Indonesia has called on the wealthy nations to provide incentives to save their rainforests and refrain from burning in peat swamps.
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This call was made in anticipation of a U.N.-led summit in December. There a report will be delivered on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation (RED) — a new scheme that aims to make emission cuts from forest areas eligible for global carbon trading.
Indonesia wants to gain bargaining power for direct assistance by teaming up with Brazil, Cameroon, Congo, Costa Rica, Gabon, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, which together account for the lion’s share of the world’s tropical rainforests.
“What the ‘F8′ (Forest Eight) hopes and wishes for is an incentive from developed countries, an appreciation of each one’s efforts to avoid deforestation,” Malam Sembat Kaban told Reuters during a visit to Beijing on Wednesday.
While it is easy to measure carbon emissions from a power plant for example, there is no definitive methodology for quantifying greenhouse uptake from a preserved rainforest. The priority should be to develop and experiment with methods of measuring the benefit of forests that have been not been cut down to make way for oil palm or other agriculture.
