REDD Alert for developing countries? Are their forests in risk of internationalisation with the recent developments within the UN climate change regime?
| Autor | Guillermo Pardavé |
| Páginas | 213-246 |
REDD Alert for developing countries? Are their forests in
risk of internationalisation with the recent developments
within the UN climate change regime? 1
Guillermo Pardavé
1. Introduction
There is an increasing awareness of the role that forests play in the global carbon cycle
and the negative impact that deforestation has on global warming2. Deforestation
accounts for nearly 17 percent of the total annual Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions3.
Forested developing countries, particularly those from South America and Africa, are
the main contributors to that amount4. This situation has boosted the perception
that the new global climate change deal following the Kyoto Protocol commitments,
ending in 2011, must include financial incentives to reward forested developing
countries that succeed in reducing the rate of deforestation. Although discussed at
the Kyoto Conference, payments for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Forest Degradation (REDD) were not included in the Protocol for a series of political
and technical reasons. Currently the UN framework only allows reforestation and
afforestation projects as part of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM),
1 REDD is a mechanism that aims to contribute to tackle climate change by creating a financial value for
the carbon stored in the trees. In this scheme, developing countries accept the commitment to keep their
forest standing in exchange for international financial compensation for the cost of opportunity of not using
forest for an extractive activity.
2 Forests sequester the CO2 from the atmosphere in a phenomenon called photosynthesis that is the natural
process by which carbon dioxide is converted into organic matter as trees and plants grow. Through this
sequestration process, forests become natural storages of carbon, contributing to reduce the amount of GHG
in the atmosphere and to limit the rise of temperatures. Some of the carbon is kept in the trees’ and plants’
biomass but a significant amount is transferred to the soil through the roots and fallen leaves (note 8 below,
p. 445).
3 IPCC. Climate Change 2007, Synthesis Report. Geneva: IPCC, 2007, p. 36. This represents more than the
whole transport sector and comparable to the annual emissions of the US or China (note 7 below, p. 6).
4 FAO. Global Forest Resources Assessment. Rome: FAO, 2010, pp. xiii–xx.
Agenda Internacional
Año XVIII, N° 29, 2011, pp. 213-246
ISSN 1027-6750
214 Guillermo Pardavé
therefore, only one part of the equation required to effectively tackle the problem of
forest loss has been considered.
However, new scientific and technological developments are making it possible to
overcome some of the obstacles that REDD faced ten years ago, and its implementation
has become feasible. Moreover, developing forested States, traditionally anxious with
foreign intervention in the administration of their natural resources, are willing to
accept commitments to reduce deforestation and developed countries seem keen
to compensate them for the opportunity cost of those actions. As a result, the
interest in the protection of the world’s forests, especially tropical forests, has grown
to unprecedented heights. 2011 has been declared by the Food and Agricultural
Organisation (FAO) ‘The International Year of Forest’ and the Cancun Agreements
(2010) ratified the intention to include REDD as part of the international efforts to
tackle climate change.
It seems timely to evaluate the potential impact that the eventual implementation
of REDD within the United Nations climate change regime will have, over the legal
status of tropical forests. Attempts by developed countries to ‘internationalise’ forests
had so far been unsuccessful in legal terms; forests, particularly, tropical forests, have
been carefully guarded by developing countries as part of their national patrimony5.
However, if REDD becomes a popular mechanism, it will impose a series of
restrictions over the freedom of developing States in the management of these
resources. It has even been suggested that “…bringing forest into an international
climate regime will increase the pressure for a de facto internationalisation of tropical
forests”6. Thus, my purpose with this dissertation is to assess whether REDD could
threaten the sovereignty of developing States over their forests.
To that end I will first discuss how the relation between international efforts to
tackle climate change and global concerns about deforestation has evolved, and
how the latter has been integrated into the former’s strategy. I will also present a
brief description of REDD as it has been developed so far by the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change’s Conferences of the Parties (COPs). I will continue
by describing the current legal status of the forest and the role of the principle
of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources in the reaffirmation of States’
sovereignty in the management of their forests. Restrictions to this principle will
be discussed in order to contextualise and present the existing international regimes
governing the global commons, which constitute the clearest exceptions to national
5 SANDS, P. Principles of International Law. Cambridge: CUP, 2nd Edition, 2003, pp. 546-547.
6 BOYD, W. ‘Ways of Seeing in Environmental Law: How Deforestation Became an Object of Climate
Change’. 37 Ecology Law Quarterly (2010), p. 880, fn. 144.
REDD Alert for developing countries? 215
sovereignty. I will review key concepts such as Common Heritage of Mankind,
Common Concern of Humankind and World Heritage.
Based on all these elements, I will determine those restrictions that the mechanism
will impose over the sovereign States and assess whether they could amount to a de
facto internationalisation of forest. As will be made evident, my conclusion is that
as REDD stands today, there are not enough legal elements to put forward such
a case. Moreover, I will argue that since legally it is not possible to speak about
the internationalisation of forests, it is not convenient and can even be harmful for
REDD that internationalisation suggestions are brought into the debate. It can exalt
nationalist and anti-colonial feelings in developing countries’ population, giving
ammunition to those that have a particular interest in continuing to deforest, such
as illegal loggers or miners, and placing the implementation of REDD by national
governments at risk.
2. Deforestation and climate change
In the last century, global temperatures have risen alarmingly by 0.7ºC7. The high
level of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution
is responsible for this situation8. The rising temperature’s effect is already evident in
many parts of the world: The arctic sea’s ice and glaciers are melting at a very rapid
speed; sea levels are rising; the changes in rainfall patterns are leading to floods and
droughts; there is an increase in the number of climate events such as hurricanes and
cyclones, etc. Climate change has become, more than ever, a global threat. The four
main contributors to global warming are: energy supply (25.9 percent), industrial
activity (19.4 percent), land use (17.4 percent) and transport (13.1 percent)9.
The UN climate change regime has developed agreements that include mitigation
policies in the energy, industrial and transport sectors, however, deforestation, which
is the main driver of emissions in the land use field, is not yet part of this scheme10.
7 ELIASCH, Johan. The Eliasch Review. Surrey: Crown Copyright, 2008, p. 2.
8 STERN, Sir Nicholas. Stern Review on the Economic of Climate Change. Cambridge: CUP, 2006, p. iii.
It is estimated that before the Industrial Revolution, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was 280 parts per
million (ppm); the current stock is around 430 ppm CO2. Policies that aim to tackle climate change, set
at 2ºC the maximum temperature increase that can be allowed. This has become a benchmark for climate
change modelling. According to the Stern Review, to avoid exceeding this target, the CO2 in the atmosphere
should not exceed 500-550 ppm (twice the quantity that existed at the time of the Industrial Revolution).
As fast-growing economies invest in high-carbon infrastructure and as the world’s demands for energy and
transport are amplified, the review estimates that in the business as usual (BAU) scenario the proposed limit
could be reached by as early as 2035.
9 Note 3 above, p. 36.
10 Ibid.
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