Deforestation and forest degradation, through agricultural expansion, conversion to pasture-land, infrastructure development, destructive logging and fires account for nearly 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector. It is absolutely critical to provide for a tolerable living environment for the society and this is possible by effectively countering and constraining the adverse impacts of climate change. We can assume that we are on the path of achieving the same if we can restrict and stabilise the global average temperatures within two degrees Celsius. This is impossible to achieve without reducing emissions from the forest sector.
REDD is an ambitious collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. REDD+ is seen as one of the most cost-effective ways of stabilising the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gas emissions to avoid a temperature rise of two degrees Celsius.
The global initiative to reduce emissions from the forest sector is being led by the United Nations-REDD Programme. The UN REDD Programme also supports the REDD-plus initiatives of individual countries that aim to encourage the participation and involvement of all stakeholders including indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities. India too seems to be all set for joining the movement with the coming of draft policy on REDD+ by the Ministry of Environment and Forests last month.
The draft policy aims to create a systematic framework which can facilitate transferring of financial benefits and incentives from REDD+ to local forest communities involved in protecting and nurturing forests which are major carbon sinks.
India has 69.20 million ha (21.05 per cent of its total geographical area) under forest cover. It ranks 10th in the world in terms of forest area as per the Global Forest Resource Assessment, 2010. REDD was proposed as a mechanism to discourage deforestation and degradation of forests to reduce carbon emissions around eight years ago. Since then India has been hoping to tap the global funds for protecting and increasing the forest cover. For years it has been working on REDD+ preparedness to build an infrastructure to implement REDD+ programmes and this seems to have finally borne results with the Ministry announcing the draft policy.
The Ministry’s move seems to have officially put India on the threshold of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation by initialising REDD+ as a promising climate change mitigation solution. The draft policy announcement comes five months after the United Nations’ 19th Conference of Parties on climate change in Warsaw in November last year, where a framework to implement REDD+ was agreed upon. The draft policy aims to create REDD+ architecture at national and sub-national levels, to encourage and incentivise local communities for their role in conservation by transferring the financial benefits accrued on account of REDD+. It also aims to safeguard the rights and interests of local communities including improvement of their livelihood. A National REDD+ Authority is also proposed under the policy, which will prepare a national inventory of carbon sequestration in forests besides setting up a national monitoring and reporting system.
The implementation of REDD+ in India is a compelling opportunity to make a difference in responding to climate change besides increasing forest cover. The challenges are many and the draft policy addresses many of those effectively, be it the setting up of the National REDD+ Authority or the facility of fund-flow management with safeguards to prevent fund pilfering. Though REDD+ is a complex subject and is still evolving where finance is certainly an ambiguous area at present, India seeks to establish a robust institutional mechanism so that it can be benefited from this global initiative.
However, in order to prepare a more robust framework the Government should ensure that clarity on the some more critical issues is provided. For instance, the role of private sector needs be further clarified and productively channelised by ensuring that the sector becomes a part of the solution by providing the kinds of market signals, mechanisms and incentives to encourage investments that manage and conserve the world’s nature-based resources rather than mine them.
In fact, if the policy helps REDD+ to be structured right, commerce and conservation of the nature can be synchronised, whereby, money will be made not just by carbon traders, but also by developing countries and communities for providing the forest-based carbon storage service. The Government can help the private sector play a vibrant role by increasing the corporate social responsibility obligations.
The policy framework visualised should be such that it is able to accommodate challenges of the future and provide in-depth details of critical aspects such as responsibility-sharing between the Centre, States and communities, or how the benefits from the programme will be shared between the Government and the communities. In addition, it is also crucial that a strong capacity-building process is placed into the policy framework.
These and many such issues if addressed properly and comprehensively will lead to a robust policy and a successful programme. But most of all the government should ensure that the implementation of REDD+ must co-exist with significant emission reductions in other sector such energy and transport as REDD+ is part of the climate change solution and cannot mitigate climate change on its own.