12. A Swot Analysis of Mitigation of Climate Change Through REDD

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is currently given high priority as one of the means to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The purpose of this study is to examine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are related to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation as a climate change mitigation strategy. REDD can contribute to funding sustainable forest management, carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. However, the amount of mitigation that REDD can achieve is limited. Furthermore, REDD is limited by its funding mechanism and geographical and sectoral leakages. Success in REDD may result in unintended effects such as increased human/wildlife conflicts as a result of increase in abundance of animals due to better conserved habitat and more severe accidental fires due to accumulated fuel loads as a result of fire prevention. Poor governance may lead to inequality in the distribution of benefits and costs of REDD. In spite of these weaknesses of REDD, most developing countries are willing to participate in REDD. There is also a lot that can be learnt from previous conservation and development initiatives that can benefit REDD. However, the success of REDD will largely depend on political stability and the continued interest of the international community in climate change mitigation. This is the first article to explicitly analyse REDD in the light of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Existing literature has so far only discussed these aspects of REDD as part of general discussions on REDD, without explicitly naming them as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Naming the aspects as such informs policy more directly.