Forest Restoration

Protecting and restoring forests is one of the cheapest and most effective options for mitigating the carbon emissions heating Earth. Since the third UN climate change summit, held in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, different mechanisms have been trialed to raise money and help countries reduce deforestation and restore degraded forests. First there was Koyoto’s clean development mechanism, then the UN-REDD program initiated at COP13 in Bali in 2008. Voluntary carbon market schemes came into effect after COP21 in Paris in 2015, but all met with limited success. In some cases, these schemes interfered with communities that have tended and nurtured forests for generations, restricting their access to the forest for fuel, grazing, and food. Meanwhile, deforestation has proceeded under the aegis of global markets hungry for beef, palm oil, and other commodities. The world is far off track to reduce deforestation to zero by 2030, or me...