Date published: 2008/10/13
The BBC says:
A new global deal to protect the world's rainforests has been proposed in a report drawn up for Gordon Brown.
The idea is part of a review into deforestation and green energy by Swedish businessman Johan Eliasch.
The ex-Tory donor says cash put aside for carbon saving in rich countries should be transferred to nations with rainforests in need of protection.
Rainforest destruction accounts for about a fifth of the carbon emissions blamed for fuelling climate change.
Details of Mr Eliasch's plan are due to be announced on Tuesday.
His report says an international deal to protect forests would reduce the cost of tackling climate change by up to 50% in 2030.
It would also allow much more ambitious CO2 cuts to be achieved globally without extra cost.
Forest destruction produces about a fifth of the world's extra C02, and any scheme to reduce forest felling will be broadly welcomed.
But the review will need to ensure it does not lead to indigenous people being dispossessed; or feed corruption; or create a moral hazard in which poor countries hold rich nations to ransom threatening to fell their trees; or flatten carbon markets supporting clean energy.
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The review will be met by goodwill peppered with scepticism. Some carbon traders are confident that forest credits can be prevented from swamping the market, but others do not believe the scheme will work.A massive challenge will be avoiding "leakage" in which some countries take hand-outs for keeping forests they had no plans to fell in the first place, whilst illegal loggers run riot in countries that either stay outside the scheme or fail to enforce it.
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Some sceptics fear even that optimism may be misplaced if carbon trading merely creates the illusion of progress but in fact diverts funds to the many crooks now running forestry in some developing nations
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Some campaigners fear that channelling funds into forestry could spark a new "natural resources" curse in which corrupt and inefficient governments get money to protect their forests but can only waste it because it is not clear who owns the forests, who should be paid for protecting them, and how agreements should be policed.The nightmare scenario, according to one analyst, is that we place undue confidence in protecting tropical rainforests in order to tackle climate change, lose sight of the imperative for a quick transition to a low-carbon economy in the rich world, trade off domestic emissions against putative "avoidance of deforestation", but then find that tropical country governments are unable to reduce deforestation.
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One carbon trader told me: "Look, there are going to be some people scamming money out of this deal - but at least it is a deal... and it has to do more good than harm."
The odds that this works is extremely low, given the history of massive corruption when it comes to sending money from the developed to the developing countries (which is usually the fault of people at both ends). The optimism expressed by the "carbon trader" should not go unchallenged (and traders have a direct financial interest, which makes their opinion less trustworthy). It is entirely possible that this kind of proposal could do more harm than good, and it is up to the proponents of this idea to convice the world otherwise. This also goes for the equally naive statement that "it would also allow much more ambitious CO2 cuts to be achieved globally without extra cost". There will be a lot of extra cost to the ordinary people of the world when the rich corrupt creeps that run the relevant countries hive off most of the money to their Swiss bank accounts.
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