REDD is going to destroy ancient forests!

Using carbon funds, the world’s governments are poised to subsidize
ancient forest logging, claiming it benefits the Earth’s climate.
REDD’s potential support of “low impact” logging of ancient forests,
and conversion of natural forests to tree farms, fails the climate,
biodiversity and biosphere. Plans to pay for rainforest protection
using funds from carbon markets progressed during this week’s UN
climate talks. I have long promoted the deceptively simple idea of
paying to keep rainforests standing, yet am far from jubilant with the
results. It appears first time, industrial logging of ancient forests
— through so-called low-impact and certified logging, and the
conversion of these and other natural forests to plantations — is
falsely considered as having carbon benefits, and will be paid for
with our tax dollars and carbon offsets. The concept of paying for
rainforest protection with carbon money has become known as avoided
deforestation, or alternatively, as REDD for “Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Degradation”. Like many promising concepts before it
(i.e. “sustainable development” and “certified forestry”), REDD is in
danger of becoming empty jargon meant to legitimate continued
environmentally destructive activities. Worldwide, an area of forest
greater than the size of Greece is deforested every year, and much
larger areas are continually ecologically diminished, contributing
about a fifth of the global greenhouse gas emissions causing abrupt
and potentially run-away climate change. Given the biosphere,
atmosphere and most species depend upon these forests; the basic idea
of paying for protection of rainforests is a sound one. But like so
many good eco-ideas before it, the devil is in the details. Most
generally, the concern is whether further commoditizing ecosystems
does in fact lead to their protection. As capitalism verges upon
collapse because of its dependence upon unsustainable growth as the
measure of well-being, it is difficult to trust the world’s ancient
forest, global ecosystem engines, to yet another market. To date the
carbon market has failed miserably to reduce emissions, and its
primary impact has been to enrich the polluting elite. What will make
avoided deforestation different? There is much vagueness regarding
what specific sorts of activities REDD will fund.

Terms like
preservation, protection, conservation, sustainability and low impact
are used imprecisely and interchangeably when in fact they are quite
different. Efforts to end old growth logging, aid in natural forest
regeneration and improve their management, and promote socially
acceptable plantations of mixed native species are certainly welcome.
Yet it is clear that REDD, as envisioned under United Nations’ climate
activities, will also subsidize first time industrial logging of
primary and old growth forests, and why not? Virtually everyone else
tasked with global environmental stewardship — from stylish
Greenpeace, to ultra-establishment World Bank, to second tier posers
like Rainforest Action Network — support the myth of certified
ancient forest logging. They and others fail to see that maintaining
and restoring large, relatively INTACT terrestrial ecosystems is key
to solving both the climate and biodiversity crises, and is ultimately
the only long-term foundation for global ecological sustainability.
REDD as it now stands further greenwashs the notion that logging the
world’s last ancient forest ecosystems, and converting these and other
natural forests to tree farms, benefits the climate. This is in direct
contradiction to the best current science. We are learning primary
forest ecosystems, including soils, continue removing carbon
indefinitely. And their continued ability to both hold existing, and
remove new, carbon is majorly and permanently reduced when “managed”
for the first time.
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2008/12/19/light-redd-the-looming-tragedy-of-carbon

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