Remarks at Cancun Summit on REDD+ MR. ZOELLICK: Well, I want to thank you, Jeff, for getting us together again. When I think of the events I attended in Copenhagen, the one that you and others organized for REDD+ was one of the most positive, and I want thank all of you for attending this event. And I see that several people [inaudible]--I feel we got some tremendous momentum behind this. It's absolutely clear that REDD+ enjoys very broad support all around the world, and it's pretty easy to see why: It offers some very significant opportunities, as Dr. Goodall said, it achieves multiple goals, trying to mitigate climate change, of course, but also improving local livelihoods, protecting species, restoring biodiversity and ecosystems, while improving local livelihoods. Now, you just heard from Dr. Goodall that the foot soldiers of forest protection are expecting REDD+ to open a new area of opportunity for habitat protection and community development, as well. So, we really need the Cancun COP meeting to adopt a decision on REDD+. I really just want to take a moment and emphasize this because all of you, I'm sure, track the details and the complexities of these international negotiations when you have over 190 economies. I've been involved with international negotiations from German reunification to trade. It's easy for people to say, well, we like this. We kind of got to hold it up until we put together some other elements. And I think if there's any lesson coming out of Copenhagen, we don't have to time wait, and if there's any issue that's ripe for moving forward, it's REDD+. If we have 180 countries, if we have 160 countries, that's good enough, let's get going. If the other 20 or 30 come on later, fine, but I hope that the voices of all you can go to the delegates from countries and say, this one is wrapped up and it's ready to move. We've got good experience. Let's close the deal and connect with others as we can over time and move REDD+ forward. Now, tremendous progress was made leading up to Copenhagen, and more progress has been made on REDD+ since Copenhagen. Governments have pledged some real money, and with Norway taking the lead, and forest countries have begun significant efforts--different types in different ways, Brazil, Indonesia, others--the Democratic Republic of Congo will move forward before too long. Indigenous peoples and civil society organizations have invested significant time and resources, and the multilateral development banks, including the World Bank and the United Nations have strengthened their cooperation as they committed to do last year to start to deliver REDD+ on the ground. I also want us to get the absolute most we can out of REDD+, both for people and for biodiversity. We know that REDD+ will not work if it doesn't benefit people on the ground, especially indigenous people and local communities. And we also realize, however, that REDD+ is one of the best chances we have, maybe one of the last chances we have, to really save our rich biological diversity. Biodiversity is severely undervalued in the international system, and as a result, the sad truth is that funding for biodiversity is paltry. If we can link REDD+ with biodiversity it would provide the stable financing for the conservation of wildlife and tropic forests. In October in Nagoya, we at the World Bank introduced a concept of a Wildlife Premium Market Initiative, together with our partners at WWF to try to create a sustainable financing streams. We need to firmly establish a system that recognizes the value of forests standing rather than dead. This can happen through a market, a fund, or a series of funds, or even scaled-up commitments from corporate social responsibility. But the other values embedded in the forests also need to be recognized, including the wildlife benefits, and these benefits would warrant premiums on the carbon. Responsible investors and buyers would be attracted to these values as well as the others and they could invest upfront in projects with REDD+ with wildlife certificates. The Wildlife Premium Market Initiative will focus on charismatic forest-dwelling species that require large expanses of forests. Tigers, jaguars, forest elephants, great apes, macaws, birds of paradise, lemurs, all of these iconic species range over vast areas, and sadly many of them are in danger. Moreover, if you map the ranges of these species, they cover most of the remaining tropical forests and the most important areas for biodiversity. Protecting these species will protect the other flora and fauna that live under the umbrella. Under future REDD+ regimes, countries where these species live could earn carbon credits for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation below a recognized baseline. By introducing wildlife premium into the mix, countries, provinces, and local communities could earn additional payments as the range of species in question expands to include former habitat above some established baseline. We cannot just rely on an offset market. Investment funding will be necessary from the very start. The World Bank, right now, is trying to consider business models that could seed the Wildlife Premium Market Initiative with initial funding, and I really look forward to working with other bilateral or multilateral organizations, conservation groups, other diversity groups to try to join the World Bank effort to launch this initiative. If it's proven successful, this market will value wildlife and return co-benefits to local communities. It could provide sustainable financing for the conservation of tigers, elephants, great apes, and others who represent critical ecosystems around the globe. Just two weeks ago in St. Petersburg, Prime Minister Putin and I hosted the Global Tiger Summit where it was the first time we got all 13 tiger range countries together and it was their plan to pledge the double tigers in the wildlife, 2022, through a comprehensive Global Tiger Recovery Program, built on individual plans. And in other aspects of development, what we've learned is that, if you don't have local ownership, it won't work. So, what I hope will be different this time in tiger conservation, we've got the countries involved, but with a problem such as wildlife, of course, they don't respect national borders. So, then, you have to bring them together to try to see what issues we can deal with on the demand side, on the poaching, on the trafficking that bring together the law enforcement and other communities. The dramatic decline of the tiger is far deeper than the loss of a single charismatic cat. The demise of the tiger is symptomatic of a broader biological crisis and it forces us to rethink aspects of the development paradigm. The loss of a species at the top of a food chain endangers all the creatures below. Past failures have proven, sadly, that piecemeal approaches don't work. So, action has to address the problem on all the diverse fronts, and REDD+ is precisely about that approach: comprehensive, multi-sector, and multi-stakeholder action. Now, tigers could be the first application of this wildlife REDD+ premium concept. Coming out of the discussion we had in St. Petersburg, Nepal, Malaysia, and Thailand are eager to partner with the World Bank and others to try to pilot this program in their tiger landscapes. We can learn from them, learn how to scale up. And if it works, this concept could be expanded to other flagship species. In fact, it is conceivable that wildlife premium could actually drive for a REDD+ voluntary carbon market in some countries, because I believe that focusing on charismatic species will attract other investors who are primarily interested in saving tigers and other charismatic species. So, one can side can help the other. We need now to ensure that REDD+ has the regulatory basis that it needs. That's the job that we created here in Cancun but also in California in the emerging carbon initiative in Australia, as well as Norway, where the government's Climate and Forest Initiative allows community resources to flow to forested countries. Once the regulatory basis for REDD+ is in place, we will be able to build financial mechanisms of different kinds, and [inaudible] to try different things--different things will work to different degrees. We need to make a case to different types of investors, the different types of market, different players that this is the right thing to do. We will need to show them the evidence, hence the importance of the baselines and the monitoring system. And at the World Bank, we're trying to set up and explore new financing vehicles for REDD+, including the BioCarbon Fund, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, the Forest Investment Program, jointly with our friends at the Regional Development Banks and in partnership with the Global Environmental Facility. We're going to have to learn from these initiatives, and then we need to scale them up as quickly as we can, also zero in on the elements beyond carbon, namely the wildlife values, the livelihood values, and the cultural values. So, I think this is a great opportunity, and I think, again, I want to thank all of you for your interest and support, it broadens the network. And what I see in a variety of topics is you have to reach out. You're able to get corporate groups like Wal-Mart, you're able to get conservation groups, you're able to get finance ministries as well as environment ministries. That's how you build a broader coalition to really make something like this happen. In our world, the World Bank, as one player in that network, we can help draw the parties together, we can help learn, we can pilot, and we can try to understand and expand up the financing. Partly to approach a lot of these is not to do the biggest project first but the pilot, the test, you get the results, and you learn from them. Because, at the end, as important as forests are, we don't want silent forests. You want forests where you can hear the roar of the tiger, where you can hear the trumpet of the elephant, where you can hear the great apes where you can hear the great apes with [inaudible] so familial, so primal, in a way, that the sound of themselves and their familes are a sign that we've got something beyond ourselves to respect and preserve. So, I want to thank you all very much for being part of this. I think we look forward to types of relationships where we can learn from you and experiment along the way. But my core message coming out of Cancun, and it's one I've shared with others, there's a lot of good things being done on the ground in energy efficiency. We're launching some interesting things in agriculture and soil carbon, which is a few years behind that in forestation. There's some interesting possibilities on the technology side. There are a lot of good ventures going, and I believe it would be a travesty if we don't move forward with the partners we have to try to reach some real results on the ground while at the same time trying to work on overall international regimes and arrangements, but let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Thank you. [Applause.] |
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