Pay Countries To Protect Trees, Climate?

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Pay Countries To Protect Trees, Climate?

 

Idea adopted at Bali talks, but questions about effectiveness remain

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23000068/

 

By Michael Casey

AP Environmental Writer

The Associated Press

updated 8:21 a.m. CT, Tues., Feb. 5, 2008

 

BALI, Indonesia - For decades, a flood of aid and an army of

conservationists couldn't save Indonesia's rain forests from illegal

loggers, land-hungry peasants and the spread of giant plantations.

Now the world is looking at a simpler approach: up-front cash.

 

Whether it was arming forest police or backing schemes to certify

legal logs, no tactic could silence the chain saws or douse the

intentional fires that each day destroy 20 more square miles of

Indonesia's rain forests, and an estimated 110 square miles elsewhere

in the world's tropics.

 

The problem was pure economics: Neither local authorities nor the

rural poor, in Indonesia and elsewhere, have a material incentive to

keep their forests intact.

 

That could now change because of a decision at December's U.N.

climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate a deal, as part

of the next international climate agreement, under which countries

would be rewarded for reducing their galloping rates of

deforestation, a big contributor to global warming.

 

The cash might come directly from a fund financed by richer northern

nations, or through " carbon credits " granted per unit of forest

saved. The credits could be traded on the world carbon market, where

a northern industry can buy such allowances to help meet its own

required reductions in emissions of global-warming gases.

 

Indonesia and other tropical countries backing the " avoided

deforestation " concept hope this carbon price will outpace what

landowners could get from logging the forests or clearing them for

palm oil, rubber, soybean or other plantations.

 

" For the next decade, the international community and countries that

negotiate this convention have tremendous potential, tremendous power

in their hands, " said Benoit Bosquet, head of a World Bank project to

prepare poorer countries to take part in the new initiative, known as

REDD, for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation.

 

" There will be a lot of money going in there, " he said. " You will

see actors currently converting forest to plantations and cattle

ranches saying, `Wait a minute. If I get more money to preserve my

forest than to produce beef, then of course I will keep my forest

standing. " '

 

From REDD to reality not easy

 

But turning REDD into reality is far from guaranteed, given competing

interests among tropical countries, the world's growing demand for

plantation products, and its poor track record in controlling

deforestation.

 

The tangled question of forests has dogged climate negotiations for

years.

 

Deforestation was left out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol because of

concerns that tradable credits for saving forests would take pressure

off northern nations to reduce their own industries' greenhouse-gas

emissions as required under that accord. But scientific uncertainty

also muddies the picture.

 

The carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by the burning and

rotting of deforestation is estimated to account for 20 percent of

manmade greenhouse-gas emissions. But from Brazil's mahogany trees

to Papua New Guinea's thick-trunked kauri, how much carbon is stored

in which of the world's forests? How much carbon dioxide is absorbed

by which trees?

 

How will the world fix baselines, judging what a country's " usual "

deforestation rate is, in order to gauge rewards for a lower rate?

And who's to verify the numbers?

 

A technical body under the U.N. climate treaty is collecting

proposals from governments on how to address such issues. It's the

first step toward negotiating a deal by 2009, as part of an overall

agreement on deeper emissions cuts to succeed Kyoto when it expires

in 2012.

 

Beyond the technical, however, political disputes will complicate the

U.N. talks.

 

The focus may be on today's deforestation, but India, Costa Rica and

others believe they should get credit for having been " good " —

protecting their forests over the years. Some rain-forest

governments, meanwhile, want commercial tree plantations counted in

the mix, a move environmentalists oppose.

 

Some fear " avoided deforestation " credits flooding the market will

drive down the carbon price. That's why REDD's advocates want the

next round of emissions reductions to cut much deeper than Kyoto,

raising demand for credits.

 

Brazil, whose energy projects already make it a big player in carbon

credits, has opposed extending that market to trees, favoring instead

a global fund to compensate rain-forest nations directly for income

lost when land sits undeveloped.

 

The British government's Stern Review of climate economics argued

that targeting deforestation is among the cheapest ways to reduce

greenhouses gases. It estimated halting 70 percent of rain-forest

destruction would cost $5 billion a year in compensation.

 

Some rain-forest nations, on the other hand, calculate REDD could

generate as much as $23 billion a year.

 

Whatever the amount, into whose pockets would these credits or cash

flow?

 

Over the years, in Indonesia and elsewhere, many initiatives — from

arresting illegal loggers to promoting sustainable logging

operations — have failed because of widespread corruption. Bribed

officials look the other way. Politically connected elites often

reap the profits from deforestation. Such problems remain.

 

Few governments have the means or money to monitor their

deforestation. Land-rights disputes leave ownership of much forested

land in question. Some environmentalists fear governments might push

indigenous people out of newly protected forests — as they did when

many national parks were created.

 

Need to know who owns forests

 

" We need to have clear property rights so we know who owns these

forests that we're paying not to convert, " said Frances Seymour, head

of the Center for International Forestry Research in Indonesia. " We

need mechanisms to get (the funds) down to the local level so they

are not just skimmed off at the top. "

 

Powerful interests have much at stake. European money is bringing

pressure on Malaysia and Indonesia, for example, to clear land to

produce biofuels, and Brazil faces demands from China to plant

soybean to feed their growing middle class.

 

" It doesn't stop at national borders, " said the World Bank's

Bosquet. " What Brazil is doing is supplying more beef and soy to the

outside world. You don't control that within Brazil. "

 

The challenge in the Amazon became clear again in late January, when

Brazil's government met in emergency session to deal with a sudden

burst of deforestation after three years of decline.

 

Two months earlier, visiting the Amazon, U.N. Secretary-General Ban

Ki-moon learned how dying rain forests will feed global warming, and

he went on to Bali to urge the world's nations to act. " It is time

to wake up, " he said.

 

Cutting through the political tangle to produce the grand plan called

REDD — money for doing nothing to forests — will itself prove a

challenge.

 

" There is a hell of a lot to negotiate and many controversial

issues, " said Christoph Thies, a Greenpeace forest campaigner who

observed the Bali talks. " It's a long and difficult road ahead. To

be honest, there is quite a good chance of failure. "

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

 

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23000068/