Climate Update IV

Published by Fern 13.11.00

The count down is on for governments working out the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. And your pressure will be needed to make sure the decisions made during CoP6 of the climate change convention will be environmentally and socially sound!

A workshop on the links between forests, plantations and carbon sinks organized by Fern and Both Ends on Friday and Saturday in preparation of CoP6 underlined the main points to bring home to environment ministers expected here next Monday to put the finishing touch to the Kyoto Protocol deal:

The focus of the negotiations has to be on emission reductions because 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from burning fossil fuel.

As long as governments confuse forests with trees ­ as they do in the draft definition proposed for discussion at CoP6 ­ it is unlikely that activities providing carbon credits that allow the North to continue emitting greenhouse gases at unsustainable and even dangerously high levels, will halt forest loss.

It is therefore essential that governments adopt a definition of forests that reflects an ecosystem-approach to forests rather than the timber-focused approach of the definition that governments are proposing here. Under that definition, one single big Mango tree could be considered a ‘Kyoto forest’ ­ and so could any large-scale tree plantation.

With regards to plantations:

At present, there is nothing in the negotiations texts on carbon sinks that excludes the possibility that industrialized countries can gain carbon credits from large-scale tree plantations to ‘offset’ their greenhouse gas emissions. Governments need to exclude the possibility of gaining carbon credits from large scale tree plantations anywhere in the Kyoto Protocol.

With regards to the Clean Development Mechanism:

Governments need to adopt a precautionary approach and not include carbon sinks as a project category eligible for carbon credits through the CDM.. Without careful consideration the Kyoto Protocol may turn our to exacerbate rather than halt forest loss and all its related problems.

Ricardo Carrere of the WRM secretariat in Uruguay handed the Mount Tamalpais declaration against large-scale tree plantations in the CDM to Jan Pronk, the Dutch environment minister and chairman of CoP6. If you have not done so, please add you signature to the Mount Tamalpais declaration attached and send it to your environment minister or senior government official who will attend the final decision-making days in The Hague next week. Please remind them to face the urgency of the situation and call upon them to make decisions that will address the real problem of climate change ­ greenhouse gas emission levels in industrialized countries. Tell them to face climate change and work out an environmentally and socially sound Kyoto protocol in which sinks have no place.

Thank you for your help!