“La importancia de los bosques en el Acuerdo de Copenhague demuestra que REDD podría realizarse. Pero debemos prestar mayor atención a las medias, los informes y la verificación de los flujos financieros relacionados con REDD. Muchos de los países que poseen la mayor parte de los bosques del mundo tienen estructuras de gobierno débiles o en evolución para controlar la corrupción”, afirmó Frances Seymour, directora general del Centro de Investigación Forestal Internacional (CIFOR).

The story also appeared in Planeta Azula.com

The report was put together by the Washington-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), whose partners include the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). “The states have pledged heaps of money without agreeing to any framework or standards for REDD,” RRI coordinator Andy White told SPIEGEL ONLINE. As White sees it, the fact that the world failed to reach a climate agreement in Copenhagen has meant that there are no rules or enforcement measures in place for properly implementing projects aimed at protecting forests.

“The legislature needs to be involved because we could use our networks in other developing countries so that we can push developed countries to really commit to set up emission targets,” Satya said. The Commission invited a number of major Indonesia environmental groups, who had been critical of the outcome of the talks in Copenhagen, to the hearing to discuss the performance of the Indonesian delegation. The groups included the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL) and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

The reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) scheme would allow forestry nations like Indonesia to harvest dollars from forest protection programs. A report from Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has warned that the REDD scheme would only succeed if corruption, financial management capacity and transparency for financial transfer were addressed. It said many of the countries with the most remaining forests were also those with the weakest governance structures to control corruption. “Our report underlines that we should be paying increased attention to the measurements, reporting and verification of REDD-related financial flows,” Cifor director Frances Seymour said.

REDD allows polluters to earn tradeable carbon credits by paying developing nations not to chop down their trees. However, a two-year study by the West Java-based Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) warned that past and recent cases of corruption and financial mismanagement in Indonesia’s forestry sector revealed systemic weaknesses that could scuttle REDD. “Investors should be looking very carefully at the financial governance conditions in the countries where they will be investing their funds. Like Indonesia, many tropical forest countries have long track records of mismanaging public financial resources, particularly in the forestry sector,” said the report’s co-author, Christopher Barr.

The story also appeared in The Star (Malaysia), Mother Nature Networks (USA), Gulf Times (Qatar), Stabroek News (South Africa) and Jakarta Globe.

The Indonesian government squandered billions of dollars in funds set aside for reforestation through corruption and mismanagement in the 1990s, raising important questions as the country prepares for the influx of money from a proposed climate change mitigation scheme known as REDD+ (reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation), warns a new report released Tuesday by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), a forest policy research group. The report, titled Financial governance and Indonesia’s Reforestation Fund during the Soeharto and post-Soeharto periods, 1989–2009: A political economic analysis of lessons for REDD+, and funded by the World Bank, the European Commission, and AusAID, says that unless major reforms are enacted, including oversight mechanisms, REDD+ runs the risk of befalling the same fate as the failed reforestation fund.