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| Home » Environmental protection » Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) |
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Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) |
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The Bali conference of UNFCCC provided a new set of plans that are known as reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation or REDD. This plan focuses on an incentives based system to reduce deforestation and degradation and hopefully have a positive impact on the efforts to reduce global carbon emission.
Forests are rich sources as well as sinks for carbon, and are thus very important for global carbon balance, sometimes referred to as global C budget. According to some recent studies, total carbon content in forests is more than that in the atmosphere. This is why deforestation in developing countries is such a major issue. Close to 20 % of global emissions resulting from human factors are due to deforestation and degradation. Under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), strategies and plans for reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation have gained importance. It has also been observed that carbon losses from forests are prevalent in all climate zones, including developed countries, although current programs and plans focus on developing countries.
Global deforestation accounts for a loss of 13 million hectares per annum for 1990 to 2005. Deforestation of this level leads to significant reduction in forest carbon stocks and increased emissions. Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) is a program that aims at reducing this level of deforestation, especially in tropics as they have more forest cover per square kilometers than other areas. REDD has been hailed as an important step towards the long term plan of reduced global emissions. Though it aims at land use patterns in developing countries right now, it is hoped that these measures will be followed by other countries and regions which follow different land use patterns.
REDD is a scheme that is based on providing incentives to developing countries to cut down on deforestation and improve their forest management systems. One of the highlights of the programme is to provide farmers cash incentives for the carbon storage capacity of their lands. During the 13th conference of parties to UNFCCC held in Bali in December 2007, particular emphasis was laid in this regard to countries like Brazil, India and China, which have vast natural resources and large populations. In the conference, a road map to an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
A total of 350 million hectares of tropical moist forests is marked as productive forest worldwide. Approximately a quarter of this is managed by rural, indigenous population who exploit these forests for timber and other agricultural produce. Selective logging leads to damaging of forests. REDD plans are based on studies that show that with proper training in directional felling and harvest planning, as much as 50 % of unproductive deforestation can be avoided. Advocates of REDD believe that reduced impact logging techniques and properly channelized incentive system can reduce global carbon emissions substantially.
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