Britain to give tropical countries £100m to protect rainforest

Investment in Brazil and Papua New Guinea directly benefits British by tackling climate change, says Ed Miliband
David Adam in Poznan
guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 December 2008 00.01 GMT

Britain is to channel £100m to tropical countries such as Brazil and Papua New Guinea to help protect vulnerable forests and tackle climate change, ministers will announce today.
The investment could help developing nations access billions of pounds of funding under a new UN scheme to extend carbon trading to forests.
The UN scheme, the so-called Redd initiative, will reward tropical countries that slow deforestation with lucrative carbon credits. The credits would be bought by rich nations that need to meet targets on cuts in emissions. It is expected to form part of a new global treaty on fighting climate change to be agreed next year at a key meeting in Copenhagen.
One obstacle is the lack of accurate measurements from tropical nations on how much carbon is locked in the trees.. Another difficulty is how the promised reductions in emissions could be verified. The British move aims to help develop systems to accurately measure, verify and report such savings.
Speaking at UN climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Ed Miliband, energy and climate change secretary, said: "The money we're putting forward is to hasten action with regards to deforestation, and looking at how the global carbon market can be used to help give an incentive to forest countries to reduce their rates of deforestation."
Land use change and deforestation produce 17% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and protecting forests was identified in the Stern review as a relatively cheap way to tackle global warming.
Miliband said it was a good move for Britain to hand over the money, despite the current economic problems.
"If we don't do something on global deforestation, then events that I saw in my constituency [Doncaster] a year ago, with terrible flooding, will happen more often," he said. "There is a direct social and economic interest in this for people in Britain as well as the moral interest in saving the planet."
Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general also told the conference economic gloom was no excuse for inaction: "There can be no backsliding on our commitments to a future of low-carbon emissions. Yes, the economic crisis is serious. Yet when it comes to climate change, the stakes are far higher. The climate crisis affects our potential prosperity and peoples' lives, both now and far into the future."
The pledged £100m is part of an overall £800m funding package for international environmental projects announced last year. The money, together with donations from other developed countries including France Germany and Norway, will be held and allocated by the World Bank. Britain already funds similar efforts in the Congo basin.
Douglas Alexander, international development secretary, said: "The funding we have announced today will support activities in developing countries such as enabling farmers to make a living in ways that mean they don't have to cut down more forests. Our funding will back the vital steps we hope to see in these talks towards achieving a climate change agreement that's fair for all."
The Poznan talks, which aim to set the stage for agreeing in Copenhagen a successor to the Kyoto deal, have made little progress on deciding how the Redd scheme could be introduced. Discussions are continuing, for example, on whether the carbon credit rewards should be based on national forestry levels, or on a project-by-project basis.
Campaigners are lobbying ministers to restore a reference to the rights of indigenous forest peoples in the scheme, which was removed by a group of countries including the US and Australia.
There has also been little progress on unlocking £150m in a separate World Bank fund intended to help developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change. Insiders say the talks are bogged down in legal issues over how countries would access the money. Making this fund operational had been one of the few concrete decisions expected at Poznan.
British officials say the conference must now shift the search for a new global climate deal from idea sharing to a formal negotiating mode. That switch is expected to be confirmed tonight. Negotiators are reluctant to discuss detailed goals until Barack Obama signals his intentions on climate change next year.