Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)
Author of this article: Philip Beckschäfer
The Kyoto Protocol requires Annex-I countries to account for the carbon changes associated with afforestation, reforestation, deforestation and all land use activities undertaken since 1990. Developing countries can, however, only claim credits generated from afforestation and reforestation through the CDM but not from avoided deforestation. REDD addresses the issue that almost 20% of global GHG emissions results from deforestation in developing countries. The basic concept of REDD is simple: governments, companies or forest owners in developing countries should be rewarded for keeping their forests instead of cutting them down.
Under the UNFCCC REDD was first discussed at COP 11 (2005) but it took until COP16 (2010) in Cancún to reach an agreement on REDD. Issues on financing, governance in developing countries or the non-permanence of carbon credits based on forestry projects are still under discussion. The term “non-permanence” refers to the risk that a forestry project for which carbon credits were issued burns down or is destroyed by pests and consequently the stored carbon is released back to the atmosphere. But there are as well crucial issues related to forest inventory. How to adequately estimate and monitor changes in forest cover, associated carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions, incremental changes due to sustainable forest management, reductions in emissions from deforestation, and reductions in emissions from forest degradation is one still unsolved problem. In this context, it is especially forest degradation that causes problems. There is still no agreement on a definition of what a degraded forest is. Also the detection of forest degradation by means of remote sensing remains demanding and costly. A further question that needs to be answered in order to implement a successful REDD scheme is how to establish the relevant baseline or reference emissions levels against which reductions will be measured? To calculate the amount of credits which are issued it needs to be measured, how much the REDD project contributed to the decrease in emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Therefore, it is necessary to know what would have happened without the project, what would be the business-as-usual scenario (BAU scenario)? The calculation of a BAU scenario is done on the basis of historical deforestation rates, which are prolonged into the future. A case from Australia showed that the creation of a reliable BAU scenario is highly complex and harbors a lot of uncertainties. According to The Australia Institute (2010), the prediction of Australia’s future deforestation rates was not adequately possible even over short time frames. For some years, the actual deforestation emissions have been in excess of 80% higher than the BAU projections. For the Australian government to have accurately predicted these emissions, it would have had to foresee changes in commodity prices, rainfall and other relevant social and economic factors. If we take into account that Australia has one of the most advanced satellite-based systems for monitoring deforestation emissions in the world, the National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS), it seems unrealistic that the prediction of deforestation in developing countries can be more accurate.
REDD and REDD+
The terms REDD and REDD+ describe different forms of a scheme aiming at the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. The pure REDD focuses only on the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. REDD+ broadens the scope and adds conservation, sustainable management of forests, and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks to REDD. REDD++ or AFOLU aims at including all transitions in land cover that affect carbon storage (e.g. peat land, trees-outside-forests, agroforestry system) into the final scheme. At COP 16 in Cancún, considerable progress has been made towards making REDD an operational instrument. The Cancún Agreement does also contain the statement that countries shall implement national forest monitoring systems that allow a transparent verification of the forest carbon dynamics.
