Why does the UN’s latest scheme to save the forests not address the drivers of deforestation?

Forests are big news these days. Preventing deforestation will help us address climate change (at least if the carbon stored in the forests isn’t traded, allowing emissions to continue elsewhere).[1] Yet forests have never been under such serious threat.

Reducing deforestation is a good idea. Stopping it altogether would be better. Paying the Indigenous People and local communities who protect the forests would be even better. That is supposed to be the idea behind the Big New Plan to save the forests: REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation). So why does REDD not attempt to address the drivers of deforestation?

As WRM has repeatedly pointed out, one of the most insidious threats to forests comes from industrial tree plantations. The current obsession with all things carbon, coupled with the UN’s failure to differentiate between forests and plantations,[2] provides the biggest ever incentive to clear forests and replace them with plantations.

A major part of that threat comes from a false solution to climate change: biomass plantations. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wood is considered to be “biogenic carbon”, which is “part of the natural carbon balance [that] will not add to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.” But as a result of this creative accounting, biomass plants are springing up like mushrooms after the rain. China is planning to build 30,000 MW of biomass power plants by 2020. The southern USA has been called the “Saudi Arabia of biomass”. Much of this expansion is to feed European utility companies, which have to produce 20 per cent of their energy from “renewable sources” by 2020.[3]

As trees grow they absorb carbon. So far so good. But biomass proponents are ignoring the fact that burning wood releases carbon dioxide, much as the pulp and paper industry ignores the fact that pulping wood to make paper also produces massive amounts of carbon dioxide.

Of course, if the trees are replanted, they will absorb carbon dioxide. But even with the fastest growing eucalyptus trees there is a five to seven year delay before the carbon dioxide released by burning the wood is absorbed by the trees. If we are going to address dangerous runaway climate change, the last thing we need is a five to seven year delay. Trees in Europe and the USA grow more slowly and therefore take longer to absorb the carbon.[4]

A May 2009 report in Science magazine, written by Marshall Wise and colleagues at the University of Maryland, compares two possible future scenarios.[5] One where all carbon emissions are taxed (including emissions from land use change) and one where only fossil fuel and industrial carbon emissions are taxed. The latter case is the logical outcome from considering biomass as “biogenic carbon” and therefore ignoring the carbon dioxide emitted when it is burned. The result of this would be that “virtually all land that is not required for growing food and forest products is used for growing bioenergy”. A graph in the article shows that by 2065 all unmanaged forest, shrubland, grassland and unmanaged pasture worldwide would be converted to bioenergy plantations.

The authors drily comment that “Such grand-scale deforestation is hard to imagine in reality, because it is hard to imagine that society would find this result acceptable.”

Riau Province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, provides an example of precisely such “grand-scale deforestation”. Twenty years ago the province was 80 per cent forested. Now, only about 30 per cent is left. Two pulp and paper companies have driven the deforestation: Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources International (APRIL). The conglomerates that own the companies (Sinar Mas and Raja Garuda Mas, respectively) have also invested in massive oil palm plantations, resulting in yet more forest destruction. One of the drivers of oil palm plantation expansion is the demand for bioenergy in Europe.

The Indonesian government is fond of REDD, not least because it hopes to gain millions of dollars worth of funding through REDD. Countries in the North are also keen to fund REDD in Indonesia, not least because it allows them to greenwash continued oil extraction. Norway’s StatoilHydro, for example, is developing oil projects in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Norway’s Ambassador to Indonesia, Eivind Homme can claim that “Norway is financing the UN REDD program, one of the pilot projects on climate change, in Indonesia.”[6]

Indonesia was the first country in the world to establish legislation on REDD investments. Yet earlier this year, the same Indonesian government decided to allow the expansion of oil palm plantations on peatlands. To grow palm oil or pulpwood tree plantations on peatland the land has to be cleared and drained, which releases millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The authorities also allow pulp companies to log native forests and turn a blind eye when they use illegal timber.[7]

Will REDD address this destruction? Not if progress so far is anything to go by. In Guyana, President Bharrat Jagdeo assures industry that his Low Carbon Development Strategy will not affect logging companies, mining companies or plans for road building through forested areas.[8] In Papua New Guinea, the government is doing little or nothing to address the destruction caused by industrial logging or oil palm plantations, while allowing a series of companies to sign dubious forest carbon trading deals with villagers for future REDD projects.[9]

Unless REDD addresses the destruction caused by logging and plantations (whether for bioenergy, oil palm or pulpwood) it will fail to halt deforestation. And as long as the UN definition of forests fails to differentiate between forests and plantations, there is no chance of this happening.

References

[1] See REDD-Monitor for a discussion about the problems with trading forest carbon.

[2] Rhett A. Butler (2009) “Weak forest definition may undermine REDD efforts“, Mongabay, 20 August 2009.

[3] European Demand For Wood Fiber”, Forest2Mill newsletter, August 2009.

[4] David Baumann (2009) “Fuzzy logic on wood-burning“, Berkshire Eagle, 12 April 2009.

[5] Marshall Wise, Katherine Calvin, Allison Thomson, Leon Clarke, Benjamin Bond-Lamberty, Ronald Sands, Steven J. Smith, Anothy Janetos, James Edwards (2009) “Implications of Limiting CO2 Concentrations for Land Use and Energy”, Science, Vol 324, 29 May 2009.

[6] Veeramalla Anjaiah (2009) “Norway to cooperate with Indonesia on energy and climate: Envoy”, Jakarta Post, 18 May 2009.

[7] Adianto P. Simamora (2009) “Inconsistent policies accelerate forest destruction: NGOs“, Jakarta Post, 13 August 2009.

[8] For a collection of President Jagdeo’s statements on the Low Carbon Development Strategy as reported in the Guyanese media in August 2009, see “Guyana_Forests“.

[9] See REDD-Monitor for more information about REDD in Papua New Guinea.
Economist journalist Natasha Loder is also following this story on her blog, Overmatter. Ilya Gridneff, who works with Australian Associated Press, has also written several articles on the subject.

(By Chris Lang. Published in WRM Bulletin 145, August 2009.)

Source: chrislang.org

Shout Your Voice!

Tags: forest , REDD

In recent weeks a storm has been gathering over Papua New Guinea’s ‘Carbon Cowboys’.  Natasha Loder, science writer for the Economist, and Chris Lang of the REDD-Monitor have been leading the charge on this, along with an AAP reporter based in Port Moresby, who broke the stranger than fiction story of the man behind the Kamula Doso REDD carbon trading scandal.

Kirk Williams Roberts, an Australian who before jumping into the world of carbon offsets ran a Philippines cock fighting syndicate, was ID’d to be the man behind Nupan PNG, the company who has been meeting with local Papuans, making fantastical claims about the benefits REDD will bring to their remote villages.

Kirk Williams Roberts, an Australian who before jumping into the world of carbon offsets ran a Philippines cock fighting syndicate, was ID’d to be the man behind Nupan PNG, the company who has been meeting with local Papuans, making fantastical claims about the benefits REDD will bring to their remote villages.Roberts, along with Dr Theo Yasause, the direct of PNG’s Office of Climate Change, have been busy selling millions of dollars of forest carbon credits on the international market, even though PNG does not have any carbon policy or legistlation. Yasause has been fired, and his Office of Climate Change is under investigation by the PNG government.

This scandal is just the latest in series of ‘carbon grabs’ that have emerged as the REDD carbon trading market gains momentum. Although there are no mandatory guidelines in the international climate treaties regarding forest carbon, it is widely expected that REDD forest carbon trading agreements will be a part of the post-Kyoto regime in 2012.

EcoSecurities, one of the big players in voluntary forest carbon, thinks the REDD credit market can grow to USD 45 billion as the market moves to mandatory commitments by the world’s governments.  That USD 45 billion in market potential has speculators diving in,  marketing their efforts as good for the world’s forests and good for the world’s forest dwelling people.

But in what has become a common trend around the world, the people who live in these threatened forests are poised to lose out. Indonesia has made the most concrete steps in developing a national level REDD market, releasing REDD revenue sharing guidelines this July. Carbon Positive reports that 50 percent of all REDD revenues will go to the government, with as little as 20 percent going to local communities.

A coalition of 9 Indonesian NGOs and 1 international NGO – including Sawit Watch, AMAN, and Gemawan – recently released a statement rejecting REDD as dire threat to local communities:

“Without effective measures to secure indigenous peoples’ rights, REDD concessions and activities can be expected to cause additional and further irreparable harm [to local communities].

In response, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has said that:

“Indonesia’s ‘Regulation on Implementation Procedures for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation’ appears to deny any proprietary rights to indigenous peoples in forests.”

One lesson to be learned from PNG’s ‘Carbon Cowboys’ is that REDD will require extreme diligence to ensure that forest carbon schemes do not become yet another impetus to marginalize native communities, and allow select elites to enrich themselves as no real conservation of forests occurs. (David Gilbert)

David Gilbert is a Research Fellow at RAN. He has worked in the tropical forests of the Amazon and Indonesia, with a special focus on forest conservation and indigenous rights.

Source: Rainforest Action Network (RAN)

Some rights for the image is reserved under Creative Commons license

Tags: carbon credit , forest , REDD

Deforestation is responsible for about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Driven in part by consumer appetite for cheap beef, leather, timber, biofuels, tropical oils and products, as well as paper products, deforestation is proceeding at the rate of an estimated 13 million hectares a year. That translates into 50,000 square miles, an area more than half the size of the United Kingdom, being lost every year.

While there is growing international support for tackling global deforestation -- there's even generous support in the Waxman-Markey bill for the effort -- action has been stymied by the overall lack of progress on a global climate agreement. The circumstance is exemplified by the UN's program on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD). It has only one donor, Norway, and six projects off the ground.

While addressing deforestation has remained difficult, around the world there has been encouraging progress on the opposite process - reforestation and afforestation. Governments, companies, organizations and individuals are putting trees back on some of the lands devastated by deforestation. 

Earlier this month, Pakistan broke a Guinness World Record previously held by India for the most trees planted in a single day – 541,176. There are even reforestation vacations for enterprising travelers that want to get in on the act. But popular events are just the tip of the iceberg of a far more difficult process that is proceeding largely unseen in many pockets around the world.

The Example of India

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently put a spotlight on India’s reforestation efforts as part of her global climate diplomacy. Speaking on CNN, she gave India credit for the $3 billion it has budgeted for reforestation. Indian Minister of Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, earlier this month tooted his own horn in the Times of India.

Brazil has been leading the discussions on how to give incentives to reduce deforestation, that is, to prevent existing forests from being cut down. India has been leading the discussions on giving incentives to accelerate afforestation and reforestation. In fact we have submitted a project proposal to the UNFCCC on sustainable forest management.

Yet India faces a number of challenges in both its forest protection and reforestation efforts, not the least of which is balancing its Forest Conservation Act with the Forest Rights Act, which gives forest-dwelling tribes the right to exploit forest resources and access to forest land.

Despite these its efforts, India is still losing forested land, though deforestation rates have slowed significantly, according to Ramesh.

“Between 1950 and 1980, before the Forest Conservation Act, India was losing 140,000 hectares to non-forest use. After the Act, between 1980 and 2008, the loss has been 25,000 hectares.”

U.S. Reforestation Efforts

In the U.S., under the banner of the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI), a plan was recently floated to reforest an initial 175,000 acres of Appalachian mountains, part of  the 1.5 million acres destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining. The group is looking for $422 million in federal stimulus money to plant 125 million trees, a project they say will not only restore habitat but create 2000 local jobs and improve local water quality. Many of ARRI’s partners are the very same companies that removed those mountain tops and restored the areas as hay pastures instead of reforesting them.

Green Jobs Czar Van Jones is reported to be ‘interested’ in the project and even the UN, which has a campaign to plant 7 billion trees around the world over the next three years, sent an emissary to a Kentucky mountaintop earlier this year to help plant saplings under the auspices of the Billion Tree Campaign.

Motivated By Orangutans

The Samboja Lestari project in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, is a project of a different nature. It grew out of conservationist Will Smits desire to restore orangutan habitat in Borneo and was supported by $4.5 million in NGO funding. The project was the subject of his talk at the TED conference in February of this year and also the subject of a recent article in Science called "Restoring a 'Biological Desert' on Borneo."

A 2000 hectare area, once clear-cut, has been restored thanks to the project Smits launched in 2002. The area is in one of the poorest districts in the province where people once spent 22% of their income buying water.

Samboja Lestari is now home to 1600 species of plants, 137 types of birds, 30 species of reptiles, sun bears and orangutans. Rainfall in the area has increased by 25% and local air temperature has decreased by 3 – 5 degrees Celsius. 3000 people in the area, which previously experienced unemployment rates as high as 50%, are paid salaries for tree-planting and sustainable production of cash crops, food, timber and ethanol. Everybody seems to be winning.

Smits blames the growing appetite for biofuels for the most recent destruction of the forested areas. And these are not just any forested areas, Smits explains, but the largest accumulation of organic material in the world.

“When you open this for growing oil pumps,” he says, “you are creating CO2 volcanoes that are emitting so much CO2 that my country (Indonesia) is the third largest emitter of CO2 in the world, after only China and the United States, even though we don’t have any industry at all -- only because of this deforestation.”

A new report (pdf) from Christian Aid concurs that deforestation, along with pollution of local water resources and displacement of local farmers are the main by-products of the current biofuels system.

Smits project has been successful, but he doesn’t want anyone to believe that it is easy. In 1998, East Kalimantan lost 5.5 million hectares to fires in just 5 months. It’s imperative that the local population be prepared to protect the forests against these fires that move from underground to brush during dry seasons. In Samboja Lestari, they created fire insurance by planting a ring of fire-resistant sugar palms around the area. Tapping them twice daily provides income for 648 families and protects the area.

Addressing local poverty was a critical part of the reforestation effort as well. From introducing crops like pineapple, beans and ginger and limiting tree planting to 1000 a day in order to keep employment stable, great care was paid to the needs and culture of the local community.

The $4.5 million spent on the project is a quarter of what the U.S. and Germany just allocated to reforest a similarly sized area in Bangladesh -- $19 million for the Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary in Bangladesh. The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that it hopes the project will create income opportunities for over 125,000 people who live in and around Chunati - income that does not come from cutting down trees.

Private Corporations Claim a Stake in Reforestation

Last week, SFM-BAM’s Campo Verde project in Peru became the first commercial reforestation endeavor using native species to be validated under the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) and following the AFOLU guidelines for Afforestation and Reforestation. The project, which has planted 919 hectares so far and has a goal of 18,900 hectares, was validated by TÜV SÜD and is also undergoing validation under the Carbon, Community, and Biodiversity Standard (CCB).

SFM-BAM is a Peruvian forestry and environmental services company that owns the land they are reforesting and are currently developing several large REDD projects in various regions of the Peruvian Amazon.

Gonzalo Castro de la Mata, Executive Vice-Chairman of Sustainable Forestry Management, explained the profit model of the project.

“The revenue comes from 2 sources: carbon (credits) and timber,” told SolveClimate. “The timber creates value over the long-term; the carbon is planned to be monetized immediately.”

While the project employs 250 men and women (with an equal gender balance), those workers will not share in the ultimate profits of the reforestation in the way that a project like Samboja Lestari is set up to allow. Still, the company argues that there are ongoing social and ecological benefits for the local communities,

“It is important to recognize the emphasis in training of local workers, as well as the active involvement of local actors as projects partners, in the form of small enterprises which produce the seedlings and provide services,” says Castro de la Mata. “These aspects are fundamental for the long term sustainability of the project.”

Earlier this month, The World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund announced that it would purchase 500,000 tons of emission reductions from a reforestation project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Ibi Bateke Carbon Sink Plantation Project will reforest 4,200 hectares of degraded land and trap an estimated 2.4 million tons of carbon dioxide over the next 30 years. French carbon buyer Orbeo has committed to purchasing a similar amount of credits from the project. It is also the first project in the DRC to benefit from global trade in emission reductions under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Similar to Campo Verde, the project is being developed by a private Congolese firm, Novacel. The company, founded by Bateke locals, has obtained loans from French water conglomerate Suez and Belgian materials and metal company Umicore to finance the project. Novacel has committed some of its profits to finance health, education and agro-forestry activities in the local community.

Whether these efforts at reforestation - both private and public - find long term and larger scale success has yet to be determined. Success in forest maintenance seems to rest with creating economic opportunity for the local community. As Willie Smits reiterates throughout his talk, the key is developing local economic value in keeping forests.

“If we want to help the orangutans- what I actually set out to do – we must make sure that the local people are the ones that benefit,” Smits told the TED audience, adding “I think the real key to doing it, if you want a simple answer, is integration.”

(by Leslie Berliant)

Leslie Berliant is a writer living in Los Angeles. She is a partner at BLU MOON Group, a cause marketing firm that specializes in advocacy campaigns. She writes about the environment and other topics for a number of publications including Celsias, PNN and the LOHAS Journal. She is also a featured poet in several books including Deliver Me and Big City Mantra.

Source: solve climate

Shout Your Voice!

Tags: REDD , reforestation

The UN’s definition of a forest may not be adequate enough to underpin a robust carbon market in avoided deforestation envisaged under the emerging REDD initiative, the results of a new study suggest. The study by Nophea Sasaki and Francis E. Putz has been published in the journal Conservation Letters and considers the differences in carbon stocks in forests of different densities.

The UN climate change convention (UNFCCC) offers a very flexible definition of a forest as an area of land at least 0.05 to 1 hectare, and at least 10 to 30 per cent covered by tree canopy. Trees must also have the potential to reach a minimum height of 2 to 5 metres. It is open to nations to set their own limits within these wide ranges, creating the potential for significant inconsistency in forest treatment around the world.

Worse still, the researchers say that overall these benchmarks are too low and should be raised. A natural forest typically has higher coverage than these ranges. They warn that exploitative foresters could log a substantial volume of mature trees within a natural forest and leave a severely degraded forest still meeting the UN standard.

REDD is envisaged to establish a payment mechanism to prevent both total deforestation and partial deforestation, or degradation, of natural forest. But the loose UN forest definition could undermine prevention of degradation. It could allow foresters to claim carbon credits for protecting a forest, yet still log a substantial proportion of its trees. With those trees could go up to 40 per cent of the carbon stored in forest, Sasaki and Putz say, much of it released to the atmosphere and producing a very poor result for the climate.

Strict carbon verification standards have been established that go a long way to ensuring that carbon credits generated from forestry projects reflect real and measurable carbon storage and emission reductions. But forest degradation is much harder to monitor than total deforestation, which may allow less reputable loggers to claim the full carbon market value for forest preservation yet still get away with selective harvesting of the biggest trees.

The study authors say the UN forest definition should be tightened to establish a minimum threshold for canopy cover of 40 per cent and a minimum tree height of 5 metres. There should also be tighter rules for natural forests than plantations, they argue.

Source: carbonpositive

Tags: forest , REDD