13 år sedan
Forestry on the Centre Stage: COP17
The big questions are still spinning in place at COP 17. There are no workable climate agreements in sight, nor any continuation of the failing Kyoto protocol. But at least there is some light at the end of the tunnel: on the deforestation issue things are looking up according Global Utmaning’s Mattias Goldmann.
Durban’s big success story may well be the initiation of the REDD agreement, “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation.” Many of the South American countries are already scouting for finance, environmental NGOs are taking a watchdog role and the climate investors are showing off new market incentives for the sector.
However, as always, the devil is in the details and it might just prevent this goal from being reached as well. A make or break question is the scope of REDD, environmental organisations are pushing for heavy protection of biodiversity and native deep forest population, whereas most of the negotiators want to regulate this on a local level and leave the REDD with a clear climate focus.
– I am worried that we get such a heavy document that it in practice shuts out many valuable projects which cannot cope with the high costs of registry and validation says Mr. Goldmann.
COP17 runs until December 8, and Mattias Goldmann will be present for the entire duration. The conclusions from the forestry debate will be of great importance for Global Utmaning’s coming report “Forestr for Development” (F4D.)
