Climate Change Mitigation: Should "Avoided Deforestation" (REDD) Be Rewarded?

The widely debated mechanism "avoided deforestation" (REDD), would benefit developing countries that reduce their deforestation rates, thereby generating at least two positive impacts : (i) a greater effectiveness of the global climate change mitigation efforts, and (ii) expected positive side effects on, e.g., biodiversity conservation. Several proposals were designed for the mechanism, which implementation is challenging: firstly, sophisticated tools available to measure the reduction of emissions (e.g. remote sensing) might be ineffective when combined with national baselines; secondly, predictive baselines lack accuracy because of insufficient knowledge concerning the causes of deforestation, and the unpredictable evolution of key variables (e.g. agricultural commodity prices); thirdly, historical baselines lack legitimacy because they only refer to past trends; and fourthly, a reduction in deforestation rates is hardly connectable to specific public policies. Based on our analysis, we recommend not promoting any mechanism within the Kyoto Protocol based on financial rewards for assumed national emissions reductions from deforestation. Two reasons justify our perspective: not only would the mechanism probably generate fake reductions ("hot air"), but undesirable side effects would also appear. Instead, we encourage use of funds made available as carbon finance (broadly speaking) for reinforcing multi- and bilateral instruments that relate to forest management in developing countries, with a focus on the correction of governance deficiencies. In addition, we support any initiative that mitigates perverse incentives from public policies in tropical and industrialized countries.