REDD Monitor

“Reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries and approaches to stimulate action”, first appeared as an agenda item in December 2005, at the 11th session of the Conference of Parties to the Climate Change Convention (COP 11) in Montréal. Two years later, at COP 13 in Bali, Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation was the big new idea to save the planet from runaway climate change.

Preventing deforestation seems an obvious way of reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There are many other benefits of preventing deforestation, including benefits to Indigenous Peoples and local communities living in and near forests.

Most discussions on REDD have so far focused on which mechanisms should be used to channel money from rich countries to those in the south where forests are most threatened, thereby avoiding the release of carbon emissions resulting from deforestation. But the question is: will this work?

At best, there are serious technical and policitical challenges to overcome. As the World Rainforest Movement noted in August 2008, “it is necessary to first identify the causes of deforestation and, once that’s done, the second step would be to find the appropriate mechanisms for addressing them.” Many observers have commented that efforts to ‘reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation’ will require major changes in forest governance, policies, laws and relationships between governments and people living in and around the forests. As a means of tackling climate change, REDD faces particular difficulties, not the least in terms of:

• monitoring the state of forests and the volumes of carbon either being emitted or stored;
• in preventing ‘avoided deforestation’ efforts in one location simply shifting the problem elsewhere; and
• finding ways that funding can be got to the people living in the forests – who should ultimately make the decisions about whether their forests stand or fall.

The website emerged from discussions between NGO networks in Europe and the South, who felt the need to share information about the way REDD is developing. REDD-Monitor will critically analyse the problems related to REDD and “avoided deforestation”. In doing so, we hope to help facilitate a public discussion about REDD. We hope that by doing so we will make a useful contribution in answering the question “will REDD work?”

REDD-Monitor will document the spread of REDD projects around the world. In doing so, we will look at the “who” as well as the “how”.

REDD-Monitor is run by Chris Lang. The views expressed on REDD-Monitor do not necessarily reflect the formal positions of any organisations or individuals, except when this is clearly stated. Currently, this project receives no external funding.