News and Events
AD PARTNERS BALI PANEL:
Private Sector Participation in REDD
Side Event to United Nations
COP 13, CMP 3, SB27, & AWG 4
18:00-19:30, Thursday 6 December
AD Partners’ Official UN Side Event a Success!
International policy to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) in developing countries often refers to private sector engagement via the emissions trading market as essential. On 6 December 2007 AD Partners co-hosted a very successful side event at the UN climate change conference in Bali on private sector participation in REDD. The event was co-hosted with the Global Public Policy Institute and Climate Focus a very successful side event at the UN climate change conference in Bali on private sector participation in REDD. and was the only official side event on this topic. The room quickly filled to capacity with many attendees standing – demonstrating the significant interest in the event. The event was covered by the International Institute for Sustainable Development reporting services and a copy of their report of the event can be downloaded here.
Additional IISD coverage is available here. Scroll to “Private Sector Participation in REDD.”
SPEAKERS
Moderator: Rick Saines, Partner, Baker & McKenzie
1) Charlotte Streck, Director, Climate Focus
Title: Expanding the carbon market to include REDD?
REVIEW: Charlotte Streck, Director, Climate Focus, opened with a discussion of lessons learned from existing trading mechanisms. She concluded that those schemes that relied heavily on host country involvement have not proven as successful to date as the purely project based clean development mechanism. A copy of her presentation is available here.
2) Jeff Horowitz, Founder, Avoided Deforestation Partners
Title: Avoided Deforestation Partners: Approach and objectives
REVIEW: Jeff Horowitz, Founder, Avoided Deforestation Partners spoke about AD Partners organization and goals. He emphasized the need to develop practical international policy. A principle AD Partners goal is to combine the forces of the public, private, and government sectors in the fight to reduce deforestation. Jeff also underscored the importance of including indigenous communities and inspiring the private sector to become a key partner. A copy of his presentation is available here.
3) Johannes Ebeling, Senior Consultant, EcoSecurities
Title: Making REDD attractive for private sector investment
REVIEW: Johannes Ebeling, Senior Consultant, EcoSecurities, discussed a number of hurdles private sector investment faces in forest conservation and carbon offset projects in developing countries. He argued that improvements in the investment framework for REDD projects and a hybrid policy national and project based policy option would help reduce risks, emphasizing that a number of countries would be very high risk investments under purely national approaches. A copy of his presentation is available here.
4) Bernhard Schlamadinger, Managing Director, TerraCarbon
Title: Permanence and REDD activities: Possible solutions and how they may impact private-sector investment
REVIEW: Bernhard Schlamadinger, Managing Director, TerraCarbon, discussed a number of different strategies for to addressing non-permanence of REDD. These included national-level commitments, temporary credits, or risk buffers as adopted by the recently published VCS standards for forestry and agriculture projects. He concluded with an assessment of how these different options affect the fungibility of credits with emissions trading markets and the relative attractiveness for private-sector investment. A copy of his presentation is available here.
5) Marisa Meizlish, Manager, Advisory Services, New Forests
Title: Financial Analysis of REDD transactions: Can REDD compete with alternate land uses at
the forest frontier?
REVIEW: Marisa Meizlish, Manager, Advisory Services, New Forests presented a paper that explored the impacts of carbon pricing on land use decision making at the forest frontier. Her research found that a carbon price signal could shift private investment toward forest conservation and rehabilitation and away from land use practices driving deforestation if a functional market is in place that provides certainty for crediting REDD projects. A copy of the paper is available here, and a copy of her presentation is available here.
6) Robert O'Sullivan, Executive Director North America, Climate Focus
Title: Policy options for structuring REDD transactions: Issues and risks for governments, local
communities, and the private sector
REVIEW: Robert O'Sullivan, Executive Director North America, Climate Focus concluded the event with a discussion of options for structuring REDD transactions and how different REDD policies may affect these transactions. Robert concluded that purely national approaches contain high risks for investors and may exclude indigenous communities, but that there are a project based and national-project hybrid approaches that contain lower risks and are more open to indigenous community participation. A copy of his presentation is available here.
