A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

222 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingThe beginnings –A story from GuatemalaMexicoGuatemalaBelizeHondurasEl SalvadorThe beginnings of the ‘carbonoffset’ idea can be traced back atleast as far as 1977, when the physicistFreeman Dyson specu latedthat large-scale planting of treesor swamp plants could be a cheapmeans of soaking up excess carbondioxide in the atmosphere. 1But it wasn’t until 1989 that thefirst forestry project funded explicitlyto offset greenhouse gasemissions was set up. 2Applied Energy Service, Inc. (AES), a United States-based independentpower producer, had been looking for a cost-effective techniquefor reducing carbon dioxide emissions at a new 183-megawatt coalfiredpower plant in Connecticut in order to make the plant moreacceptable to state regulators. On the recommendation of the Washington-basedWorld Resources Institute (WRI), AES decided to tryto ‘mitigate’ the plant’s carbon emissions by offering usd 2 million tofinance 10 years’ worth of ‘land-use activities and multiple-use forestryprojects’ in Guatemala.The activities would be undertaken by the organisation CARE withthe help of USAID and the Guatemalan Directorate General of Forests.3 CARE had been working in agroforestry since 1974 in theWestern Highlands – one of the country’s few remaining highlandareas with existing forest and the potential to offset significant quantitiesof carbon – and it was hoped that the AES money could leverageadditional funds from other sources (debt-for-nature swaps) as well asvolunteer services from groups such as the US Peace Corps.Some 40,000 smallholder farmers would plant 50 million pine and eucalyptustrees in the course of establishing 12,000 hectares of communitywoodlots, 60,000 hectares of agroforestry and 2,880 kilometres oflive fences. Some 2,000 hectares of vulnerable slopes in local watershedswould be protected and training provided for forest fire brigades toreduce the threat of fire and potential CO 2 release. During its first 10years, the project would also train local communities so that its activitieswould become self-sustaining. In all, AES finance would make possiblethe sequestration of 15.5 to 16.3 million tonnes of carbon in Guatemala