
Indonesia reports reduced deforestation, triggering carbon payment from Norway - ammaristotle
https://www.norway.no/en/indonesia/norway-indonesia/news-events/news2/indonesia-reports-reduced-deforestation-triggering-first-carbon-payment-from-norway/
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maaaats
> In 2010, Norway pledged to support Indonesia with up to 1 billion USD
> depending on results.

It's easy to sit in a developed western country, buying products from other
countries, and then complain about their emissions. I'm glad that we're trying
to be responsible. It may not be enough or not the right way to do it (some
thoughts on this?), but it's something.

~~~
StreamBright
This is exactly what most Westerners do not get about China. If you want to
reduce emissions stop buying their products.

~~~
andrepd
People do get that, but waiting for people to spontaneously start doing the
right thing is just not a very good strategy.

That's why we need a carbon tax. To force people to.

~~~
EGreg
We don’t just need a carbon tax. We need the public to support it unlike the
French public.

So we need to redistribute the carbon tax as UBI. So people say “more carbon
tax please!” Climate Justice. Contact Andrew Yang who is running for President
and tell him his UBI needs to be funded with a carbon tax!

~~~
tim333
I think if you had a properly planned tax so you could say this is fair and
will fix or at least significantly reduce the risk from global warming then
people would be ok with it. The present ineffectual stuff doesn't really
achieve much.

~~~
EGreg
You are too naive to think that, in my opinion. It is also unnecessary to rely
on this dream about human nature when we can just do the UBI thing which is
strictly MORE incentive. Not to mention that it lets us introduce UBI’

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duopixel
When I first moved to Europe I was struck by just how domesticated the land
is. I can sleep in the open without being afraid of snakes, scorpions,
spiders, wolves or bears. Even when land is "wild", the larger mammals will be
rabbits, deer, wild goats and such. Excepting natural parks, hunters are the
only predators.

At least in Spain, a tremendous percentage of land is put at the service of
mankind. The dehesas give cork, honey, acorns to feed the pigs, and grass for
the cattle.

The situation where developing countries need to conserve their land in a
natural state in the interest of biodiversity and climate reminds me a game of
Civilization where you are no longer allowed to exploit them to your advantage
(with good reason!). We need to keep this land intact, but the only way to do
it is to make conservation more valuable than exploitation.

~~~
mihaifm
What I don't understand is why there doesn't seem to be any initiative in
Western Europe to reintroduce large fauna like bears and wolves. It is very
convenient indeed to hike through the Alps without any fear of bears, but in
this context it's almost hypocritical of Europeans to talk about conservation
in Africa when their own fauna has been wiped out, without any effort to
repopulate it.

~~~
iguy
There are many such programs, although wolves are controversial.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_reintroduction#Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_reintroduction#Europe)

Hypocritical seems a bit strong though. The extinctions in europe happened a
long time ago, those people are dead. Conservation may stand in the way of a
particular guy's dinner but it's not like shooting all the gorillas is the key
to Uganda getting to first-world living standards -- the advice that they are
worth more alive than dead is probably sound.

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75dvtwin
I am yet to see an example of corruption-free model converting environment
impact reduction (or increase) in to monetary credit or (debit).

"..

To offset their own carbon emissions, European companies have been overpaying
China to incinerate a powerful greenhouse gas known as hfc 23.

And in a bizarre twist, those payments have spurred the manufacture of a
harmful refrigerant that is being smuggled into the U.S. and used illegally.

…"

[https://e360.yale.edu/features/perverse_co2_payments_send_fl...](https://e360.yale.edu/features/perverse_co2_payments_send_flood_of_money_to_china)

~~~
tim333
Still the perfect is the enemy of the good and all that. It's probably better
to have a flawed but functional mechanism than nothing. I'll give you that hfc
23 story is bad.

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hannob
It's a start, though obviously if we want to be serious about deforestation we
need much more of this.

A somewhat similar initiative regarding the Yasuni rainforest in Equador
unfortunately went nowhere a couple of years ago because rich countries
weren't willing enough to pay.

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aboutruby
Wouldn't that push countries to cut a lot of trees to then have the highest
bidder willing to reduce carbon emissions pay a premium?

~~~
Gpetrium
You raise a valid point, Brazil may be an interesting test-case for the point
you have raised. The new government shows strong interest in cutting down the
Amazon (at least partially) for the sake of Agribusiness, Cattle & Logging.
Now will they use Amazon and the way the world perceives it as a way to
exchange concessions? It remains to be seeing.

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Pxtl
Good on Norway for living up to their promises. There are a lot of places I'd
expect to welch on this kind of deal.

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spacecrew5
Indonesia has been doing better with the enviroment in recent years, probably
thanks to international pressure and incentives such as this. Anything which
maintains Indonesia's biodiversity is good to see.

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outside1234
How about Norway just stop pumping oil to reduce our carbon footprint?

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magicalhippo
That's an argument many make here in Norway.

It's usually countered by saying "that oil would get pumped anyway, better us
doing it 'cause our oil sector has the smallest CO2 impact per barrel of oil
pumped" or something along those lines.

A decent argument, but it hinges on a massive "what if".

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spsrich
Norwegian taxpayer funds sent direct to Indonesian politicians Swiss bank
accounts. Marvellous !

~~~
virtastic
yes, bribing corrupt 3rd world politicians to repress their populations and
prevent them from engaging in economic development. the height of western
virtue.

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O_H_E
Looks like a great way to incitive developing countries to reduce their
emissions. Although when the developing countries' tax payer start
complaining, it's going to be hard to defend these expenditures.

~~~
codebolt
As a Norwegian tax payer I do feel a bit like a schmuck for paying Indonesians
not to destroy their own country. For one, what's to stop them from cutting
these forests once the payouts stop coming? A better endeavor might be to
invest in environmentally sustainable industries in Indonesia.

~~~
richardhod
As a Western developed nation inhabitant, you and indeed most HN readers
benefit enormously for your rich lifestyle on past carbon emissions by your
predecessors, which those in that country have not benefitted from. This is a
good way to incentivise those countries who - quite reasonably - feel it's
unfair that they don't get to use up any of that carbon to develop their
nation towards a rich modern lifestyles. So, here is one solution.

~~~
varjag
Norway did not contribute all that much to carbon emissions directly. The
electric grid historically been and still is hydro, and the country was never
really industrialized in the first place.

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rerx
Norway's wealth comes from exporting oil and gas. That's not very indirect.

~~~
varjag
That's exactly what indirect means. Only a tiny portion of this oil and gas
was ever used in Norway, the rest was exported. A lot of it was used up by
developing nations.

Either way there were no hydrocarbon exports prior to early 1970s. Unless by
"predecessors" you mean gen-x'ers.

~~~
shoo
Norway gained a lot of wealth from extracting and selling the oil.

All parties in the transaction (producer, middle men, end users) "should" be
carbon taxed to some degree.

It's not obvious to me why you'd only want to carbon tax the consumer.

Similarly, in public debate there's a lot of finger pointing at oil companies.
The public can be somewhat less vocal about wanting to carbon tax the demand
side of the trade, of which they play a large role.

~~~
varjag
It did gain a lot of wealth of selling oil, however it has nothing to do with
Norway CO2 emissions.

Carbon footprint describes where the source of CO2 pollution is. You can make
plastics from all that oil you buy or burn it all, that's on you. If you do
burn it, you become CO2 pollutant, really hard to see the controversial part
here.

~~~
shoo
Nonsense. You can define "carbon footprint" that way if you like, but I view
that as an accounting definition. You've just decided to define it that way.

CO2 pollution is stored in the atmosphere, which is a shared global resource.

I'd argue that carbon taxing should be designed to discourage economic
activity that directly or indirectly leads to greenhouse gas emissions, you
need to disincentivise production as well as consumption as well as associated
enabling activities such as shipping the stuff. Encourage all of these actors
to do something else that results in lower net carbon emissions at the global
system level.

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indothrowaway
forcing us on halmahera to not allow clearing for farm land and need to import
more food to our island. rely on boats that sometimes dont come.

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porpoisely
Considering all the money norway got to pay indonesia came from selling oil,
this is really nothing more than a billion dollar PR exercise. Not to mention
that in a globalized world, the deforestation will ultimately get shifted
somewhere else.

Just like europe loves to pretend it is lowering emissions when it's just
shifting manufacturing to china, norway loves to pretend to be environmenally
friendly with its oil money.

If europe or norway truly cared about emissions or the environment, they'd end
global trade and drilling for oil, but they aren't going to give up their
luxurious first world lifestyle are they?

Edit: To everyone downvoting, how about this scenario. We give norway $1
billion for them to shut down their oil rigs? Surely norway will sacrifice
their economic wealth and prosperity to help the environment right? Or do we
only expect that from poor countries?

~~~
geezerjay
You've missed the whole point of the carbon payment system.

The whole point is that it isn't realistic to assume that it's possible to
quit oil overnight, buy it's very possible to mitigate its effect by
converting some externalities to a concrete price tag and thus creating
incentives to abandon the use of at least some fossil fuels and to compensate
those who contribute to invert the tendency.

~~~
porpoisely
But the "externalities" got shifted from indonesia to somewhere else.

How about this, if indonesia told norway to go to hell, cut down their
forests, got rich and then in 20 years paid Laos $1 billion to spare their
forests. Would we celebrate indonesia as great environmentalists? Of course
not. We'd call them hypocrites, especially when the deforestation just moved
to cambodia instead.

At the end of the day, this exercise is just wealthy european neocolonialists
trying to feel better about themselves as they keep a underdeveloped country
poor. While norway gets to destroy their and other countries resources to
enrich itself, they use that ill gotten wealth to dupe poor countries to stay
poor.

How about this, lets shift wealth instead. Tax all of europe X amount of money
and shift that wealth to indonesia and ASEAN to achieve an equal living
standard? This way, indonesia and ASEAN won't touch their forests or resources
and their living standard will be equal to that of europe? Now that would make
a real difference.

Of course it would mean europeans living standard would have to decline, but
europeans (especially norwegians) are such environment loving saints right?
They are willing to sacrifice right? Or are they greedy like the rest of us
and want others to sacrifice while they themselves enjoy the good life?

Or how about this, we give norway $1 billion to shut down their oil industry?
Do you think the norwegians would agree to that? Of course not.

~~~
rebornshellfish
>Tax all of europe X amount of money and shift that wealth to indonesia and
ASEAN to achieve an equal living standard?

You're literally the most evil person I have ever seen on the internet. High
IQ Europeans, who have secular values, who have the greatest respect for human
rights, who invest a lot in their children, and who already suffer under an
excessive regulatory/tax burden, do not owe the rest of the world anything.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account. Obviously, if you've read the guidelines, you can't
comment on HN like this.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and
give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

