India

India highlights that Brazil’s submission for compensated reduction unfairly  favours countries with high deforestation rates, and therefore proposes a  mechanism of “Compensated Conservation” that also rewards countries for  maintaining and increasing their forests as a result of conservation.

India states that, since constant forest carbon stocks do not include flows  of carbon, it is not possible to link these stocks to the Global Carbon  Compliance Market. Nor can compensation for maintaining forest carbon  stocks be a voluntary matter for individual developed countries. This would  place this payment in the realm of “donor” funding and, judging by the  history of climate change actions, lead to serious under compensation.  Accordingly, the compensation payments should be on some norms for  assessment, agreed under the BAP, related to both responsibility and  capabilities of each developed country.

On the other hand, both market-based and non-market-based incentives  may be required. Given sound monitoring and assessment of changes in  forest carbon flows, it would seem feasible to provide positive incentives for  REDD by including REDD credits in the global carbon compliance market.  India recognises, however, that flows of REDD credits could be very large  and there might therefore be a need to place limits on the extent to which a  developed country may meet its GHG mitigation commitments through the  use of REDD credits.