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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Kyoto
Protocol Could Accelerate Forest Destruction
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org
http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation
Portal
http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest
Conservation
11/09/00
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY
Following
is excellent additional information regarding concerns that
efforts
being pursued to promote forest plantations as carbon sinks
at the
soon to commence Hague climate meeting may speed up global
warming
while increasing native forest destruction.
Please take the
time to
send an email to the United Nations on this matter from:
http://forests.org/emailaction/oldcarbon_oct_00.htm
g.b.
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TEXT STARTS HERE:
ITEM #1
Title: Kyoto Protocol could accelerate forest
destruction, warn WWF
and Greenpeace
Source: WWF Press Release
Date: November 9, 2000
London,
UK - Relying on forest plantations to store carbon pollution
from
the atmosphere and combat climate change could accelerate the
destruction
of old-growth native forest around the world, according
to a
report commissioned by Greenpeace and WWF, the conservation
organization.
The report, released today, challenges the assumption
that
carbon storage in trees will yield environmental benefits. It
concludes
instead, "the economics of the developing carbon
sequestration
market is becoming an additional driver for clearing
native
forests."
Whether
industrialised nations will be allowed to gamble on forests
as
temporary carbon stores rather than reduce emissions of global
warming
gases at source is one of the most controversial topics in
two
weeks of intergovernmental negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol
that
open in The Hague, Holland, on Monday 13 November. Under the
Protocol,
industrialized nations have to reduce their emissions 5 per
cent
below their 1990 levels by 2008-2012. The United States, Japan,
Australia
and Canada want to avoid domestic efforts to control their
rapidly
growing carbon emissions from energy use by counting forest
carbon
storage and so claim to be meeting their Kyoto targets.
Furthermore,
the Protocol contains a perverse incentive in allowing
countries
to claim a carbon credit for planting trees but not incur a
carbon
debit for deforestation.
Today's
report, entitled "The Clearcut Case: How the Kyoto Protocol
Could
Become a Driver for Deforestation", examines a number of
Australian
projects as case studies of what could emerge as a
dangerous
new international threat to forests and the species they
support.
(1)
The
report outlines how Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Japan's
largest
power utility, is implicated in the destruction of native
forest
in the Tamar Valley in the Australian state of Tasmania, and
its
replacement by fast-growing eucalyptus plantations intended for
carbon
credits under the Kyoto Protocol. TEPCO's investment of Aus$10
million
(ca. US$5 million) in Tamar Tree Farms accounts for 3,000
hectares
of eucalyptus plantation which are expected to yield TEPCO
130,000
tonnes of carbon credits that could be offset against rising
carbon
emissions in Japan. The report shows how this project is not
an
isolated incident but is compatible with the forest-clearance
programmes
of the Australian and Tasmanian authorities.
"Claiming
credit for carbon stored in trees is a blatant attempt by
some
countries to cheat on their Kyoto commitments," said Bill Hare,
Greenpeace's
Climate Policy Director. "This report shows that it is
also
bad for the environment, leading in some cases to the
destruction
of old-growth forest to make way for 'carbon-sink'
plantations."
"The
only way to combat climate change is through deep cuts in
emissions
of global warming gases," said Jennifer Morgan, Director of
WWF's
Climate Change Campaign. "The Tasmania project is an example of
what
could go terribly wrong for forests around the world if Japan,
Australia,
Canada and the United States get their way. We could see
native
forest destruction accelerate but still see no benefit for the
global
climate. This is potentially the largest of a number of
loopholes
in the Kyoto climate treaty that governments urgently need
to
close."
The
threat to forest conservation will be exacerbated if decisions on
Kyoto's
"Clean Development Mechanism" promote 'carbon sinks' projects
by
industrialised nations in developing countries, where gathering of
accurate
data on forests would be considerably more difficult than in
Tasmania.
Greenpeace
and WWF are calling on the 184 Parties to the Climate
Convention
to exclude reliance on carbon sinks from the Kyoto
Protocol,
and from its Clean Development Mechanism. The organizations
want
industrialized nations to achieve their Kyoto commitments
through
domestic reductions in global warming gases.
"The
global forest commons is facing its biggest challenge since the
Industrial
Revolution," said report author Tim Cadman of the Native
Forest
Network. "Many forest-dependent species are on the brink of
destruction.
How ironic it would be if the Kyoto Protocol were
complicit
in sending some of them over the edge."
Proposals
for relying on plantations to soak up carbon overlook the
vulnerability
of forests to global warming, and the urgency of
cutting
emissions. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate
Change whose Second Assessment Report from 1995 is the
current
international scientific consensus on climate change, one
third
of the world's forests will undergo major changes as a result
of
global warming. Entire forest types may disappear and large
amounts
of carbon could be released into the atmosphere during
transitions
from one forest type to another. (2)
For
further information:
WWF
Robert
Kihara, Press Officer, WWF International. Tel: +41 22 364
9553;
E-mail: rkihara@wwfint.org
Andrew
Kerr, Public Affairs Manager, WWF Climate Change Campaign.
Tel:
+31 6 5161 9462 (mobile); E-mail: rrek@compuserve.com
Greenpeace
Jon
Walter, Press Officer, Greenpeace International, Tel: +31 20 524
9608;
E-mail: jwalter@ams.greenpeace.org
Bill
Hare, Climate Policy Director, Greenpeace International. Tel:
+31 6
2129 6899 (mobile); E-mail: bhare@ams.greenpeace.org
Native
Forest Network
Tim
Cadman, Tel: +61 2 6655 9841; E-mail: tcadman@nfn.org.au
NOTES
(1) The
Clearcut Case: How the Kyoto Protocol Could Become a Driver
for
Deforestation by Tim Cadman, Native Forest Network. Commissioned
and
published by Greenpeace International and the WWF Climate Change
Campaign.
November 2000
(2)
Climate Change 1995. Contribution of Working Group II to the
Second
Assessment Report of the IPCC. Summary for Policymakers,
Section
3.1.
ITEM #2
Title: Green group says close climate loopholes at
The Hague
Source: c 2000 Reuters
Date: November 10, 2000
BRUSSELS
- The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said yesterday an
international
agreement to combat climate change could prove worse
than
useless unless governments agreed to close potential loopholes.
WWF
told a news briefing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol might not have the
desired
effect of reducing the industrial world's greenhouse gas
emissions
and could have the reverse effect of boosting
environmentally
undesirable industries.
"Fossil
fuel burning lies at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol but
there
are a range of loopholes that will allow individual countries
to meet
their targets without reducing their emissions," WWF's Liam
Salter
told a news conference.
The
U.N.-sponsored protocol commits developed countries to reduce
emissions
of six greenhouse gases by five percent from 1990 levels by
2008-2012.
But the
the agreement allows for "flexible mechanisms" which would
allow
countries to achieve emissions reduction credits without
actually
reducing emissions on their own territory.
How
these will work in practice is one of the key questions to be
solved
at an intergovernmental meeting starting on Monday in The
Hague -
dubbed by some the "Climate Summit".
The
protocol's Achilles' heel, according to WWF, is the concept of
"carbon
sinks" - the use of forestry to absorb carbon dioxide
(CO2),
the main greenhouse gas, to offset emissions.
WWF
says, as well as being difficult to monitor, the use of sinks
could
lead to environmentally-damaging monocultures being classed as
environmentally
sound and do nothing to protect wildlife-rich
forests.
The
protocol could also give a boost to nuclear power and large
hydro-electric
dams which, although they do not produce CO2 and could
potentially
receive emissions reduction credits, are considered
environmentally
unsound by WWF.
"We
need an up-front ban on (the use of) these technologies (under
the
Kyoto Protocol)," WWF's Stephan Singer said.
Another
potential loophole, the group says, is "emissions trading"
where a
country that has reduced its emissions beyond its target can
sell
the "extra" pollution it has saved to a country that has not met
its
goal.
WWF
wants both buyers and sellers of emissions credits to be made
legally
liable in case their certificates are found not to represent
a
genuine emission reduction.
It also
wants a restriction on the amount of credits that can be sold
by
Russia and the Ukraine, whose industrial decline during the 1990s
means
they will have plenty of spare "hot air". "We have never been
opposed
to the system of (emissions) trading but we are opposed to
buying
hot air and trading in sinks," Singer said.
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