OPINION: It would be irresponsible to give up REDD+
Janaína Dallan is a Forestry Engineer, CEO of carbon credits company Carbonext, president of the Brazilian Alliance for Nature-Based Solutions and a member of UN Climate Change External Experts (UNFCCC/RIT).
REDD+ has been the target of constant criticism.
After more than a year under attack, carbon credit buyers and, consequently, project developers, are moving towards other ways to avoid emissions and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Well-founded criticism is always welcome.
After all, carbon sequestration methods are new and complex.
We are all on a learning curve, with much to improve.
However, the trend of abandoning REDD+ is worrying.
It is not only the companies or the market that are at stake. They adapt.
The forest dwellers and their biodiversity have no sustainable alternatives.
The Amazon and other forests are the result of thousands of years of nature's construction, in cooperation with their inhabitants, who spread seeds throughout them.
The environmental service they provide, not only by capturing and storing carbon but also by keeping our planet wetter and cooler, is vital.
Without forests, there would be no water for food production.
REDD+ projects exist because of a sad pressing reality: governments have not been able to enforce laws to protect forests, which are shrinking at a frightening rate.
So far this year, 107,000 forest fires have been detected in Brazil, 75% more than the same period last year.
The Amazon is the region most affected by those fires as it has been going through the worst drought in 100 years.
That's proof that the current President Lula administration's improved command and control over the forest, while necessary, is far from enough.
Impact on people
Now, think about the people who live in these territories.
No initiative other than REDD+ brings income, support and real changes in their lives that serve as an incentive for them to protect the forests.
Read the words from Francisco Ramos Muniz, president of the Association of Remaining Quilombo Communities of Gurupá, in the Brazilian State of Pará, which manages the Awa project ("Spirit of the Earth", in the Kimbundu language), formed by descendants of Afro-Brazilian slaves and Indigenous people, owners of around 80,000 hectares:
"At the Environment Department (in Belém, Pará), in search of a project, we were shown two proposals: deforestation and REDD+."
"When I laid down the options, the communities and the people opposed deforestation, so we decided to stick to REDD+."
Mr Muniz explained: "Deforestation involved two companies bringing in machinery and breaking all the land open to work with soy."
"In the first year alone, there was a proposal to bring in BRL 8 million ($1.45 million) per year."
"[But] We chose REDD+ because it's about preservation."
"Otherwise, the forest would be cleared, and then there would be no hunting, no forest left, nothing."
"So, this other option we are working on [the REDD+ project]... will hold our territory forever".
Now see what Regiane Machado dos Santos told us: "I'm a Quilombola, a black woman. We don't intend to migrate."
"But in order to stay, we also need improvements aimed at women, youth, our children, and even the elderly."
"For many years, the forest has given us no economic returns. This project comes to help us protect better because it's difficult to take care of such a large forest area alone," she added.
Legal reserves
REDD+ allows farmers to cover the financial costs of maintaining their legal reserves, which, in the case of the Brazilian Amazon, represent 80% of properties.
Josmar Matogrosso, an owner of more than 40,000 hectares in Pará, told us:
"Maintaining the forest is a huge burden."
"People who cleared land, people who today have a reserve smaller than 80%, besides having a lower cost, have a higher income."
"Carbon credits came to help offset some of this cost. If there wasn't this added value in standing forests, these forests would disappear in a short time".
Smaller landowners come together in cooperatives to make carbon projects viable.
Uriel Brandão, from the Ybyrá project, said that hunters invaded his property of more than 2,000 hectares at night and started a fire.
Mr Brandão called his neighbours, members of the cooperative who, like him, had undergone fire-fighting training as part of the project and managed to contain the fire.
"If it weren't for the project, I would have lost my entire legal reserve."
The afforestation, reforestation and revegetation (ARR) methodology is very interesting and should be expanded.
However, the high cost and time that it takes to restore a forest, in addition to the impossibility of recreating something with the biodiversity and traditional population of original forests, means that ARR cannot replace REDD+.
The same applies to agricultural land management (ALM), carbon removal, landfills and so on.
Those are all important.
But it would be irresponsible to give up REDD+.