Greenpeace today launched a landmark proposal for reducing, and ultimately stopping, tropical deforestation while preserving forest biodiversity and respecting indigenous peoples’ rights. The initiative was launched at a side event of the Bali Climate Conference, featuring the Governors of Papua and Papua Barat, the provinces with the largest intact tropical forests in Indonesia.
Tropical deforestation accounts for approximately 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions and must be dealt with under the Kyoto Protocol’s second phase. Indonesia and Brazil are the third and fourth largest emitters in the world largely due to deforestation. In order to prevent dangerous climate change, deforestation needs to be stopped globally within a decade.
„We want deforestation to be addressed at the Bali Conference. The world has the resources to stop deforestation, what is needed now is the political will. Governors from Papua and Brazil’s Amazonas State have shown that will, world governments in Bali must now follow. No money, no forests, no future.”
said Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazon campaign coordinator, Paulo Adario.
The Greenpeace proposal has the potential to raise funding in the range of several billion US$ per year, some of which can be used in the near future to finance urgent action to cut emissions from deforestation.
In Bali, earlier this year, the Governors of the Papua provinces recognised the need to reduce deforestation and called for the „support of the international community through carbon financing mechanisms and transfer of technology to protect our forests and provide income to local communities”. (1)
Bill Hare, Greenpeace political advisor on climate change and co-author of the initiative, said „Our proposal merges market opportunities with funding for public policies. It will achieve real deforestation reductions without shifting deforestation from one place to another and also ensures that local communities share the benefits”.
