Kenyan Ogiek hunter-gatherers claim to have been expelled from their Mau forest after a UN REDD pilot project was launched there.Early initiatives to certify REDD projects do include safeguards for local people.
REDD can accommodate such staggered progress.For now, most REDD projects are small-scale and based on traditional conservation.
It will take it years to bring a national REDD programme to market, and meanwhile its REDD efforts will probably have to be funded with foreign public money.
So the second idea for saving forests lies in changing economic incentives by paying people not to chop down trees an idea known in the ghastly jargon of climate-change diplomacy as "reduction of emissions from deforestation and degradation" (REDD).
As with other forms of carbon credit, today's voluntary and experimental REDD schemes will need to be replaced by more rigorously accredited and monitored schemes.
The talks are working on details of an idea known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD): it aims to fold the saving of trees into a wider UN effort to cool the world.At the moment, the UN system offers no rewards for leaving trees alone.
Advocates of national approaches involving entire countries, not small areas say local efforts cause "leakage" as felling is stopped in one place but shifts to another.Tony La Viña, the chief negotiator on the UN initiative known as "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)" was optimistic, as of December 16th, that the issues left to settle were "manageable".
But on December 5th a cheering announcement punctured the gloom: that Indonesia's government had formally approved the country's first project under the "REDD" scheme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation).Indonesia is one of world's big emitters of carbon, largely because of logging.
So REDD projects will require reporting, auditing and monitoring mechanisms.
In other parts of the world it might involve certification or helping people find alternative ways to earn a living.Land tenure is another big flashpoint for REDD.
He reckons community forest revenues need topping up by a third, and is looking to REDD.
