SAVING FORESTS: Markets for trading greenhouse gas emissions may be the last hope for restraining the clearing of Asia's remaining tropical forests.
Image: Flickr/Lexe-I
SHANGHAI -- Seven years after Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea called on the world to combat climate change by saving vanishing forests in the tropics, the marriage between emissions trading and forest protection has grown into something more than wedding vows, but it is still far away from generating a baby.\ That marriage was blessed by an international mechanism called REDD, short for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Through REDD, developed countries pay developing countries for keeping trees standing. While global negotiators are still discussing how to do this, some steps have already been taken on the ground.
In Asia, where forests are disappearing faster than in many other parts of the world, Western donors and international organizations have devoted millions of dollars and a lot of planning to prepare nations for the emerging mechanism. Financial specialists have also begun developing REDD pilot projects to experiment with forest carbon trading. The goal is to cash in on carbon dioxide that trees store up and, at the same time, to slow down the forest destruction in the region.
As big as this goal may be, the challenges in developing REDD projects that work are even bigger. Many pilot projects have generated nothing but a scar on the mechanism's reputation. Some people also question whether money generated from selling carbon credits could really flow across a corruption-prone region and wind up in the hands of the right people: villagers who are protecting the forests.
REDD supporters are scrambling to move faster. They need to build villagers' trust in the mechanism, and they think the survival of Asia's remaining forests may well depend on their efforts along with the future habitability of the region.
With larger swaths of forests being cut down in recent years, Asian countries are seeing less wildlife, losing groundwater and discovering more soil erosion. Human life is at risk, too, as thinned mangrove forests failed to protect South Asia from a tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands in 2004.
The theory has been that trees can lock climate-harmful carbon dioxide into centuries-long storage. But the reality has often been that the burning of forests to make way for agriculture ends their ability to absorb carbon. The burning also produces an immediate flow of carbon back to the air. As a result, forests now emit more greenhouse gas than all of the world's vehicles combined, with more than half that coming from Asia.
Trying to break the cycle of destruction
That leads to an urgent call to save Asia's forests. Already, some nations and international alliances have opened their wallets to do so, but "even if the money is very well spent, it is still not sufficient to bring the changes that are needed," said Thomas Enters, an expert at the U.N. Environment Programme. He has spent 19 years of his career in forest management in Asia and the Pacific.
But as industrialized countries committed to reduce emissions in a global climate treaty in 1997, forest protectors saw another solution: If rich nations need to meet emission reduction targets, why don't they do so by paying poorer nations to protect their forests? The idea was proposed in a United Nations conference in 2005, then got accepted in principle two years later.
How to do this on a global stage is still under negotiation, but nations like Japan have already moved ahead to link REDD with their own carbon offset programs. Australia and California, two emerging carbon markets, are also considering ways to let their emitters comply with their emission rules by buying some carbon credits generated from REDD.
Outside these emerging regulated markets, interest in REDD projects is also growing.
"In voluntary markets, buyers or investors are really looking for the story behind a project," said Naomi Swickard, manager at Verified Carbon Standard, a U.S.-based firm that audits environmental benefits of emissions reduction projects. She added that sponsoring REDD projects tells good stories. For example a hotel chain can show its effort to mitigate travelers' carbon footprint by investing in the protection of nearby rainforests.
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7 Comments
Add CommentThe article asks: “If rich nations need to meet emission reduction targets, why don't they do so by paying poorer nations to protect their forests?”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnswer- one issue is reducing actual emissions while the other is a bologna form of accounting that does not actually reduce emissions, but gives countries a way of pretending that they are reducing emissions.
How many American readers believe it is a worthwhile idea to have our taxes raised even more than they will be anyway in order to send money to Asian countries so that they do not poorly manage their own forests?
Sisko,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes your answer apply to military spending -- which much of it can be considered a subsidy to the defense of other nations? Should the US continue to be the world's police force allowing other nations to piggyback? Compare our expenditures on the "War on Terror" to rest of world. Also, the size of expenditures and expenditures per GDP (and per capita) should be compared.
Many might say that's a false equivalency because our military power is linked to our global leadership. Hmmm...
Priorties are interesting. If the people of a certain ideological slant had different priorites, the "War on Climate Change" would be in our lexicon. Yes, interesting priorities... since those same people consider us to be a Christian nation.
Similar arguments could be made regarding health care spending.
Easy answer, no. Not cutting down forests will save forests. This ridiculous belief in government regulation and trading of so called pollution rights will do absolutely nothing except at best allow politicians to make the claim they are doing something for votes or money but otherwise all that will happen is some nations will hand over money and the countries with forests will still cut down the trees anyway to sell to whoever will buy. Waste, not following agreements and in general doing whatever they can to line their own pockets is sort of par for the course for banana republics, third world dictators and in general countries run by thugs or chiefs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCramer
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is interesting that you link the two issues in any way since they are unrelated. If you ask does the US waste money on defense spending, I would answer yes, but that has nothing to do with the article. If people around the world had different priorities many things would be different and maybe there would not be 7 billion humans exploiting the planets resources. All of which has ZERO to do with US taxpayers having to pay more to send funds to another independent nation.
Cramer: Military spending is never accounted for, its money for the taking by the super corrupt. The USA chose to attack the ignorant nation of Afghanistan, when they were attacked by the theocratic Saudi Arabian nation in their jihad to spread Islam across the world. This demonstration of religious might turned people to religion world-wide.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn honest response would have been a nuclear attack on the religious centres of Saudi Arabia. No further world takeover from Islam would have followed.
Sadly in the free states, religious groups, though they have lost their following, strategically place their representatives as candidates for political positions and encourage their congregations to support them. They wield disproportionate power without the massive followings they once had.
In Australia "The Lyons Forum", a group of parliamentarians represent the Christian churches. Mr Tony Abbot, a failed priest, was health minister and for three years refused to sign into legislation the morning after pill. Parliament and The Therapeutic Goods Administration had passed all the necessary legislation. Dozens of young mainly Christian girls committed suicide as a result. Only one evil representative of the most evil organisation on the planet "Religion" held our nation to his perverted depraved thought process.
Another point. The church claims abusive priests are acting on their own accord. Not true, the church takes children in their early early teens into seminaries, and converts them into sexually abusive mysogenic adult priests.
As previously stated the environment will always play second fiddle to economics. Rich nations always forget that a lot of their wealth has been build on the explotation of poorer nations....its the human way. Always has been and sadly I see this behaviour continuing. Only when the economies of the rich are threatened and hurting will they react to try and save themselves....will it be too late?? Are we too stupid/arrogant/greedy?? Time will tell.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about the poorer nations simply manage their own affairs. Maybe they should consider the term forest management and not blame other nations if THEY cut down to many trees
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