REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, and the term is as critical to understanding ACES (American Clean Energy & Security Act, aka cap and trade legislation, aka climate change bill) as "public option" is to understanding healthcare reform.
Remember your fourth grade class in which you learned that human beings breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, while plants do the opposite? Remember Al Gore telling us at the end of An Inconvenient Truth to plant a tree? So what could possibly be wrong with planting a lot of trees? Short answers: internationally, enough to possibly derail last week's G20 meeting, when money is involved; and domestically, when a tree is not a tree.
REDD in the abstract:
The (British) Guardian begins with FAQs:
What is Redd?
It's a way of paying poor countries to protect their forests. Global deforestation accounts for nearly 20% of all CO2 emissions and all previous attempts to curb it have failed. Redd — "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation" would allow countries that can reduce emissions from deforestation to be paid for doing so.
Very generally, tropical trees are better carbon sinks -- more efficient at absorbing carbon dioxide -- than trees in temperate areas. The implications of REDD are huge: deforestation accounts for more carbon than all cars, trucks, planes, and ships combined. In an effort to quantify the abstract, the United Nations Environment Programme has begun a three year Carbon Benefits Project in Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, and China. In Kenya, a region near Lake Victoria has been divided into old-growth forests, subsistence farms, tea fields, and human settlements. In India, one civil servant organized the planting of one billion trees on August 30. And, because trees are often cut down to make room for cattle, on DailyKos we're trying Meatless Mondays.
The term REDD usually refers to the international efforts, which many countries hope to be part of a treaty at Copenhagen in December. However, Waxman-Markey also has an offset section.
REDD House:
The House version of ACES (sometimes known as Waxman-Markey, aka HR2454) official summary (p. 22 of a 44 pg pdf) has an Agricultural Offsets section: "Agricultural Offsets. ACES directs the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a program governing the generation of offset credits from domestic agricultural and forestry sources. The Secretary must promulgate methodologies for assessing the amount of offset credits, including activity baselines, additionality requirements, quantification methods, and leakage. The legislation also directs the Secretary to establish requirements to account for and address reversals, and it allows for the issuance of term offset credits."
Agricultural and forestry offsets? The afforestation could be larger than the 1930s-era Civilian Conservation Corps, which planted 3 billion trees. Some agricultural economists are pleased, because trees require less water, chemicals, and pesticides than crops. An EPA study done in 2005 that analyzed policies similar to Waxman-Markey found that trees would overgrow farms primarily in three areas where prior forests have been replaced by cropland:
•Great Lake states: Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
•The Southeast: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
•The Corn Belt: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio.
Generally, the offsets would be exchanged with polluters. If you think carbon offsets are a great concept, you'll love being part of The Croc.
REDD in reality: Have you figured out the problem yet? If not, consider this a subtle hint:
At least 32 REDD proposals have been made internationally. Like REDD in Waxman-Markey, they attempt to put a monetary value on keeping carbon stored in trees.
Back to the Guardian:
Who owns the carbon?
Land ownership is highly disputed in most forested countries. Governments would have to pass new laws to refine who owns the carbon credits. Land in some countries is owned by the communities but trees may belong to the state. Does tree ownership confer carbon rights? How do you make sure that communities who protect the forests are rewarded, rather than say logging or mining companies who often have the legal rights on trees?
What about corruption?
Friends of the Earth International has argued that the current Redd proposals are open to abuse by corrupt politicians or illegal logging companies. Many heavily forested countries are some of the most corrupt in the world and are home to some notorious logging companies close to politicians. Policing forests is nearly impossible, and money is likely to be diverted by people in power. The likelihood of international money getting to the people who depend on the forests is unlikely. Governments can overstate the case that their forests are in danger.
What if the carbon market fails?
The market price of carbon could collapse if too many Redd credits flooded onto the market. With no financial incentive to protect the trees, people would revert to logging.
The just-concluded G20 meeting ducked the question of "climate finance," including how to pay for REDD. The Coalition for Rainforest Nations reports over-optimistically that "We heard strong statements of support for REDD from leaders of Australia, Republic of Congo, Guyana, Norway, Papua New Guinea, and Sweden. Equally encouraging was a strong endorsement from World Bank President Robert Zoellick for immediate REDD funding and implementation." However, no financial specifics were mentioned, and the United States did not attend the CRN meeting. In a separate development, Guyana was criticized for seeking cash under the false pretense that its rainforest would be turned into cropland absent a bribe. Some have speculated that Obama's signature agreement -- an elimination of fossil fuel subsidies (which you saw on DailyKos two weeks beforehand) was made because he couldn't, or wouldn't, get the G20 to agree to the bigger climate finance picture.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, an early EPA analysis of Waxman-Markey calls for an ever-increasing quantity of afforestation, presumably as farmers plant more trees.
Joe Romm of ClimateProgress isn't worried, because afforestation will only begin to play a large role in calculating offsets after 2030, and the EPA will have time to get it right.
I'm a little less sanguine about REDD in ACES. The idea of planting trees makes a lot of sense. However, that idea seems trapped between a scientific reality and a political fantasy. Science dictates that planting trees makes more sense in troptical areas than in the United States. The political fantasy occurs in the summary of the House bill; apparently the bill fails to distinguish between planting trees and other agricultural practices. Remember the general impression that Collin Petersen weakened Waxman-Markey with agricultural goodies? Section 503 of the bill has a laundry list of practices considered to be offsets:
(1) agricultural, grassland, and rangeland sequestration and management practices, including--
(A) altered tillage practices;
(B) winter cover cropping, continuous cropping, and other means to increase biomass returned to soil in lieu of planting followed by fallowing;
(C) reduction of nitrogen fertilizer use or increase in nitrogen use efficiency;
(D) reduction in the frequency and duration of flooding of rice paddies;
(E) reduction in carbon emissions from organic soils;
(F) reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from manure and effluent; and
(G) reduction in greenhouse gas emissions due to changes in animal management practices, including dietary modifications;
(2) changes in carbon stocks attributed to land use change and forestry activities, including--
(A) afforestation or reforestation of acreage that is not forested;
(B) forest management resulting in an increase in forest carbon stores including but not limited to harvested wood products;
(C) management of peatland or wetland;
(D) conservation of grassland and forested land;
(E) improved forest management, including accounting for carbon stored in wood products;
(F) reduced deforestation or avoided forest conversion;
(G) urban tree-planting and maintenance;
(H) agroforestry; and
(I) adaptation of plant traits or new technologies that increase sequestration by forests; and
(3) manure management and disposal, including--
(A) waste aeration;
(B) biogas capture and combustion; and
(C) application to fields as a substitute for commercial fertilizer.
To my un-agriculturally-trained eye, many of the above items look like good ideas, but should they be permitted to offset pollution?
In short, REDD is a great idea, but the reality needs to be scrutinized when the Boxer-Kerry bill is released on September 30.