Forest-intact countries at risk of carbon trade exclusion - study

http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article?id=56526747

Forest-intact countries at risk of carbon trade exclusion - study
Stabroek News
Tuesday, August 14th 2007

A new study has found that 11 countries, including Guyana, which have
avoided widespread destruction of their tropical forests, are at risk
of being left out of the emerging carbon market to promote rainforest
conservation to combat climate change.

The study appearing today in the Public Library of Science Biology
journal warns that "the forest cover with low rates of deforestation"
(HFLD) nations could become the most vulnerable targets for
deforestation if the Kyoto Protocol and upcoming negotiations on carbon
trading fail to include intact standing forest, according to a
Conservation International (CI) news release.

The study by scientists from CI, the South African National
Biodiversity Institute, and the University of California-Santa Barbara
calls for the HFLD countries to receive "preventive credits" under any
carbon trading mechanism to provide incentive for them to protect their
intact tropical forest. Otherwise, the same market and economic forces
that cause deforestation elsewhere will quickly descend on regions that
so far have avoided significant loss, the authors say.

"Given the very large - and likely still underestimated - role of
tropical deforestation in causing climate change, these forest-rich
countries should be at the forefront of worldwide efforts to sequester
carbon, rather than being left out entirely," CI President Russell A.
Mittermeier, an author of the study, is quoted in the release as
saying. "With this paper, we hope to highlight this critical issue and
put it on the table for future negotiations."

In addition to Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, the other HFLD
countries are Panama, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Peru, Belize, Gabon, Bhutan and Zambia. Guyana, Suriname and French
Guiana comprise much of the Guayana Shield region of the northern
Amazon which is the largest intact tract of tropical forest on Earth.
In addition, portions of other large non-HFLD countries are in the same
situation. For example, the release says, although Brazil has four
other major ecosystems, the Brazilian Amazon faces a similar
circumstance as HFLD countries.

Up to now, the Kyoto Protocol and subsequent discussions have focused
on carbon credits for new or replanted forests that replace the carbon
storage services of destroyed forests. New rules being discussed by the
U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change for implementation
subsequent to Kyoto are likely to create a carbon market for countries
that reduce their deforestation from levels of recent years.

That would cover countries that have lost large portions of their
original tropical forest, as well as those that still have more than
half their forest cover but face current high rates of deforestation.

But in contrast, 11 HFLD countries with more than half their original
forest intact and low rates of current deforestation would receive no
credits for standing forests.

"The minute that you exclude those countries, their forests lose
economic value in the global carbon market, leaving governments with
little reason to protect them," says study co-author Gustavo Fonseca of
CI and Brazil's Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.

According to the study, preventive credits for HFLD countries at a
conservative carbon price of US$10 per ton would be worth hundreds of
millions of dollars a year, providing governments with significant
economic incentive to protect tropical forests that store atmospheric
carbon and supply essential natural benefits for local populations such
as clean water, food, medicines and natural resources.

CI states in the release that it believes any carbon credit mechanism
should include full representation, participation and consultation by
indigenous and local communities of tropical forest regions to ensure
that conservation and development programmes proceed in accordance with
their rights and traditional ways of life as stewards of the crucial
ecosystems in which they live.

Along with Fonseca and Mittermeier, the study's other authors are
Carlos Manuel Rodriguez and Lee Hannah of CI, Guy Midgley of the
Kirstenbosch Research Center at the South African National Biodiversity
Institute, and Jonah Busch of the Donald Bren School of Environmental
Science and Manage-ment at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

CI, founded in 1987, works in more than 40 countries - including Guyana
- to help people find economic alternatives without harming their
natural environments.