Climate Change and Community Development: the Impact of Carbon Offsetting Schemes

This course will provide an overview of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), which has been at the forefront of climate talks in the past few years. We will critically analyze REDD projects and assess their impacts on local communities.

Our planet is heating up due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This is manifesting in different ways and all around the Earth: weather patterns are changing, desertification is expanding, sea level is rising, oceans are becoming more acid, and many species are on the brink of extinction.

The levels of human-produced greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increased significantly since the offset of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s. The global atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased from a pre-industrial value of about 280ppm to 379ppm in 2005 (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, 2007). The average global temperature rose about 0.8 °C higher than its pre-industrial level.

In an effort to mitigate climate change, economists, governments, corporations and environmentalists have proposed, since early 1990s, the use of ‘offsetting’ mechanisms to help polluting industries to compensate for their CO2 emissions by either expanding or protecting forests somewhere else. The idea of offsetting industrial carbon emissions through biological carbon sequestration and storage has been fiercely debated since it was first proposed. Many NGOs, developing country governments, and local communities oppose the concept for a variety of reasons. Based on this idea of carbon offsetting, REDD schemes were created. Some see REDD as one of the best mechanisms to help combat climate change, whereas others remain skeptical to their efficiency and even see them as dangerous and working against local communities.

Upon completion of this course participants will be able to:

• Understand climate change and REDD as a climate change mitigation solution.
• Critically assess how a REDD scheme can (positively or negatively) affect local communities.
• Make informed decisions when analyzing REDD projects.