From false climate solutions to addressing the real drivers of
deforestation Posted Dec. 10, 2012 / Posted by: Jeff Conant
Friends of the Earth in the news this week As developed
countries have fled the Kyoto Protocol like rats from a sinking
ship, climate financing continues to be central among the issues
on the table at the UNFCCC COP18 negotiations taking place right
now in Doha, Qatar (as Friends of the Earth’s Karen Orenstein
notes here). In the talks on Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Degradation, also known as REDD, in Doha, the
EU and others are trying to impose complicated Monitoring
Reporting and Verification systems – ways of accounting for
forest carbon stocks – essentially to prepare the way for an
international offset market in forest carbon. But, if the goal
is to reduce deforestation, why spend billions on counting
carbon when the growth of biofuels, industrial agriculture, and
the rash of illegal logging are gobbling up forest lands – and
leading to landgrabs to boot? Yesterday in D