Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth has a nice article about the proposal by Al Gore and Wangari Maathai to include forest preservation in carbon-trading markets designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Gore and Maathai, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates for their conservation work, are promoting the work of the Avoided Deforestation Partners.
Tropical forest conversion to other uses currently accounts for about 20% of the world’s carbon budget. In the Kyoto Protocols, the first plan to reduce world carbon emissions, forests received little attention, mainly because of opposition from environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. These organizations feared that counting tropical forests in carbon credit schemes might take pressure off major greenhouse gas (GHG) producers to reduce their own emissions. There was also concern that carbon credits extended to forest plantations might promote clearing of native forests. WWF has backed off that original position and now acknowledges that carbon credit trading could help conserve tropical forests.
Creating a significant dollar value for keeping tropical forests intact may provide governments and land owners with sufficient incentive to overcome the current incentives to clear tropical forests. These incentives include profits from illegal logging and the high price for palm oil. Oil palm plantations have replaced large areas of lowland tropical forest throughout Southeast Asia, and the exploding biofuels market is putting market pressure on palm oil producers to expand their operations. Lowland forests, especially the kerangas (peat and heath forests) are critically threatened resources, store vast amounts of carbon and become major carbon sinks when converted to oil palm or other uses.
The challenge in placing dollar values on carbon storage in tropical forests, and paying for tropical forest conservation, is ensuring that the money gets to local people and that corruption can be overcome. Malaysia and Indonesia have strong forest conservation laws on the books, but they are unenforceable due to corruption, with money flowing from forestry and oil palm interests to local and national government officials. There has to be sufficient income to national governments from carbon trading credits to overcome the economic incentives that lead to corruption. If money flows only to national governments and corporate interests, and does not benefit local people, any scheme will fail.
The solution to these problems is the same as the solution to the problems of sustainable forestry: reputable third-party certification. Third party verifiers can produce management plans and provide evidence to carbon credit buyers so that the system can be trusted.
Pervasive corruption throughout the tropical countries that could most benefit from carbon credit purchases will be difficult to overcome, especially in countries like Indonesia with a weak central government and widespread poverty.
I took the photographs below in 1984 in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, showing the vast Kerangas (peat swamp and heath forest) of lowland Borneo in 1984. Most of this forest is now gone. Illegal logging remains rampant. More pictures are at my photography site.
Links:
Two Nobelists Call for Forest Carbon Market – Dot Earth Blog – NYTimes.com
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