"I Will Write a Letter and Change the World". The Knowledge Base Kick-Starting Norway’s Rainforest Initiative

Abstract

In September 2007 two Norwegian NGOs wrote a letter to leading Norwegian politicians urging them to establish a climate initiative for protecting rainforests. Two months later, at the United Nations climate summit in Bali, Norway committed to donate three billion NOK annually to prevent tropical deforestation, making Norway the leading global donor in what has become the REDD+ mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). This article provides a detailed analysis of the making of the rainforest initiative, placing particular emphasis on the knowledge base of the initiative, most notably a decisive letter. Close contact with policy makers in the process ensured legitimacy and credibility for the proposal. Important for the initiative’s rapid progression was that it came in the middle of the run-up to the negotiations of a cross-political climate settlement in the Norwegian Parliament. The rainforest initiative became one of the hottest proposals in the climate policy ‘bidding war’ between the government and the opposition. All these events must be seen against the background of 2007 being a year when public concern and media coverage about climate issues peaked. Politicians were under pressure to act, and the rainforest proposal’s perfect fit with the Norwegian climate mitigation main approach of pursuing large-scale cost-effective emission cutbacks abroad made it pass swiftly through the governmental machinery. In conclusion, the article suggests the metaphor of the perfect storm to explain how the NGOs exploited a situation which made the rainforest initiative an indispensable part of Norway’s climate policy.