Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries: Implications for the Carbon Market

Summary

Allowing REDD credits to be used for compliance in cap-and-trade programs, both in the EU and the United States, could accomplish several goals at once: it would create a powerful incentive for the protection of tropical forests, transform the dynamics for forest protection world-wide, encourage large emissions reductions in tropical forest developing nations, and help preserve the world's options to avert global warming of more than two degrees above preindustrial levels. In addition, REDD credits could help to manage the costs of compliance in countries that take on economy-wide caps -- helping to create and maintain the political will to achieve deep reductions in emissions.