The Promise and Peril of REDD

Roman Czebiniak, policy advisor on climate change and forests for Greenpeace International, reports on SciDev.Net on 8 July 2009, that:

Reducing deforestation is crucial to mitigate climate change, but it mustn't be used as an excuse to continue polluting.

World leaders are discussing whether and how to include tropical forests in the next agreement on climate change. A decision on financing Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD) is expected at the Copenhagen climate negotiations at the end of this year.

Forests will be used to either bring the world closer to, or further away from, avoiding catastrophic climate change. Developing countries have the most to gain from a good deal, and the most to lose from a bad one.