The Big Trees Were Kings: Challenges for Global Response to Climate Change and Tropical Forests Loss

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Today, a historic opportunity appears to present itself. This is the chance to link the stabilization of the global climate with the financing of tropical forest conservation. The effort to link these two key parts of the Global into a conservation and financing program was a key agenda item at the Copenhagen Conference, COP-15, held in December 2009. The proposal, called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), envisions creating marketable carbon offset rights representing the carbon content of tropical forests. These offsets would be sold to firms in the industrial world operating under emissions caps. This system would create incentives to preserve the forest, along with the funds needed to ensure implementation. Investing in natural tropical forests, under existing economic and social conditions, is generally not attractive. In most tropical nations, poor governance and contested property rights are barriers to investment. Future population pressures are also likely to intensify. Western Europe has had experience in managing complex, highly fragmented, and poorly documented forest rights: the forest use rights of medieval times. The fact that adjusting them to modern needs took centuries and generated severe conflict reminds us how difficult massive changes in customary rights can be. Thoughtful study of this experience could generate ideas for managing transitions in tenure rights in the tropical world. From a legal standpoint, a sale of a carbon right in a forest is an exceptionally complex transaction in real property. The frustrations of at Copenhagen reflect the bedrock fact that saving tropical forests is complicated. The prospect REDD can deliver early progress on saving tropical forests should be viewed as an untested hypothesis. Achieving REDD-readiness is likely to be a work of decades if not generations. ABSTRACT I. INTRODUCTION II. CARBON RIGHTS AND TROPICAL FORESTS A. What Is REDD? B. Setting: The Tropical Forest Figure 1: Forest Area (2005) Figure 2: Percent of Natural Forest Sustainably Managed, as Estimated by International Tropical Timber Organization 2006 1. Economics of Tropic Forest Management 2. Economic Challenges and Population Pressures Figure 3: Population Pressures on Forest 3. Governance Challenges Figure 4: Failed States Index Rank, 2008 Figure 5. World Forest Area 2005 C. Delivering a Marketable Carbon Credit: Compliance Market 1. What Is a REDD Project? 2. Carbon Credit as Real Estate Transaction: Who Owns the Carbon? 3. Who Owns the Land? 4. Contracting Carbon for a Century III. LESSONS FROM COMMONS THEORY AND HISTORY A. Theory of the Commons and Its Management 1. Atmosphere as a Commons 2. The Tropical Forest as a Commons B. Learning from Ancient Parchments: Medieval Europe IV. COPENHAGEN AND REDD A. What Happened--and Didn't Happen--.at Copenhagen B. Policy Learning and REDD: Programmatic Puzzles C. Informal Observations on the Major Policy Challenges V. CONCLUSION Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. (1) --Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness I. INTRODUCTION At the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development, General Assembly president, Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, urged his listeners to consider: [T]he Earth's biosphere as the common heritage of all life, with humanity as its guardian. It belongs to the common good of humanity and the Earth, as stated at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment . …