The Oslo Declaration on REDD
The Oslo Partnership Document - the endpoint of the Paris-Oslo process on interim steps towards reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation - will be formally announced at the Oslo Climate and Forest Conference today. (The background to today’s announcement is described here and here). The Partnership Document formalizes an ongoing partnership between the participating countries that is designed to support the development of effective action on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) over the next few years. The conference can be watched live here.
A consultation draft of the Partnership Document was published on 28 April. The final version of the Partnership Document that will be issued today contains some not insignificant changes to the language, reflecting the process of engagement among partner countries and with NGOs and private actors. The Partnership Document has been carefully drafted so as to emphasize that the process will need to dock with the UNFCCC when the latter finally does yield a binding agreement. There are repeated references for the need to promote the language of safeguarding biodiversity and forest peoples’ rights that was agreed as draft text in Copenhagen.
The Paris Oslo process has represented a renewal of political momentum on reducing emissions from deforestation in the wake of the disappointments of Copenhagen and today’s statement is an expression of that revitalization. It is a serious attempt to institutionalize a learning environment for participating actors to develop best practice and creates a framework for transparency and accountability. It is an effort to introduce coordination and cooperation in the commitment of the up to six billion dollars of interim REDD finance pledged by various donor countries. Indeed in another announcement made yesterday, a billion dollars was pledged by Norway to reduce deforestation in Indonesia, governed by a bilateral relationship between those countries. Norway's efforts to provide leadership on the issue are striking.
Nevetheless, it is important to note the structural limitations of the Partnership Document. The commitments are voluntary; the language is often limited and there is no resolution of tough issues, like the need for robust MRV. But to coin a maxim: a stream cannot rise above its source. The nature of the Paris Oslo process meant that any resulting agreement was always going to be constrained in its ambition.
Views of the Paris Oslo remain mixed. Many in civil society are still anxious and frustrated, feeling that the Paris Oslo process has been undertaking with unseemly haste, rendering the proper involvement of Indigenous peoples in particular, practically impossible. The Norwegian Government, coordinating the process in the lead up to today’s announcement, has tried to address concerns with regular teleconferences and a website, but there has been a limit to what has been possible within the available time frames.
More generally, it is appropriate to recognize that within all deliberations over REDD, there is a profound tension between the imperative for speed and the hazards of haste. It is a fine balancing act, with profound local, national and global consequences. The world urgently needs action to tackle deforestation, but if things are done the wrong way, the resulting mechanisms may not only fail to reduce emissions, but actually become a driver of natural forest loss and the dispossession of forest peoples.
Natural forests are the best terrestrial carbon stores, as well as supporting tremendous biodiversity and providing economic, cultural and spiritual sustenance to forest peoples. All efforts on REDD should prioritize and reward actions that support and maintain the integrity of natural forests: not the spread of monoculture plantations, or the kind of 'planning' that actually expedites the opening up of new areas of intact forest to exploitation in the name of ‘management’. Explicit prioritization of funding for preservation of natural, biodiversity rich (and photogenic) forests is also much more likely to be politically palatable in the developed world, particularly in these fiscally constrained times.
Concentration on securing the world's remaining natural forests is the strategy of no regrets.
