Going green with REDD

Mike Korchinsky of Wildlife Works Carbon said he got interested when “A few months ago, a friend trading in carbon credits suggested l look into REDD because it is about protecting trees we already have.” It wasn’t an easy to implement because of the stringent standards set by the Voluntary Carbon Standards which allows for participation in the global carbon markets covering REDD.

The implementation programme is complex, expensive and time consuming.

It involved documenting Rukinga’s carbon value by counting all the trees in order to calculate the carbon emissions if the forest was not there.

The land was divided into grids, with teams of men recording the height and width of the canopies, and the tree species, compete with their location using the global positioning system.

“It’s a bit futuristic and speculative because you have to work out what would happen if you weren’t there to protect the trees. Historical evidence shows that deforestation is rampant. But you have to also include other parameters for the next 20 years such as population pressure, the estimate consumption of fuelwood among others. You have to make a case for the auditors.”

One has to also provide evidence that while you may be protecting your forest, you’re not moving the problem of deforestation elsewhere.

The stringent criterion is necessary to keep unscrupulous people from exploiting the carbon trade market.

“Wildlife Works has been a leader in using the power of the consumer market place to conserve biodiversity and protect forest habitat, and we see the emerging Voluntary Carbon Marketplace as a logical and exciting extension of our 10 year history,” says Mr Korchinsky.

Wildlife Works Carbon will help local landowners in the developing countries gain financially from their forest and biodiversity assets whether they are communities or private landowners.

If the REDD venture takes hold in Africa and other parts of the developing world, it may help save the last of the ancient forests by placing a true economic value on them from where the local people can directly earn carbon credits.

It may give them the much need incentive to invest their time in protecting the forests versus cutting them down for charcoal or for farming.

In an article in the March 2009 edition of the International Institute for Economic Development (IIED), Virgilio M. Viana, director-general of the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation and an IIED Visiting Fellow, writes that deforestation is not simply a result of poverty or ignorance but of expected economic benefits for the people exploiting it. “It is the result of a perverse system that financially rewards land grabbers, illegal loggers and agribusiness.

Cattle farming, for instance, is a highly profitable enterprise. From 1996 to 2006, numbers of cattle in the Brazilian Legal Amazon — that part of Brazil within the Amazon basin — rose from 37 million to 73 million.”

Viana further writes that the biggest challenge under the REDD venture is not how to reduce deforestation, but how to finance the reduction. The global carbon market reached $118 billion in 2008 but very little of it was invested in protecting tropical rainforests.

He continues his argument by stating that if the nature of the battle is predominantly economic, irreversible success will come only with sustainable finance — public, private and non-profit programmes aimed at stopping deforestation for carbon stored, biodiversity conserved, water supply protected or poverty eradicated.