Market-based schemes not reducing deforestation, poverty — report

PARIS, France — Market-based approaches to forest conservation like carbon offsets and deforestation-free certification schemes have largely failed to protect trees or alleviate poverty, according to a major scientific review published on Monday.

The global study -- the most comprehensive of its kind to date -- found that trade and finance-driven initiatives had made "limited" progress halting deforestation and in some cases worsened economic inequality.

Drawn from years of academic and field work, the report compiled by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), a group of 15,000 scientists in 120 countries, will be presented at a high-level UN forum starting Monday.

Its authors urged a "radical rethink" of increasingly popular market-based approaches often promoted as effective at saving forests, curbing global warming and raising living standards in developing nations.

"The evidence does not support the claim of win-wins or triple wins for environment, economy and people often made for market mechanisms as a policy response to environmental problems," said contributing author Maria Brockhaus from the University of Helsinki.

"Rather our cases show that poverty and forest loss both are persistent across different regions of the world... where market mechanisms have been the main policy option for decades," she told AFP by email.

Since the last IUFRO assessment in 2010, the report noted a rise in complex and overlapping market-based schemes "with financial actors and shareholders more often interested in short-term profits than long-term just and sustainable forest governance".

Its lead author, Constance McDermott from the University of Oxford, said this may not be true of all individual projects "but overall... it's hard to say they've been a rousing success".

The report said a $120 million project in the Democratic Republic of Congo had "reinforced entrenched interests" by restricting local people from forests without addressing logging by powerful extractive businesses.

In Malaysia, indigenous groups promised better livelihoods from a foreign-backed plantation venture on their customary land received no benefit, the report said.

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