Week 1-Day 2: UN Climate Change Conference
This is Nigel Sizer’s 2nd post from the UN Climate Change Conference, which kicked off Monday, December 3rd in Bali.
Strange Bedfellows!
The best way to learn anything at these huge governmental meetings is to leave the governments to do their thing and head to the side meetings. There the NGOs, experts, politicians and thought leaders strut their stuff. The highlight today was an event lead by Greenpeace featuring – get this – the governor of Indonesia’s Papua province (the most forest rich part of the country) and a Carbon trading company. Greenpeace bringing top politicians and Carbon traders together to save forests…climate change is creating some extraordinary new coalitions!
The topic of the gathering was one of the hottest topics here: RED. This appropriate acronym stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation. Since clearing forests, mainly in the tropics, accounts for about 20 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions, finding ways to curb deforestation is a key piece of the climate change puzzle – especially if you remember that we may need to reduce emissions by 80-90 percent by about 2050 to avoid catastrophic consequences.
Papua Governer Barnabas Suebu (left) with Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Amazon Campaign Coordinator.
Eighty percent of Papuans live in poverty, and most depend on forests and reefs for their livelihoods. Logging for China and oil palm plantations are moving fast into these last great forest frontiers. Governor Barnabas Suebu plans to set aside most of the province’s forests for conservation and Greenpeace is trying to help pay for this through concern about climate change in the rich world.
The discussion following the presentations was as rich in technical complexity as a Papuan rainforest is in culture and biodiversity. A key point made by several was that the real challenge will be implementing the program on the ground, getting the communities to buy in. And that of course is where Rare can help. Our Rare Pride program is a proven tool for forest conservation and we may be on the cusp of seeing a massive surge in demand for our training as the climate change negotiations get truly serious. But we’re not quite there yet. I asked the governor, who will pay for his initiative? His response, “We don’t know yet.”
