Weathervane: A Climate Policy Blog from Resources for the Future

Feb11

Running the Numbers on REDD

In the latest installment of RFF's Weekly Policy Commentary Series RFF Senior Fellow Allen Blackman examines whether programs to incentivize avoiding deforestation and forest degredation will be the cost-effective emission reduction tool many are counting on:

An international system that enables countries to earn carbon credits by reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) will almost certainly be a prominent feature of whatever post-2012 international climate architecture emerges from ongoing negotiations.

One of the main arguments for creating such a system is that REDD will be inexpensive compared to fuel switching, carbon capture and storage, and other greenhouse gas abatement options. As a result, allowing countries to sell REDD credits will cut the total global cost of combating climate change. This argument underpins numerous high-profile reports and white papers—including the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report and the 2006 Stern Review—and has even inspired widespread concern about, and research on, a coming deluge of low-cost REDD credits.

Yet the scientific foundation for the hypothesis that REDD credits will be cost effective is thin, is contradicted by emerging evidence on the effectiveness of forest conservation policies in developing countries, and deserves serious scrutiny before critical REDD policy decisions are made.

Read the rest of Blackman's “Will REDD Really Be Cheap?” here.

Published: Feb-11-10 | 0 Comments

Jan07

Post-Holiday Post-Mortem: Surveying the Wreckage of COP-15

COP-15, International, China, United States, REDD

Pony image courtesy Cheesy42 via Flickr

If I may, I’d like to start with a holiday-appropriate metaphor. Let’s pretend that you are convinced you’re getting a pony for Christmas. You’re absolutely sure of it; the momentum built up from the Christmas presents of years past is too strong for this year’s gift to be anything but a pony. As the year creeps closer to Christmas morning, you see warning signs that suggest you might not get your pony this year. Mom and Dad are struggling to make ends meet, the pony market is down overall, and you live in a high-rise apartment. Regardless, you keep thinking that pony is coming because it has to. This is the year of the pony.

When Christmas comes, you rush downstairs to find … no pony. All you got was a pair of socks. They’re nice socks. Thick and warm, they’re made of SmartWool, so they’ll keep your feet dry. They will be great socks to wear the day when you eventually get a pony. Your friend, who wasn’t expecting to get anything for Christmas got the same socks and is actually pretty stoked, considering he didn’t expect to get anything. It doesn’t matter to you, though, because you had your heart set on a pony and all you got was a stupid pair of socks. Worst December ever.

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When people ask me how Copenhagen turned out, I tell them it depends on what they were expecting going in. For some, expectations for the conference were huge, a-pony-for-Christmas huge. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that many of them view the results as a dismal failure. Negotiations on text for what would have become the Copenhagen Agreement or Protocol (or whatever official sounding name for a document you prefer) did not progress well enough over the course of the year to produce a great outcome at COP-15.

The U.N. tried to lower expectations in the preceding months, and after meetings in Bangkok and Barcelona, it was pretty clear Copenhagen was not going to deliver on what many were hoping for, namely legally binding emissions targets. The Copenhagen Accord, the result of two weeks’ worth of brain-numbing negotiations and some impressive ad hoc diplomacy by President Obama, to turned out to be something like (to stick with the metaphor) a comfortable pair of warm socks: underwhelming and perhaps disappointing to a lot of people, but still useful, probably more helpful than we realize, and something on which we can stand in the future.

What actually came out the meeting? The Copenhagen Accord, a three-page document that reiterates the international community’s commitment to reduce emissions enough to prevent a 2 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures. It asks developed and developing countries to commit to mitigation actions under the basic structure of the Kyoto Protocol (and submit them by January 31), and establishes a framework for monitoring, reporting, and verifying nations’ emissions reductions. Along with recognizing the importance of reducing emissions for deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and market approaches to emissions reductions, it also establishes mechanisms through which developed countries can provide financial support to developing countries for adaptation purposes.

The Accord, while not officially adopted by the Conference, will help move the process forward. Before you start making hotel reservations in Mexico City for December, let’s take a look back on some the important things we saw in Copenhagen and how they might affect the process moving forward.

Do we need to scrap the COP? – If there was one thing that was pretty clear after two weeks in the snow and fog of Copenhagen, it’s that the current structure for international negotiations is very limited in what it can achieve. It would be difficult to get 193 nations to agree on something trivial like who was the best Bond (quite obviously Connery), so getting them to agree on how best stop a global catastrophe is not going to be a walk in the park. The UNFCCC structures and processes, however, make progress painfully difficult at times.

The final result of the COP is a perfect example. After weeks of arguments, stalemates, and walkouts, it took five heads of state trapped in a room together (President Obama and the leaders of Brazil, China, South Africa, and India, also called BASIC) to come up with three pages of somewhat vague agreements to be solidified at a later date. Most of the plenary was happy enough to have some kind of outcome and voted to approve the politically binding (not legally) Accord. To adopt an accord, however, requires a unanimous vote of approval from the delegates. Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Sudan all felt that the Accord developed by the big kids did not include their particular interests or they were not properly consulted, and at least four of them voted against the Accord. Thus, instead of adopting it, the COP took note of the Accord, meaning that it acknowledges its existence and COP members can voluntarily comply with it, but it currently has no legal authority. None of this means that the Accord is not significant, but it shows how fragile COP proceedings can be. All it takes it one cheesed-off country (or one that is scared of economic specters) to stand between the world and a binding international climate agreement.

So are there alternatives? Indeed there are and they may become more attractive as nations look to move forward from Copenhagen. It’s clear that the complexities of climate change are a bit overwhelming for the UNFCCC process. Parallel conversations need to happen to more effectively address major issues and disagreements. As I said before, the Accord was written between the U.S. and BASIC. Those nations represent more than 50 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. Throw the EU, Japan, and the rest of the world’s 17 largest economies and you have over 90 percent of emissions represented in one room that is much smaller and more manageable than the Bella Center. Dialogues between these critical nations can help break some of the loggerheads encountered in the COP discussions. There are two possible avenues through which parallel negotiations can help:

Bilateral and multi-lateral talks: What if the U.S. and China went into Copenhagen with a semi-formal agreement for technology sharing and measurement, reporting and verification (MRV)? Or if the EU worked out a deal with Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia for funding programs for REDD and adaptation that could easily be plugged into UNFCCC institutions? Major emitters working directly with each other to smooth out differences and reach understandings before entering COP negotiations may help cut down on the static and grease the skids for legally binding outcomes that robustly address major issues.

Major Economies Forum: About that smaller room I mentioned earlier. The MEF can play a substantial role in advancing COP discussions if it wants to. It can provide a more intimate setting in which the U.S. and EU can talk about monitoring emissions and trade restrictions with China and India without the chaos and pressure of the COP negotiations. The MEF also does not have entrenched categories of Annex I and Non-Annex I countries that were established by the Kyoto Protocol, so the distinctions between developed (US, EU, Japan, etc.) and emerging (BASIC and others) are more flexible and can better reflect the economic realities in each nation.

These suggestions are not advocating a total dismantling or abandonment of the UNFCCC process. Instead, these negotiations can occur outside the process, but the end results can be designed so they can easily plug into on-going COP discussions. There will likely be issues regarding equity for developing countries and many of them will probably resent not being actively involved in the process. But going outside the COP may lead to significant progress on climate change and could also spur action within the COP as well. If you don’t want to take my word for it, you can listen to Rob Stavins and Joe Romm instead.

Et tu, China? – Going into Copenhagen, it looked like the U.S. was once again going to end up looking like the bad guy. Leave it to China to beat us at our own game. Without the U.S. to hide behind anymore, China—and India to a lesser extent—stepped forward to block huge progress. For the two weeks of the COP, China stonewalled and refused to budge on its demands for the developed world. Then in the final hours, when things got real with the various heads of state, China showed the proceedings exactly how serious it was taking things by sending a mid-level official to talk to the leaders of the other nations. Even after Obama managed to track down Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and get him talking, China still vetoed the inclusion of language requiring a 50 percent reduction in total global emissions and 80 percent reduction from developed countries by 2050. Following the meeting, British Climate Secretary Ed Miliband called China out for trying to hijack the conference and being an obstacle to progress.

China’s actions, while discouraging, are not entirely surprising. It had all the leverage in this situation. Unlike other countries like Brazil and, to some extent the U.S., there was no domestic political pressure for the Chinese to reach a deal. The Chinese know they are key to any international agreement, and they know how big a role they play in U.S. domestic climate debates. Why should they move when they hold all the cards? It is also pretty clear that the Chinese have no desire to be an international leader on climate change. They have announced what they consider strong reductions (45 percent reduction in carbon intensity by 2020) and they have been going nuts on the renewable energy front, but they don’t want to commit to anything that’s going to cut into their economic growth over the next few decades. If the U.S. and EU are looking to form some kind of coalition of the willing for climate change, they’d be better off going after Brazil, Indonesia, and other emerging economies first. Everyone else might have to be on board first before the Chinese decide to play.

The more things change, the more they stay the same – The Obama administration entered 2009 looking to reclaim American leadership on climate change. The U.S. was engaged and negotiating in good faith for the first time in eight years. But, ever the realist, Obama wouldn’t sign anything that has no chance of passing the Senate. Consequently, U.S. negotiators would not commit to anything that was not laid out in domestic legislation. What domestic legislation am I talking about? Well, uhh …

It’s pretty simple. The world can’t take effective action without the U.S., and the U.S. can’t act effectively without domestic legislation. Things cannot move forward until the Senate acts. Obama cannot make “transformative and inspiring commitments” that will not pass a filibuster vote, let alone the 67 votes needed to ratify an international treaty. Copenhagen may have some effect on the Senate debate in 2010, and that debate will loom very large over future COPs just as it did in Copenhagen.

REDD in the face – If you followed our on-the-ground reporting, then you know the silver lining in all the chaos and tomfoolery was the advances in REDD and protecting tropical forests. The negotiations regarding the REDD text were consistently the most promising. While a final agreement was not reached, there were some promising developments. First, the U.S., Australia, Japan, Norway, Britain, and France pledged $3.5 billion for REDD programs over the next three years. Second, the Accord acknowledged how important REDD is to achieving robust emissions reductions and discussions are going to continue into the future. There are still some issues to iron out, like national vs. sub-national monitoring systems, but saving the forests was one of the rare things on which almost everyone could agree. Insert tree-hugging hippie joke here.

Copenhagen was a disappointment in a lot of ways, and a disaster in some ways (I’m not going to talk about logistical problems here), but it had real outcomes that matter. It is not the solution many were hoping for, and the world is currently a long way away from keeping temperature rises from 2 degrees Celsius. But things are moving forward. Think of Copenhagen as a baby step, with really nice wool socks.

Daniel F. Morris is a Research Associate with Resources for the Future and a regular contributor to Common Tragedies

Published: Jan-07-10 | 2 Comments

Dec11

REDD Dawn

Forest Carbon, COP-15, REDD

COPENHAGEN -- If there is one topic at the COP that gets people excited, it is the issue of international forests. Many people I’ve talked to, from delegate members of developing countries to negotiators for major corporations, see a lot of potential for REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) to have a major impact on the negotiations. For those not in the know, REDD programs basically would pay people to keep the carbon currently locked up in the trees and soil of forests. Truth be told, if had I to make everyone at this event decide on something slightly more scandalous than the statement “chocolate is tasty,” it would be “REDD is a vital part of any climate agreement.”

With that in mind, the RFF team has been scouring many of the REDD-related meetings over the past couple days. Though the side events and presentations have been varied, a couple of consistent themes have cropped up:

Stakeholders – working with people who are on the ground, especially indigenous groups who can benefit from REDD schemes (paying people to protect their forested land), is a critical component of a successful project. The indigenous people here at the COP are very skeptical about the ability of REDD to improve their lives or protect their lands. This was especially evident in one side event that focused on the social and environmental standards necessary for REDD projects hosted by Nepal. After a series of presentations about how best to involve people living in forests and the importance of their rights, a number of indigenous representative stood up and lamented how no one appreciates their rights and they are not being involved. Ensuring indigenous rights (and convincing them they are a part of the process) will be key for any tropical forest carbon program.

Equity – similar to the stakeholder issues, equity among all involved parties in REDD programs is something people here are hammering home. People receiving payments need to be treated fairly for them to maintain standing forests.

National strategies – Coordinated national strategies are important, but no one knows quite how to do them yet. The solution, reiterated in multiple events, is to take lessons learned from small-scale projects and eventually upgrade them to the national scale. While it’s not a perfect strategy, options are currently limited.

Upfront investment – REDD is not a slow-boil proposition, something you can just sit back and let develop slowly. Without robust investment in critical components (capacity building, monitoring, etc) from the beginning, REDD programs will likely fail. National governments are the only entities with the resources to fully deploy everything necessary to make REDD succeed.

Forestry issues are one of the least contentious issues being negotiated here, but there are still a lot of important considerations and problems to be solved. Don’t count on them being solved in the next ten days.

Daniel F. Morris is a Research Associate with Resources for the Future and is a regular contributor to Common Tragedies.

Published: Dec-11-09 | 0 Comments

Nov09

Making Sense of Lowered Deforestation Emissions Projections

Forests, REDD

Image courtesy certified su via Flickr Research published this month in Nature Geoscience indicates that downward revisions to estimates of past deforestation rates (a smaller numerator) and an increase in overall global greenhouse gas emissions (a larger denominator) may have squeezed the percentage of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from deforestation down from 20 percent to about 12 percent. The report also highlights the central role of less-widely known peatland degradation in this total — suggesting that a more comprehensive land management approach building on the UN’s REDD program should be the focus of international forest policy negotiations.

The study — carried out by a global group of researchers led by Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam — addresses each of the three estimates of global deforestation rates included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, the source of the oft-cited 20 percent figure. First, country-level UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) deforestation surveys used for estimates have recently been revised downward. Second, global satellite monitoring data used in other estimates has been extended outward to 2005 and its projections remain below those based on FAO data. Third, estimates of carbon emissions from forest fires, primarily concentrated in Southeast Asia, have also been lowered. Combine these trends with a bump in energy-related fossil fuel emissions, and voila, deforestation suddenly seems to be a smaller piece of the greenhouse gas pie.

The authors say reducing fossil fuel emissions remains the key to global climate stabilization, although they concede that in specific countries where deforestation is the primary driver of emissions, focusing on reductions from that sector may be appropriate. It remains to be seen what impact this revision will have on efforts to agree on a global REDD framework under the UNFCCC, or the substantial tropical forest offset and set-aside provisions in U.S. climate legislation.

However, it would also be easy to draw several false conclusions from this report:

1) Global efforts to reduce deforestation have been successful, or adequate to address the scale of the emissions problem. As the authors clearly state, these changes are the product of revisions to past estimates of deforestation and increasing total emissions, not of actual declines in recent deforestation or degradation rates.

2) Estimates are too uncertain and resources devoted to this area should be reduced. Although this is an easy target for those who oppose these programs in general, it would be equally valid to draw the conclusion that the uncertainty revealed by this estimate, and highlighted by recent RFF work, is actually a call for additional resources to be devoted to this area in order to get a better handle on the scale of the problem and the right solutions. In addition, whether emissions are 12 percent or 20 percent there is wide agreement, cited in the report, that these are 12 percent of the most cost-effective reduction opportunities out there and thus may merit special attention in the short-term even with existing uncertainties.

3) Effective mechanisms for reducing emissions from land-use change are somehow secondary to or less important than transforming energy and manufacturing. Several recent papers published in Science indicate that emissions accounting policies as they relate to bioenergy may place substantial additional pressure on the world’s forests in the coming years. Increasing demand for food driven by population growth and rising affluence will also put additional pressure on the land, not to mention the impacts of climate change on agriculture or water resources. Developing a comprehensive approach to climate change and land management must be a central priority right up there with transforming the global energy sector.

Andrew Stevenson is a research assistant at Resources for the Future and regular contributor to Common Tragedies.

Published: Nov-09-09 | 0 Comments

Oct08

Curbing Deforestation Emissions: A REDD Primer

REDD, Forests, Forest Carbon, International, Congress

Forest image courtesy Certified Su via Flickr A bipartisan group of government, business, and NGO leaders—boasting D.C. star power like John Podesta and Lincoln Chafee—is urging Congress to make tropical forest conservation a key facet of its climate and energy legislation.

According to The Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests’ Protecting the Climate Forests, the deforestation and degradation of tropical forests accounts for some 17 percent of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Halting deforestation could be a cost-effective way to quickly slow the growth of emissions rates.

The commission says the United States should lead a global partnership to halve GHG emissions from tropical deforestation by 2020 and reach zero net emissions from deforestation by 2030. The authors suggest investing at least $1 billion in public funding prior to 2012 and mobilizing roughly $9 billion annually by 2020 from the private sector to reduce tropical forest emissions.

REDD

Investment from developed nations for tropical forest conservation in developing countries is the basic framework of a United Nations program known as REDD. REDD is expected to play a key role in upcoming international climate treaty negotiations.

Below, RFF Program Fellow Erin Myers Madeira answers some questions about what REDD is, who could be involved, and how—with the creation of a compliance market—it could work.

What is REDD and how does it work?

REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. REDD is a mechanism that uses market/financial incentives to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases from deforestation and forest degradation in a measurable and verifiable way.

REDD credits offer the opportunity to utilize funding from developed countries to reduce deforestation in developing countries. REDD puts a value on forests for the services they provide by keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. At relatively low carbon prices, REDD can make standing forests more valuable than the timber or plantation revenues that would result from clearing forests.

REDD can refer to policies and measures—such as strategic road planning, implementing best practices for timber practices or restricting activities that degrade peatlands—that reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation across a landscape. REDD can also refer to pilot projects or demonstration activities that have a clear objective to directly reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in a specific geographic area.

You said that there are market incentives for REDD; who are buying and selling REDD?

Land owners, concession holders, traditional forest people, and governments in developing countries can take actions to prevent forest loss or forest degradation. By proving that their actions measurably reduced the rate of deforestation and degradation compared to a reference scenario (where no action would be taken), they can generate REDD credits.

Currently REDD credits can be sold on the voluntary market where individuals, companies, and even towns or counties buy carbon credits to offset their carbon footprint. However, a compliance market for REDD credits could be created by inclusion of REDD in domestic climate change policy or international post-Kyoto climate agreements. In a compliance market, companies and other entities facing an obligation to reduce their emissions could buy REDD credits to offset their emissions and meet their legal emissions requirements.

Who stands to benefit from a compliance market for REDD?

If REDD credits are included in a compliance market, the benefits are widespread. The sellers of REDD credits benefit because they are able to generate value by protecting their forests, making them better off doing that than finding any alternative forest use. The buyers benefit because they are able to reduce the cost of complying to emissions regulations. And greater society benefits from the biodiversity and watershed benefits that forests provide in addition to their carbon storage

What are some of the major concerns in the design and implementation of a compliance market for REDD?

Many of the concerns with REDD have to do with the technical ability to measure and monitor emissions reductions from forests as well as environmental integrity issues about leakage and permanence—meaning that if you sell a credit based on protecting forests in one place at one time, it’s not guaranteed you can be sure that forests are not cut down somewhere else or in the future. The good news is that the technical capabilities for REDD have improved tremendously in recent years, and the attention on environmental integrity has spurred innovative thinking in how to minimize and monitor these risks.

There are also concerns that the developing countries that are expected to generate REDD credits have weak institutional and governance capacities, which would inhibit the success of REDD programs.

It is certainly true that many countries have a poor track record when it comes to governance in the forestry sector. However, REDD has created an incentive to improve governance conditions as they work towards national REDD program. Further, there are a number of activities that can be undertaken in the existing conditions that will result in real, measurable reductions in deforestation and degradation. Find a more in-depth discussion of issues surrounding REDD here.

What is REDD+?

REDD+ expands the scope of REDD beyond avoided deforestation and degradation activities to include forest restoration, rehabilitation, sustainable management and/or af/reforestation. However, it is not yet decided which specific activities will be included in REDD+. Expanding the scope of REDD means that countries that have low rates of deforestation and degradation, or have increasing forests will be able to participate in a REDD+ program where they might not be able to with a narrower definition of REDD.

Erin Myers Madeira is a program fellow at Resources for the Future. She’s written extensively about REDD both in this 2008 RFF report and online at the Katoomba Group’s Ecosystem Marketplace.

Tiffany Clements is managing editor of Weathervane.

Published: Oct-08-09 | 0 Comments