Deforestation: Paying nations not to cut down forests 'will fuel corruption'

Louise Gray, The Telegraph 14 Oct 08;

Plans to pay developing nations millions of pounds every year not to cut down forests will fuel corruption and human rights abuses, according to environmental organisations.

The controversial Eliasch Review was presented to the Prime Minister as a way of using free market economics to slow climate change.

The report suggested a 'forest emissions trading system', where credits are given to rainforest nations for limiting CO2 through protecting existing forests and planting more trees.

These credits can then be sold to developed nations that need to offset the amount of carbon they are producing.

By 2030 the market will be generating enough money to ensure the world's rainforests are protected.

However in the intervening years the world community will have to find up to $19 billion (£11 billion) annually to pay the rainforest nations, most of which are in the developing world, to protect their forests.

There was immediate concern about the money going into the hands of corrupt governments or logging companies and leading to human rights abuses as indigenous people are driven off now valuable land.

In the long run it is feared the forest credits will provide richer nations with a "get out jail free" card so that they can go on producing carbon emissions by buying offsets from developing nations.

The author of the report Johan Eliasch, a former Tory donor who runs the sports business Head, is a controversial figure in the environmental world.

Earlier this year one of his companies was fined for illegally cutting down Amazon rainforest.

Although the report was welcomed by the new Department of Energy and Climate Change, that could use the new credits to help meet impending targets, it was criticised in the development sector for being a kind of "green colonialism" by paying poorer nations to tackle climate change.

However, for all the difficultly and expense involved in paying for deforestation, Mr Eliasch said the investment would be worth the cost.

"With climate change we are living on borrowed time. If we do not address these issues today it is going to be much more expensive later on and that is why we need to take action now," he said.

Deforestation currently accounts for a fifth of the world's carbon emissions.

"Saving forests is critical for tackling climate change," explained Mr Eliash. "Without action on deforestation, avoiding the worst impacts of climate change will be next to impossible, and could lead to additonal climate of $1 trillion (£600 million) a year by 2100," he said.

"Including the forest sector in a new global deal could reduce the costs of tackling climate change by up to 50 per cent and therefore achieve deeper cuts in emissions, as well as reducing poverty in some of the world's poorest areas and protecting biodiversity."

The report called for the world to halve deforestation by 2020 and make the forest sector carbon neutral by 2030 by balancing emissions with new forest growth.

To do this the world must put a value on the rainforests by including the forest sector in the carbon market.

"Deforestation will continue as long as cutting down and burning trees is more economic than preserving them. Access to finance from carbon markets and other funding initiatives will be essential for supporting forest nations to meet this challenge," continued Mr Eliasch.

Between now and 2012 it will cost the world $4 billion (£2,000 million) to develop the new forest emissions trading system. This will include setting individual targets for rainforest nations, introducing new technology to measure emissions and helping rainforest nations to establish the mechanisms to measure and monitor rainforest emissions.

By 2020 it is expected the market will generate $7 billion (£4,000 million) towards protecting the forests. A further $11 - $19 billion (£6-11,000 million) will have to be found from the global community to pay rainforest nations to halt deforestation.

However by 2030 the market should be self sustaining as the money generated from trading the forest credits will be enough to pay to stop deforestation.

The report will be key in deciding a way forward for the world to reduce greenhouse emissions at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next year to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

But it was widely rejected by environmental groups.

Andy Tait, head of biodiversity at Greenpeace, said introducing forest credits to the existing carbon markets would drive down the price of carbon credits so that it is cheaper to pollute and allow developed nations to offsett CO2 emissions rather than investing in renewables and reducing pollution to meet targets.

"If Gordon Brown accepts these proposals he will give a green light to companies to use forest protection abroad as a cheap alternative to making the dramatic cuts in the industrial and energy sectors that we need here in the UK.

"We must do both, and allowing forests to become a get out of jail free card for the big polluters would be extremely bad news for the fight against climate change."

Tom Picken of Friends of the Earth said allowing rich countries and businesses to 'offset' their carbon dioxide emissions by buying up huge tracts of forest is "riddled with problems and will do little to tackle climate change".

Simon Counsell, director of the Rainforest Foundation UK, warned the plan could horribly backfire by creating the illusion of carbon savings whilst fuelling corruption in forests nations who do not have the means to protect their forests, and often do not know who legally owns the trees.

"Trading off our own emissions against hoped-for reductions in deforestation could be a catastrophic lose-lose strategy," he added.

Pay-to-protect forest plan gets cautious welcome
Environmentalists warn the global fund would give rich nations a cheaper alternative to cutting their own greenhouse emissions and put at risk the human rights of a billion people who depend on forests for their livelihoods

John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 14 Oct 08;

A proposal for a giant global fund to pay the owners of the world's forests not to cut them down has received a guarded welcome from environmental groups. They warn of the risks of giving rich nations a cheaper alternative to cutting their own greenhouse gas emissions and to the human rights of the tens of millions of people who live in or who depend on forests for their livelihoods.

The independent report, revealed by the Guardian, was written for the prime minister, Gordon Brown, and states that an international carbon market could prevent the deforestation that is a major contributor to climate change and inject much needed funds into poor countries.

The report calls for an international agreement to halve the carbon dioxide released through deforestation by 2020. It acknowledges this will be costly but estimates such action could be worth $3.7tr (£2.1tr) to the world's nations in net benefits over the long term. If nothing is done to slow rampant deforestation, the report states, the resulting climate change will cause impacts costing governments nearly $1tr a year by 2100.

The report was written by Johan Eliasch, a businessman appointed by Brown to be his special adviser on forests. Deforestation is responsible for at least 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing it is seen as one of the quickest and cheapest ways of cutting emissions.

The report recommends that forests be included in the emerging global carbon market. By giving standing trees a carbon value, it says, "the cost of halving global carbon emissions could be reduced by up to 50% in 2030".

The Eliasch review acknowledges it could take at least five years before the global carbon market is operating and that not all countries would currently agree to such a system.

It notes that countries that would benefit from international payments to protect their forests should be required to comply with international agreements that require them to respect human rights and to protect the environment.

The countries that might benefit are some of the most politically volatile, and – in many cases – corrupt in the world. It says that in the short term the international community should pay up to $4bn to 40 forest countries to help them reach acceptable standards of governance.

Environmentalists welcomed the report as a sign of deforestation being taken seriously by governments, and agree the issue must be tackled, but urge caution over how it is done. "Sufficient and long-term funding is needed to act as an incentive to protect forests," said Emily Brickell, climate and forests officer for WWF-UK.

But protecting the needs of people was also paramount, she said: "More than one billion of the world's poorest people rely on forests for their livelihoods, so any measures to reduce emissions from deforestation must ensure that local communities enjoy continued access to, and benefits from, forest resources."

Andy Tait, Greenpeace's head of biodiversity, expressed concern over the effect the plan would have on emissions in rich nations. "If Gordon Brown accepts these proposals he will give a green light to companies to use forest protection abroad as a cheap alternative to making the dramatic cuts in the industrial and energy sectors that we need here in the UK. Allowing forests to become a get-out-of-jail-free card for the big polluters would be extremely bad news in the fight against climate change."

The reliability of the carbon market is also a key factor, said Simon Counsell, director of the Rainforest Foundation UK: "There is a serious danger of placing excessive hope in what might be very unreliable and speculative forest protection carbon credits.

"Avoided deforestation carbon credits might well turn out to be sub-prime, as weak tropical country governments fail to deliver actual reductions in deforestation, or as forests increasingly become susceptible to fire and disease because of the warming effects of climate change itself. Trading off our own emissions against hoped-for reductions in deforestation could be a catastrophic lose-lose strategy."

According to Friends of the Earth's international climate campaigner Tom Picken, the plan does not address the deeper causes of deforestation: "Financial packages are needed – but we must also address the underlying causes, such as biofuels, excessive meat consumption and industrial logging."

Under the proposed scheme countries would be rewarded with carbon credits, which could be exchanged for cash on the global market, for not cutting down forests and for reforesting previously logged areas. While the international community would monitor forest loss via satellite, it would be left to national governments to decide how money earned would be distributed and what measures would be needed to prevent illegal logging.

The review says countries could tackle deforestation in different ways. The most controversial would be to pay logging companies not to fell trees, or subsistence farmers not to clear land. In addition, countries could greatly increase their policing of forests or could tax heavily anyone who clears forest.

But it accepts that halting deforestation will be difficult. "Such delegation [of responsibility] will involve significant costs ... which may be very challenging for many forest nations in the short term. Demonstration activities to test these approaches will be needed." It accepts there are significant human rights and land-ownership risks.

"Risks include increased state and outside expert control over forests, support for anti-people conservation and land speculation", says the report.

Rich Countries Must Pay for Rainforests - UK Report
Gerard Wynn, PlanetArk 15 Oct 08;

LONDON - Rich countries should pay tropical nations billions of dollars a year to save their forests, using donor money and global carbon markets to foot the bill, said a UK-commissioned report on Tuesday.

In the longer-term, by 2030, developing countries should also start paying to help create "carbon neutral" global forests through binding targets to slow deforestation and plant trees.

Clearing and burning forests for timber and farms creates about a fifth of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change, but growing urgency to tackle the problem is dividing opinion on how to fight the problem.

Tuesday's report drew criticism from some carbon traders and green groups, saying it down-played costs and skirted real world issues of corruption and land disputes.

The report, "Climate Change: Financing Global Forests", firmly pinned hopes on the notion of carbon trading, where rich countries pay poor ones to cut carbon emissions, so that they can carry on polluting as normal.

"Deforestation will continue as long as cutting down and burning trees is more economic than preserving them," said Johan Eliasch, author of the report and Prime Minister Gordon Brown's special representative on deforestation.

The report estimated that finance from carbon markets could curb deforestation rates by 75 percent by 2030, and urged inclusion of forests in a new global climate pact slated for agreement under UN-led talks by the end of next year.

But carbon markets would still leave a funding gap of US$11-19 billion by 2020, said the report, to be met by donors currently struggling against a worldwide banking crisis.

Extra pressures now on tropical forests include clearances to plant vegetable oils for biodiesel, and more cattle ranches to satisfy a richer world's increasingly meat-hungry diet.

Carbon markets use a carrot approach, allowing developing countries to earn carbon offsets for chopping fewer trees than in the past, and then selling these offsets to rich countries as a cheaper option to domestic greenhouse gas emissions curbs.

COSTLY

Some critics said that the report's cost estimate of US$33 billion a year to halve deforestation by 2030 was too small.

Offsets would have to compensate farmers for not planting valuable crops such as palm oil.

That implied high prices, which made one expert doubt the report's claim that forestry offsets could halve costs for rich nations to fight climate change.

"Over the next decade, forest carbon credits could conceivably cut mitigation costs by 13 percent," said Eric Bettelheim, chairman of a private company Sustainable Forestry Management, citing an estimate by Environmental Defense.

In addition, the report excluded the cost of planting new trees to replace the shortfall in timber supply.

"It's an enormous, industrial-scale undertaking, trees take time to grow and planting trees and maintaining them is expensive," added Bettelheim, estimating the total cost to halve deforestation rates at US$50-100 billion.

The Eliasch report skirted the problem of corruption and illegal logging, said Simon Counsell, executive director at the green group the Rainforest Foundation.

The report recommended that rich country donors spend US$4 billion over five years for research, to fund local bodies, and resolve local land disputes.

"It really fails to appreciate just how serious and long-term these problems of corruption and governance actually are," said Counsell, adding they would take 10 years to address.

"In DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) there's fewer than 10 people in the forestry department managing an area of forest twice the size of France. That's the reality on the ground."