The Avoided Deforestation Partners had an impressive gathering this afternoon. Like iN Copenhagen, about 500 people came to listen to a very prominent line-up of speakers. But unlike in Copenhagen where delegations were firmly stuck in negotiations, this time the speakers were all present. They inculded Ban Ki-moon, Prime Minister Stoltenberg of Norway and President Jagdeo of Guyana.
President Jagdeo made a passionate speech about the commitment made by his country to achieve REDD+. He then went on to express the frustration that finance is not provided at the necessary scale and speed by the international systems. Projects are ready to go, but without finance, the commitment and expectation may wither.
If REDD+ can’t be done in Guyana, it can’t be done anywhere, he said.
He then went on to single out the World Bank as being particularly inept in channeling finance for the purpose. This comment drew long applauds from the audience, which included many from northern NGOs.
Multilateral organizations, while country-owned, are not always appreciated…
Of course, any adverse comment about the World Bank (WB) is bound to attract loud applause from many – including northern NGO delegates, whose role in climate talks is not generally to prop up any international organisations – and of course many REDD+ projects funded by the WB have to suffer prolonged delays which are common to all projects involving international organisations. And of course these projects have WB strings attached, even the one you blogged about with here recently – selling soil credits in Kenya (“Is it worth it”): see the funding call wording “The BioCarbon Fund’s capacity to respond is conditioned upon available capital. Please also note that priority will be given to projects from the World Bank’s project portfolio or that fit in the World Bank’s country dialogue and have demonstration value and replication potential.” (http://wbcarbonfinance.org/Router.cfm?Page=BioCF). But we don’t have to accept a false dichotomy between public and private finance for REDD, any more than we have to accept false dichotomies between environmental and agricultural claims to the moral high ground for REDD negotiations. Its very much a mixed bag, which needs to be tested in practice while being worked out in theory, with appropriate adjustments as evidence emerges of good practice (if not ‘best practice’).
This very balanced comment piece in the UK’s Guardian newspaper on 8 December http://bit.ly/i93iL5) by Christian del Valle, in response to an earlier article by John Vidal in the same paper, is really worth reading for anyone interested in a balanced approach to funding REDD+ and not simply an ideological response.
His key points are:
1. the vast majority of carbon purchase agreements with indigenous communities do NOT involve the sale of land. Properly designed REDD projects work to ensure that the drivers of deforestation are alleviated sustainably and equitably. A project that fails to do so is likely to fail;
2. Far from a “rush for Redd” because of perceived “huge rewards for corporate investors”, the market for REDD is just emerging, and private capital investments are sparse and isolated. He makes a useful comparison with timber markets: “institutional investors’ timber holdings total nearly £13bn, with the majority having little or no sustainability criteria, whereas the total value of the forest carbon market between 1990 and 2009 is approximately £95m, overwhelmingly in the voluntary market”;
3. The cost of cutting deforestation in half by 2020, estimated at up to $33bn a year (SOURCE: “Climate Change: Financing Global Forests – the Eliasch review” – http://bit.ly/gpmOI9 [NB THIS IS A LARGE DOCUMENT AND TAKES A WHILE TO DOWNLOAD]), “cannot be raised by the public purse alone and requires a regulatory environment that attracts significant support from the private sector”
[...] World Bank not ready for REDD+ claims President Jagdeo [...]