The Recommendation for REDD based on the Restrictions of A/R CDM Under the Present Rules

抄録

The Afforestation and Reforestation project activity under the Clean Development Mechanism (A/R CDM) is one of the policies set under the Kyoto Protocol. A/R CDM is to remove greenhouse gases by the afforestation or reforestation project in developing countries and has some specific features: non-permanency, uncertainty, and longterm. The introduction of the new policy targeted on the sink sector, the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD), is considered in a next framework starting from 2013. REDD will give positive incentives for the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The purpose of this study is focusing on proposal for the promotion of REDD, based on the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of A/R CDM. To analyze the issues of A/R CDM, this paper especially focused on two stakeholders, project participants and host countries. Project participants regard A/R CDM (and REDD) as "business" and host countries consider them as "development policy." It is often said that much more discussion on implementation of REDD should be done based on the lessons from A/R CDM, but there have been no studies on sorting out problems especially concerned with A/R CDM, and on discussing how to reflect the lessons from A/R CDM to REDD. The research results showed that while A/R CDM had some innovative advantages such as giving financial incentives for the carbon sequestration function of a forest and helping to attain Sustainable Forest Management, there were many problems from the both viewpoints of "business" and "development policy," i.e. complex rules, low profitability, long-term corporation risk, and low priority for many countries. These results lead to the conclusion that there are restrictions and barriers to promote A/R CDM under the present rules and support systems. The recommendations for REDD are as follows; REDD is environmentally-sound and can be evaluated as a good system to contribute the multilateral functions of forest and local job-creation on forest management and conservation, but has disadvantages to restrict all "activities leading to the destruction of forests." The project scale of REDD would be much larger than that of A/R CDM, so that consideration on social aspect would be more significant. It is desirable to make the rules of REDD easy to use and understand for both developed and developing countries, to decrease the long-term corporation risks by structuring the partnership among stakeholders, and so on.