This year's U.N. climate conference in Doha, Qatar, marked the first time talks to curb deforestation ended in a stalemate, offering a sobering realization to observers who considered the process a bright spot among the political strain of climate negotiations.

In the first week of the annual U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting, parties to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) -- the convention's scientific advisory group -- became entrenched in a discussion on verification of carbon stocks from forests.

The discussions were part of the process of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), a system that would pay forest-rich countries for efforts to reduce deforestation.

Norway, representing wealthy, donor countries, pushed to implement a rigorous, international verification process. Brazil, representing the Group of 77 developing nations, refused to agree to international verification given the lack of finance offered by wealthy countries. This resulted in a text filled with unresolved statements and pushed the issue to the next SBSTA meeting in Bonn, Germany, this summer.

"This is the first time REDD discussions broke down and they did so not for technical reasons, but for political ones," said Rebecca Chacko, senior director of climate policy at Conservation International.

Technical issues, like how to count emissions reductions from carbon-sequestering trees, have always been linked to financing, said Chacko. But this is the first time developing countries so explicitly placed finance in the technical discussion.

"It's clear they've done so because they are frustrated with the flow of finance and the lack of clarity on how much funding will be available," Chacko said.

At Doha, country pledges to fill the Green Climate Fund totaled $5 billion -- a small contribution to the $100 billion it must reach by 2020.

"There's the broader fear of finance overall," said Niranjali Amerasinghe, director of the climate change program at the Center for International Environmental Law. "[REDD+] is not getting the signal for trajectory for longer-term finance."

Many observers questioned why finance was included in what should have been an objective, scientific discussion about counting carbon. The stalemate between Norway and Brazil followed successful talks in SBSTA to define forest monitoring systems for REDD+.

Can't reach 'low-hanging fruit'

Deforestation is responsible for about one-fifth of carbon emissions in the world, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Finance for REDD+ projects would offer countries the ability to keep forests standing against economic drivers like large-scale agriculture, timber production, population growth and other threats.

In theory, REDD+ is a relatively simple way to address climate change. Instead of asking countries to possibly compromise economic development by scaling down fossil fuels, it provides a system of incentives to avoid cutting existing forests.

But several years of REDD+ projects in developing countries have shown that the process is filled with uncertainty, potential corruption, questionable human rights and the possibility of increased deforestation outside of REDD+ countries' borders (ClimateWire, Dec. 7, 2011).

"It was thought it would be a low-hanging fruit," said Gerald Nelson, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. "But if, in fact, we can't measure [monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions reductions], it's not low-hanging fruit anymore."

Early Saturday morning, negotiators in the 18th Conference of the Parties in Doha, Qatar, agreed to a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, which will lead to mandatory commitments from all countries after 2015 (see related story). The conference attendees also saw the dissolution of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action, a group that wrote much of the text on REDD+ finance since 2007.

Despite the stalemate over verification, the REDD+ process in Doha did not go unchanged. Delegates agreed to a work program for REDD+, an effort to gather research to offer at next year's conference of the parties in Warsaw, Poland.

The work program will address options for financing REDD+ projects, including incentives for noncarbon benefits like increasing biodiversity.

Addressing noncarbon benefits could create an alternate incentive for forests that do not sequester much carbon. Dryland forests in North Africa, for example, are not as carbon rich as other tropical forests but provide myriad other benefits in biodiversity.

Agriculture left behind, again

This is the first time the UNFCCC has officially recognized the benefits of saving forests beyond carbon, said Stephen Leonard, president of the Climate Justice Program.

Conversely, delegates voted not to begin a work program on agriculture, which is the source of up to one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent report.

Some delegates voiced concern about instituting greenhouse gas reduction programs when food security, aggravated by the volatile commodity markets of past years, could be affected, said Nelson, adding that this is a common misconception about low-carbon agriculture.

The lack of movement on agriculture is similar to the outcome of the last SBSTA meeting last May in Bonn, said Geoffrey Orme-Evans, animal agriculture and climate change specialist with the Humane Society International. In Bonn, parties declined to create a framework for a workshop on agriculture in Doha.

"There a lot of overarching political issues, particularly when something as important as maintaining food security is involved," Orme-Evans said.

Nevertheless, measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture often go hand in hand with adapting agriculture to harsher climates.

"In the future, there's an opportunity for more consensus going forward, because the lines [between adaptation and mitigation] are not as clearly drawn as they may seem," he said.