RFUK Response to the Eliasch Review
BACKGROUND
A new report published today by Gordon Brown's Special Representative on Deforestation and Clean Energy, Johan Eliasch, recommends that rich countries should pay developing countries not to cut down their rainforests, as a cheap alternative to reducing industrial emissions here at home. The Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) welcomes the report's call for urgent measures to prevent destruction of the world's forests in order to counter climate change, but finds its conclusion that countries can somehow trade off pollution reduction for forest protection flawed.
The study, known as the Eliasch Review after its chair, Swedish businessman Johan Eliasch, looked at what it will take to get tropical countries to protect their forests in order to help mitigate climate change, and how much it might cost to do so. The Review's findings and recommendations will inform the UK government's position on how incentives for forest protection should be included in the next phase of the global agreement on climate change, to be decided in Copenhagen in December 2009.
THE REVIEW'S FINDINGS
The report identifies that carbon emissions from continued destruction and burning of the world's forests will alone be sufficient to send atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide above levels where dangerous climate change is likely to occur.
The Review's main conclusion appears to be that it is cheaper to stop deforestation than to reduce pollution in the industrialised world, so funds should be diverted towards paying to keep carbon stored in forests rather than financing new, clean technologies here at home. The Review proposes that funds for forest protection should be generated by allowing polluters in industrialized countries to buy 'avoided deforestation carbon credits', instead of reducing their own carbon emissions. The Review believes that this trade-off between industrial pollution and avoided deforestation should begin as early as 2012, and that by doing so deforestation can be reduced by 75% by 2030.
The report specifically suggests that forest carbon credits should be brought into the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which has been established to try and reduce CO2 pollution within the European Union.
RAINFOREST FOUNDATION UK'S RESPONSE
RFUK agrees that saving the rainforest is an essential and urgent element of mitigating climate change. However, we do not believe that it is the quick, cheap 'low pain' fix that the Eliasch Review may suggest, nor that it is an alternative to reducing emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels. We believe that the approach advocated in the Eliasch Review risks diverting attention and resources away from efforts to make a rapid transition to clean energy sources, better energy conservation and less-polluting transport.
The Review team's own research provides much evidence that halting tropical deforestation may prove not to be an easy solution, nor a quick or cheap one.
Importantly, and rightly, the Review recognizes that improved 'governance' of forests, and stronger and clearer laws and rules about who owns and controls forests and who should be paid for looking after them, are necessary prerequisites for lasting forest protection. The report also recognises the need to ensure that forest protection schemes respect the needs of indigenous and other people living in the forest and depending on it for their livelihoods. The report further recommends that countries wishing to access any new international funds for forest protection should be expected to comply with basic international standards and agreements on human rights, labour rights and environmental protection.
The report suggests that at it will take at least 5 years to get the right policies and governance in place, including forest land-use planning and zoning, and to build government capacity to enforce them, before any mechanisms to pay for forest protection could be effective, at a cost of between $344 million and $2.28 billion in 25 countries.
The RFUK concurs very much with the general thrust of these points. However, we believe that the Review probably greatly underestimates both the cost of resolving some of these problems, and also the time which they are likely to take. Some of the problems of bad forest governance and poor policies identified in the report have long been known about, and have already been the subject of many internationally-funded programmes to improve them. These have largely been unsuccessful, not least because they sometimes challenge deeply held vested interests, corruption and political patronage systems in tropical governments. The lesson from these earlier attempts to improve forest governance has usually been that wider reforms of government are required so as to strengthen the rule of law and increase accountability, and that this can only be achieved through long-term political dialogue, commitment and support, including for local civil society. Recent experiences in countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and Indonesia should be salutary.
The report probably also underestimates the fundamental lack of capacity in many tropical countries to better manage their forests, even where the willingness genuinely exists. Government forestry departments are often pitifully weak, and seriously lacking in expertise and skills. These problems cannot be resolved overnight, not the least because even the institutions required for training new experts and officials are few, and mostly suffering from long-term neglect.
Whilst topical governments will clearly need major new financial flows to help protect their forests in the longer term, pouring money into rainforest countries before the right pre-conditions are in place may do little to conserve forests, and might exacerbate problems of corruption and graft. As the report itself rightly notes, failure to get the foundations right from the outset might also risk harming the poor, violating local community rights and increasing social conflict.
There may also be problems of 'flooding' carbon markets such as the European Emissions Trading Scheme by hastily including forest carbon credits, which could depress the price of carbon and make pollution abatement efforts in the UK and Europe uneconomic. Greater demand for the billions of forest protection carbon credits which potentially might become available, can only be created through political commitments to much deeper emissions' reductions in Europe and elsewhere in the industrialised world.
CONCLUSIONS - AND WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
The current scientific thinking on climate change indicates that a transition to low-carbon economies must commence immediately, and that emissions in the industrialised world have to start to decline between 2010 and 2015.
RFUK believes there is a serious danger of placing excessive hope in what might be very unreliable and speculative forest protection carbon credits, instead of continuing to accelerate measures to prevent pollution and green economies in the industrialised world. Avoided deforestation carbon credits might well turn out to be "sub-prime," as weak tropical country governments fail to deliver actual reductions in deforestation, or as forests increasingly become susceptible to fire because of the warming effects of climate change itself. Trading off our own emissions against hoped-for reductions in deforestation could be a catastrophic lose-lose strategy.
Instead, there is an urgent need to accelerate efforts - initially using existing funds that have already been committed by the UK and Norwegian governments amongst others - to secure local peoples' rights to their forests, assist them to build sustainable livelihoods, combat corruption and build government capacity, thus laying the foundation for long-term forest protection, while actively reducing our emissions from fossil fuels. The UK government and others should also help to reduce levels of consumption of wood, meat and agricultural products, including agrofuels, which contribute to forest destruction.
RFUK hopes that the UK government will distance itself from the review's recommendation that forests brought into the carbon market, while heeding its advice about the need to get good governance, improved land tenure and respect for human rights in place, as the first step in any mechanism for lasting forest protection. RFUK calls on the UK government to support the forthcoming European Commission statement (due to be issued on October 17th), which is expected to argue for keeping forests out of the European Trading System (ETS) in its next phase, and pursuing other non-market funds to address the underlying drivers of deforestation.
