Why have forestry activities not been included in strategies to cope with climate change?

Throughout international negotiations to tackle climate change, some environmental groups have opposed including forestry activities in measures to reduce carbon emissions. Carbon forestry has immense potential to mitigate climate change but, by February 2008, only one forestry project had been registered under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol; this compares to 900 industrial and energy projects.

Carbon forestry – using forestryactivities to reduce carbon emissions – can include reforestation, avoideddeforestation or forest conservation. Research by EcoSecurities,in the UK, examines the opposition to carbon forestry, which contrasts starklyto support from many other environmentalists.

Reforestation activities can be awardedtemporary tradable carbon credits under the CDM. As with other CDM projects,reducing atmospheric carbon – in this case sequestering (removing) it byplanting trees – produces ‘carbon offsets’ (carbon credits). Companies can use theseas verified emission reductions, in addition to or instead of reducing theirown emissions.

Many environmental non-governmentorganisations have lobbied for restrictions on which forestryactivities can be included in the CDM. Due to this lobbying, emissionsreductions from forest conservation or improved forest management are notcurrently eligible under the CDM.

These organisations make severalclaims about the presumed negative impacts of including forestry activities in carboncredit markets:

• Carboncredits for forestry risk diverting attention from restructuring fossilfuel-based economies; they will flood the carbon market with cheap credits, decreasingincentives to reduce emissions elsewhere.
• Plantingforests carries the risk of the carbon being released into the atmosphere inthe future, for example through burning or logging (non-permanence risk).
• Carbon‘leakage’ – an increase in carbon emissions in one country due to an emissionsreduction by a second country –can occur when plantingforests on lands used for agriculture; this also displaces agriculturalpressures onto remaining forests elsewhere.
• Vasttree plantations may use up arable land in developing countries at the expenseof poor rural communities.
• Plantingfast-growing, non-native trees risks creating negative impacts on localbiodiversity.

Many of these risks have been exaggerated,but have brought attention to the problems of including forestry in carbonmarkets. The author makes several conclusions regarding reforestation andavoided deforestation:

• Ifreforestation activities are cheap, the costs of tackling climate change willcome down, allowing steeper emission reductions in the near term and longerterm.
• Aflood of cheap credits from forestry is unlikely; the high costs of plantingforests cannot be met with carbon finance alone, and there are governance problemsin developing countries as well.
• Furthermore,it is straightforward (and is already practiced) to limit the proportion of forestrycredits that can be used to reach emission reduction targets.
• Avoideddeforestation (excluded under the CDM) verifiably does reduce emissions overtime. Non-permanence risks are not much different in forestry and energy-relatedprojects, especially if conserving forests coincides with socio-economic transitionsin national forest and land use.
• Leakagerisks can be addressed through counter measures in projects that tackle thecauses of deforestation.
• Leakagebetween countries is similar to non-forestry sectors and is likely to be reduced;most countries will begin by lowering deforestation rates on marginal landswith low opportunity costs, and by increasing and improving forest managementand agricultural productivity, rather than displace highly profitable andinternationally mobile activities such as palm oil production.
• Plantationscan have positive impacts beyond carbon storage; for example, they can beplanned to benefit local communities, for example providing fuel wood.