Hello, my response was about the counterfactual value of funds to REDD+ - i.e. what govts and the private sector would spend money on. It is analogous to a donation to FHI: Sanjay is proposing that we should discount money to REDD+ projects because part of the money would otherwise have gone to global development. In the same way, one could argue that money donated to FHI would otherwise have gone to global development and discount by that. This is in principle correct, but it tends not to be done.
Max_Daniel is on the nose about what we were trying to convey.
Let’s imagine another hypothetical example from global development:
imagine that the Fairly Good Charity is 50% as good as AMF
and imagine that Warm Fuzzy Fundraising encourages current AMF donors to donate to Fairly Good Charity instead of AMF
Would we consider Fairly Good Charity to have negative impact because the funds could have gone to AMF? Arguably we could do, but in practice we don’t.
What about a donation to support the operations of Warm Fuzzy Fundraising? I think this is a negative impact. (there’s a parallel with Max_Daniel’s vegetable example)
And coming back to climate change, if we thought that funds going to REDD+ were displacing higher-impact uses of the money, then CfRN too would have net negative impact.
I agree with that. My response is (1) to contextualise this by saying that this feature is true of almost all CEAs, (2) to say that I don’t think the counterfactual use of funds is very good in comparison to effective spending on deforestation prevention.
Hello, my response was about the counterfactual value of funds to REDD+ - i.e. what govts and the private sector would spend money on. It is analogous to a donation to FHI: Sanjay is proposing that we should discount money to REDD+ projects because part of the money would otherwise have gone to global development. In the same way, one could argue that money donated to FHI would otherwise have gone to global development and discount by that. This is in principle correct, but it tends not to be done.
Max_Daniel is on the nose about what we were trying to convey.
Let’s imagine another hypothetical example from global development:
imagine that the Fairly Good Charity is 50% as good as AMF
and imagine that Warm Fuzzy Fundraising encourages current AMF donors to donate to Fairly Good Charity instead of AMF
Would we consider Fairly Good Charity to have negative impact because the funds could have gone to AMF? Arguably we could do, but in practice we don’t.
What about a donation to support the operations of Warm Fuzzy Fundraising? I think this is a negative impact. (there’s a parallel with Max_Daniel’s vegetable example)
And coming back to climate change, if we thought that funds going to REDD+ were displacing higher-impact uses of the money, then CfRN too would have net negative impact.
I agree with that. My response is (1) to contextualise this by saying that this feature is true of almost all CEAs, (2) to say that I don’t think the counterfactual use of funds is very good in comparison to effective spending on deforestation prevention.