New plan would pay tropical countries for saving forests, regardless of level of threat
MongaBay | 24 July 2008
BRAZIL: Deforestation and forest degradation account for around a fifth of global carbon emissions from human activities, but new policy measures are focusing reducing such emissions as a cost-effective way to fight global warming. While the concept of REDD has found wide support, there are lingering concerns over how to compensate countries that have extensive forest cover and low rates of annual forest loss, since payments are based on historical deforestation rates. A new proposal seeks to get around this issue by factoring in all the terrestrial carbon in a tropical landscape — regardless of level of threat it faces — and packaging it as a tradable commodity. The concept is presented in a paper by the Terrestrial Carbon Group, a group of scientists, economists and public policy experts. The paper, “How to Include Terrestrial Carbon in Developing Nations in the Overall Climate Change Solution“, lays out a series of “guiding principles” for action to address emissions from terrestrial carbon sources.
“The Terrestrial Carbon Group’s paper recognizes that over the coming decades, vegetated land in developing nations will be increasingly threatened with conversion to agricultural and plantation use, and to human settlements and infrastructure. This will cause greenhouse gas emissions, underscoring the ongoing importance of terrestrial carbon in the climate change solution.” – Terrestrial Carbon Group
According to the media release, “both market and non-market approaches to terrestrial carbon and climate change are necessary. Within that context, the Terrestrial Carbon Group proposes a market-based system that includes all the components that would need to be agreed at an international level (whether bilateral, multilateral or global).
“Nations would determine national and sub-national implementation systems targeted to their specific circumstances. The proposed system is as simple as possible and has two purposes: (i) to allow the international trading (whether bilateral, multilateral, or global) of carbon credits based on the maintenance and creation of terrestrial carbon, and (ii) to guarantee that action under the system contributes to long-term climate change mitigation.”
