Climate Change: Better REDD Than Dead

The byzantine politics of paying countries to save trees.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Amid the blizzard of acronyms you’re likely to hear a lot as global climate talks heat up is REDD, which is United Nations lingo for Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation. In other words, finding ways to pay for preserving forests and planting new trees—an issue that has set major political and financial interests on a collision course. Some of the key players:

The UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, set up under the 1997 Kyoto treaty, allows governments and corporations to buy offsets from tree-planting projects in developing countries (including, for example, monocrop eucalyptus plantations that grow quickly and sequester carbon). But it does not cover projects that save existing forests, and there’s a lot of pressure for that to change in Copenhagen.

Divisions have already emerged among the developing countries with significant forests. Brazil, wary of placing the fate of its trees in the hands of polluting industries in the north, is advocating for rich countries to give anti-deforestation aid directly to developing countries; the money would come from emission permit sales as well as institutions like the World Bank. This is known as the “sectoral” approach, in which large areas of forestland could become part of a nationwide preservation strategy—and governments would be paid to reduce the rate of deforestation below an agreed-upon baseline, for example 2005 levels. By contrast, countries like Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Congo, which have cut their forests at slower rates than Brazil (and would thus not benefit as much from such a baseline approach), want to be paid via offsets, much as businesses now pay directly for offsets like windmills. What’s implied is that if not compensated, they could ratchet up their deforestation rates to match, say, Brazil’s.

Indigenous people around the world, many of whom have been displaced through preservation efforts, are demanding “free, prior, and informed consent” before new restrictions move forward. Some also want tribes, like the Guarani in Brazil, to be compensated for preserving forests for centuries.

In the industrialized world, the big fight is between the EU and the United States: The European carbon-trading market, by far the largest in the world, does not allow avoided-deforestation offsets, which the EU says are hard to monitor and can’t bring down emissions in the long term. In the US, a very different approach has developed thanks to massive lobbying from energy companies such as American Electric Power, Duke Energy, and PG&E. They have joined forces with green groups like the Nature Conservancy, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council to advocate for harnessing “the power of US carbon markets,” where carbon offsets would be traded to preserve forests. Groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth argue such schemes would hold forests hostage to the price of carbon, but so far, the industry coalition is winning the day: Waxman-Markey permits avoided-deforestation credits, a provision that could be worth millions of dollars for the companies that have stockpiled thousands of tons’ worth of carbon in their forest preserves far from Washington, DC.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate