The current rates of deforestation contribute to more than 20% of human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, making deforestation across the globe a significant contributor to human-induced climate change and biodiversity loss. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that, between 2000 and 2005, an average of 12.9 million hectares of forests was lost annually, mostly in South America, followed by Africa and Asia.

Deforestation’s contribution to biodiversity loss, moreover, increases the negative impacts of climate change on a number of aspects affecting human life, including water, food and energy security and access to raw materials. Biodiversity loss will be further augmented as climate change impacts increase.

Despite the international community’s efforts to find a solution, dealing with deforestation has remained a divisive issue. This is largely attributable to the varied root causes of deforestation, which range from direct and indirect dependence on forests for livelihoods, macro-economic policies and economic factors including market forces and poverty.

The need to protect forests
The protection of forests yields numerous co-benefits. Most obviously, effective and sustainable forest protection would significantly reduce emissions. At the same time, biodiversity loss would be stemmed, which would contribute to reducing the impacts of climate change on people. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) acknowledges the need to protect forests as part of efforts to combat climate change. Under the Kyoto Protocol, emissions from deforestation in developed countries are taken into account as part of national commitments to reduce GHGs. Tropical deforestation, however, was excluded from the Kyoto Protocol due to controversies surrounding sovereignty, uncertainty and implications for efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Yet, trees in tropical forests hold, on average, about 50% more carbon per hectare than trees outside the tropics. Consequently, the issue is likely to be brought back to centre stage in the context of negotiations for a post-2012 climate regime, with the expectation that the UNFCCC could deliver an instrument to reduce deforestation. Parties to the UNFCCC agreed to a process on deforestation, which has begun with a dialogue to understand the causes of the phenomenon, and identifying a possible mechanism. The main issues to be resolved will include ways to measure and report reduced emissions from deforestation, as well as setting baselines, and the type of incentive that will be established at the international level. The alternatives for a mechanism currently under discussion by Parties can be grouped into two types: those using transfer of payments and those making use of the carbon market.

Possible approaches
A number of Parties are deliberating whether deforestation may represent an opportunity for countries to participate in the carbon market. Under this alternative, tradable credits would be issued and sold in the international carbon market. Such transactions would be the main incentive to reduce deforestation rates. Other Parties suggest that incentives should not be linked to the carbon market for fears of flooding the market with cheap credits and driving down prices. Their proposal centres on the creation of a fund or other type of ‘earmarked’ instrument to finance forest conservation.

Irrespective of the result of these discussions, the UNFCCC is likely to make available resources to combat deforestation, thereby contributing to climate change abatement and the stemming of biodiversity loss. These resources could contribute to activities at the national level, e.g. the establishment and management of protected areas, and the promotion of sustainable forest management.

Such activities would also have the potential of offering benefits to local communities, whose livelihoods depend on forests. National Governments would be in a position to assess how such resources could be used to protect hotspots of biodiversity that are also under high risk from deforestation. To this end, experiences and lessons learned from activities to protect biodiversity, as well as developments under the CBD, will become increasingly valuable as discussions under the UNFCCC advance. The Kyoto Protocol with its GHG emission reduction targets for developed countries for the period 2008 - 2012 represents an initial step in climate change abatement. A comprehensive package on the future needs to be launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali this year, to ensure that a stronger climate change framework is agreed before 2010, thus preventing a gap between the end of the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period and the entry into force of a future regime.

Efforts under a future regime need to be broadly focused to allow all aspects of global solutions to be addressed, including deforestation with its cross-linkages to biodiversity. The UNFCCC has a unique opportunity to deliver an effective mechanism under a future regime that contributes to reducing deforestation and mitigation, safeguards socio-economic growth and poverty eradication, while providing fair incentives to those who avoid deforesting.

Yvo de Boer is Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change