Asia governors endorse U.N. forest carbon scheme

By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Six provincial governors from Indonesia, Laos and the Philippines on Thursday backed an expanded U.N. scheme aimed at protecting and conserving forests in return for carbon credits.

In a joint statement after a meeting on the sidelines of an annual gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders, the governors said the scheme, called REDD+, held the promise of boosting livelihoods for local communities, a key step in curbing deforestation.

But fair distribution of wealth was key.

"People in the cities have better education, they are richer but actually they produce carbon poison," said Abang Tambul Hussin, regent of Kapuas Hulu in Indonesia's West Kalimantan province.

"The communities in the forest area have to be more prosperous," he told the meeting, convened by the Asian Development Bank and ecosystems service firm Carbon Conservation.

Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) aims to reward developing countries for saving their forests in return for carbon offsets that they can sell to rich nations.

The United Nations hopes REDD will be part of a broader global climate pact from 2013, ushering in a potentially multi-billion dollar boost to the global carbon market.

REDD+ expands the idea to protection, restoration and sustainable management of forests.

The governors said that the REDD+ "approach offers tremendous promise in creating a new set of incentives for the preservation and sustainable management of forests," and urged world leaders to push the concept at U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen next month.

FIRES, ILLEGAL LOGGING

Four of the governors were from Indonesia, including Central and West Kalimantan on Borneo island, South Sumatra and West Papua. Attapeu province in Laos and Albay province in the Philippines also endorsed the scheme, with some of the provinces already starting pilot REDD+ projects.

Indonesia is on the front line of effort to save the world's remaining tropical forests, with deforestation responsible for more than 10 percent of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions.

But the meeting also underscored the challenges facing the scheme that many rich nations support in the hope of offsetting some of their planet-warming emissions at home.

Ensuring the money from forest carbon credits flowed to local communities, awareness of the scheme on the ground, poverty, fighting illegal deforestation and curbing the expansion of palm oil estates were among the key issues facing REDD+, they said.

"It's very important for us that people know exactly that if they take care of the forest they can have also the money," Central Kalimantan Governor Agustin Teras Narang told Reuters.