ClearSky Climate Solutions is excited to be working on some innovative projects that avoid, or reverse, deforestation from the impending threat of deforestation.  These are exciting projects form a number of perspectives: improved local livelihoods for forest-dependent communities, improved biodiversity habitat via forest ecosystem conservation, improved local governance through transparent agreements on how to share carbon revenue and re-invest in the communities involved, and of course – the mitigation of emissions from deforestation that was slated to occur.  These are the kinds of holistic solutions that ClearSky is most interested in being a part of. 

Human caused climate change is, in fact, caused by human actions.  At ClearSky, if we can help find a way to more effectively manage humans – and their use of the natural resources they have access to – we believe we can more effectively address the emissions of greenhouse gases.  Humans are complicated and behave the way they do for many interconnected and correlated reasons.  Understanding how a solution to one community’s resource problem does not mean it is directly replicable in another community – but it is adding to the library of possibilities that can be leaned on in the future to craft new solutions.  REDD and REDD+ (avoided deforestation that includes a focus on sustainable development, community benefits and ecosystem/biodiversity benefits as well as greenhouse gas benefits) present a unique opportunity to merge numerous interests to solve common problems, with a market based approach. 

REDD/REDD+ are very interesting and potentially revolutionary, by merging ecosystem markets with community development and ecosystem conservation.  There are a number of unresolved, as yet, issues: what is the permanence of the carbon credits created by these projects?  What happens after the project life and crediting period that protects the forest into the future?  What about leakage – and the need for national level, forest carbon accounting standards?  What about the need for transparency in the distribution of financial benefits accruing to a project?  How does the project improve local communities and local governance? Will REDD also improve the forest-dependent peoples’ access to the forest for non-timber forest products, improve their training in value added processing, give them legal tenure claims on customary lands?  These and many other issues need to be cleared up at the international policy level and at the local project implementation level. 

The mere idea that REDD and REDD+ could have a potentially large impact in making the worlds forests worth more standing than they are cut – is exciting.  That the services that forests provide: carbon sinking, oxygen creating, biodiversity habitat holding, evapotranspiring-rain creating systems, soil fertility improving, flood water reducing and retaining are all valuable to the planets and the humans that inhabit it.  The fact that forests are reserves of genetic material, protein banks, seed libraries, spiritual retreats, and add much needed resilience to help stabilize the meteorological systems of our planet all make it easier for humans to live comfortably.  That is what the climate change question is really about……can we agree to make it relatively comfortable for the future generations of humans that will inhabit this little rock – 3rd from the sun?  The changes are evident before our eyes already.  What will we do about it? And how wonderful that there are options to address so many needs simultaneously, with REDD and REDD+ in our toolkits.