Guyana and Suriname would gain little from deforestation billions - new study

Guyana Chronicle top story, Wednesday 09 April 2008

http://www.guyanachronicle.com/topstory.html
Guyana and Suriname would gain little from deforestation billions
- new study

OSLO, Norway (Reuters): A slowdown of deforestation from the Amazon to the
Congo basin could generate billions of dollars every year for developing
nations as part of a UN scheme to fight climate change, a study showed on
Monday.
But nations such as Guyana or Suriname, which have maintained high forest
cover, or others like Costa Rica and Chile, which have slowed or reversed
deforestation, would gain little.
Burning of forests by farmers clearing land accounts for 20 percent of world
greenhouse gas emissions. A 190-nation UN climate conference agreed in Bali,
Indonesia, in December to work on ways to reward countries for slowing
deforestation.
"Even with quite conservative assumptions, you can generate substantial
amounts of money and emissions reductions," said Johannes Ebeling of
EcoSecurities in Oxford, England, of a study with Mai Yasue at the
University of British Columbia in Canada.
They said a 10 percent decline in the rate of tropical forest loss could
generate annual carbon finance for developing nations of between 1.5 billion
and 9.1 billion euros ($2.4 to $14.30 billion) assuming carbon prices of
five to 30 euros a tonne.
Such curbs would represent about 300 million tonnes of avoided carbon
dioxide emissions a year -- about the amount of heat-trapping gases, mainly
from burning fossil fuels, emitted by Turkey, or half the total of France.
The United Nations wants reduced emissions from deforestation to be part of
a new long-term climate treaty beyond 2012 to help avert more droughts,
heatwaves, outbreaks of disease and rising seas.
Ebeling told Reuters that any credits for avoided deforestation would have
to be matched by tough restrictions elsewhere, for instance forcing
coal-fired power plants or cement factories to pay for right to emit carbon
dioxide.
The study, published in the British journal Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society B, said there were big challenges in designing a fair
system.
So far, most focus in the UN debate had been on rewarding countries with
high deforestation rates -- such as Brazil and Ecuador -- for slowing the
losses.
There were also problems such as judging the rate of deforestation or
creating controls to ensure that protecting one forest does not lead to
logging or clearance of another.
And some poor countries that could benefit -- such as Liberia or Myanmar --
may simply lack controls needed to regulate land use.
Still, Ebeling said he was optimistic a system could be worked out because
of a widening political willingness to address deforestation as part of a
new treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2013.