In a side event at the UN climate negotiations in Bonn, Patrick Alley of Global Witness highlighted the dangers of REDD – as well as the potential opportunities. “Going beyond carbon: good governance, biodiversity conservation and demand-side management in REDD,” was presented by the Ecosystems Climate Alliance, which was formed in Poznan in December 2008.

Alley illustrated his talk with this slide of the Bugatti Veyron, a car that consumes more fuel per kilometre than any other production car on the planet, with a top speed of 407 kilometres an hour. That’s the length of a football pitch every second. At this speed, you could cross Equatorial Guinea in 25 minutes. Except, of course, that you couldn’t because the roads needed to drive a car like this don’t exist in Equatorial Guinea. For once, Jeremy Clarkson is right when he describes it as “a triumph for lunacy over common sense”. Something similar could be said about the idea of pouring billions of dollars a year for REDD into some of the most corrupt governments in the world.

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