Climate change has thrust the decades old fight against deforestation back in to the spotlight. And rightly so -- deforestation and forest degradation are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for nearly twenty percent of emissions globally. The growing rate of forest loss also threatens the world’s biodiversity and imperils the 1.6 billion people who are dependent on forests for their livelihoods.
For the climate community to lend a hand to the fight against deforestation, we must listen to the lessons learned from forest advocates and the indigenous peoples and local communities who live in and protect the forest. The new global concern about addressing climate change, and a particular interest in tackling emissions from deforestation, provides us with an important opportunity to address the real need for improved forest governance structures, while simultaneously conserving biodiversity and protecting the rights of the indigenous and traditional forest dwelling peoples.
New mechanisms under discussion for forest and climate protection must recognize and support the broad range of policy approaches and positive incentives necessary to guarantee lasting protection of natural forests and the reduction of deforestation and degradation, regardless of whether the impact of these measures can be immediately quantified in terms of carbon emission units. These measures include:
Moreover, some proposals seek to include forests to enabling polluters to buy forest carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions here at home. But to stave off the most dire consequences of the climate crisis, we cannot trade off continued pollution here in the United States for forest protection elsewhere. We must both reduce emissions here and support developing countries in protecting tropical forests. If we allow polluters to buy offset credits, then we divert critical investments away from necessary and job creating clean energy technologies and delaying the much-needed transition to a low-carbon economy.
Countries that consume and import heavily, like the United States, must recognize the role they play in driving deforestation. That’s why we support the Lacey Act, which bans the import of illegally harvested wood products in to the United States. While only a first step, including the Lacey Act in forest and climate policies recognizes the fundamental role that poor governance and the surging global demand for wood products, which are often illegally harvested, play in global deforestation.
There is no guarantee that massive sums of new money will actually help solve the problem of deforestation. Without addressing the fundamental reasons for deforestation, the benefits of forest climate policies may simply be captured by corporations and elites and do nothing to address deforestation. There is a problematic misconception that deforestation happens because of logical economic decisions. In fact, deforestation results from ineffective forest governance, weak forest law enforcement, and surging demand for forest and agricultural products.
This is not to say that funding is not required, and assistance from the United States for reducing deforestation will be an important component in a successful global agreement. New funding for to protect forests is necessary to support the scaled up efforts that are required.
