Biodiversity and REDD at Copenhagen

provide essential ecosystem services on which many poor people depend. Tropical forests contain the majority of the world's rapidly vanishing indigenous cultures and its peoples living in voluntary isolation [5]. REDD could also slow the loss of biodiversity — important in itself and in its central contribution to ecosystem services [6]. Over half of all species live in tropical forests and are under threat from deforestation [7]. Many species are also threatened with extinction from global climate disruption [8], and may well be additional to those lost from deforestation [9]. These additional benefits may not accrue if REDD rules are poorly designed and implemented. We now explore why this could happen and suggest how to prevent it. Design If REDD emphasizes reducing deforestation rates, then governments and market forces will likely focus on areas of threatened forest that are cheapest to protect. The Marburg Declaration expressed concerns that biodiversity 'hotspots' might not be cost-competitive [2]. Biodiversity loss concentrates in hotspots which, by definition, have both high numbers of endemic species and high levels of habitat loss [10]. Tropical moist forest hotspots retain only ~10% of their original forest [10] and have high rates of human population growth [11]. Protection costs will be much higher than for forest elsewhere — such as the Amazon, where at present ~85% of the forest remains. Time scale matters, for at present rates of deforestation, extinction rates in even the relatively intact forests — such as the Amazon — will soon match those in the hotspots [7]. The 190 countries that are party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are negotiating the successor to the Kyoto Protocol and hope to complete it in Copenhagen in December 2009. This 'Copenhagen Agreement' expects to directly involve developing countries in slowing global warming via a mechanism to reduce carbon emissions caused by deforestation. The premise of REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) is that tropical forest countries would be compensated if they reduce their rates of deforestation and thus their emissions of greenhouse gases. During the negotiations, REDD has expanded in scope and now includes the sustainable management of forests and the conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. By default, it should have multiple benefits. Unfortunately, the final rules could safeguard carbon stocks but nonetheless fall short of their potential to protect biodiversity [1] — concerns reiterated in the Marburg Declaration by leading …