Reducing emissions from deforestation and degredation.

Reducing emissions from deforestation is a pretty awful way of looking at things. To spend a day in a rainforest and walk through one acre, to look at the immense biodiversity, the innumerable forms of life and an almost infinitely complex web of interactions, this is an experience that we should not deny future generations. This beauty should add up to more than just carbon, yet , a new urgency comes to protecting our forests, not because of a new appreciation of there qualities and innate value, but rather because of the dire consequences of there destruction on our planet as a whole. Deforestation is a significant contributor to climate change and many people have been looking at how we can best address the problem.

For an introduction to forest destruction, and what this means for the global climate you might be interested in a recent conference at the Environmental Change Institute of Oxford University. For a four page introduction to the overall discussion, this document may be of interest (draft summary for SB side event 19 May 2006, 18.00-20.00). Also, Environmental Defence have done a great deal of work in the area of avoided deforestation and there page on the topic can be found here.

Finally, a recent conference, addresses the details of how this is implemented...

Session I - Background (9:15 - 10:45)
Chairperson Bernhard Schlamadinger (Joanneum Research)

History of the issue under the UNFCCC, reasons for exclusion of deforestation in the past, and the changes that have occurred since Montreal (Eveline Trines, Treeness Consult, the Netherlands) PDF-File (124 kB)

Magnitude of the problem and underlying causes of deforestation, including social and economic issues (Sven Wunder, CIFOR, Brazil) PDF-File (2.85 MB)

Lessons learned from other national and international efforts to reduce deforestation (Jurgen Blaser, Intercooperation, Switzerland) PDF-File (6.7 MB)


Session II Future policy pathways (11:15 - 12:45)
Chairperson Yoshiki Yamagata (Global Carbon Project)

Coupled climate-carbon-human analysis (Yoshiki Yamagata, Global Carbon Project)
PDF-File (357 kB)

Modelled climate change movie (Yoshiki Yamagata, Global Carbon Project)
MPEG-Movie (15.29 MB) Windows-Mediaplayer or Quicktime required

The role of reducing emissions from deforestation in avoiding danger- ous climate change (Peter Frumhoff, Union of Concerned Scientists, USA) PDF-File (1.67 MB)

Status of the Montreal Mandate and approaches how deforestation could be addressed within a UNFCCC or Kyoto Protocol type umbrella (Ian Noble, World Bank) PDF-File (52 kB)

Policy approaches and incentives within a country an example from Brazil (Thelma Krug, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espacias, Brazil) PDF-File (1 MB)

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