Seeing REDD on climate change
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That is not the case. Individual countries like Germany are making binding unilateral commitments that are not conditional on what other countries do, and "coalitions of the willing" are being formed to tackle particular sectors. The REDD-plus partnership (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), an effort to create financial value for the carbon stored in forests, is the prime example here. Indeed, the greatest progress is now being made where the problem is the most urgent: It is much easier to preserve forests than to restore them.
The case of Indonesia deserves special attention. Indonesia's forest grows on peatlands. When the trees are cut and peatlands drained, the carbon accumulated over millenniums is exposed and oxidized - often in the form of fires that envelope neighboring Singapore and Malaysia in smoke.
Today, half of Indonesia's peatlands remain intact; if they were exposed, emissions would double. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is determined to prevent this, and he has received financial support for his efforts from Norway. Their partnership has already been joined by Australia, and others are expected to follow soon.
The partnership is path-breaking in several ways. Yudhoyono is introducing a moratorium on the exploitation of peatlands and virgin forests. A REDD-plus agency will be charged with treating rain forests as a natural resource that is to be preserved and restored rather than exploited and destroyed. This will also transform governance and the delivery of official development assistance (ODA).
The REDD-plus agency will have a domestic governing board that will coordinate the activities of all governmental units associated with rain forests, and an international board that will authorize and monitor the spending of ODA funds. This means that ODA will support homegrown institutions instead of administering projects introduced from the outside.
These efforts can serve as a prototype for assisting other countries such as Guyana, where the current forest-preservation scheme does not work so well. Eventually, it should lead to the establishment of a global fund for rain forests and agricultural adaptation because the benefits of carbon abatement accrue to mankind as a whole, not to individual countries. The global fund would introduce two prices, one for carbon saving by restoring forests and one for avoiding carbon emissions by preserving them.
This in turn sets an example for other sectors. In this way, carbon pricing will be introduced and international cooperation established from the bottom up, on a sectoral basis rooted in demonstrated results.
Thus, despite the widespread impression that the climate change agenda has stalled, there are grounds for hope. But realizing that hope requires keeping pace with global warming, and that means speeding up the process of putting a price - or prices - on carbon emissions.
The author is chairman of Soros Fund Management and of Open Society Institute.
Project Syndicate
