— Norway-funded study finds
A STUDY funded by the Norwegian Government and due to be published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) says paying people alone will not tackle deforestation in the global climate change battle.

It says that paying people to protect forests can be an effective way to tackle deforestation and climate change but only if there is good governance of natural resources.

Norway and Guyana have agreed to collaborate on avoiding deforestation and forest degradation and a Norwegian team led by Ambassador Hans Brattskar, Director of the Norway International Climate and Forest Initiative, met President Bharrat Jagdeo and a top government team here this week to advance the bilateral programme.

Under a memorandum of understanding the two countries signed in February this year, Norway is to provide funds for Guyana’s programme with monitoring by a reputable international organisation.

According to the study to be released today, payments to protect forests will be effective only if key economic, cultural, institutional and information conditions are met, and if payment schemes monitor impacts on poor communities to ensure equity and avoid social harm.

The IIED said the results of the study will be shared today at a meeting in Norway organised on behalf of the Norwegian Ministries of the Environment and of Foreign Affairs.

The London-based IIED said the report comes as government negotiators meet in Bonn to hammer out a global policy to address climate change. The deal will have forest conservation at its heart as deforestation and forest degradation accounts for about 17 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The new study by researchers at IIED, the World Resources Institute and the Center for International Forestry Research looked at existing efforts to pay people in developing nations to protect ecosystems in return for the services — such as fresh water, wild foods and climate control — they provide.

The IIED said it aimed to see if such payments could be used to help tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, an approach known as REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) that is gaining international support under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“Effective and equitable governance will be the key to successful payment schemes,” says lead author Ivan Bond, a senior researcher at IIED. “Unfortunately, governance tends to be weakest in the very places where deforestation is greatest. Communities need clear land rights if they are to gain from payments that flow to their countries in return for forest protection.”

The Norwegian Government commissioned the study to inform the design and implementation of its Climate and Forest Initiative (N-CFI), which will provide hundreds of millions of dollars each year to instigate early action to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and to ensure that a mechanism to reduce these emissions become part of a new and more comprehensive climate regime.

The researchers reviewed 13 schemes that make payments for ecosystems services in Africa, South-East Asia and Latin America and concluded that performance-based payments can be part of REDD but only if important preconditions are met.

“Massive levels of funding are set to flow into REDD schemes so it is important that money is not spent on projects that are ineffective at protecting forests or that end up harming the poor,” says Peter Hazlewood of the World Resources Institute.

“As this is such a new area of policy it is essential to share knowledge about what works and what does not. The N-CFI can play a critical role in learning lessons from early project experience and facilitating South-South exchanges.”

The report also found that paying landowners to conserve forests is likely to be a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but that costs are likely to be higher than those suggested by the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, in particular costs to meet capacity development needs.

“Schemes involving payments for ecosystem services have been criticised in the past, but we found little evidence that payments cause harm,” Bond said. “What is important in applying this approach to REDD projects is that payments alone are not enough. Other key conditions must be met.”

The countries covered by the case studies are: Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia, Mexico, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.