REDD - Tackling Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss

Climate change remains a present and future threat to biodiversity. REDD, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, aims to curb climate change by conserving the world's remaining forests.

REDD aim to ensure that measures to tackle climate change include accounting for the carbon sinks that forests and bogs provide. After lenghty dialogue, both the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol have made provisions to reduce emissions released from forest degradation and deforestation.

December 07 witnessed the unilateral agreement between the conference of the parties to strengthen agreements made at the fourteenth conference. UNEP and WCMC have now produced a paper that outlines opportunities for multiple benefits of forest protection, including increased watershed and coastal protection.

It seems likely that protection of native forests will offer greater resilience to the effects of climate change than new plantations, and this should be taken into consideration in decision-making.