Reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD): a climate change mitigation strategy on a critical track

A framework for calculating carbon benefits by including assessment errors is developed. Theoretical, sample based considerations as well as a simulation study for five selected countries with low to high deforestation and degradation rates show that even small assessment errors (5% and less) may outweigh successful efforts to reduce deforestation and degradation.The generation of benefits from REDD is possible only in situations where assessment errors are carefully controlled.According to estimates by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.6 billion tons of carbon are released annually by land-use change activities, of which a major part results from deforestation and forest degradation [1]. The Stern Report [2] pointed out that nearly one-fifth of today's total annual carbon emissions come from land-use change, most of which can be traced back to tropical deforestation. Deforestation is generally understood as the direct human-induced conversion of forest land to non-forest land [3], while forest degradation is according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [3] the direct-human induced long-term loss of forest carbon stocks in areas which remain forest land. Among the causes of degradation are the collection of fuelwood, selective logging, forest fires, grazing or shifting cultivation [4].For the 2008-2012 commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) avoiding deforestation was discussed as a CDM activity and rejected. Leakage was seen as uncontrollable at the project level. In 2005 at the Eleventh Session of the Conference of Parties (COP 11) to the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Papua New Guinea together with 8 other developing countries proposed a new agenda item "reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries" at a national level. This was the start of the process for considering reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) as a mitigation option fo