Integrating Biodiversity in the Climate Regime's Forest Rules: Options and Tradeoffs in Greening REDD Design

• Author: Harro van Asselt
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9388.2011.00704.x
• Date: 01 July 2011
• Published date: 01 July 2011

Integrating Biodiversity in the Climate Regime’s

Forest Rules: Options and Tradeoffs in Greening

REDD Design

Harro van Asselt

Forests play a crucial role at the interface of the inter-

national legal regimes for climate change and biodi-

versity protection. However, the rules on land use,

land-use change and forestry developed under the

Kyoto Protocol have only provided limited incentives

to protect biodiversity. A new opportunity to exploit

potential synergies between the climate and biodiver-

sity regimes is provided by the ongoing negotiations

on reduced emissions from deforestation and forest

degradation (REDD), yet the biodiversity impacts of a

REDD mechanism will crucially depend on its design.

Against that background, this article suggests and

examines various options to integrate biodiversity

considerations in REDD design. It shows that while the

explicit incorporation of biodiversity considerations is

possible, doing so will force negotiators to make inevi-

table tradeoffs. The first tradeoff is between pursuing

a legally binding agreement and strong references to

biodiversity in a future agreement, whereas the second

tradeoff is between the strength of such references and

the need to secure countries’ participation in a future

REDD mechanism. Nevertheless, the article concludes

that such tradeoffs need not necessarily lead to the

exclusion of biodiversity concerns under a future

climate regime.

INTRODUCTION

Although the problems of biodiversity loss and climate

change are inextricably intertwined, the applicable

international law related to the problems is still frag-

mented.1As a result, rules developed under the United

Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

(UNFCCC)2and its Kyoto Protocol3may impact on the

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)4and vice

versa. Nowhere are these linkages more evident than in

the rules on forests developed in the climate regime.

Both the climate change treaties and the CBD have

started to address forests under their respective man-

dates.5However, whereas the biodiversity regime pri-

marily views forests from a holistic perspective, forests

have been mainly viewed as a sink or source of carbon

dioxide emissions by actors in the climate regime.

Various observers have expressed concerns that the

existing rules on land use, land-use change and forestry

(LULUCF) under the Kyoto Protocol have adverse

impacts on biodiversity, even though some safeguards

have been incorporated in the rules. Similar concerns

are re-emerging, but now in the context of rule devel-

opment regarding the design of a mechanism to reduce

emissions from deforestation and forest degradation

(REDD). How REDD is designed may alter the impacts

it has on biodiversity. While different design elements

are of relevance, this article specifically focuses on dif-

ferent options for integrating biodiversity concerns

through explicit references to biodiversity or the CBD in

the rules developed in the climate regime. In doing so, it

aims to identify challenges and tradeoffs for ‘greening’

the design of REDD in the negotiations.

To this end, the article starts with a discussion of the

role of forests in addressing the interrelated problems

of climate change and biodiversity loss. It proceeds to

show how biodiversity considerations have played a

subsidiary role in the rule development on LULUCF

under the Kyoto Protocol. It then turns to REDD, point-

ing out that its impacts on biodiversity depend on the

specific design of a REDD mechanism. The article

examines various options for explicitly integrating

biodiversity concerns in future rules on REDD, but

shows that explicitly integrating biodiversity consider-

ations in REDD design will force negotiators to make

inevitable tradeoffs.

1H. van Asselt, F. Sindico and M. Mehling, ‘Global Climate Change

and the Fragmentation of International Law’, 30:4 Law & Policy

(2008), 423, at 427–9.

2United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (New

York, 9 May 1992) (UNFCCC).

3Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on

Climate Change (Kyoto, 11 December 1997).

4Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio de Janeiro, 5 June 1992)

(CBD).

5D. Humphreys, Logjam: Deforestation and the Crisis of Global Gov-

ernance (Earthscan, 2006), at 191–208.

Review of European Community & International Environmental Law

RECIEL 20 (2) 2011. ISSN 0962 8797

© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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