Saving forests and those living in them - FERN researchers speak out (From Smallholder)

Saving forests and those living in them - FERN researchers speak out

5:00pm Saturday 21st November 2009

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The benefits of forests such as carbon storage, reduced flooding and soil erosion, and the provision of food and jobs should be protected in a new climate change treaty, researchers say.

Safeguards for these ecosystem services, which would be part of an agreement to pay countries to protect their forests, would also guarantee the rights of forest-dwellers and cut global carbon emissions, their study says.

The paper, by Dr Chuks Okereke of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and Kate Dooley, of the campaign group FERN, says the new treaty should acknowledge the global and local benefits of forest protection.

Proposals for rewarding nations for preserving their forests will be high on the agenda at climate change talks in Copenhagen next month.

Dr Chuks Okereke said: “Saving forests is essential but we need to take the interests of the poor very seriously in deciding how we do this. If forests are protected properly, global emissions will be cut and the livelihoods of forest-dwellers will be protected too.”

Deforestation is responsible for about 20 per cent of global emissions. Forests store carbon but logging releases it into the atmosphere. They regulate temperature and rainfall and create jobs for millions of people. Tropical forests in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Ghana also harbour a greater range of wildlife than any other habitat with deforestation causing the extinction of 100 species every day.

Rewards for saving forests were ruled out of the Kyoto deal because carbon monitoring was inaccurate. Measures of forest carbon have now improved and negotiators plan to include forest protection in a post-Kyoto deal. Kyoto expires in 2012.

Kate Dooley said: “Talks about including forests in a new climate agreement are being dominated by the same carbon trading systems that are undermining Kyoto. If industrialised nations pay to protect forests but are then allowed to keep polluting, neither the climate nor forest peoples will benefit. These people have inhabited these areas for thousands of years but often have no legal rights to that land whatsoever.”

Dr Okereke said: “If the climate change regime is seen as part of the wider search for global sustainability, then proposals must be judged not only on the basis of economic efficiency, but also on their ability to promote conservation and on the needs of the most vulnerable peoples on the planet.

“One of the most important issues is the extent to which the rights and well-being of millions of indigenous communities who live and depend on forests are considered in the design of policy arrangements.”

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