Thursday, November 5, 2009
EDF's A Day in the Life of a Carbon Credit for Reduced Deforestation
An interesting story (hyperlinked in blog title) by Environmental Defense Fund on what a hypothetical REDD credit could look like in Brazil.
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This is not so much a hypothetical story as a carbon market fairytale about the happy interaction of American corporations and impoverished forest users in developing countries.
You have to accept a series of dubious assumptions to come to the same conclusion as EDF. Two examples are listed below:
1) The indigenous group must be able to reduce deforestation more cheaply and more 'transparently' (from the standpoint of global monitoring systems) than other potential actors. Can poor forest residents monitor their lands for less than it costs large landowners or multinational corporations to create carbon forest plantations? If not, AEE will probably invest its money elsewhere. This is how markets work.
2) The government of Brazil must recognize the indigenous populations as legitimate forest owners and carbon mitigators. It must provide a governance structure that responds to their claims (i.e. a police agent shows up and arrests the illegal loggers after they are identified by the indigenous patrol).
This may very well be true in Brazil, but the government is not nearly so responsive to the demands of rural people in the majority of REDD countries.
Let's stop telling fairytales and produce a more realistic assessment of how REDD will impact people and forests in developing countries.
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