Problems with Wood Chips: Why Copenhagen’s Piecemeal Approach to Preserving Forests will Fail
We all share the same atmosphere. Wood is an internationally traded commodity. How is it, then, that, simultaneously, governments in East Asia are urging their citizens to reduce their consumption of wooden chopsticks whilst wood-burning boilers are being promoted in the UK?
Such a lack of consistency is typical of attempts to preserve forests, including the proposals apparently being discussed in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate-change talks.
I’m finding literature supplied by the NGOs to be a lot more useful in understanding the Copenhagen discussions than anything I’ve seen in the mainstream media. A WWF “Pocket Guide” to “The New Copenhagen Climate Deal” was included with the Guardian early this week. I immediately turned to the section on forests (not apparently available online, but with some overlap to this page on WWF’s site). I highlighted the following passage about REDD which, according to WWF stands for “reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries”:
“There is no point paying to protect one forest, if the loggers and farmers simply go somewhere else and tear that down (in the jargon, this is called ‘leakage’) – or come back in a couple of years after REDD has paid out (the challenge of ‘permanence’).”
Very succinctly put.
Why, oh why, then would we even contemplate a REDD framework that does not meet the conditions of avoiding leakage and ensuring permanence?
As far as I can tell, Copenhagen is likely to spawn a variety of different schemes for preserving forests. These seem to fall into 3 main categories:
1. Carbon-trading REDD schemes
Specific areas of land are ring-fenced from deforestation (and/or reforested or afforested) and the amount of carbon “saved” compared to “business as usual” (i.e. if the land had not been protected). This carbon is then amortised over a number of years and traded as carbon credits for each of those years.
I don’t think I’m pre-empting a lot of discussion by suggesting that such schemes meet neither of the two criteria of avoiding leakage and ensuring permanence.
2. Preservation of specific forest areas
Despite New Scientist’s flippant headline, a scheme in Ecuador to preserve part of the Amazon rainforest (which happens to sit on a lot of oil) makes considerable sense:
“Ecuador said it would abandon plans for drilling in Yasuni National Park, one of the few pristine regions of Amazon rainforest remaining, if it was paid half of the $7 billion that it expected to earn from tapping the oilfield.”
The critical point is at the end of New Scientist’s report:
“…the UN Development Programme is expected to announce plans to hold contributions in a trust fund, passing along only the fund’s interest to Ecuador. … this will give future Ecuadoran governments an incentive not to start drilling for oil, while also encouraging other nations to pay up.”
This model could at least meet the challenge of permanence.
3. National commitments to reduce deforestation rates
The Copenhagen talks are unfortunately turning into a battle between the “developed” North and the “developing” South. This artificial distinction has spawned a counter-productive “them and us” mentality. It makes it even more difficult to define, let alone agree, sensible solutions to the problem of global warming.
Likely we are past the point where reducing deforestation rates is enough. Ultimately, we will probably need to significantly increase the forested area of the planet to absorb carbon that’s already in the atmosphere. But let’s put that issue to one side for now.
The problem with the “North” buying reductions in the rate of deforestation from countries in the “South” is the leakage criterion.
WWF has defined REDD as “reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries”. This makes absolutely no sense. We need to preserve temperate and boreal forests as well as tropical forests. You can’t assume a lot when it comes to the increasingly baroque Copenhagen negotiations, but I’d wager that none of Russia, Canada and the Scandinavian and Central European countries, not to mention Australia, Japan and New Zealand are classified as “developing”. It seems to me that the best that could happen under schemes aimed at reducing some national deforestation rates is that timber exports from those countries decrease, whilst they increase from countries not included in the scheme.
What is actually needed is a global Forest Endowment Fund which provides an income stream in perpetuity to any and all custodians of the world’s forests (and other ecosystems, in particular wetlands) in approximate proportion to the carbon stored in their trees and soils, as long as the forest remains in a defined state. Only this way is it possible to meet the key criteria, correctly identified by WWF, of avoiding leakage and ensuring permanence.
Tim: I liked your dissection of Hansen v Krugman, Australia’s ETS is de facto purely an income redistribution exercise
BUT, I cannot agree with your in principle support of REDD.
FACT: more trees are logged annually by white men in North America, northern Europe including Russia than by ALL off-whites (eg Brazil), blacks (Africa), browns and yellows everywhere else combined (see FAO or ITTO). Is it that trees logged by us whities release no carbon? Interesting!
The truths are (1) that the majority of the timber in logged forests (over 50%) is stored for ever in building materials, books, etc – even newspapers last for ever in landfills; (2) most logged forests are either logged on sustainable rotations of primary forest, I know, been there and done that, or from constantly replanted plantations, also been there and done that (in PNG), but try telling that to Chatham House, I have tried and failed; (3) all younger trees in logged primary forest or in replanted plantations absorb more CO2 than mature standing timber – the REDD mob are not even aware or more likely, choose to ignore that the core of a mature tree’s trunk is already inert carbon; (4) where primary forest is cleared to make way for other crops, those crops usually absorb more CO2 p.a. per hectare than the cleared timber, oil palm especially is outstanding in this regard (see Lamade et al. and many others) as well as being one of the world’s most important food crops, ah but of course us whities prefer olive oil, and let the brown and yellows do without their preferred cooking oils or buy our canola/olive oils (when you get a handle on this you might have some more understanding of why Obama failed to win over India and China to his USAID’s long standing oil palm prevention strategies (in favour of US soy of course) (I also saw that in operation in the field); (5) the strategy of REDD which you clearly support in principle to prevent non-whites’ logging is to pay the “sit down money” that we in Australia do so well with the Aborigines (keeps them out of our towns). AusAid is already applying this policy to PNG and Indonesia – stop the forest livelihoods they have been doing for millennia in exchange for $10 a month per family, sorry it can’t be more, it’s all we can afford.
Tim, I am sorry if this is too much of a rant, but in my experience all proponents of REDD are unethical even if mostly from ignorance.