Land rights are crucial to REDD. This week, the Rights and Resources Initiative released a study that found an increase in community land rights in tropical forests, but at the same time most land laws in Asia and Africa remain “either meaningless or unenforced”.
The World Bank’s spin on carbon markets
“The total value of the carbon market grew by 11 percent in 2011, to $176 billion”, the World Bank announced this week. The occasion was the launch of the Bank’s “State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2012”. But as Oscar Reyes notes, the carbon market growth is “more spin than substance”.
Disagreement on REDD finance during the “stalemate” climate negotiations in Bonn
Last year, emissions of carbon dioxide increased by 3.2% to 31.6 billion tonnes, according to figures released by the International Energy Agency. Fatih Birol, IEA’s chief economist told Reuters that, “[T]he trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (towards the end of this century), which would have devastating consequences…
WWF scandal (part 4): The dark side of the Panda
In June 2011, the German TV station ARD broadcast a documentary titled “The Silence of the Pandas: What the WWF isn’t saying”. The film-maker, Wilfried Huisman has also published a book about WWF: “Black Book WWF: Shady deals under the sign of the panda”.
REDD discussions at the UN climate meeting in Bonn: “The only thing negotiators did here was produce more things to disagree on”
For the past two weeks, the UN has been talking about climate change in Bonn. Predictably enough, little was achieved in terms of meaningful actions to address climate change (like finding ways of reducing fossil fuel emissions, say). Neither was any progress made on REDD.