Deforestation is responsible for roughly one fifth of global carbon emissions, most of it in the tropical forests of the developing world. At the Copenhagen climate talks, negotiators discussed a potential new mechanism to compensate nations for keeping their forests intact. The article by Duncan Brack and Katharina Umpfenbach looks at these REDD proposals (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), arguing that carbon finance alone might not be enough to stop deforestation – unless part of it is spent upfront on improving forest governance.

Access to the article is provided on the Chatham House Website.

The article is the result of Katharina Umpfenbach's secondment to Chatham House's Energy, Environment and Development Programme in 2009. The joint research effort on schemes to compensate forest nations for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) was part of the Ecologic project  "Global Environmental Governance". It was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the social-ecological research programme (SOEF).