projects (and 4 requesting registration), as against some 3000 CDM projects overall,
mostly in energy, waste management, manufacturing, emissions, and agriculture.
The main issue seems to have been that the process of developing standards and
procedures for validating such projects (for instance, that it is an additionality, and
will be long-lived) is complex and time consuming (which the authors have cited,
rather unconvincingly, as an excusable process of learning that will help the successor scheme to get off the mark that much faster), and the same is bound to be true
of the latest incarnation, REDD Plus, which introduces yet more components, like
sustainable forest management, to sort out.
Apart from the intractable difficulties in actually proving that a particular
afforestation or restoration project is an additionality, and that the forest crop will be
sure to last indefinitely with its locked-in carbon (and not liquidated sometime in the
near future), there is the fact that the world community has been rather niggardly in
providing the funds required to implement the scheme: after a lot of meetings and
discussions, some 280 million USD were pledged at the CoP-19 at Warsaw in
November 2013 by certain developed countries for a “results-based” REDD programme in 48 partner countries, a miniscule amount compared to the many billions
required to even secure the existing forests, let alone produce enough new trees to
sequester the extra CO 2 the world is going to emit as per the IPCC scenarios. India is
in any case probably not going to be a potential recipient of such payouts, and the
relatively minor amounts being discussed are an obvious indication that much of the
money will actually go to technical inputs like training, ‘capacity building’, consultancies and so on. For India, it is all the more meaningless to look to such sources
for its national programmes, as there is already an accumulated Compensatory
Afforestation (CAMPA) fund of over 5 billion USD waiting to be utilised.
Another potential problem with relatively stable and institutionally developed
states like India is that it will be difficult to find any major additionalities over and
above the existing national programmes (the ‘business as usual’ scenario). For India
in particular, there are already the eight national Climate Missions devised under
the previous government, of which the Green India Mission is one (see Prof.
Ravindranath’s presentation at the FAO online conference, 2015). It envisages the
creation of 5 mha new growth and improvement of 5 mha of existing forest, on a
landscape approach, over a period of 10 years, which will sequester carbon, along
with a number of ‘co-benefits’ in the form of strengthening community participation, biodiversity conservation, and income augmentation. India also has a
long-established forest service that administers the forest and wildlife areas (which
cover some 65 mha out of the 300 mha of the area reported upon in the country),
and many progressively stringent protective laws like the Forest Conservation Act
(1980), Wildlife Protection Act (1972), National Forest Policy (1988),
Environmental Protection Act (1986), National Environment Policy (2006), Forest
Rights Act (2006), etc., along with a strong and active judiciary (and now the
National Green Tribunal), which have succeeded in at least stabilizing, and even
modestly increasing, the forest cover and wildlife habitats in recent decades (Dilip
Kumar 2014c).
Climate Change Strategies and Developing Nations …
35
mostly in energy, waste management, manufacturing, emissions, and agriculture.
The main issue seems to have been that the process of developing standards and
procedures for validating such projects (for instance, that it is an additionality, and
will be long-lived) is complex and time consuming (which the authors have cited,
rather unconvincingly, as an excusable process of learning that will help the successor scheme to get off the mark that much faster), and the same is bound to be true
of the latest incarnation, REDD Plus, which introduces yet more components, like
sustainable forest management, to sort out.
Apart from the intractable difficulties in actually proving that a particular
afforestation or restoration project is an additionality, and that the forest crop will be
sure to last indefinitely with its locked-in carbon (and not liquidated sometime in the
near future), there is the fact that the world community has been rather niggardly in
providing the funds required to implement the scheme: after a lot of meetings and
discussions, some 280 million USD were pledged at the CoP-19 at Warsaw in
November 2013 by certain developed countries for a “results-based” REDD programme in 48 partner countries, a miniscule amount compared to the many billions
required to even secure the existing forests, let alone produce enough new trees to
sequester the extra CO 2 the world is going to emit as per the IPCC scenarios. India is
in any case probably not going to be a potential recipient of such payouts, and the
relatively minor amounts being discussed are an obvious indication that much of the
money will actually go to technical inputs like training, ‘capacity building’, consultancies and so on. For India, it is all the more meaningless to look to such sources
for its national programmes, as there is already an accumulated Compensatory
Afforestation (CAMPA) fund of over 5 billion USD waiting to be utilised.
Another potential problem with relatively stable and institutionally developed
states like India is that it will be difficult to find any major additionalities over and
above the existing national programmes (the ‘business as usual’ scenario). For India
in particular, there are already the eight national Climate Missions devised under
the previous government, of which the Green India Mission is one (see Prof.
Ravindranath’s presentation at the FAO online conference, 2015). It envisages the
creation of 5 mha new growth and improvement of 5 mha of existing forest, on a
landscape approach, over a period of 10 years, which will sequester carbon, along
with a number of ‘co-benefits’ in the form of strengthening community participation, biodiversity conservation, and income augmentation. India also has a
long-established forest service that administers the forest and wildlife areas (which
cover some 65 mha out of the 300 mha of the area reported upon in the country),
and many progressively stringent protective laws like the Forest Conservation Act
(1980), Wildlife Protection Act (1972), National Forest Policy (1988),
Environmental Protection Act (1986), National Environment Policy (2006), Forest
Rights Act (2006), etc., along with a strong and active judiciary (and now the
National Green Tribunal), which have succeeded in at least stabilizing, and even
modestly increasing, the forest cover and wildlife habitats in recent decades (Dilip
Kumar 2014c).
Climate Change Strategies and Developing Nations …
35