Limited carbon markets put tropical - forests at risk – CI

Limited carbon markets put tropical
forests at risk – CI

• Guyana listed among 11 countries threatened
Kaieteur News, 15 August 2007

Although efforts by some countries to preserve forest resources have
been recorded as commendable, a recently published study warns that
this could in fact make such nations vulnerable targets for
deforestation if the Kyoto Protocol and upcoming negotiations on carbon
trading fail to include standing forests.

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.

However, new rules being discussed by the United Nations 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.

As a result the study, in the Public Library of Science Biology
journal, which was conducted by scientists from Conservation
International (CI), the South African National Biodiversity Institute,
and the University of California-Santa Barbara, calls for vulnerable
countries to receive ‘preventive credits' under any carbon trading
mechanism to provide incentive for them to protect their intact
tropical forest.

If this is not instituted, the study suggests that the same market and
economic forces that cause deforestation elsewhere will quickly descend
on regions that so far have avoided significant loss.

This situation is likely to see at least 11 countries that have avoided
widespread destruction of their tropical forest, at risk of being left
out of the emerging carbon market which is intended to promote
rainforest conservation to combat climate change.

The vulnerable countries are regarded as those which have “high forest
cover with low rates of deforestation” (HFLD) and include Guyana,
Panama, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru, Belize, Gabon,
Suriname, Bhutan and Zambia, along with French Guiana.

These countries contain 20 per cent of Earth's remaining tropical
forests, including some of the richest ecosystems.

Guyana , Suriname and French Guiana comprise much of the Guiana Shield
region of the northern Amazon that is the largest intact tract of
tropical forest on Earth.

In addition, portions of other large non-HFLD countries are in the same
situation, according to the study, which states that the Brazilian
Amazon faces a similar threat as the HFLD countries.

The study underscored the fact that cutting and burning tropical
forests releases the atmospheric carbon they store, contributing
significantly to global climate change. According to CI President
Russell Mittermeier, “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.

“With this paper, we hope to highlight this critical issue and put it
on the table for future negotiations.”

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.

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,” according the study's co-author, CI's
Gustavo Fonseca.

The study suggests that preventive credits for HFLD countries at a
conservative carbon price of US$10 per tonne would be worth hundreds of
millions of dollars annually, 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 believes that 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.