Helping nations to see the wood for the trees
Can the world's remaining tropical forests in Indonesia and elsewhere be protected and brought into the battle against climate change? Working out ways of halting or slowing the cutting of forests for valuable timber and agriculture will be a key issue discussed this week and next at the UN climate change negotiations in Poznan, Poland.
Deforestation contributes about 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity and most of it occurs in forest-rich developing nations in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America. Any international deal to preserve forests is critical to these regions and the wider world.
The talks in Poznan are part of a process that began in Bali, Indonesia, a year ago to devise a new climate change control treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. Under the Kyoto pact to limit emissions, all developed economies, except the US, have agreed to cut greenhouse gases by an average of 5 per cent by 2012 from 1990 levels.
The Bush administration rejected Kyoto, arguing that it unfairly excused China, India, Indonesia and other emerging economies from binding commitments. US President-elect Barack Obama has promised to bring the US back to the table.
Kyoto includes national cap and trade systems that allow countries and companies to achieve reductions in greenhouse emissions by buying and selling carbon credits. The Kyoto pact allows tree-planting programmes in its carbon trading scheme, but not forest preservation.
This is expected to change. Delegates in Poznan will consider a pay-to-preserve forests scheme known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. Under Redd, richer countries would pay to maintain forests in tropical regions, to offset their own emissions.
Many countries favour forestry offsets, both to direct billions of dollars of carbon finance to developing nations that protect their forests and to make it cheaper for advanced economies to meet emission limits. However, there are many challenges. How accurately can forest carbon-emissions savings be measured and what sort of forest should be included - only primary jungle or regrowth forests and plantations, as well, even if they hold less carbon? Will a Redd forest remain standing longer and can illegal logging and fire be prevented? Will a halt in logging in one area relocate it to another?
Some non-governmental organisations fear that attaching a substantial preservation value to forests could lead to land disputes, loss of livelihoods and intervention by corrupt officials, and allow rich nations to avoid making deep cuts at home.
Indonesia has become the centre of Redd trial programmes in Asia. The country has 91 million hectares of tree cover, despite having lost 70 per cent of its original forest. As a result, it is among the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters, according to a report commissioned by the World Bank and the British government's Department for International Development.
Last month, California and two other US states signed an agreement with Indonesia's Aceh province to integrate forest carbon credits into US emissions trading schemes. The pact, the first of its kind, is a big step towards global acceptance of carbon credits from forest protection.
It is linked to preservation of the 750,000-hectare Ulu Masen forest reserve, which will save 3.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted each year, or 100 million tonnes over the project's lifetime. Australian firm Carbon Conservation teamed up with the Aceh government last year to sell the offsets, known as verified emissions reductions. These usually trade for between US$4 and US$10 per tonne of carbon saved.
This and other projects in Indonesia promise not only to preserve forests but also fight poverty and create jobs - provided they are well run and corruption is kept at bay.
