In this article, Wally Menne of the Timberwatch Coalition in South Africa asks whether REDD can really help address climate change and whether it can bring genuine benefits for rural communities. The article was first published in Drynet News, in February 2012.

 

Since the mid-1995s, the Timberwatch Coalition has focussed on exposing the environmental and social problems caused by industrial tree plantations in South Africa and elsewhere. One of Menne’s concerns with REDD is that it fails to address a key driver of deforestation: over-consumption. As long as consumption of forest products and agricultural products continues to increase, the pressure on forests will remain, as forests are logged for timber or cleared to make way for monoculture plantations. Other problems include the reliance on carbon trading to finance REDD and the risk of “allowing real forests to be replaced by monoculture tree plantations in the name of ‘enhancing forest-carbon stocks’”.