Matt Leggett, Global Canopy Programme
Despite current and future efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change, median agricultural yields will fall by 1-2 per cent per decade until the end of the century, while corresponding demand for agricultural products is predicted to rise by 14 per cent per decade. The greater the increase in global average temperatures, the wider the gap will be between crop demand and crop production.This stark prediction from a leaked section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ‘Summary for Policymakers’ report provides a fitting ‘call to action’ in the background of the latest round of climate change negotiations in Warsaw – the nineteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP 19). This message is of particular relevance for those developing the rules and systems surrounding REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) – the UN mechanism for funding, accounting for and paying for greenhouse gas emission reductions from forests, one of the focal points of discussion at COP 19.
The predictions from the IPCC raise serious concerns that governments in both developed and developing countries will prioritise short-term adaptation to the immediate risk of rising food prices, food insecurity, and poverty by incentivising new agricultural developments to increase crop production and meet rising demand. Indeed, for many countries in the tropics agricultural expansion is already the centrepiece of their economic development strategies. However, if historical trends continue, such strategies are likely to have serious impacts on tropical forests globally.
Commercial agriculture for the production and trade of forest risk commodities (such as soya, beef, palm oil and timber, pulp and paper) is already the most important direct driver of deforestation in tropical and subtropical countries. Deforestation and degradation is also a major driver of climate change, accounting for around 10 per cent of our global annual CO2 emissions, and tropical forests play a critical role in regulating the world’s climate, annually storing around 2.8 billion tonnes of carbon (equivalent to twice the annual CO2 emissions of the USA) and processing six times as much carbon as humans emit from the use of fossil fuels. At a global level, the demand for these commodities has resulted in more than 80 per cent of new agricultural land coming from intact and disturbed forests since 1980. At a national level, the impacts of agricultural expansion on forests can be equally pronounced. For example, from 1990 to 2005, over 50 per cent of oil palm plantation expansion in Indonesia and Malaysia occurred after planned deforestation of lowland tropical forests to allow for increased agricultural development in line with national development strategies.
While improvements in agricultural productivity and the use of degraded lands for expansion offer some hope, it is unclear to what extent this will ease the pressure on forests in light of rising global populations, as well as increasing global temperatures. REDD+ is likely to still play a vital role in stimulating the required investment needed to drive a 50 per cent reduction in deforestation rates by 2020 and its complete reversal by 2030 – somewhere in the region of US$17-40 billion annually. However, the findings from the IPCC demonstrate that while the UNFCCC therefore must continue to play a critical role in delineating the ‘rule book’ for REDD+, it does not hold the only key to solving the wider problem of tropical deforestation.
The main reason for this is a lack of demand, and a corresponding lack of financial investment, for REDD+. The predicted demand from existing markets, and all other sources combined amounts to no more than 160 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e), while estimates suggest that cutting deforestation and degradation by 50 per cent will require a total annual emissions abatement of 1.45 billion tonnes CO2e. The demand gap that remains is huge.
After the best part of a decade of work and considerable investment, it is therefore clear that the REDD+ mechanism alone is no longer our last best chance for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at scale. In order to ensure that forest protection remains the most cost effective and efficient option for avoiding dangerous climate change, there is now an urgent need to look beyond the UNFCCC process for a market signal to reduce deforestation, and to ensure that long-term mitigation, rather than short-term adaptation, remains the focus of all nations as they move to develop effective, climate resilient development pathways.
For this, we must look beyond the climate negotiations towards the creation of new policy incentives and regulations that will tackle the unsustainable production and trade of commodities which are driving the conversion of forest land into agricultural land. This could offer us an opportunity to usher in a new virtuous cycle – supporting tropical forest countries to enact a transition to more sustainable agricultural practices would directly reduce deforestation and degradation, which in turn could lower national greenhouse gas emissions without an impact on productivity, reducing the level of abatement and financial investment required from REDD+. And, when enacted in parallel with a UNFCCC agreement to stimulate early action on REDD+ in the interim period between 2015 and 2020, these actions could ultimately support the building of investor confidence in larger scale national or jurisdictional REDD+ projects in the long-term. If the IPCC are right, without this urgent shift of focus countries in the tropics may have no choice but to continue to deforest while they wait for a political process to deliver a REDD+ mechanism that will never be able to live up to the expectations placed upon it. – Source: Outresch magazine
