6.0 Forestry governance A key issue for climate change
Forests cover 31 per cent of the Earth’s surface, but they are shrinking at a rate of 13 million hectares (ha) each year.1 They play a fundamental role in regulating CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and, as a result, they naturally mitigate the effects of climate change by acting as carbon sinks. Conserving forests and promoting reforestation rather than deforestation or forest degradation has a twofold benefit: the preservation of the carbon already stored and the maintenance or enhancement of the forests’ ability to act as a carbon sink and absorb atmospheric CO2 . Forest resources are very lucrative, however, and have the potential to be an important element of countries’ economic development. The sector is prone to illegal logging and corruption, which strips forests at unprecedented rates and does not provide revenue to governments for development purposes. REDD – Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation – is a mechanism to offer financial incentives for developing countries to reduce forest-related emissions. This special section discusses the governance risks associated with the implementation of REDD in a sector that is vulnerable to corruption. In the first section, Patrick Alley provides a compelling critique of the drivers of corruption in forestry, including the international demand for timber, shortfalls in legislation regulating illegally sourced forest products and the emphasis on forests as a component of economic development rather than conservation. In a complementary piece, Iftekhar Zaman and Manzoor-e-Khuda analyse the effects of localized corruption in Bangladesh in response to revenue-centric government policy, which encourages the erosion of essential mangroves. Jeffrey Hatcher and Luke Bailey go on to discuss the implications of implementing REDD in countries and forest environments with poor governance records, particularly in relation to the impact on and participation of indigenous communities. This piece is supplemented by a contribution from Ana Murillo Arguello that
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