Climate Change, Forest Carbon Sequestration and REDD-Plus

[...]there has been a growing pressure to include forestry, and forest protection and improvement in the list of climate mitigation strategies to be supported financially by the world community. There has been criticism that the forest reservation and style of administration in India have been harsh on tribals and forest-dependent communities, and the Forest Rights Act (2006) has been enacted as a corrective, to set right the historical injustices done to the forest tribes, giving them back a degree of ownership and control. [...]the existing legal and policy framework covers most of the concerns of the international community both on the environmental/ecological side and the human rights/indigenous communities side, and there is little that REDD or any other mechanism would have to add by way of improved governance. If we look at the reported figures of actual GHG emissions for India, as reported by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF 2012) in their Second National Communication to the UNFCCC, once again it appears that the forests are not really contributing much through DD (keeping in mind, always, that there may be deficiencies or limitations in the data and the assumptions). [...]just as an illustration, in 2007, it is reported that of the total country levels of CO 2 emissions (14,76,357 Gg, or million tonnes) and removals (2,75,358 Gg), forest alone contributed 87,840 Gg emission, 67,800 Gg removals, which obviously is minuscule compared to the overall figures, and nowhere near the 20% contribution of GHG from forest degradation which is the basic assumption of the REDD regime. [...]rather than bother about meeting requirements of a hypothetical REDD regime of international finance (very little of which will come in the way of government, if at all), the forest services perhaps ought to be looking at the type of institutions and processes that REDD and other international declarations and conventions are advancing.