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How to include terrestrial carbon in developing nations in the overall climate change solution

What role can terrestrial carbon markets play in solving climate change problems?

Authors:
Publisher: The Terrestrial Carbon Group, 2008

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This paper argues that terrestrial carbon (including trees, soil, and peat) can be used to provide up to 25% of the climate change solution. The document focuses on the role and use of terrestrial carbon and provides guiding principles for terrestrial carbon to be effectively included in the international response to climate change, which would support:

  • ongoing global negotiations on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol; and
  • emerging national, bi-lateral, and multinational efforts to maintain and enhance terrestrial carbon.
It is emphasized that both market and non-market approaches to terrestrial carbon and climate change are necessary. Within this context, The Terrestrial Carbon Group proposes a system to credibly include terrestrial carbon in developing nations in the international response to climate change using carbon markets.

The system includes all the components that would need to be agreed at an international level. Nations would determine national and sub-national implementation systems targeted to their specific circumstances. The system has two purposes:
  • to allow the international trading (whether bilateral, multilateral, or global) of carbon credits based on the maintenance and creation of terrestrial carbon, and
  • to guarantee that action under the system contributes to long-term climate change mitigation.
The authors argue that certain steps can be taken before the UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen in 2009. These steps include:
  1. Get developing countries market-ready through technical and financial assistance from developed nations
  2. Develop minimum standards and guarantee credits generated under such projects are valid under a post-2012 treaty at the UN climate change meetings in Poznan in December 2008
  3. Agree, design and begin implementing a national-scale pilot
  4. Resolve outstanding technical issues