all of my favorite missions were ill-defined

I’ve completed a report for Cameroon’s action plan for the Convention on Biodiversity about the potential for synergies between Carbon finance schemes (particularly avoided deforestation) and the protection or reintroduction of biodiversity.

Conclusions, basically:

-It will almost certainly be a gong show.

-That probably isn’t a good enough reason not to give it a shot.

It seemed like such a beautiful fit; Avoided deforestation schemes map forest cover and give areas values based on ‘carbon stock’ and ‘risk’, then pluck out the high-risk, high- carbon stock areas for protection. And if countries want to, when they are planning their REDD-Readiness Mechanism, they can include a ‘high biodiversity’ theme in there.

Sadly the amount of CONSTANT monitoring and inventorying (and corresponding technical capacity) required isn’t really available here, or probably in any of the ‘non-annex 1’ countries that are eligible for REDD financing from the big bad world bank.

And this is not to mention any of the problems with carbon finance projects in general. In the worlds of Daniel Welch author and Ethical Consumer researcher,

“Offsets are an imaginary commodity created by deducting what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened.”

and there’s just no getting around that one. Additionality, the idea that the carbon wouldn’t have been sunk without the project, is just inherently subjective and speculative. Another thing is that offset markets lack the critical competitive check found in normal markets, wherein the interests of the buyer counter that of the seller. In offset markets, both parties just want MORE PROJECTS, which, especially with the difficulties in monitoring and enforcement, and in the absence of enough standardized regulation, means people selling the same offset more than once, or over pricing it, or even selling offsets from a project that never existed.

All of that said, the payment-for-ecosystem-services thing has really gotten under my skin, and seems like too good of an idea to pass up on the grounds that it’s big and messy.

So back to Yaoundé (soon) to find out who else agrees this is probably inappropriate.