Six developed countries have committed $3.5 billion (€2.4bn) in early funding for forest preservation in the first concrete financial commitment at the Copenhagen climate talks. The US, UK, France, Japan, Australia and Norway have pledged the money over the next three years to kick-start a global financial mechanism, called
REDD+, under which rich countries would pay developing nations to preserve and enhance their climate-vital forests. The US will provide $1 billion of the total, Australia $108 million.
With two scheduled days to go, the UN climate talks are bogged down on a range of familiar issues; levels of climate funding to go to developing nations and the balance of emissions reduction obligations between rich and poor nations. Also at the core of the stand-off is whether and how the Kyoto Protocol and a new wider climate accord, on ‘long-term cooperative action’ (LCA) and committing the US and China to action, should fit together.
The six-nation REDD funding pledge appears an attempt to inject some momentum into the stalled talks on overall funding from developed nations to poorer developing nations - and in turn the other issues at stake in a wider climate agreement. But the US has stressed that the funds are contingent on a full, comprehensive climate agreement being struck.
The early funding for REDD attends to one small part of an overall LCA agreement that remains very much in unsettled draft form, and now before the main body of the conference, the Council of the Parties (
COP). Draft and bracketed LCA text calls for “individual pledges by developed country Parties to provide new and additional resources amounting XX for the period 2010–2012 … to enable and support enhanced action on mitigation”.
Early funding up to 2012 has been earmarked for building capacity in developing nations to monitor forest loss and set up the institutions needed to establish a robust and transparent system for avoiding deforestation. A REDD scheme would begin in earnest in 2013. Moves toward establishing the fully-fledged system is covered in a draft sub-agreement on REDD within the overall the LCA agreement. It requires longer term funding for REDD up to 2020, one of many areas yet to be agreed.
The REDD agreement text, however, appears to be one of the areas of talks where most progress has been made. But a proposed global target to cut deforestation by 50 per cent by 2020 has been removed from the text at this stage. Further negotiation on REDD will be at the COP level and in high-level talks by ministers.
Reuters, Bloomberg, AAP 16/12/09
More:
LCA draft decision text on REDD [PDF 40 KB, 4 pgs]