Global Pacts Like REDD Ignore Primary Causes of Destruction of Forests, New Study Suggests

(Science Daily) A new study by some of the world's top experts on forest governance finds fault with a spate of international accords, and helps explain their failure to stop rampant destruction of the world's most vulnerable forests. The report suggests that global efforts have too often ignored local needs, while failing to address the most fundamental challenge to global forest management -- that deforestation usually is caused by economic pressures imposed from outside the forests.
...The detailed results of the work of the expert panel, which was constituted under the Collaborative Partnership on Forests and coordinated by IUFRO, is being presented to the Ninth Session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) as part of the launch of the International Year of Forests.
..."REDD+ is an improvement, as it names forest conservation as a goal and sustainable forest management as a solution," Rayner said, "But it continues to explicitly value carbon storage above the improvement of forest conditions and livelihoods."
...REDD negotiators must sufficiently engage stakeholders outside the forest sector -- such as in the agriculture, transportation and energy sectors -- and stop an over-reliance on a "one-size-fits-all" global scheme to address situations that are vastly different from region to region and country to country.
..."Unless all sectors work together to address the impact of global consumption, including growing demand for food and biofuels, and problems of land scarcity, REDD will fail to arrest environmental degradation and will heighten poverty."
McDermott notes that if REDD results in an overriding focus on protecting and pricing the carbon stored in forests this will lead to the "further exclusion of indigenous people from their forests and the criminalization of their traditional livelihoods." READ MORE