General Article REDD herring

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With the world’s rainforests still going up in smoke at an ever-increasing rate, the good news is that a new global initiative is being billed as a way of helping. REDD (yes, it’s another clumsy acronym: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries) is now official UN policy in the fight against climate change.
The REDD proposals have come about as a consequence of the 2006 Stern Report, which identified that carbon dioxide emissions resulting from rainforest destruction account for a massive 20% of the world’s total. The idea behind REDD is, in theory at least, quite simple: rich Northern countries will offset their own greenhouse gas emissions by paying poorer Southern countries not to level their rainforests. The whole scheme, which will cost billions of dollars, would then be paid for by the sale of carbon credits on the emerging global carbon market.
 

Divided movement

So much for the good news. The bad news is that the environmental movement is now becoming in...

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