Cameroon industrial-scale logging. © Global Witness.
Davyth Stewart, Senior Campaigner, Global Witness. Copenhagen, December 2009. © Global Witness.
In 2009/10, The Rufford Foundation provided a grant of £30,000 to Global Witness.
In 2009/10, the Foundation grant helped us escalate our forests work. With increased international focus on deforestation as a driver of climate change, forests gained unprecedented prominence at the United Nations climate negotiations (UNFCCC). Developing the REDD mechanism (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) became crucial in the fight to protect the world’s forests from the ravages of industrial-scale logging.
The pace and complexities of UNFCCC REDD negotiations prompted Global Witness to co-found the Ecosystems Climate Alliance (ECA) coalition as a powerful advocacy body pushing for the exclusion of damaging logging activities and the inclusion of independent monitoring in any REDD agreement.
With ECA we fielded strong teams at all UNFCCC meetings and released a series of briefings on what we believe are the main issues to be considered in shaping the REDD agreement. Although no firm REDD agreement came out of Copenhagen, our activities achieved significant success in getting language into the current REDD negotiating text which, in very bald summary, keeps out destructive forest practices and acknowledges the need for independent monitoring. For example, the term 'Sustainable Forest Management' (which can encompass large-scale logging) was changed to 'Sustainable Management of Forests' (which cannot) because of our advocacy; there is now a series of safeguards for any activities taking place under REDD including on local people’s rights and preventing forest conversion to plantations. We got the need for independent measuring, reporting and verification of REDD projects into the text – previously it had not been considered.
