Michael Casey, Associated Press Yahoo News 19 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN – A plan to protect the world's biologically rich tropical forests by paying poor nations to protect them was shelved Saturday after world leaders failed to agree on a binding deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Burning trees to clear land for plantations or cattle ranches and logging forests for wood is blamed for about 20 percent of the world's emissions. That's as much carbon dioxide as all the world's cars, trucks, trains, planes and ships combined.
About 32 million acres (13 million hectares) of forests are cut down each year — an area about the size of England or New York State — and the emissions generated are comparable to those of China and the United States, according to the Eliasch Review.
Deforestation for logging, cattle grazing and crops has made Indonesia and Brazil the world's third- and fourth-biggest carbon emitters, after China and the United States.
All that made the failure of the forest project even more stinging.
"No treaty means that forest destruction will continue unabated, forest-dependent peoples' rights will not be protected and endangered species will continue down the path to extinction," said Stephen Leonard of the Australian Orangutan Project.
"REDD gets punted along for another year," said Kevin Conrad, executive director of the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, which includes many of the 40 tropical countries that would take part in the program.
"It's depressing," he said. "It means I've got to spend another year ... coming to meetings and talking about the same things."
But others said even without the legal framework, the forest program known as REDD — for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation — did benefit from the talks. World leaders at the U.N. talks in Copenhagen did agree to spend $30 billion over the next three years and $100 billion by 2020 to help poor nations — and some of that money could go toward the forest program.
"The failure to conclude a comprehensive agreement on forests is disappointing," said Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But if developed countries can deliver the $100 billion per year aimed for in the broader Copenhagen Accord, there is little doubt that a large part of that will go to help preserve forests."
REDD would be financed either by wealthy nations or by a carbon-trading mechanism — a system in which each country would have an emissions ceiling, allowing those who undershoot it to sell their emissions credits to over-polluters.
Reducing tropical deforestation is one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to reduce emissions, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Two years ago, Norway announced it would commitment $500 million annually to reduce deforestation at a climate summit in Bali.
"Now the United States has shown that it is willing to play in the same league," said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Hope and funding for saving forests around the world
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post 20 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN -- In the months leading up to the U.N.-sponsored climate talks, there was one thing observers said with confidence: Any final outcome would establish global guidelines for paying poor countries to preserve their tropical forests.
That almost happened. The fact that it didn't may pose a slight glitch, but is unlikely to halt the proliferation of such projects around the world.
The burning and clearing of forests, primarily in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, accounts for roughly 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions each year.
A coalition of conservationists, business interests and officials from developing countries back the idea of creating financial incentives for leaving standing trees that are in danger of being cleared for ranching or farming. According to the arrangement, known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, industries that create carbon emissions essentially pay impoverished nations to maintain their rainforests by buying pollution allowances from them.
Mark Tercek, chief executive of the Nature Conservancy, sees the mechanism as a win-win situation.
"It's a good deal for the developed world," Tercek said. "There are no losers."
Over two weeks in Copenhagen, negotiators worked out most of the details about how such a global system would work, and what type of projects would qualify for offsets.
But two key provisions -- what sort of emissions cuts countries would aim to achieve by avoiding deforestation and how much money rich nations would give to help finance it -- were tied to broader political questions that did not get resolved. So while references to REDD made it into the Copenhagen accord, the actual U.N. document that would insert it into a future treaty was tabled until next year.
The U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, said Friday that the forestry provisions of a future climate pact, along with helping developing countries adapt to climate change and acquire clean technology, are "oven ready" and could be completed without a problem in 2010, assuming there's a final agreement then.
"Nothing will be achieved until everything will be achieved," said Fred Boltz, senior vice president for global strategies at Conservation International, who added that despite the delay, "We've come a long way in two years and we have an opportunity on a scale that was previously inconceivable to act immediately to avert emissions from deforestation."
The talks did produce concrete short-term financial commitments to fund the effort, with $3.5 billion pledged by Norway, Japan, the United States, Britain, France and Australia.
This could be the start of a broader effort to put a dollar value on the carbon benefits received from natural ecosystems, whether from sea grass or mangroves.
"The fact is the global economy is at a point where it's beginning to internalize the services of a rainforest, and bring it into the transactions of a global economy," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.
