Brazil and Indonesia : REaDD+y or not?

The future of the international climate regime remains highly uncertain given the continued failure to reach agreement on a revised or successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. In lieu of progress towards a global climate regime embracing all major emitters, there have been important achievements in specific areas of carbon management. One of the most notable of these is in relation to forests. Since agreement in principle was reached on REDD+ at COP13/CMP3 in Bali in 2007 there have been rapid and substantial developments in fleshing out the details of the REDD+ mechanism. At COP17/CMP7 in Durban in December 2011 governments recommitted to REDD+ and resolved a host of financial and technical issues associated with implementing REDD+, including safeguards and reference levels. In light of these developments REDD+ has been described as being ‘the most advanced component of climate change negotiations’. Against this background, this chapter considers the experience of two key states, Brazil and Indonesia, in implementing REDD+ laws and policies. Brazil and Indonesia have been among the most significant state actors in relation to REDD+. This is reflective of the critical importance of the tropical forests within these states in the global carbon cycle. Brazil and Indonesia hold the largest and equal second largest stocks of forest carbon, and both states have struggled to address high deforestation rates (which together account for around 50 per cent of net deforestation annually). A case study of the experience of these two key states with REDD+ sheds significant light on the promise and pitfalls of the REDD+ mechanism in delivering the abatement of emissions needed to meet the objective of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to prevent dangerous interference with the climate system. For reasons of space this chapter can provide only an overview of the key REDD+ issues in both jurisdictions.