Rights and Resources Dialogue on Forests, Governments and Climate Change Conference in London highlights tensions over Paris-Oslo Initiative.

The Fourth Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) Dialogue on Forests, Governance and Climate Change held in London last week, provided a well-timed opportunity to look at the current state of international negotiations on deforestation following COP15.

As a result of the general failure to achieve legal agreement, no binding decision was taken on REDD at COP15. It did however feature strongly in the Copenhagen accord and six countries pledged US$3.5 billion as a ‘fast-start’ interim finance to be paid between 2010 and 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol expires. This year, a number of other countries have announced contributions and the total amount pledged is now considered to be somewhere between 2.5 and 6 billion.

The Paris-Oslo initiative was the first ministerial level meeting on REDD, taking place on 11th March. The initiative aims to use the mandate established by Copenhagen to create a multilateral Interim REDD Partnership to secure coordination, transparency, progress and positive precedents with the available fast start interim funding. A second meeting is scheduled for 27th May in Oslo.

The Paris-Oslo initiative is currently a key dynamic in the global politics of deforestation. The RRI discussions highlighted various tensions associated with the process.

• Paul Watkinson of the French Ministry of Ecology, Environment and Sustainable Development spoke of the need for an operational text to move the process forward.
• Per F.I Pharo from the Government of Norway emphasized that trying to establish the perfect mechanism covering everything is over-ambitious and unreasonable in the given timeframe.
• A network of 40 civil society and indigenous peoples’ organisations had previously denounced the lack of transparency and participation in the Paris discussions in March: http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/64052/2010/03/14-101557-1.htm
• Rosalind Reeve from Global Witness, the main NGO observer to REDD, described the Paris meeting as “an appalling start” to the Paris-Oslo process, advocating for more attention to safeguards, and measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV). She said efforts by Norway to improve transparency such as parallel workshops and online conferencing were “not enough”.

Brazil’s climate change plan was mentioned by Dan Nepstad of The Woods Hole Research Centre, who stressed that an interim partnership should aim at REDD+ compliance that is efficient and ensures meaningful participation. Nepstad referred to the example that Brazil’s climate change plan is incompatible with its agricultural agenda.