 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Understanding Carbon |
| | The Kyoto Protocol obliges industrialised countries to cut carbon emissions, but allows the reductions to be offset by ‘credits’ from carbon sinks including forests. But such credits are no substitute for reducing fossil fuel emissions.
There is little doubt that our planet’s climate is changing, and that human activities are largely responsible for this change. For more than 150 years, industrialised societies have been releasing carbon from underground coal and oil reserves, resulting in a 31% increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1750. Over the past decade, the international climate change debate has shifted from whether concerted international action is needed to avoid dangerous climate change, to how such dangerous changes in the world’s climate can be averted.
Forests have moved into the spotlight of the debate on how to achieve these emission reductions, which industrialised countries committed themselves to in the Kyoto Protocol. It obliges industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the ‘first commitment period’ from 2008 to 2012 by 5.2% compared with 1990 emissions. This is a meagre start compared with the reductions scientists believe will be required to avert dangerous climate change: 60–80% by the end of this century.
But even these minimal reductions may be achieved only on paper, depending on how much use governments intend to make of large loopholes created by the inclusion of ‘carbon sink’ credits in the protocol.
Under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol, 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’ (see the Box) at a time when all efforts ought to be directed towards avoiding this very increase.
In addition to this basic fallacy, there are two further problems with carbon sinks once we look more closely at the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol gives the wrong incentives. The focus is on carbon sequestration, hence more credits can be gained the faster a tree can grow, which in turn leads to an incentive for large-scale tree plantations and ignores the role of forests, particularly old-growth forests which have accumulated carbon over centuries, as carbon stores.
Measuring carbon pools is wrought with uncertainties. Assessments of the amount of carbon stored and sequestered in forests can vary hugely, depending on the methodologies used, the assumptions made, and the carbon pools within forests that are taken into consideration or ignored (e.g. soil, litter, below-ground biomass). Differences in assessments for Russia, Canada and Australia vary by as much as 565 million tonnes of carbon (tC) per year among different assessments. These variations are bigger than the reduction target under the Kyoto Protocol, which is 200 million tC.
Despite these fallacies of the carbon sinks argument, it is important to stress that forests are important stores of carbon, and forests will be severely affected by climate change. Forests undoubtedly have an important role to play in protecting local environments against weather extremes in the wake of climate change. But for forests to fulfil that role effectively, we need to move beyond carbon sink credits and the faulty concept that a tonne of carbon sequestered in a tree can neutralise and justify the release of a tonne of carbon from fossil fuels. It cannot. Carbon sequestered in trees will neither contribute to halting climate change nor to slowing down the global forest crisis.
With regards to boreal forests, the chance is before us to ensure that boreal forests can play their part in averting dangerous climate change. This will require drastically reducing oil and gas exploitation throughout the boreal, a drastic alteration of destructive forestry practices in already degraded forest areas, and protection of intact boreal forests. Such an approach will safeguard boreal forests as carbon stores, and ensure they can offer protection against extreme weather events and continue to serve as an integral part of indigenous peoples’ way of life in the boreal region.
Visit Sinkswatch for more information
|
| | Contact
Jutta Kill, SinksWatch |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
