• combating conflict diamonds
• natural resources in conflict
• ending impunity
• forests
  • burma
  • cambodia
  • honduras
  • making the forest sector transparent
  • un climate negotiations
    • meetings
    • redd recommendations
• corruption in oil, gas and mining
• banks and corruption
• independent forest monitoring
• climate change and energy security
• libel reform

The world's forests have been declining at an alarming rate, especially over the past fifty years or so, due to industrial logging, conversion to plantations and agriculture. The 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change found that carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation comprised 18% of total global CO2 emissions, greater than the entire transport sector combined. This finding changed the international debate on forests.

It is now widely accepted that the battle against climate change cannot be won unless global deforestation is halted. Consequently forest issues have risen high up the international agenda; most importantly with the launch of the Bali Action Plan at the 14th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),  in December 2007, which brought yet another acronym to the forests debate; Reduced Emissions from Deforestation & forest Degradation (REDD).

A REDD agreement has the potential to protect forests on a global scale - a goal that has eluded policy makers, the timber industry and campaigners for decades.  However, a bad REDD agreement could prove disastrous for the world's forests and the people that live in and depend upon them. Vested interests including industrial timber and agricultural are lobbying for a REDD agreement that allows ‘business as usual' forest destruction to continue. But ‘business as usual' is not a viable option if we are to win the battle against climate change.

Global Witness is determined to fight for a REDD agreement that will protect the world's forests, respect the rights of forest-dependent peoples and preserve the fantastically rich biodiversity that forests contain. See recommendations. We are attending all the UN negotiating meetings on climate change and campaigning hard at them for a fair REDD deal.

Global Witness is co-founder of the Ecosystems Climate Alliance (ECA), a network of environmental and social NGOs committed to keeping natural terrestrial ecosystems intact, and the carbon they contain out of the atmosphere, in an equitable and transparent way.

Read our latest reports on REDD: Trick or Treat, Vested Interests, A Decade of Experience: Lessons Learned from Independent Forest Monitoring to Inform REDD, and Building Confidence in REDD: Monitoring Beyond Carbon

Global Witness has become increasingly concerned by efforts to close the meetings and exclude civil society observers.  This roll-back in transparency risks leading to distrust and does not necessarily assist the progress of the negotiations. We believe that the negotiations - and any ultimate agreement - will benefit substantially from increased openness and interaction between parties and observers.  Read ECA's letter to the UNFCCC requesting transparency and openness in the COP 15 climate change meeting in Copenhagen.  Open letter to the UNFCCC Secretariat