Policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation ...

∫ REDD policies would generate credits by reforming land-use policies to reduce deforestation. Agricultural
subsidies, for example, often create incentives to deforest, and transportation networks
provide access to clear forests and remove timber. Policy-based REDD activities would reform these
policies so that they would discourage deforestation.
∫ Sector activities would generate credits by reducing net deforestation rates over an entire country.
A country or province could commit to a target emissions cap in the forestry sector. For some
developing countries, pursuing emissions targets in the forestry sector might be the most appealing
and powerful way to participate in the global effort to mitigate climate change.
An international REDD policy does not necessarily have to limit itself to a single type of activity
but could allow all three REDD activities, acknowledging that countries differ in the pressures
on their forests and their abilities to manage and monitor the resource.
Related is the question of whether a REDD policy would be built around national commitments
or project-based activities. National commitments appear better suited to reaching the goal of reducing
carbon emissions, but because countries differ in their ability to implement REDD activities,
a purely national system might discourage participation by subnational entities that are able
and willing to participate. Hybrid approaches that allow subnational participation can be designed
to be inclusive, accommodating the differences among countries while also addressing the magnitude
of the problem.
Forests are complex ecosystems that simultaneously sequester, store, and emit carbon. An umbrella
forest carbon policy that included REDD activities, forest conservation activities, and afforestation
and reforestation (AR) activities would account for all of the carbon fluxes of forest
ecosystems. However, it is complicated and time consuming to design a policy for just one of these
functions. Although ecosystem-based management is ideal, the realities of crafting environmental
policies might impede the creation of ecosystem-based policies.
Monitoring
In recent years, the international climate change community has grown increasingly confident
about measuring deforestation and its associated emissions. A decade ago, concerns over the ability
to monitor tropical deforestation and degradation drove some of the original reluctance to
consider REDD as a measurable means of CO2 mitigation. Now, many experts agree that the technology
and methods exist to measure deforestation adequately, predominantly through remote
sensing (DeFries et al. 2005; DeFries et al. 2006; UNFCCC 2006; Mollicone et al. 2007).
Measuring emissions from deforestation involves three steps:
∫ First, a forest inventory assesses the state and extent of a forest.
∫ Second, a monitoring program measures changes in that forest, ideally using a combination of remote
sensing and on-the-ground field sampling. The complexity of the monitoring program depends
on whether the program is measuring just deforestation or includes levels of forest degradation.
∫ Third, data on changes in forest cover are translated into data on forest carbon. Information on
changes in forest cover is not useful unless the carbon content of that forest is also known. This
can be achieved through extensive field sampling or, less accurate but more cost-effective, look-
1 Policies to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries