Halting deforestation

My post earlier this week on the UN Bali Conference on the next steps to tackle climate change proved popular, so I thought I'd talk about another subject that has been hotly debated at the Conference this week: deforestation.

Deforestation is the other side of the coin of increased carbon emissions - because at the same time as carbon emissions are increasing, the proportion of trees that can absorb the greenhouse gases is declining - in some cases, alarmingly. This again goes to my preference for initiatives that encourage, incentivise and innovate to tackle climate change: simply by reversing deforestation we can make a significant, and relatively affordable contribution to the fight.

On Thursday, Channel 4 News noted that Indonesia - with 10% of the world's rainforests - produces 25,000 cubic metres of wood pulp every single day at the loss of a staggering 2 million hectares of forest every year. Not that long ago an area of the Brazilian Rainforests the size of Wales was year-after-year being hacked down - a problem that has declined significantly under President Lula da Silva but remains a problem in part because of the world-wide demand for Soya.

The mooted solution to this is for wealthy countries to effectively pay these developing nations (and economies) to not cut down their forests. Indonesia's government is keen on this idea, perhaps unsurprisingly: it gets paid handsomely for doing not very much! The sticking points are many, however - not least how can donor nations be guaranteed that the forests won't be felled after the cash has been handed over: after all, 80% of the logging in that country is illegal.

I also personally feel slightly uneasy about rich countries effectively "buying up" swathes of the developing world - it has echoes of colonialism about it even if it is consensual.

My solution would be to create an International Trust, mirroring our own National Trust, which is of course the biggest landowner we have - and one of our most trusted institutions to boot.
The cash-for-land arrangement would still go ahead - albeit that rather than the government getting 100% of the money a share would go to the Trust for security and forestry management; but instead of the sovereign government being responsible for honoring and enforcing the preservation of forests they would have to covenant the land over to the Trust; so that there is a guarantee to the donor nations that our agreement will be honoured over the long term; not subject to the whim of changing governments, elected or otherwise.

If you're interested in reading more about the RED - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation programme, you can do so at the UN Environmental Programme website here. And a reminder that the UN Bali Conference site is http://unfccc.int/. The Conference runs until 14 December.