FERN’s aim is for an EU commitment to halting forest loss in a way that ensures forest peoples’ rights and is not based on carbon offsets.
FERN’s analysis: Initiatives which focus on reducing deforestation are rightly deemed as urgent, but there is a real danger that the focus on carbon will distract from dealing with the real drivers of deforestation. This is particularly true for Initiatives aimed at to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). They could easily end up delaying the necessary transition to low carbon economies if they allow for industralised countries to offset their own fossil fuel emissions with claimed reductions in deforestation elsewhere. FERN also shares the concern that as forests gain in monetary value as a result of the international REDD debates, forest peoples' rights are increasingly violated. Already incidents abound where private investors buy up forested land and national governments assert their perceived rights over forest lands to the detriment of local communities, in order to benefit from forest carbon cash.
What FERN is doing: FERN is campaigning for an EU commitment to halting forest loss in a way that respects indigenous peoples' rights, recognises the needs of forest dependent communities and where EU funding does not lead to the creation of carbon offsets. Without recognising forest peoples' rights, without improved forest governance and without addressing the drivers of deforestation - including overconsumption - it will not be possible to reduce forest loss.
Funding for schemes aimed at halting deforestation must not be generated through carbon offsets. Carbon trading will not provide money for those forest protection activties most needed, will lock Southern countries into expensive and futile exercises to 'accurately' meaure forest carbon, and will act as an excuse for industrialised countries to delay the necessary drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. FERN is therefore campaigning for industrialised countries to exclude carbon offsetting as a source of funding for activities to halt deforestation.
To learn more about this campaign read “walking the tightrope to success”, signed onto by more than 20 organisations.
A FERN-FPP report analysing nine different country proposals (R-PINs) to get money from the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). The report concludes that both the process and the proposals adopted do not respect the Bank's own guidelines. The report also includes an annex which details the World Bank funded REDD process.