Serious errors impair an assessment of forest carbon projects: A rebuttal of West et al. (2023)

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2312.06793
• Publication Date: 2023-01-01
• Authors: Edward T. A. Mitc...; Harry Carstairs; Riccardo Cosenza; Sassan Saatchi; Jason Funk; Paula Nieto Quintano; Thom Brade; Iain M. McNicol; Patrick Meir; Murray Collins; Éric Nowak
• Keywords: Rebuttal; Deforestation; Forest degradation

Independent retrospective analyses of the effectiveness reducing deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) projects are vital to ensure climate change benefits being delivered. A recent study in Science by West et al. (1) appeared therefore be a timely alert that majority operating 2010s failed reduce rates. Unfortunately, their analysis suffered from major flaws choice underlying data, resulting poorly matched unstable counterfactual scenarios. These were compounded calculation errors, biasing against finding significantly reduced deforestation. This flawed 24 unfairly condemned all 100+ REDD projects, risks cutting off finance for protecting vulnerable tropical forests destruction at time when funding needs grow rapidly.