Forest Degradation

According to The REDD desk (2016), the world’s forests are vanishing even though the forests cover a total of 4 billion hectares worldwide which can be represented as 31% of the total land area. It was also recorded that the world lost amount of 8.3 million hectares per year of forest between 1990 and 2000. Although the rate of loss has moderately slowed in the following decade up to 2010, the loss is still excessive with amount of 6.2 million hectares per year. The loss was mainly caused by deforestation and forest degradation that had impacts on biodiversity and forest-dependent communities. Since forest serve as vast carbon sink, the loss of forest coverage led to release of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere which is

The operation of REDD mainly focused on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. It encouraged financially rewarding any developing country to achieve reduced emissions by dropping the conversion of forests to alternate land uses. However, in 2010, REDD became REDD+ at sixteenth session of Conference of the Parties (COP-16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) but the debate of inclusion of new components started in 2007 at COP-13 during the formulation of Bali Action plan. REDD+ now includes both old components of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and new components that consists of conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. The new components are depicted by ‘+’ symbol in

REDD+ has been proposed as a cost-effective solution to climate change mitigation at the global level, it is only cost effective in some countries while it is also not cost effective in some of the countries. Bastakoti and Davidsen (2017) critiques REDD+ as carbon surrogacy through which developed countries can evade expensive mitigation efforts easily just by cheaply transferring the responsibility to developing countries. However, it all depends on efficient implementation through good governance and law enforcement. Busch and et. al (2011) stated that although governments would receive payments under REDD+, it is actors at regional, provincial, local or household scales who are directly responsible for many land use change decisions. The effectiveness of REDD+ will depend on how government structures economic incentives in a way that influences involved actors to either increase emissions or decrease emissions. According to Graham, Laurance, Grech, Mcgregor and Venter (2016) REDD+ has potential to accomplish maximum carbon benefits cost-effectively by providing financial incentives for carbon stored in forests. This also needed investment in better policing and surveillance as well as infrastructure, education and training programs to prevent illegal logging and agricultural encroachment provides carbon gain alongside benefits to biodiversity, tourism and local livelihoods through non-timber economies.