LAOS FORESTS TO VIETNAMESE COMPANIES
Laos Forests to Vietnamese Companies
A 2009 study, Forest transition in Vietnam and displacement of deforestation abroad, found that while Vietnam’s area of forest is increasing, it is doing so at the expense of forests in other countries, including Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia.
The authors, Patrick Meyfroidt and Eric F. Lambin of the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, found that 39 per cent of the forest regrowth in Vietnam was in effect logged in other countries and about half the wood imports to Vietnam between 1987 and 2006 were illegal.
Protecting the climate by conserving the forests. Is called REDD, an acronym that stands for "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation" (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Deforestation is responsible for around one fifth of global greenhouse emissions. The idea is to provide incentives in order to make more "convenient" to protect the forests than to log them.
Unfortunately, REDD is based on financial dynamics, and where money is involved, vested interests and corruption can to play a major role. Some rich countries plan to use the REDD to continue to emitting carbon. Multinational companies are now exploring the new business opportunity of carbon sequestration, and REDD culd lead to massive land grabs. Indigenous peoples protected the forest for centuries, now unscrupulous companies plan to profit from REDD by expelling an indigenous people from their forest to acquire legal title over it.
Even logging companies want to obtain subsidies for logging the forests, instead as protect them. It is also the case of trees plantations expansion, one of the major cause of tropical deforestation.
Research is increasingly showing that attributing a price to forest carbon will not be enough to save the forests or protect the climate: the profits coming from forest conversion for biofuel plantations are much higher than the carbon incentives to forest conservation.
Research is also questioning the effectiveness of carbon market approach. Cabon markets mechanisms allow to buy and sell permits to emit CO2 (allowances and carbon credits). Carbon markets in fact do not bring about the changes needed to keep fossil fuels in the ground, allowing polluters to buy their way out of reducing their emissions.
