The palm oil industry and REDD

With a 12-day joint climate change summit underway in Cancun, Mexico attempting to make progress on REDD – Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation – a palm oil industry group has issued a 38-page report saying that in fact conservation of forests in developing countries such as Indonesia will do more harm than good.

The report, REDD And Conservation: Avoiding The New Road To Serfdom by World Growth, seeks to debunk estimates that greenhouse emissions from deforestation provide as much as 30 percent of global greenhouse gases, saying they are wildly wrong. The actual figure, the report says, is 12.9 percent at best and could be as low as 6 percent – which is certain to be debated by environmentalists and climate scientists.

And, the report says, "while there may exist some consensus on the proximate causes of deforestation – such as agricultural expansion, wood extraction, and infrastructure extension," the report argues, "the underlying drivers are complex social, political, economic, technological, and cultural variables. Because drivers are specific to these contexts, importing a 'one size fits all' land use model is ineffective in addressing geographically specific issues."

World Growth has mounted a no-holds-barred attack on REDD. And, while the report was produced by an organization with an undeniable economic interest in letting deforestation and forest degradation continue so that vast tracts of oil palm can replace virgin forest, it raises some intriguing questions. For instance, the report argues that forest conservation could doom a major segment of the world's rural poor to continuing poverty, depriving them of jobs, and that setting aside protected areas has displaced 900,000 to 14.4 million poor , mostly without any compensation.

The palm oil industry and REDD | Asian Correspondent