Climate Action 2010-2011

Redd, Sustainable Forest Management and Agriculture
Tropical forests sustain half of all life on earth, about 6 million species of
living creatures.
© Creative commons/flickr/rainforest_harley
Creating
incentives
for avoiding
deforestation
and forest
degradation
His Excellency, President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana
Action to save the world’s forests is vital – and
possible now. Guyana’s partnership with Norway
is already working to provide a model for Redd+
incentives to avoid deforestation and forest degradation.
Payments from Norway for the climate services provided
by Guyana’s forest are making the forest worth more
alive than dead. And Guyana is investing these payments
in renewable energy, better forest governance and
community-led sustainable development projects. This
is all part of our work to re-orient our economy onto a
low carbon trajectory, and we hope that in a small way,
we are providing insights for others across the world.
It will be mathematically impossible to reach climate
stabilisation unless the international community moves
quickly on four fronts. We need to simultaneously
improve energy efficiency, transition to clean energy
sources, improve agricultural productivity and slow down
net deforestation.
Much of the world seems to be waking up to the
need to create solutions for energy efficiency and clean
energy. But the importance of land use – in other words,
agriculture and forestry – still remains unclear to many.
Changing this reality is vital and do-able: action to stop
deforestation and forest degradation can start now.
Achieving no net annual deforestation
by 2030 IS possible
Deforestation and forest degradation currently produces
about 17 per cent of all greenhouse gas (GHG)
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emissions. Yet it is possible and affordable to achieve
no net annual deforestation by 2030. That would be
the equivalent of eliminating all the GHG emissions
generated by the entire European Union.
Moreover, saving the world’s tropical forests would not
just make an immense contribution to climate stabilisation
but also protect the planet’s incredible biodiversity.
Tropical forests sustain half of all life on earth, about 6
million species of living creatures. They provide the world
with the majority of its medicines, saving the lives of
hundreds of millions of people. Forests generate rainfall
without which the agricultural industries of North
America, Europe and elsewhere could not survive. And to
many people, forests are also a spiritual home and source
of wellbeing impossible to value in monetary terms.
Creating new incentives is the key
So how can we save the world’s forests? The first thing
is to face up to the reality that we are currently part of
a global economy that values the timber that forests
This world economy does not
value the vital climate and
biodiversity services that forests
provide. Put simply, forests are
worth more dead than alive.
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