There are 294 posts tagged Financing REDD (this is page 1 of 20).
A recent report by the Rainforest Foundation UK describes the potential scaling up of the International Finance Corporation’s Forest Bonds programme as “One of the most worrying evolutions of GCF activities in the Congo Basin”.
“Good money after bad? Risks and opportunities for the Green Climate Fund in the Congo Basin Rainforests”, is the title of a new report by the Rainforest Foundation UK. The report focusses on the GCF and REDD, followed by a critical overview of the GCF’s planned projects in the forests of the Congo Basin.
By Chris Lang (REDD-Monitor) and Simon Counsell (Rainforest Foundation UK)
Unlike carbon capture and storage systems, trees do actually take carbon out of the atmosphere and store it – temporarily, at least. In theory, planting enough new trees, and allowing existing forests to grow and regenerate, could mop up some of the excess CO2 now in the atmosphere. The idea has been around since the mid-1970s, when theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson came up with the idea of planting vast areas with trees (“in countries where labor is cheap”) to soak up the CO2 that burning fossil fuels is putting in the atmosphere.
On 16 February 2019 in Jakarta, Norway’s Minister of Climate and Environment, Ola Elvestuen, and Indonesia’s Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, announced that Norway is planning to make a payment for reduced emissions from deforestation to Indonesia.
“Carbon markets have spectacularly failed to curb greenhouse gas emissions for over a decade, and it has been demonstrated that they suffer from unresolvable conceptual issues, such as the inexistence of a reliable price signal. As a result, they will never work and should be abandoned.”
A proposal from Brazil for results-based payments from the Green Climate Fund will be considered by the GCF board at the end of this month. If approved, it would set a terrible precedent, wasting GCF money without creating any incentive to protect forests in the future.
As climate breakdown gets worse, the corporations most responsible are looking for ways to continue profiting from ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Norway’s oil company Equinor is a classic example of this. The company plans to continue drilling oil – including in the Arctic – while investing in “natural climate solutions” to offset its emissions.
“The technology is well known and has been available for thousands of years. Everybody knows how not to cut down a tree.” That spectacularly naive comment came from Norway’s then-prime minister Jens Stoltenberg in December 2007 at the launch of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI).
In September 2018, the California Air Resources Board released a draft California Tropical Forest Standard and a Draft Environmental Analysis. The California Air Resources Board invited comments on the Environmental Analysis by 5 pm on 29 October 2018.
At 5.45 pm on 22 December 1988, Chico Mendes, Brazilian rubber tapper and trade union leader was assassinated in the doorway of his home in Xapuri, Acre. Two meetings in Xapuri this month show that Mendes legacy is disputed.
Eleven years ago, almost to the day, the government of Norway put out a press release: “Norway is prepared to increase its support for efforts to prevent deforestation in developing countries to about three billion kroner a year.” That’s about US$550 million per year.
On 20 November 2018, Equinor, one of the largest oil and gas firms in the world, wrote to Patricia Espinosa, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The first sentence spells trouble. “The way you lead the important work to deliver solutions to the global climate challenge is of great inspiration to us,” Equinor’s CEO Eldar Sætre writes.
At the end of last week, California’s Air Resources Board held a public meeting to consider the endorsement of the California Tropical Forest Standard. After several hours and dozens of testimonies for and against the Tropical Forest Standard, the Board decided to postpone making a decision until April 2019.
Since May 2018, if you buy ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop in Wardour Street, London, you will also buy a small part of a carbon credit. For every scoop of ice cream, a penny goes to buying carbon credits from the Cordillera Azul National Park REDD project in Peru.
The World Bank and the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo are coming to the end of negotiations about the country’s Emission Reductions Payment Agreement. While no official announcement has yet been made, REDD-Monitor understands that the Agreement was signed last week.
