The new frontier of climate law: Reducing emissions from deforestation (and degradation)

Abstract

This article analyses the efforts of the international community to incorporate activities relating to Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (and Degradation) (RED(D)) within the international legal framework governing climate change. Such activities were first recognised at the Thirteenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 13) held in Bali in December 2007. Any agreement on RED(D) at the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen in December 2009 is likely to be heavily influenced by the Negotiating Text developed by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention earlier this year. The article also demonstrates how the United States, unlike other jurisdictions, has decided to include RED(D) provisions within the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 prior to the outcomes of COP 15. Various financing approaches to RED(D), including public funding schemes and a market-based RED(D) credits approach, are then assessed before a number of key issues associated with RED(D) activities are addressed. All of these have legal implications. They include: the crucial issue of governance; establishing baselines and national reference levels; the link between monitoring, reporting and verification, and compliance and enforcement; proprietorial rights over the carbon in the world's forests; and legal arrangements for benefit-sharing through Payments for Environmental Services. The article is divided into the following five parts - Part I: Latest scientific evidence and forest sequestration; Part II: The international law framework for RED (D; Part III: The United States moves ahead on RED(D); Part IV: Key RED(D) issues and legal implications; and Part V: Conclusions.