Week 2-Day 2: UN Climate Change Conference
Nigel Sizer’s 7th post from the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, which kicked off Monday, December 3rd.
Waking up to tropical deforestation
Ten years ago when I worked at World Resources Institute, we encouraged the world to include efforts to reduce deforestation in the process to address climate change. Many environmental groups were firmly opposed, with some justification, as they felt the focus needed to be on getting the rich world to cut emissions.
A decade has passed and much has changed. The ground-breaking Stern report on the economics of climate change highlighted the relatively low cost of protecting many tropical forests versus the very high costs associated with other means of reducing emissions. The IPCC, co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, mustered global scientific consensus to point out the contribution of tropical deforestation to global emissions, at around 20 percent – too high to be ignored.
Source: IPCC 4th Assessment. Note the significance of emissions from forests.
Now the world is looking seriously at cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of half by about 2030, and I predict they’ll soon be talking about 80-90 percent cuts needed by 2050. So, however you look at it, achieving these goals will be very hard if tropical deforestation continues to expand.
So the highlight of today was the launch by the World Bank’s new President, Bob Zoellick, of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. Ten ministers from major donor countries joined him to announce $300 million to work with tropical countries to reduce deforestation. This is projected to grow to over $1 billion per year by 2011 in new funding.
World Bank President, Bob Zoellick, with (left to right) Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chair, UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany’s minister for economic cooperation and development, Bert Koenders, Dutch minister for development cooperation, and (ex-rock star) Peter Garrett, Australia’s brand new minister for environment, heritage and the arts.
This is an important initiative and one that Rare will engage with strongly. While Mr. Zoellick talked, in warm calm tones, about the Bank’s plans to assist tropical countries (none of which managed to send ministers to the event, most painfully Indonesia, the host, the only empty seat on the stage), protestors screamed outside. They were very upset about supposed ongoing Bank support for fossil fuel extraction projects. They also were concerned that the Bank has not consulted indigenous peoples about their plans.
Since indigenous peoples have actually done a much better job than the rest of us at protecting tropical forests it was a bit of an oversight on the part of the Bank not to engage them more effectively. Mr. Zoellick promised that this would be fixed. Denmark’s minister implied that his country’s support for the program would depend upon resolution of this issue.
Protests outside the World Bank forests event calling for an end to Bank fossil fuel projects and greater inclusion of indigenous peoples in the process.
Rare has conducted several Pride campaigns related to forest fires, tropical forest conversion for farming and grazing, and consolidation of forest reserves. We now have the opportunity to draw upon this experience and create entire cohorts of campaigns around this theme. We will build partnerships with those who can help with the various monitoring and measurement challenges, threat reduction and lessons learning. The Bank may have overlooked local peoples as they launch this effort, but we are confident this aspect will become a central theme and Rare will contribute to developing the new approaches needed to engage and inspire communities at scale, thereby reducing forest loss, conserving livelihoods, cultures and biodiversity, and helping get down emissions.
