Climate Change: Financing Global Forests The Eliasch Review

About this book

An area of forest the size of England is cut down in the tropics each year. Forestry is responsible for a fifth of global carbon emissions - more than the entire world transport sector. Urgent action to tackle the loss of global forests needs to be a central part of any new international agreement on climate change.

Climate Change: Financing Global Forests is an independent report commissioned by the UK Prime Minister to address this vitally important issue. It assesses the impact of global forest loss on climate change and explores the future role of forests in the international climate change framework, with particular emphasis on the role of international finance. It also looks at the economic and policy drivers of deforestation and describes the incentives required to ensure more sustainable production of agriculture and timber in order to meet global demand while reducing carbon emissions.

The report draws on a wide range of international expertise and will have significant national, EU and international interest and influence. It includes new modelling and analysis of the global economic impact of continued deforestation and provides a comprehensive assessment of the opportunity and capacity-building costs of addressing the problem. It shows that the benefits of halving deforestation could amount to $3.7 trillion over the long term. However, if the international community does not act, the global economic cost of climate change caused by deforestation could amount to $12 trillion.

In this comprehensive and detailed report, Johan Eliasch makes a clear and forceful case for forests to be included in international carbon trading mechanisms. He calls for the international community to support forest nations to halve deforestation by 2020 and to make the global forest sector carbon neutral by 2030.

Contents

Executive Summary * Introduction * Part I: The Challenge of Deforestation * Forests, Climate Change and the Global Economy * The Drivers of Deforestation * Sustainable Production and Poverty Reduction * The Costs of Mitigation * Part II: Forests and the International Climate Change Framework: The Long Term Goal * A Long Term Framework for Tackling Climate Change * The Current International Climate Change Framework * Part III: The Building Blocks of Forest Financing: The Medium Term Approach * Transition to a Long Term Framework * Effective Targets for Reducing Forest Emissions * Measuring, Monitoring and Verifying Emissions from Forests * Linking to Carbon Markets * Governance and Distribution of Finance * Part IV: International Action, Capacity Building and Short Term Funding * The Funding Gap and Capacity Building * Conclusions

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Biography

Johan Eliasch is Special Representative of the Prime Minister on Deforestation and Clean Energy. Born in Sweden but now based in the United Kingdom, he is Chairman and CEO of Head, the global sporting goods group. He is also the first President of Global Strategy Forum, an independent think-tank, and founder of the international charity Cool Earth, a charity that protects endangered rainforests.