The REDD scheme to curb deforestation: a well designed system of incentives?

Bioprospection is, largely, meant to help reducing deforestation and, the other way around, stopping deforestation enhances the prospects of bioprospection. The need for a global agreement to the problem of tropical deforestation has led to the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) scheme, which 10 proposes that developed countries pay developing countries for CO2 emissions saved through avoided deforestation and degradation. The remaining issue at stake is to define the rules defining payments to countries reducing their deforestation rate. This article develops a game-theoretic bargaining model, simulating the on-going negotiation process which is currently taking place within the Convention of Climate 15 Change, after the Copenhagen agreement of December 2009. It shows that the conditions under which developing countries are left to bargain over the allocation of the global forest fund may lead to an inefective system of incentives. Below a given level of contributions from the North, the mechanism fails to curb the deforestation. Beyond this level, it induces perverse effects: the larger the North's contribution, the 20 larger the deforestation rate. Consequently, the mechanism is most effective only at a specific threshold level which, given the unobservability of countries'preferences, can only be found by a repeated "trial and error" implementation process