Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is a mechanism that has been under negotiation by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since 2005, with the objective of mitigating climate change through reducing net emissions of greenhouse gases through enhanced forest management in developing countries.In the last two decades, various studies estimate that land use change, including deforestation and forest degradation, accounts for 17-29% of global greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason the inclusion of reducing emissions from land use change is considered essential to achieve the objectives of the UNFCCC.During the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol, and then in particular its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the inclusion of tropical forest management was debated but eventually dropped due to anticipated methodological difficulties in establishing – in particular – additionality and leakage (detrimental effects outside of the project area attributable to project activities). What remained on forestry was ""Afforestation and Reforestation"", sectoral scope 14 of the CDM. Under this sectoral scope areas of land that had no forest cover since 1990 could be replanted with commercial or indigenous tree species. In its first eight years of operation, a total of 52 projects has been registered under the ""Afforestation and Reforestation"" scope of the CDM. The cumbersome administrative procedures and corresponding high transaction costs are often blamed for this slow uptake.In response to what many perceived to be a failure to address a major source of global greenhouse gas emissions, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN) was established and in 2005 they proposed to the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC a mechanism for considering the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases stemming from tropical deforestation and forest degradation as a climate change mitigation measure.