Deforestation accounts for 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and the UN bodies charged with mapping out the role of forestry offsets in a post-Kyoto climate-change regime are set to meet at least four more times before a final accord is hammered out in Copenhagen at the end of this year – beginning in June. Here's a guide to the best coverage of the debate so far.

Forests were prominent on the minds of many of the 2,600 attendees at the Bonn, Germany climate meetings from 29th to April 8th. For the first time this year, the working groups charged with hashing out sticky policy issues in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process (see The UNFCCC Process, right) met in an attempt to generate language that will serve as the basis for the major climate negotiations at Copenhagen in December. One of the most substantial issues up for debate is whether and how to include Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, commonly known as REDD, as a mechanism for mitigating climate change.

In the meeting's concluding press conference, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer made it clear that there is tremendous energy from a number of parties and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to bring REDD into the climate agreement set to be finalized in Copenhagen at the end of this year.

The deliberative progress on REDD, however, has been glacial, and the Bonn meetings proved no exception to this rule. In light of this, there is currently an attempt to establish REDD as a separate negotiating stream within the AWG-LCA,
which is one of the working groups referred to above and in the bar on the right.

Such a move would enable real progress on the tough issues.

Financing REDD

It is an axiom of life that money complicates everything, and so it is for REDD. Over the course of the Bonn meetings, the debate continued regarding how to finance the reduction of deforestation in developing countries. Should REDD be financed in the model of traditional government-to-government development funding, or should it be linked to a market, and should it generate credits that can be used by industrialized countries to meet their emissions targets?

No consensus was reached on these questions in Bonn, but there was a general trend in the discussions towards developing a hybrid approach combining the various funding options.

A proposal from Norway helped focus discussions around the idea of a multi-phased process for REDD implementation that would be customizable, to fit the circumstances of each participating country. Correspondingly, each phase would be funded through a different finance mechanism, beginning with direct government assistance, and culminating in the generation of credits that developed countries could use to meet their emission targets. The Government of Norway released a report that elaborates this approach.

Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF)

Leaving REDD aside, carbon emissions and sequestration from changing land use are already a part of the Kyoto Protocol, where industrialized countries must account for their LULUCF emissions. During a meeting of another of the working groups referred to above, the AWG-KP, a carbon accounting option suggested by the European Union caused quite a stir. The accounting method, known as the "bar approach", proposes that a country would have a reference level of LULUCF emissions (or reductions), based on some agreed-upon historical baseline. If the country went below that emission level, it would be credited; if it went above, it would be debited.

The influential Climate Action Network viewed this proposal with a healthy dose of skepticism, suggesting in its ECO newsletter that the method might be susceptible to 'gaming'. Without a doubt, however, the issue will reappear at the next AG-KP meetings, set for early June in Bonn.

Indigenous Rights

The rights of Indigenous Peoples in the development and implementation of REDD also continued to be a contentious issue the in the Bonn meetings, with a number of organizations contending that little was being done to enable the participation of indigenous communities, or to protect the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), as provided in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Next Steps

The next major meeting will be June 1st-12th, again in Bonn, where the working groups will resume their discussions in tandem with two other deliberative bodies. And, as a sign of the urgency surrounding the negotiations, additional meetings have been added to an already crowded 2009 schedule, in advance of Copenhagen (see UNFCCC 2009 Schedule, right).

Copenhagen: The End of The Beginning for REDD?

While the addition of two new working group meetings on the UNFCCC schedule indicates a true commitment on the part of the working groups to bring substantial and specific text to Copenhagen for negotiation, it is still too early to tell how much progress can honestly be made in the next six months. Referring to the REDD negotiations, AWG-LCA chair Zammit Cutajar urged prudence from the participants. He reminded them that the famously complicated Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is only covered in one small article in the Kyoto Protocol, and suggested that participants focus on sending the right 'signal' in Copenhagen, with the details being hashed out later.

Perhaps REDD will be a mere sentence in the Copenhagen document, leaving the details for yet another day?

Reporting and Summaries

At each UNFCCC meeting, organizations and institutions offer their perspective on the events, either through reporting or analysis. Here we have highlighted a few we found particularly useful.

Earth Negotiations Bulletin

For those that want to follow the events of the Bonn meeting in detail, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) reporting service provides the most consistent and impartial reportage throughout the various climate negotiations. You can download the wrap-up from the Bonn meetings, or you can view the index of their daily Bonn reporting. A word of caution: These summaries are laden with acronyms and arcane terminology.

Carbon Finance

In an insightful piece, Andrei Marcu, a senior advisor on emissions trading at the Canadian law firm Bennett Jones and negotiator for Panama, reads the tea leaves on the REDD discussions at Bonn, to try to divine what might happen in Copenhagen. He also offers insights into what it all might mean for businesses and investors.

Global Canopy Program Blog

With two bookend postings from the Bonn meetings, Charlie Parker of the Global Canopy Program provides a quick summary of what could have happened and what did happen with regards to REDD in the various policy negotiating streams, and offers a another perspective the ultimate outcome Copenhagen.

ECO Newsletter

The Climate Action Network, which we alluded to above, represents 450 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and provides daily coverage and (often witty) commentary from the NGO perspective through its ECO Newsletter.

Statements and Outputs

To coincide with the Bonn meetings, a number of organizations and institutions released reports to inform, and in some cases influence, the discussions. Here are a few of the relevant publications.

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) released two briefings by Virgilio Viana, director general of the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation which helped to pioneer a system of REDD payments in Amazonas. In the briefings, Viana makes the argument for funding approach for REDD that combines market access (carbon credits) with funding from governments.

Greenpeace released a report proposing that including forest offset credits in carbon markets would cause a 75 percent collapse in the price of carbon, triggering a subsequent reduction in clean technology investments. The report, however, highlights findings of an unconstrained scenario as opposed to the more likely one with politically constrained supply.

Additionally, the recent draft US climate bill evidences a strong US demand projection for credits and thus the likelihood of international forestry credits causing global carbon prices to crash also decreases significantly. Moreover, revenue from the strategic reserve auctions and allowance set asides in the supplemental pollution reduction program to retire forestry credits should mitigate the deflationary price pressure as well.

A number of organizations are attempting to work the issue of agriculture into the negotiations, both in terms of adaptation and mitigation. The (International Food Policy Research Institute IFPRI) released a brief summarizing the main arguments for doing so.

UNFCCC Resources

As with any major UNFCCC meeting, there are a host of official documents to sort through. These are all available at the UNFCCC website for that particular meeting. There, one can find the documents that various stakeholders and observer organizations submitted in advance of the meeting, to see where they stand on the issues.

Of unique interest is the focus document for the working group on long-term cooperative action, written by the Chair of the working group. Released in two parts (one and two), this document is intended to summarize the state of negotiations on high-profile issues at the beginning of the meetings, and serves as the departure point for the meetings negotiations. (by Evan Johnson)

Source: EcosystemMarketplace

NAIROBI (Reuters) - International researchers launched a $12 million study on Monday intended to help many of the world's poorest farmers benefit from multi-billion dollar schemes to limit emissions of greenhouse gases.

The 18-month Carbon Benefits Project will examine rural sites in Kenya, Niger, Nigeria and China to see how much carbon is stored in trees and soil when land is managed sustainably.

It is led by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Washington-based financial arm for international conventions on green issues.

Tropical deforestation accounts for a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Trees soak up carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they are burned or rot.

Farming contributes as much to global warming as all the world's planes, cars and trucks, and that will increase as the world tries to feed an extra 3 billion people by 2050.

Putting a price on living trees and storing carbon in the soil could give developing countries an incentive to save forests and adopt more climate-friendly farming practices.

The new study would measure the impact on soil carbon of such practices, an area which lags measuring carbon in trees.

About 190 nations have agreed to thrash out a new U.N. climate treaty in December in Denmark that would step up the fight against global warming, which scientists say will bring more heat waves, droughts, floods and rising seas.

They will consider paying developing nations for maintaining standing forests -- but so far there is no agreement on how to put a price on carbon in forests and especially soil.

"We all hope for a deal in Copenhagen, and it is having such tools (as the Carbon Benefits Project) that will actually make the deal implementable on the ground," GEF official Maryam Niamir-Fuller told reporters at UNEP headquarters in Kenya.

"The true economic value of ... ecosystem services has not been integrated into the value of crops or livestock. Since that value is not there, it is not captured by the markets -- then you have all kinds of distortions."

MARKETS UNEASY

Rich countries agree they have to lead a climate fight after enjoying two centuries of industrialization and pollution, but they disagree with developing nations on how much of the burden they should carry under a new global treaty.

Suggestions range from carbon trading to levying new taxes in developed nations to raise cash. Carbon trading puts a cap on emissions in one region but allows participants to pay for cuts elsewhere, and so channels funds into developing countries.

But such carbon offsets could divert from climate action at home, skeptics say. Greenpeace said in March that the price of carbon market credits prices could fall 75 percent if credits for safeguarding forests were added to existing markets for industrial emissions -- dramatically reducing the incentive for carbon reduction.

Including soil among carbon offsets options could further swamp demand. Scientists say that the soil could store as much as one-tenth of annual global carbon emissions, if farmers used longer crop rotations and grazed fewer livestock, for example.

A European Commission report last year also said the European Union should not let industry meet its climate goals by funding forest conservation in tropical nations before 2020.

It said this would cause serious supply and demand imbalances, and that deforestation emissions were three times bigger than emissions regulated by the EU emissions trading scheme. But such estimates are highly approximate.

David L. Skole, a forestry expert from Michigan State University, said the new project would help develop more accurate tools to measure the amounts of carbon involved.

"When it comes to agro-forestry, agriculture and forestry and land-based carbon sequestration, there is a lot of uncertainty and uneasiness in the market," Skole said.

"This is then an obstacle ... Without a way to quantify the carbon from those farms as accurately as you can quantify the CO2 from a smokestack, smallholders can't get engaged."

(Additional reporting by Gerard Wynn in London; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Source: UK Reuters

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Village communities in Western Kenya could become the key to unlocking the multi-billion dollar carbon markets.

The markets are intended for millions of farmers, foresters and conservationists across the developing world. Catchments in and around Lake Victoria have been chosen as a test-bed for calculating how much carbon can be stored in trees and soils when the land is managed in a sustainable, climate-friendly ways.

Communities in Niger, Nigeria and China will also benefit from the initiative.

The initiative, known as the Carbon Benefits Project, was launched Monday by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Agroforestry Centre, along with a range of other key partners.

"Farming carbon alongside farming crops is just one of the tantalizing prospects emerging as a result of the world's urgent need to combat climate change," said Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director.

The project is being funded by the Global Environment Facility.

Under the United Nation's climate convention and its Kyoto Protocol, developed countries can offset some of their greenhouse gas emissions by paying developing economies for implementing clean and renewable energy projects such as wind, solar and geothermal power.

In December 2009, at the crucial UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, nations will decide to also pay to tropically-forested countries for maintaining standing forests under a scheme known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD).

This is because up to 20 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions linked with climate change is coming from deforestation-more than from cars, trucks, planes and ships combined.

UNEP, along with the Food and Agricultural Organization and the UN Development Programme, is working with nine developing nations including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea and Panama in preparation for the inclusion of REDD in a future agreement on climate change in Copenhagen. (By: Rosalia Opondo)

Source: kbc.co.ke

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MANADO, Indonesia, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia on Monday urged the world to take action on ecosystem management and climate change that threatened oceans.

"These actions need to be extended from the global community of nations right down to each and every human being," said the Minister of Marine and Fisheries Freddy Numberi in the opening speech of the World Ocean Conference here.

Numberi stressed that the WOC should focus on oceans and climate change because the coupling issues really needed to be accorded a high priority, recognizing a significant proportion of economic development, food security and livelihoods were reliant on healthy oceans and marine system.

The WOC was considered to mainstreaming the climate change policies in oceans governance and to exploring opportunities to enhance adaptation capacity.

The minister encouraged that the world should work individually or collectively and international organization to enhance scientific activities on the marine environment and marine biodiversity to develop ways and means of adaption to climate change.

"We must work together to promote and advocate for better understanding of the linkage between oceans and climate change and the adverse impact of climate change on ecosystems, marine biodiversity, and coastal communities in Small Island Developing States which are under high risk of being submerged with sea level rise," said the minister.

He also demanded the world to strengthen partnership and networks for capacity building and information exchange on climate change related issues and concerns, including planning, implementation and monitoring of adaption and mitigation strategies.

The conference is held between May 11-15, 2009 and would discuss the global concern for its future amidst all uncertainties brought by global warming, polar ice melt, high sea level rise, changing weather patterns, sinking islands, acidification of the sea, coral reef destruction and other impacts of uncontrolled emission of green house gases. (Editor: Zhang Xiang)

Source: Xinhuanet.com

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