With REDD, the global economy can remunerate nations saving rainforests

Source: The post is based on the article “‘With REDD, the global economy can remunerate nations saving rainforests’” published in The Times of India on 24th December 2022. 

Syllabus: GS3 – Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation.

Relevance: About Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation’ (REDD).

News: The idea of incentivizing countries to protect forests first surfaced in the 2005 COP meeting held in Montreal. It was finally approved at COP meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt this year.

About ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation’ (REDD)

The key idea behind REDD: Forests capture and store huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is of great value in a world facing climate change.

The REDD mechanism has only been fully approved in 2022.

About Coalition for Rainforest Nations: It has more than 50 members. The members are primarily tropical countries. Its purpose is to work within a UNFCCC framework and the COP meetings. The Coalition sends its representatives to these meetings to argue for its goals to be included in the COP agenda and produce papers supporting these arguments.

About REDD offsets and Carbon credit

Claiming credits under the REDD system will require very good satellite imagery of forests with detailed case studies. Most member countries have been accumulating such data. In recent years, many American and European companies have announced they want to buy offsets to be carbon-neutral. So, there’s a huge increase in the market.

Why countries are incentivised to protect forests?

a) A hectare of tropical forest absorbs 50 to 100 tons of CO2 per annum, b) Forests are huge supports for biodiversity. The vast majority of the world’s animals, birds and insects, each with its own-natural service, live in forests.

c) Countries maintaining forests, found usually in developing economies. Hence, forests can produce carbon credits on the basis of the CO2 they capture and store. These can be sold on international carbon markets. REDD offsets will take a significant part of this trade and provide resources to tropical countries.

The entire process of REDD offset was finally passed this year at COP-27. This offers a good future for REDD.