Elaine Ganley, Associated Press Yahoo News 11 Mar 10;
PARIS – A conference bringing together more than 60 nations Thursday added $1 billion to the fight against deforestation and boosted the morale of those hoping to save the world's forests — a key defense against global warming.
Three months after a morose ending to climate change talks in Copenhagen, the one-day ministerial meeting in Paris attended by heavily forested countries such as Indonesia and those in the Amazon and Congo basins amounted to a confidence-builder for nations wondering what comes next in the battle against deforestation, many delegates said.
"We entered the meeting with $3.5 billion. It went to $4.5 billion (here) and we want to arrive in Oslo with $6 billion," Brazilian Environment Minister Carlos Minc said after the closed-door talks.
A follow-up to the Paris meeting is planned in Oslo, Norway, in May.
Brice Lalonde, who heads climate negotiations for France, said: "We must go on. ... There is a post-Copenhagen landscape where we will be more pragmatic."
The 64 nations agreed to create a core structure of some 10 countries to work on the mechanics of equitably distributing funds and other issues. The idea is to arrive at the U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, in December with a concrete plan devoted specifically to the critical issue of deforestation.
Efforts to halt that culprit in climate change have bogged down along with the wider goal of reaching a legally binding global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions while helping poor nations adapt to, and cope with, climate change.
Thursday's meeting focused on an aspect of a forest program — Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, or REDD — that was approved at the Copenhagen conference.
REDD Plus, discussed in Paris, is an incentive program based on providing funds to nations working to reduce emissions through good forest governance and protecting biological diversity and the rights of indigenous people.
Reclaiming the forest in many cases entails retraining people whose livelihoods are linked to the forest — or its destruction.
Deforestation — the burning of woodlands or the rotting of felled trees — is thought to account for up to 20 percent of C02 released into the atmosphere — as much as that emitted by all the world's cars, trucks, trains, planes and ships combined.
Due to deforestation from logging, crop-growing and cattle grazing, Indonesia and Brazil have become the world's third- and fourth-largest carbon emitters, after China and the U.S.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, opening the conference, said defending the world's forests demanded more aggressive funding.
"Those who don't want to do anything are those who don't want to pay," he said. He reiterated his appeal for a tax on financial market transactions worldwide that could be earmarked for a global climate fund.
"Together, we will demonstrate that it is possible to achieve concrete and measurable results, as of this year, starting with ... the fight against deforestation," Sarkozy said. He called the Copenhagen conference "frustrating."
France, Norway and four other countries pledged an initial $3.5 billion to REDD Plus through 2012. The core coordination group established in Paris will, among other things, see where the funds are spent and ensure it is done fairly.
Minc, the Brazilian minister, said: if "we will arrive in Cancun with things that work, we won't repeat the problems of Copenhagen."
Many delegations were seeking a share of the funds and guidance about how to obtain them.
"What we need here are step-by-step guidelines to be followed to access funding," said Wandoso Sisnanto, an adviser for Indonesia's Forest Ministry.
"After Copenhagen, we have had no chance to talk ... and now we can work with each other, coordinate. It's really worthwhile to again build trust among us," he said.
Many funding programs are in the works, and individual countries are moving ahead with their own programs to fight deforestation and educate local populations who live off forests — estimated at more than 1 billion worldwide — to do so in a sustainable way.
Progress seen on forest scheme, Germany to join
Richard Ingham Yahoo News 11 Mar 10;
PARIS (AFP) – Around 60 countries pushed ahead on Thursday with a multi-billion-dollar scheme to reduce climate-changing emissions from deforestation, to which Germany added its support, British minister Joan Ruddock said on Thursday.
"There was a tremendous mood of determination to get things done. I regard this as quite a breakthrough, actually," Ruddock, who is secretary of state for energy and climate change, told AFP in a phone interview.
Around 60 countries, gathering donor economies and poor countries with large tropical forests, met for the one-day conference in Paris.
It aimed at fleshing out an initiative launched on the sidelines of the UN climate summit in December.
Between 12-20 percent of worldwide carbon emissions come from loss of trees and conversion of forest land to agriculture.
The scheme was launched in Copenhagen by Australia, Britain, France, Japan, Norway and the United States, which pledged a total of 3.5 billion dollars from 2010 to 2012.
Under it, poor tropical countries would be financially rewarded for preserving their forests, rather than chopping them down for logging or farming.
The Paris talks were the first step towards deciding how to disburse the money -- a process fraught with questions as to how to determine which forests deserved to be protected, how they would be conserved and how to enforce transparency, help indigenous forest dwellers and battle corruption.
Countries agreed on Thursday to set up a steering committee of four developing and four developed countries and establish a "very slim" secretariat, said Ruddock.
They also determined to get an overview of what is already happening in this realm to avoid overlap with existing bilateral or multilateral help.
A further meeting will be held in Oslo in May to assess progress.
Germany also announced it would join the aid effort, she said.
"Germany said they would also be joining and would be providing 20-30 percent of their fast-start money for forestry," she said, adding that the amount was not specified as the German government was "in the middle of a budget process."
"Fast-start money" refers to funding for 2010 to 2012, pledged by rich countries under the so-called Copenhagen Accord to assist poor nations fighting climate change.
Around 30 billion dollars was promised in total under "fast start," with a vaguer goal of mustering around 100 billion dollars annually by the decade's end.
Although it was launched at the Copenhagen summit, the forestry initiative technically lies outside the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the much-troubled arena for dealing with global warming and its impacts.
This means the scheme can be administered without the need for consensus under the 192-nation UNFCCC, an issue that has bedevilled efforts to build a worldwide treaty on climate change after 2012.
In a welcoming speech at the conference, President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke bitterly of the Copenhagen summit as "an example of bad management" and said the process of negotiating the envisioned treaty had to change.
More than 120 heads of state or government, arriving for the meeting's climax, were handed a draft text that Sarkozy likened to "volapuk," an invented 19th-century language translatable as "gobbledegook."
With fiasco looming, around two dozen countries haggled through the final night to craft a compromise, touted as a platform for action.
The Copenhagen Accord would limit warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) but does not detail when or how this goal should be achieved nor commit signatories to binding pledges. Nor has it been endorsed by a plenary of UNFCCC members.
Sarkozy admitted the outcome was "frustrating" but argued that the rapid progress yielded by a small group in the space of a few concentrated hours was revealing.
"These working methods have to change... who can believe that this can work?" he said, calling for a "representative" group of countries to do the essential haggling before the global forum becomes involved.
Forest and donor countries stump up to reduce emissions
WWF 11 Mar 10;
Paris, France: Forest and donor countries have kicked off an important joint process which could speed up action to reduce the 20 per cent of global carbon emissions linked to deforestation and forest degradation.
Despite no formal agreement to achieve Reduced Emissions from forest Degradation and Deforestation (REDD) being reached at the United Nations conference on climate change last December, key nations met yesterday in Paris in a process being called the REDD+ Partnership Process.
The initiative, which brings together major forest countries and donor nations, is hosted by Norway and France. Broad agreement has already been reached on principles and safeguards of REDD+ and according to WWF, the initiative represents a critical opportunity to mobilise early action and financing for national REDD+ programmes.
“Slowing deforestation would help the world significantly cut global emissions,” said WWF Forest Carbon Initiative Leader Chris Elliott.
“That’s an opportunity we simply cannot ignore as any delay in reducing emissions only makes it more difficult to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees C.”
“The REDD+ Partnership process must build real momentum for countries to move ahead with REDD+,” said Elliott, “It is important this remains an open and inclusive process.”
Countries have signalled their commitment to REDD+, with many developing countries, including Brazil and Indonesia, announcing targets for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. In Copenhagen, $3.5 billion was pledged for REDD+ by Australia, France, Japan, Norway, the UK and the US.
“With funding already flowing for REDD+, it is vital that benefits for people and biodiversity are a fundamental part of this effort to integrate forests into the climate change solution,” said Elliott. “REDD+ is not only about the carbon stored in forests and so we must ensure there are positive social and environmental impacts as REDD+ becomes a reality.”
