Progress on tropical forest scheme

A proposal that will ultimately include the world’s tropical forests in a climate protection carbon trading scheme, is well received at UN-led negotiations in Bonn.A carbon trading scheme aiming to protect the climate by halting tropical deforestation is likely to be agreed at the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen this December.

“We are seeing a lot of areas of agreement that include both developed and developing countries… there is a much stronger consensus in the room on this that there are on some of the other issues,” Federica Bietta, Deputy Director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN) tells BusinessGreen during this week’s UN-led negotiations in Bonn.

The proposal aims to introduce REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) in three phases. Firstly forestry management in rainforest countries should be scaled up. Secondly forestry protection demonstration projects should be deployed. And thirdly the REDD projects should get access to carbon markets to help finance projects.

Brazil remains sceptical about carbon credits as an appropriate tool in rainforest conservation, but according to Federica Bietta the credits have general support in Bonn:

“We know that if we are to have access to carbon market projects, we will have to adhere to higher standards of auditing and management. But we believe access to the market is the best way to get the financing at the required scale (…) Some countries such as Papua New Guinea and Indonesia have already been working on REDD for a few years and could introduce projects quite quickly, while some other countries could take five years to get their first project up and running.”

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