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Forests and plantations in the Kyoto
Protocol
In 1997 the world's governments came to an agreement on climate action,
the Kyoto Protocol (http://www.unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.pdf).
The Protocol binds industrialized nations, which ratify the protocol
to reducing their emissions by an average of five per cent by 2008-2012.
Countries unable to achieve these modest targets are allowed to "compensate"
by buying credits from countries that have underused their emission
allowance, by investing in "cleaner" energy technology abroad or by
putting money into forestry or soil conservation. According to Greenpeace
estimates, these options for carbon trading will allow Northern countries
to increase their emissions by an average of 0.3 per cent over 1990
levels instead of decreasing them by over five per cent, as agreed in
Kyoto in 1997.
Carbon sink loopholes
Carbon credits generated through afforestation, reforestation and forest
management are amongst the largest loopholes incorporated into the Kyoto
Protocol. Four articles of the protocol allow for generation of carbon
sink credits, which industrialised countries with emission reduction
targets can use to avoid or delay emission cuts at source. Article 3.3
requires the obligatory reporting and monitoring of carbon stocks within
a country with emission targets, article 3.4 provides an option to account
for increases in carbon storage through forest management, and articles
6 (Joint Implementation) and 12 (Clean Development Mechanism) describe
two of the 'flexible mechanisms' which allow trading of carbon credits
generated in other countries.
Under these rules, for every tonne of carbon that is stored
in a tree, an equivalent tonne of carbon from fossil fuels can be released
into the atmosphere. While in the books such a transaction of 'release
one tonne and sequester one tonne and you're carbon-neutral' might appear
as a contribution to slowing down climate change, in reality it does
not, because such a transaction still increases the amount of carbon
in the 'active carbon pool'
at a time where all efforts ought to be directed towards avoiding this
very increase.
Whilst any carbon sink credit used in the Kyoto accounting
framework is based on this fallacy, SinksWatch's greatest concern lies
with carbon sinks in the Clean Development Mechanism.
Carbon sinks and the CDM
Through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Northern countries can
finance projects in the South, aiming to mitigate climate change in
return for credits, which allow additional greenhouse gas emissions
at home.
The CDM also allows Northern countries or corporations
to set up tree plantations in the South. Industrialised countries can
buy CDM carbon sink credits worth up to one per cent of their 1990 emissions,
and thus increase the level of greenhouse gas emissions by a total of
145 million tonnes of CO2 per year while on paper still staying within
the Kyoto target.
How big a land acquisition this will amount to depends,
among other things, on how much fraudulence will be permitted in the
carbon calculations. But in theory, the Bonn agreement allows the North
access to a parcel of land roughly the size of one small Southern nation
- or upwards of 10 million hectares - every year for the generation
of CDM carbon sink credits.
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