By Nithin Coca
From the article:
World leaders are gathered this month in Katowice, Poland, for COP24, the most important global meeting on climate change since the 2015 UN Climate Conference in Paris. At the top of agenda: getting countries to agree on rules to implement the Paris climate accords for 2020, when the pact goes into effect.
Some small signs of hope
One bright spot: the Indonesian government is finally ready to begin accepting payments as part of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program. REDD+ provides direct payments for preserving intact forests, and Norway has already pledged $1 billion specifically to protect Indonesian forests.
If climate finance can get scaled up, this could be a tool to provide substantial funds into forest protection. Jonah Busch, environmental economist whose research focuses on climate change and tropical deforestation at the Center for Global Development, thinks that Brazil, which dramatically pared its own deforestation between 1996 and 2010 (though the trend has been worrying since then), could provide a model for Indonesia to reduce its own deforestation.
“Five, ten, or twenty billion [dollars] for protecting forests would have a much bigger impact,” said Busch. “That would happen when rich countries get much more serious about addressing climate change than they currently are.”
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