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

offsets – the fossil economy’s new arena of conflict 241Farms for low technical standards and demanded that the company‘do some real investment to produce quality tree stands’. 33The eucalyptus plantations have also suffered termite attacks. By2001, the Tree Farms project was way behind schedule and sufferingfrom lack of funds. To raise some quick money, the company waseven forced to clear 50 hectares for commercial maize crops, arousingfurther criticism from the forestry authorities.But is the project at least storing some carbon?Tree Farms’ original management plan called for their plantations inthe Bukaleba reserve to cover some 4,260 hectares of the company’stotal area of 5,160 hectares by 2005. The firm anticipated being ableto sell 500 tonnes of CO 2 credits per hectare, or 2.13 million tonnesof carbon dioxide in all. 34 The accounting that resulted in this figurewas wildly optimistic.For one thing, proper carbon accounting for the project would requirefollowing around thousands of evictees, many of whom wouldprobably have to clear land elsewhere, resulting in carbon emissionsattributable to Tree Farms. This would be impossible, particularly ina country such as Uganda, where poverty, landlessness, and politicalinstability keep people constantly moving from one end of the countryto the other.For another, advance sale of carbon credits would require that thelong-term political future of Bukaleba be known in advance, so thatany re-invasion of the area could be predicted and its effects on carbonstorage precisely quantified and insured against or compensatedfor. No basis exists for deriving numbers of this sort.The future investment climate for such projects would also have to becalculated, as well as the probability of fires; the ecological effects ofplantations on local patches of native vegetation through hydrologicalor other changes; the soil carbon loss attributable to clearing, ploughingand erosion caused by the project. 35 Even to attempt to do all thiswould drive the costs of the project through the roof.If the original easy numbers posited by Tree Farms were accepted bythe market, however, they would translate into carbon profits of theorder of usd 10 million, well over a dozen times Tree Farms’ outlayon land. This would not include possible income from timber andwood sales. Turning Bukaleba into a Norwegian carbon plantation,more over, would mean that its lands would not be available for longperiods either for agriculture or for plumping up Uganda’s own carbonaccounts.