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		Climate Change Climate Change and Global Warming What's New The Impacts of Climate Change Climate Change and Biodiversity: An Interactive Map What You Can Do:   Carbon Footprint Calculator Offset Your Emissions   Contribute Now   Contribute Monthly   Climate-Saving Tips   Get the Facts   Take a Quiz   Get our e-Newsletter   Donate now What We Do:   Stop Deforestation   Adapt to Impacts   Support Policy Where We Work on Climate Change Contact Us Press Releases Tell us what you think about climate change

Duncan Marsh is the Director of The Nature Conservancy’s initiative on reducing emissions from deforestation (REDD) which develops, tests and demonstrates effective approaches to valuing and conserving forests for their contribution to climate change mitigation. Widodo Ramono is the Policy Director for The Nature Conservancy’s Indonesian Program. He has training in forestry, state administration, national park and equivalent reserves management, wildlife management, and biology conservation. Before joining the Conservancy he was a senior forestry official with 40 years experience of conservation in Indonesia. Get Involved You can learn more and explore new places when you join the Conservancy's online community and build your own personalized nature page. Why is The Nature Conservancy involved? Climate change is the greatest threat to nature.  We all rely on nature for survival and now nature is relying on us. As one of the world’s largest environmental organizations, we are compelled to work on the world’s largest environmental challenge. A strong, comprehensive international climate change agreement is the most powerful way we can reduce the impacts of climate change on people, plants and animals. For more than a decade, the Conservancy has been confronting the nexus between climate change and nature, putting into practice — in six countries, on over 1.5 million acres — nature-based strategies to both reduce emissions and adapt to an already changing world. Breaking from Bali In Bali, New Incentive for Developing Nations to Curb Emissions The Christian Science Monitor discusses the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility with The Conservancy’s Andrew Deutz. The Nature Conservancy Pledges $5 Million to Tackle Emissions from Deforestation World Bank-led Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) will Demonstrate New Incentives for Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The Nature Conservancy Acts on Indonesia’s Call to Save Orangutans and Address Climate Change. The Nature Conservancy pledges $1 Million for strategy and action plan for the national conservation of orangutans. Major Steps Taken to Protect Coral Triangle The region is critical to the livelihoods of more than 120 million people. Indonesia Vows to Protect Endangered Orangutans. Reuters talk's with the Conservancy's Erik Meijaard about Indonesia's pledge to save orangutans and forests Trees Are at Heart of Talks on Climate The Washington Post talks with the Conservancy’s Duncan Marsh about efforts in Bali to strike a deal that would slow the destruction of tropical forests. Scrambling to Save Coral’s “Homeland” The Associated Press talks with the Conservancy’s Annisah Supal about the Coral Triangle Initiative and efforts to establish climate change resilient marine protected areas in the coral triangle.  Indonesia's Corals Threatened by Climate Change Reuters discusses the coral triangle with Abdul Halim, policy manager for The Nature Conservancy's Coral Triangle Center. Electricity Revives Bali Coral Reefs The Associated Press reports on Conservancy coral specialist Rod Salm about bleaching in the coral triangle.   Can We Save the World by 2015? Time magazine talks to Andrew Deutz about the climate change conference. Climate Meeting Preview: The Conservancy's Roberto Troya previews the conference for The World. Climate Change: What We Support Find out how the Conservancy is working with all levels of government — from state and regional initiatives , to U.S. federal policy, to international treaties  — to address the impacts of climate change. Our key policy areas include: Reducing emissions from all sectors Forest carbon Supporting adaptation for nature and people Forest Conservation Find out more about the Conservancy’s work in forest conservation and forest trade

December 11, 2007 — The Nature Conservancy has worked for more than 50 years — and for more than 15 years in Indonesia — making the case that forests matter for people and nature. Protected and sustainably managed forests provide critical services including:

• clean water,
• habitat for 70 percent of terrestrial species,
• erosion and mudslide controls, and
• forest products such as timber and paper.

Forests, especially tropical forests, are also remarkably effective at storing carbon — a valuable service in our world where reducing the threat of climate change is so important.

Over the last several years, the vital role of maintaining forests to combat climate change has become crystal clear. Deforestation and land use change accounts for about 20 percent of all emissions globally, and can be the leading cause of emissions in many tropical forest countries. As a result, there is now an emerging consensus at the Bali climate change meetings that the future international agreement on climate change must include strong incentives and support for developing countries’ efforts to reduce tropical forest loss and degradation.

This concept is being advanced by a growing number of developing countries across the world, including Indonesia and the members of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, who are taking the lead and breaking new ground for North-South cooperation on climate change.

What’s to Gain?

If properly structured, a global mechanism could drive at least several billion dollars per year or more into incentives to reduce deforestation and degradation (REDD) in tropical forest nations. These payments would reward countries that effectively lower deforestation emissions as compared to business-as-usual scenarios. Such a mechanism would create a sustainable revenue system to encourage and support a broad range of policies, measures and project activities that work to reduce deforestation.

At a national scale, countries would enjoy net economic, environmental and social benefits as a result of their participation. Well-designed REDD programs also have the potential to generate significant benefits for indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities by:

• strengthening these communities’ access and rights to land,
• rewarding sustainable management, and
• maintaining the forests that provide watershed protection, fuel wood, traditional medicines and cultural identity.

By creating incentives for protecting or sustainably managing standing forests, a REDD mechanism can also advance the protection of biodiversity, water catchments, air quality, soil quality and other environmental benefits.

Testing Solutions on the Ground

There are many questions yet unanswered about exactly how to bring these benefits to life.

• How should different funding sources be blended together to achieve the optimum result?
• How can incentives be aligned to promote sustainable management of forests while targeting revenues to forest communities?
• How can forest degradation be monitored and measured in an efficient and practical way?
• How exactly will the potential co-benefits be measured and guaranteed?
• How can the political will be generated to make the necessary investments?

Developing countries, industrialized countries and international institutions and organizations have called for pilot activities to provide real-world, practical experience for how to deliver incentives to reduce deforestation and degradation in the most effective ways. These experiences and information will help negotiators craft an effective international climate agreement over the next several years.

Flexibility will be needed to allow participation by a wide range of countries with varying circumstances and capacities. While a robust international mechanism will be needed to create the sufficient financial incentives, strategies to combat deforestation are likely to differ by country, according to a combination of factors including:

• political systems,
• drivers of forest loss and degradation,
• land tenure arrangements,
• ecological characteristics and other factors.

To mobilize this effort, negotiators this week must agree on a Bali roadmap that aims to create a robust REDD mechanism. This roadmap should encourage action by national governments, and address degradation of forests as well as deforestation. It also must include consideration of the full range of funding mechanisms, both market and non-market, public and private, in order to reduce deforestation at a scale sufficient to help mitigate climate change. And it should ensure protection of community and indigenous rights. Last, it must lay out a clear process to resolve these and other remaining methodological and policy questions. 

Jumping in Together

Given their complexity, successful REDD pilot activities will require “all hands on deck.” The huge potential to deliver broad environmental and economic benefits to developing countries will only be realized if the full range of stakeholders engage and are incorporated into the design, implementation, and benefit-sharing of REDD. These efforts will need to be led by governments and be coordinated across different levels of government. They must include civil society organizations and incorporate community perspectives and needs. And they need to involve partnership with a range of private sector actors. Only by engaging the many different reservoirs of related experience in sustainable forest management can this effort succeed.

The Nature Conservancy is committed to building capacity and supporting pilot activities on REDD. The momentum building in Bali reflects how important it is — to forest people, to our climate, to biodiversity, to the world — to give developing countries a real chance to reduce deforestation and the emissions that result. With active engagement, participation and collaboration across all sectors of society and all nations, we can build the know-how for creating a global solution. 

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo ©  Karen Foerstel/The Nature Conservancy (Forests in  East Kalimantan, Indonesia); Photo © The Nature Conservancy (Duncan Marsh); Photo © The Nature Conservancy (Widodo Ramono).