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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

248 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingThe enthusiasm is not unanimous, even in Costa Rica. In fact, theboom in carbon forestry fits into an existing trend of support formonoculture tree plantations that has aroused concern among localenvironmentalists. Between 1960 and 1985, about 60 per cent ofCosta Rica’s forests disappeared due to cattle farming. Then therewas a ‘wood shortage’ scare, and the government subsidised monoculturetree plantations extensively between 1980 and 1996. Helpedby govern ment incentives, over 130,000 hectares have been coveredby the plantations over the past 20 years. By 2000, plantation monoculturescovered over 3 per cent of Costa Rica’s territory.The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Costa Rican environmentalistsfear, may help spread the monocultures even further. Inthe late 1990s, a government official active in the climate negotiationshelped promote a new law supporting monocultures. Half of a 3.5 percent fuel tax went into an ‘environmental service programme’ designedlargely to give incentives to private landowners to be ‘green’ in a countryin which 20 per cent of the land is national parks, a few per cent indigenousterritories and the rest private land. Under the programme, alandowner might get, for example, usd 90 per hectare per year to conserveforest, or usd 500 per hectare over five years to establish a plantation.In return, the state gets rights to the carbon in the plantation,which it can use to bargain with in international negotiations.A typical ecosystem on whicha Costa Rican plantationmight be established. Thecarbon released from thestanding trees, removed tomake way for the plantation,often will not appear inproject accounts.How much of this tax money goes to forest conservation, and how much toplantations?Most payments under the environmental services programme go toforest conservation, but 20 per cent is used to subsidise monocultureplantations and agroforestry. This has provoked objections from ecologists,academics and indigenous peoples who argue that monocultureplantations, often lucrative in themselves, can damage the soils, waterand biodiversity that the programme is supposed to protect. The programmemay also soon be supported by a tax on water and electricity.Still, 20 per cent is a pretty small proportion, isn’t it?Overall, Costa Rica is today putting usd 1.5 million annually into financing4,000-6,000 hectares per year of new plantations. That maynot seem much, but Costa Rica’s total territory is only a bit over 5million hectares. A UN Food and Agriculture Organization consultant’sstudy has suggested that the country set up even more plantations,up to 15,000 hectares per year, using carbon money. Anotherstudy estimates that, during the period 2003-2012, some 61,000 hectaresof monoculture plantations, or 7,600 a year, could be establishedin so-called ‘Kyoto areas’. That’s well above the current rate, 47
offsets – the fossil economy’s new arena of conflict 249implying that plantations could start competing aggressively for landthat might otherwise be given over to secondary regeneration andconservation of native forest.In addition, because CDM forestry projects, for economic reasons,would probably have to cover 1000 hectares and upwards (see below),they could well threaten the land tenure of people carrying out otherforest projects in Costa Rica. The average landholding in the countryis less than 50 hectares, with most parcels belonging to families.Well, sacrifi ces do have to be made for the climate, don’t they?Ironically, one of the things that the Costa Rican case helps show isthe impossibility of determining whether the climate would in factbenefit from a policy of pushing such projects. It also clarifies theproblems of fulfilling the conditions set out in the Kyoto Protocol 48for reforestation and forestation carbon projects.Take, for example, a study on carbon projects done by the Forestand Climatic Change Project (FCCP) in Central America, jointlyexecuted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN andthe Central American Environmental and Development Commission(CCAD). 49 The study shows that available soil use maps are notprecise enough to show how carbon storage in prospective carbonsink areas (or ‘Kyoto areas’) has changed since the 1990s, and are alsohard to compare with each other. That would make accounting forincreased carbon storage over the period impossible.The study also suggests that it would be impossible to show to whatextent Kyoto carbon projects were additional to ‘those that the countryimplements as part of its forestry development projects’: ‘it is not possibleto predict in what exact proportion these activities will be in orout of the Kyoto areas and any assumption in this respect is enormouslyuncertain’. In addition, Kyoto carbon projects could find it hard to factorout the anthropogenic activities to encourage natural seed nurseriesthat are being promoted and funded without carbon finance.Above all, the FCCP study reveals the confl ict between convenienceand accuracy in measuring carbon. Measurements of soil carbon beforeand after the start of any carbon forestry project, it says, wouldbe too costly, even though such measurements are a key to carbon accountingfor plantations, which disturb soil processes considerably. 50Similarly, the study accepts for convenience a blanket carbon storagefigure of 10 tonne per hectare for grassland sites that could be convertedto carbon forestry. However, Costa Rica boasts too wide a varietyof grasslands and agricultural systems – most of them comprisinga lot of trees – for such a figure to be used everywhere. 51
Page 1 and 2:
PRESS RELEASEContact:Linda Chiavaro
Page 3 and 4:
ContentsEditorial note 2Chapter 1 I
Page 5:
editorial note 3in Dorset, UK - poi
Page 8 and 9:
6 development dialogue september 20
Page 10 and 11:
Page 12 and 13:
Page 14 and 15:
Page 16 and 17:
Page 18 and 19:
Page 20 and 21:
Page 22 and 23:
Page 24 and 25:
Page 26 and 27:
Page 28 and 29:
Page 30 and 31:
Page 33 and 34:
Chapter 2‘Made in the USA’A sho
Page 35 and 36:
‘made in the usa’ - a short his
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71:
Page 74 and 75:
Page 76 and 77:
Page 78 and 79:
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Page 94 and 95:
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
100 development dialogue september
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
Page 126 and 127:
Page 128 and 129:
Page 130 and 131:
Page 132 and 133:
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Page 142 and 143:
Page 144 and 145:
Page 146 and 147:
Page 148 and 149:
Page 150 and 151:
Page 152 and 153:
Page 154 and 155:
Page 156 and 157:
Page 158 and 159:
Page 160 and 161:
Page 162 and 163:
Page 164 and 165:
Page 166 and 167:
Page 168 and 169:
Page 170 and 171:
Page 172 and 173:
Page 174 and 175:
Page 176 and 177:
Page 178 and 179:
Page 180 and 181:
Page 182 and 183:
Page 184 and 185:
Page 186 and 187:
Page 188 and 189:
Page 190 and 191:
Page 192 and 193:
Page 194 and 195:
Page 196 and 197:
Page 198 and 199:
Page 200 and 201: 198 development dialogue september
Page 218: 216 development dialogue september
Page 300 and 301:
Page 302 and 303:
Page 304 and 305:
Page 306 and 307:
Page 308 and 309:
Page 310 and 311:
Page 312 and 313:
Page 314 and 315:
Page 316 and 317:
Page 318 and 319:
Page 320 and 321:
Page 322 and 323:
Page 324 and 325:
Page 326 and 327:
Page 328 and 329:
Page 331 and 332:
Chapter 5Ways forwardIn which the c
Page 333 and 334:
ways forward 331‘Tinkering around
Page 335 and 336:
ways forward 333suggests that the
Page 337 and 338:
ways forward 335more stringent than
Page 339 and 340:
ways forward 337Unlike carbon tradi
Page 341 and 342:
ways forward 339hold little appeal
Page 343 and 344:
ways forward 341Waiting their Chanc
Page 345 and 346:
ways forward 343ways - many of whic
Page 347 and 348:
ways forward 345energy - loan benef
Page 349 and 350:
ways forward 347From an Open Letter
Page 351 and 352:
ways forward 349be answered in the
Page 353 and 354:
ways forward 351rogated by Indian v
Page 355 and 356:
ways forward 353argue, they’ve he
Page 357 and 358:
ways forward 355‘The US alone acc
Page 359 and 360:
appendix - the durban declaration o
Page 361 and 362:
appendix - the durban declaration o
show all

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

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?