Costa Rica to Save Forest with Carbon Credits
4/25/98
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE
Costa Rica's cutting edge rainforest conservation rhetoric continues,
as the country moves to harness carbon credits to finance rainforest
conservation. While acknowledging justifiable concerns regarding the
South forgoing development to subsidize continued Northern over-
consumption, in is inarguable that carbon swaps appear uniquely
capable of providing financing to pursue large scale rainforest
conservation. Carbon swapping will address global warming while
changing the economics of tropical forests, tipping the scale towards
conservation rather than large-scale exploitation. While ensuring
that a carbon trading system does not lock in place development
disparities, it is my opinion that any strategy that addresses two
major World concerns--global warming and deforestation--while
transferring much needed financial resources to developing countries,
needs to be rigorously pursued.
g.b.
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Title: Costa Rica to save forest with carbon credits
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1998
Date: April 24, 1998
Byline: Vicki Allen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Costa Rica launched a program Friday to save
more than 1.25 million acres of rainforest by selling companies
allowances to emit carbon gases.
Costa Rican President Jose Maria Figueres said the rainforest will be
protected by the first greenhouse gases trading project developed
under the guidelines of the global climate change agreement reached in
December in Kyoto, Japan.
"Costa Rica is proud to take the lead in an initiative that can save
forest land around the world," Figueres told a news conference in
Washington.
The project, which makes the rainforest's ability to absorb carbon
gases a quantifiable asset, could earn Costa Rica more than $20
million this year, and $300 million over the life of the project,
government officials said.
With that revenue, the government will be able to buy land in the
rainforest, most of which is privately-owned, they added.
"This program is a model for North-South cooperation to help meet the
world's environmental challenges," Figueres said.
The emissions credits would be sold to companies in industrialized
countries that produce heat-trapping carbon gases by burning fossil
fuels. Buying these credits would help industrialized countries meet
emissions reductions goals of the Kyoto agreement.
A Swiss company, Societe Generale de Surveillance Holding S.A. (SGS),
operating under the Kyoto agreement's procedures, verified the plan
would remove more than 1 million metric tons of carbon from the
atmosphere.
Costa Rica has established environmental bonds called Certified
Tradable Offsets, with each corresponding to one ton of carbon to be
absorbed by its trees. It sold some credits last year, but this will
be the first such project using criteria from the Kyoto protocol.
"Independent certification such as that provided by SGS created the
confidence necessary to make trade in greenhouse gas reductions a
reliable financial tool for industrialized countries to meet their
emission reduction commitments in a cost-effective manner," Figueres
said.
He and company representatives said this should help create a
marketplace for emissions credits that could be used to save forests
around the world as well as bring down costs of cutting carbon
emissions that are heating the atmosphere and changing the world's
climate.
"Creating a market for carbon offsets provides developing countries
additional financial resources from their tropical forests -- money
that can be earned without cutting down their trees," Elisabeth Salina
Amorini, SGS chairman, said at the news conference.