For immediate release
Contact: Peg Putt +61 418 127 580
3 November 2009
peg.putt@wilderness.org.au
Battlelines Drawn in Barcelona: Forest Protection Leads Debate As Copenhagen Deal
Hang In The Balance
Barcelona opportunity for Australia to lead on forest protection
Barcelona – The fate of the world’s remaining rainforests hangs in the balance as United Nations
climate change negotiations resume in Barcelona and Australia is expected to play a leading role in
forging an agreement to protect native forests from logging and destruction.
“It will not be possible to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at a safe level
if we fail to protect native forests. There must be both deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions and
protection and restoration of native forests, including rainforests,” Peg Putt from The Wilderness
Society said in Barcelona as part of the negotiating delegation from the global Ecosystems Climate
Alliance.
Negotiations on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries
(REDD) ended in dramatic disarray at the most recent talks in Bangkok three weeks ago after a key
provision – safeguards against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations – vanished from
the negotiating text on the final Thursday of the session.
Without the safeguard, REDD monies projected to help developing countries protect their remaining
forests and reduce the 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation, forest
degradation and peatland destruction could instead allow industrial-scale logging and replacement
of tropical forests with pulp or palm oil plantations.
Tree plantations and degraded forests, logged or otherwise, have far lower carbon stocks and
carbon-storage capacity than primary forests, and suffer from severe biodiversity loss, according to
forest and climate experts from the Ecosystems Climate Alliance.
REDD negotiations in Barcelona must recover ground lost in Bangkok. At the final Bangkok session,
the European Union, supported by the Democratic Republic of the Congo and several other Congo
Basin countries, used procedural grounds to refuse to reinstate the conversion safeguard, despite
strong requests to do so from more than 20 countries including Brazil, India, Mexico, Switzerland
and Norway. At a press conference the next day, however, the European Commission's chief
negotiator called the blocking of text “an unfortunate mishap” and indicated that “in policy terms we
can support that particular paragraph moved in."
“The protection of intact natural forests should be a core element of REDD, but so far it is still not in
any text proposals,” said Peg Putt from The Wilderness Society, one of nine NGOs which constitute
the Ecosystems Climate Alliance. “Barcelona may be the last chance for forests, and we need Parties
to step up and say so.”
Signs of hope, however, appeared last week from sources at the UK Department of Energy and
Climate Change, quoted in the October 26 edition of The Independent newspaper in London saying,
“The UK is pushing hard for the strongest possible deal to stop deforestation and that includes
wanting specific language in the UN text on the protection of natural forests.”
“This is encouraging. Now we’d like to see the UK translate these words into action by showing
some leadership in the EU that will ensure restoration of the essential safeguard provision against
the conversion of natural forests,” said Dr. Rosalind Reeve of Global Witness.
With only a month to go before the Copenhagen climate summit, Barcelona is crucial to resolving
problems in the current REDD text that threaten rather than support protection of the world’s
remaining natural forests. Discussions on the core “Objectives and Scope” of the REDD treaty were
put off until Barcelona in order to focus on safeguards in Bangkok.
But many of those safeguards remain unresolved, including addressing governance in countries
which stand to benefit from REDD, and ensuring the rights and full and effective participation of
indigenous and forest dependent peoples.
“Rainforests are not empty areas of carbon sticks, they are home to hundreds of millions of
indigenous and forest dependent peoples who have established rights secured through various
international agreements and standards,” said Nils Hermann Ranum of Rainforest Foundation
Norway. “Without a guarantee to ensure their rights and their full and effective participation, REDD
will do them more harm than good.”
Essential incentives to reduce ongoing emissions from drained peat forest soils, and safeguards to
prevent the conversion of not only forests but also of other natural ecosystems to plantations have
not yet been addressed.
Crucial language confronting the social and economic forces which drive demand for forest products
and result in forest destruction also disappeared completely from the REDD text in Bangkok.
“Do we actually expect to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation when the same
countries funding REDD are buying illegal timber and palm oil in no-questions-asked markets?” said
Andrea Johnson of the Environmental Investigation Agency.
While momentum builds that a REDD agreement may be one of the few positive Copenhagen
outcomes to limit global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,
without forest protection as its key priority, those hopes will be shattered.
# # #
environment and social NGOs committed to keeping natural terrestrial ecosystems intact and their
carbon out of the atmosphere, in an equitable and transparent way that respects the rights of
indigenous peoples and local communities. ECA comprises Environmental Investigation Agency
(EIA), Global Witness, Humane Society International, Nepenthes, Rainforest Action Network,
Rainforest Foundation Norway, The Rainforest Foundation U.K., Wetlands International and The
Wilderness Society.
NEWS 
