‘The road from Bali to Poznan and Copenhagen must be paved not with good intentions but concrete actions and rigorous implementation.’

So said Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia’s Environment Minister and President of COP13, in the closing plenary of the UNFCCC 13th Conference of the Parties, in Bali, 15 December 2007.

The Bali Action Plan, to which Witoelar was indirectly referring, is a process for negotiating a global climate strategy to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Crucially, this Plan acknowledges the importance of forests to addressing climate change, and specifically the enormous potential of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).

The Plan prescribes two years of consultation - focusing on technical and methodological issues; policy approaches and positive incentives - before final details are agreed at COP15 in Copenhagen, December 2009.

So, as we arrive at COP14 in Poznan, Poland (the halfway point on the road to Copenhagen) can we say that the road so far has been “paved with concrete actions and rigorous implementation?”

Certainly there have been many good intentions announced

In December last year, the World Bank launched The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, which at last count had accepted 25 countries for support under its ‘Readiness Mechanism’. In September 2008, the UN launched its UN-REDD programme, which promises to deliver assistance in establishing forest monitoring, assessment and reporting systems to nine developing countries. A number of governments, including Australia and Norway, have established bilateral initiatives to assist with REDD design and implementation. And a recent report from the UK, the Eliasch Review, suggests that including the forest sector in carbon markets could provide finance and incentives to reduce deforestation rates by up to 75% by 2030.

So, what can we expect to be achieved in Poznan? Where do we need to be, come the closing plenary on 12 December, to stay on track for Copenhagen?

“We’ll have a first version of negotiating text on the table in Poznan,” said Yvo de Boer UNFCCC Executive Secretary, in a recent interview with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

“I don’t think we need to have specific numbers for individual countries in Poland. But I do hope that Poland will shed more light on where the group of industrialised countries as a whole need to be going by 2020 . . . in a way, the whole picture needs to come together in Copenhagen.”

Frances Seymour, CIFOR’s Director General, says the challenge is to maintain the momentum that was generated in Bali.

“In Bali, the world’s attention was firmly on forests, which ensured the agreement recognised the significance of forests to climate change,” says Seymour.

“In Poznan, further progress will depend on how well the ‘willingness to pay’ on the part of industrialised countries lines up with the ‘willingness to play’ on the part of developing countries, when it comes to REDD.

“For example, there are concerns that the current financial crisis will undermine the ‘willingness to pay’ of industrialised countries, both in terms of political will to finance reductions in forest-based emissions, but also to make commitments to significant reductions in emissions overall.

“At the same time, a key challenge will be reaching an agreement that targets emissions reductions in a way that optimises trade-offs between efficiency and equity, which is necessary to support the ‘willingness to play’ of countries that are concerned about equitable distribution of funds.

“At the end of the day,” says Seymour, “the challenge for us all on the road to Copenhagen is to stay the course.”

Story by Tim Cronin, CIFOR