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

offsets – the fossil economy’s new arena of conflict 267Hadida YasminArindam DasDevjeet NandiBut it seems there could be an even more fundamental problem. If JFM projectsare going forward anyway, even without the CDM, they’re not saving carbonover and above what would have been saved anyway. So how could they generatecredits?That’s not clear. And there are plenty of other problems with CFI’s carbonsequestration claims as well. For example, CFI doesn’t take intoaccount the changes in numbers of people and in community and familycomposition to be expected over the project’s 20-25 year lifetime.CFI’s estimates of fuelwood used by communities in the Rahetgaonrange are also inaccurate. CFI believes every family uses two head loadsof fuelwood per week, but recent interviewees suggested that a morerealistic figure would be 18-22, especially during the winter and themonsoon season. CFI also makes the questionable assumption that localcommunities would relinquish their forest-harvesting activities for thesake of very little monetary income from carbon sales, and that incomeflowing to VFPCs would be transparently distributed.In order to assess how much carbon would be saved, CFI comparedvegetation in forest plots at different stages of growth and subject todifferent kinds of pressure from humans. Yet while the total area offorest to be considered is 142,535 hectares, the total number of 50square metre plots assessed was 39, representing a total study areaof only 9.75 hectares. That may be an adequate sample in biologicalterms. But it’s hardly enough to assess the range of social influenceson carbon storage in different places.Have any prospective carbon forestry projects been looked at in other parts ofIndia?Many. To take just one more nearby example, in Adilabad, AndhraPradesh state, CFI saw possibilities of sequestering carbon by reforestingand afforesting non-forest or ‘degraded’ forest lands whose carboncontent has been depleted by a large and growing human and cattlepopulation, uncontrolled grazing of cattle in forests and ‘encroachment’on and conversion of forest lands for swidden cultivation.The best option, CFI felt, would be to regenerate teak and mixed deciduousforests. Clonal eucalyptus plantations would, it thought, accumulatecarbon faster, and would have other commercial uses suchas timber and pulp, as well as incremental returns for any interestedinvestor, but would cost more to establish and maintain, and wouldbe sure to be condemned by Adivasi communities and activists as anew form of colonialism. 95