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At the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, the Obama Administration made a historic announcement to devote $1 billion to reducing tropical deforestation

$1 BILLION PLEDGE AT RISK

STATEMENT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS : US MUST KEEP COPENHAGEN PROMISE TO CONSERVE FORESTS

Immediate action on REDD+ is a crit ical part of the climate change solution. Preserving forests also provides other valuable benefits: biodiversity, soil conservation and flood control. Combined, such services are worth bil l ions -- perhaps tri l l ions -- of dollars to the global economy. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions represent the biggest market fai lure the world has ever seen. GHGs cause damage and without specific policies nobody pays for this damage. Lord Nicholas Stern, Global Sustainability: A Nobel Cause, 2010

Although such a reduction of deforestation in the Amazon represents an ambitious target, in recent years the country has demonstrated its abil ity to reach it. With successive decreases in yearly deforestation rates of the Amazon forest achieved by REDD policies between 2005 and 2009, Brazil is close to meeting the target established for the first f ive years (2006–2010). Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, 2010

IN 2009 THE UNITED STATES PLEDGED $1 BILLION TO REDD+ ACTIVITIES Evidence that climate change is a present reality is unequivocal. Global warming is occurring and human-driven emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are primarily responsible. Given current trends, temperature extremes, heat waves and heavy rains are expected to continue to escalate in both frequency and intensity, and the earth’s temperature and seas will continue to rise. These conclusions lie at the heart of a 2007 report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost scientific body for the study of climate change. The IPCC was set up to provide an authoritative international statement of scientific understanding of climate change. Its reports are written by a team of authors nominated by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) member states or accredited organisations and are based on consensus and input from hundreds of international experts. Global warming is expected to increasingly impact food security, water availability and quality, and exact a toll on public health, spurring chronic disease, malaria prevalence, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. According to a 2009 report by the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF), rising sea levels, which affect relatively few people today, are expected to impact large populations in the future and desertification is projected to accelerate with 40 percent of the earth’s land becoming dry or semi-arid regions

which is detrimental given that arid and semi-arid climates comprise over one quarter of the land area of earth. Glaciers will continue to melt at an ever accelerating pace. Changes in local rainfall and river run-off patterns are expected to trigger increased water supply in high latitudes but reduced amounts in sub-tropical latitudes. The GHF estimates that about 310 million people could be seriously affected by these changes due to climate change by the 2030. In December 2009, the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP) issued a statement signed by 54 of the world’s leading science academies warning there can be no solution to climate change without addressing deforestation. The IPCC estimates that deforestation and forest degradation, through agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development, destructive logging, fires etc., account for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector. It is now clear that in order to constrain the impacts of climate change within limits that society will reasonably be able to tolerate, the global average temperatures must be stabilized within two degrees Celsius. This will be practically impossible to achieve without reducing emissions from the forest sector, in addition to other mitigation actions. The international community has been looking for ways to slow down forest-based greenhouse gas emissions. The concept of REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, plus conservation, sustainable management of forests,

and enhancement of forest carbon stocks) is part of an emerging consensus regarding forest related global climate change efforts under the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). REDD+ activities offer cost-effective opportunities to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions while providing other sustainable development benefits, such as improved local livelihoods, economic growth, and enhanced ecosystem services. More than 40 countries are developing national REDD+ strategies and policies, and hundreds of REDD+ projects have been initiated across the tropics. At the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009, the Obama Administration made a historic announcement to dedicate $1 billion over the FY2010-2012 timeframe to REDD+ activities. Both President Obama’s proposed budget and especially House Republican proposals fall significantly short of the administration’s $1 billion pledge for short-term forest finance – putting the United States’ climate credibility at even further risk. The $1 billion pledge was one of the few concrete, deliverable commitments on international climate finance that the United States has made. Without these funds, the United States will be doing very little indeed to address climate change. The risks associated with inaction on sustainable landscapes are far too great to ignore. We urge the United States to fulfil its tropical forest pledge and make a serious effort to reduce global warming by helping developing countries reduce their deforestation.

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THIS STATEMENT IS ENDORSED BY: Norman Myers Professor, Oxford University 1992 Laureate, the Volvo Environment Prize 1995 winner, the UNEP Sasakawa Environment

Prize 2001 Laureate, the Blue Planet Prize Stuart Pimm Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology,

Duke University 2006 Laureate, the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for

Environmental Sciences 2010 winner, the Tyler Prize for Environmental

Achievement

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