ABSTRACT

This chapter describes why Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) will fail, and also argues that the program will benefit only some corporations and governments and leave the planet's balance of carbon unchanged while disrupting the livelihoods of millions of people. Forests will never be saved from degradation and destruction so long as the root cause of deforestation goes unchecked and plantations continue to grow. The chapter demonstrates how and why two key international organizations, the United Nations and the World Bank, are unwittingly fostering this destruction in large part by how they define a forest. It explains an example to demonstrate the risk for activity-shifting leakage but also illustrates the transformation of forests into economic commodities. Temporal leakage deals with time and the permanence of the conservation project. Monoculture plantations severely inhibit, if not end, the ability of forests to naturally maintain their ecosystem balance or resilience and severely limit the biodiversity of the forest ecosystem.