Compromise is Hard: The Problems and Promise of REDD+

In Durban this week delegates from around the world are examining the options to mitigate carbon emissions. In what look like the best chance for progress: REDD+ (for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, plus co-benefits — like conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks). REDD+ has been seen as a potentially powerful solution to solve both poverty and deforestation — in one fell swoop.

How does it work?  Essentially, these programs would be funded by developed nations to help pay for community forestry projects in developing countries, if the communities can demonstrate — with verifiable data — that their efforts are saving forests that would have been destroyed or if they are planting trees that would permanently sequester carbon.

Will this work? Many other systems have tried and failed to reduce deforestation. In Indonesia, where an area of forest about the size of Nevada has been destroyed since 1990, activists have participated in demonstrations, legal actions, blockades and destruction of property to protest timber production. Many international NGOs have joined them in their campaigns against the forestry practices in Indonesia, releasing report after report on the “State of the Forest.” The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have attempted to regulate forestry as conditions of their loans. None of it worked, and Indonesia continues to see massive amounts of illegal logging and deforestation.

But, there’s a new kid in town: Norway. This small, rich, Scandinavian country of 4.8 million people has entered into a partnership with Indonesia to reduce deforestation and prepare the vast island nation in Southeast Asia to provide verified emissions reductions on a world carbon market. In exchange, Norway will provide financial support of $1 billion over the next seven to eight years. If saved, the remaining 88.4 million hectares of forest and the emissions credits they would be worth could be “an almost unfathomably large business opportunity,” according to one leading international banker, Lord Stanley Fink. Norway’s agreement with Indonesia to develop REDD+ projects is a step in the right direction. They are focused on building the foundation of a responsible system before rushing into certification projects.

Early examples of REDD projects in other countries reveal the risks of a rush to REDD. In a report released this week at the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, indigenous leaders from Peru tell a story about REDD+ project developers hastening to get community leaders to sign contracts in English and with serious flaws:

We live here in the Peruvian Amazon where there is a new boom, a new fever just like for rubber and oil but this time for carbon and REDD. The companies, NGOs and brokers are breeding, desperate for that magic thing, the signature of the village chief on the piece of paper about carbon credits, something that the community doesn’t understand well but in doing so the middle-man hopes to earn huge profits on the back of our forests and our ways of life but providing few benefits for communities. We denounce this ‘carbon piracy’ that is one side of the reality of REDD in the Peruvian Amazon.

The problem here is that consensus is hard. Project developers rushed into the area to establish projects without doing the slow and consensus-based community conservation work that has been proven effective, as in Indonesia’s community forestry programs. Like Lord Stanley Fink, these developers view REDD+ as a business opportunity and were not inclined — and probably did not have the expertise — to do the slow work of educating villagers, hosting community meetings and building consensus. The Norway-Indonesia partnership, however, seems to be making a slow, and delayed, way to a successful and mutually beneficial program.

Cooking Shouldn’t Kill

Every year, two million people die from a killer in the kitchen: their cookstoves. A new report from the UN Foundation says the toxic smoke from these crude devices cookstoves can lead to child pneumonia, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and heart disease, as well as burns and disfigurement. The report lays out a plan, but they’re not looking for a handout. It argues that we can make life safer by making a buck.

Start with the market size… 3 billion people. That’s right, almost half the world’s population, primarily in Africa and Southern Asia, depend on rudimentary cookstoves and fires to prepare their daily meals. By the way, it’s not just their health that’s impacted. Local forests are pillaged for firewood that quickly burns in their fires, sending up black carbon into the atmosphere and causing ground-level and global warming pollution.

If you don’t see this map, click here

Better, clean-burning cookstoves have been around since the 1980s when aid groups such as UNICEF and CARE-Kenya first started distributing them. Since the health and environmental problems are clear, why haven’t they been widely adopted? It hasn’t been for lack of trying. In India, the government subsidised 50% of the cost of eight million stoves and distributed throughout the country, but half the stoves laying unused. The problem is that there wasn’t enough marketing built in to the plan… and not enough was done to adapt the models to fit cooking styles.

So, instead of giving stoves away, a new model for bringing clean cookstoves to the masses is gaining steam: create a business opportunity. Aid organizations are now looking for opportunities to subsidize small businesses to market and service cookstoves in their own communities, with the hopes that it will enhance demand for products appropriate for the market that they’re in.

One way they’re already starting to employ workers is to send them on outreach and demonstration trips to rural communities. PBS Newshour showed the work of one organization doing just that — through theater.

http://www-tc.pbs.org/s3/pbs.videoportal-prod.cdn/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf

The UN Foundation Report, “Igniting Change” makes it clear that it’s not just demand that needs to be encouraged to make the use of clean cookstoves widespread. Supply of high-quality and effective cookstoves need to be increased in addition to an “enabling environment” that tracks the impact of the project, like carbon reductions and adoption.

Some of us in the U.S. may be hoping for kitchen makeover, but even more are hoping for a toxic-free kitchen. And, with the holidays in front of us, we can all get behind the new slogan for the cookstove campaign, “Cooking shouldn’t kill.”

Rise Above Sea Level Rise: Raft Houses

Coastal communities are running out of real estate. Sea level rise threatens coastal communities with increased floods, erosion and displacement. To put it in perspective, the amount of water held in Greenland’s ice sheet could fill the lower 48 “like a bathtub”.

But an innovator in Thailand is figuring out how to build homes that rise above waters when they rise. Chutayaves Sinthuphan’s Amphibious House can be placed on land and rises on stilts when there is a flood. But there is a much cheaper option–raft houses–which sit on water.

What do you think of this idea? Let us know at Planet Forward.

DOE’s Solar Decathlon Director Talks about How to “Rebuild the 20th Century.”

Published on National Geographic

College campuses are facing the same problems everyone else is — houses built on sand. Coastal erosion, extreme weather and climate uncertainty are impacting university campuses the same way they are our homes. How are they dealing with these issues?

But even more, how are they educating people to deal with these issues elsewhere? As job-trainers and thought leaders, are they preparing students to enter the workforce for clean energy jobs or sustainable community planning? Are engineering departments teaching students how to build in ways that have less impact on the earth? Are business schools teaching their MBA candidates how to navigate the world of clean energy credits and carbon offsets?

Universities need to be thinking forward and figuring out how to prepare both their own campuses for the future and their graduates for the future. Luckily there are a few programs that are already doing that. We talked to Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon Director, Richard King about how students can leverage their college experience to build for the future, or “rebuild the 20th Century.”

Energy Secretary Chu on the Coolest Solar Decathlon Innovations (Video)

Published on Huffington Post

Planet Forward’s Frank Sesno catches up with Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu on site at the 2011 Solar Decathlon. Chu talks about some of the coolest innovations in the houses, and even wonks out a bit on values and building materials.

The official DOE final standings for the solar decathlon put the University of Maryland on top (congrats, Terps!) followed by Purdue, New Zealand and Middlebury. But we have our own contest and you are the judge. Vote for which team was your favorite at Planet Forward’s Solar Decathlon page and maybe you can see them featured in a PBS Nightly Business Report!