Environment, Carbon and Forests

While steaming ahead with new carbon market initiatives, the World Bank attracted further criticism and suffered potential setbacks on agriculture and on the Green Climate Fund (GCF) at the UN climate negotiations in Durban.

 

As the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) summit opened in Durban in November last year, the Bank’s climate record came under renewed scrutiny. People from all over the world joined the Global Day of Action and other protests to voice their concerns about the Bank’s involvement in climate finance during the summit. A group of civil society organisations, including the BASIC South Initiative and the Sierra Club, launched the report Unclear on the concept: How can the World Bank Group lead on climate finance without an energy strategy? It argues that the Bank should finally agree a low-carbon energy strategy that ends funding for dirty energy and promotes access to clean energy. The report states that, in the last four years, nearly half of the Bank’s energy lending went to fossil fuels, and less than 10 per cent went to promote energy access for the poor. It also notes the Bank’s heavy involvement in establishing and promoting carbon markets.

 

The Bank’s push for forest and agricultural carbon markets was confirmed by the launch of the third tranche of the BioCarbon Fund during the summit, set up to enable access to carbon markets for the least developed countries with a focus on reforestation and agriculture projects, such as REDD+ and soil carbon. The Bank also launched the new Carbon Initiative for Development to enable least developed countries to tap into carbon markets through carbon-credit-generating projects.

 

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation also continued to attract critique and the outcomes of the negotiations, including decisions on safeguards and financing, were met with disappointment by indigenous peoples groups. A new coalition formed during the summit, the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities against REDD and for Life, called for a moratorium on REDD+ until their concerns have been addressed, arguing that their very existence is under threat. Tom Goldtooth, Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said: “At Durban, CDM and REDD carbon and emission offset regimes were prioritised, not emission reductions.

 

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How to design a REDD+ project
Reuters AlertNet (blog)
By Essam Mohammed | 7 minutes(s) ago | Comments ( 0 ) By Essam Mohammed REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) aims to reward or compensate tropical developing countries for keeping their forests intact or for reducing the ...

The most recent UN climate negotiations wrapped up in December with a better-than-anticipated outcome, but the preparations for the next set — this year in Qatar — are already underway.

 

REDD+ policies got a major boost in Durban when countries agreed that all sources of funding, including carbon markets, are eligible to pay for REDD+ activities. After years of exploring how to pay for all three stages of REDD+ (capacity building, early implementation and national-level pay-for-performance), the UN has put its seal of approval on the use of markets. Estimates indicate that while public financing is needed, especially for the capacity building stage, only large-scale, sustainable funding from carbon markets will generate sufficient funding. EDF applauds this decision.

 

The decision on REDD+ finance, in the “Long-term Cooperative Action” (LCA) negotiations, included a clear endorsement of all sources of finance, a call for a REDD+ finance workshop and a technical paper in 2012.

 

Negotiators in Durban approved critical provisions for ensuring the rights of Indigenous Peoples are respected and will be safeguarded in the implementation of REDD+ programs. Parties also outlined the protections for Indigenous Peoples prominently in the LCA’s financing sections. Still, negotiators only developed a framework for systems of reporting on the implementation of REDD+ safeguards and decided to continue working on the content of these REDD+ systems next year.

 

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When Reshma Kunda talks about the land surrounding her village, her voice is full of reverence. “Our mountains and forests are like our gods. They give us grass, wood for fuel, water, medicines and food – everything we need for our lives,” says the farmer who lives in Godavari Kunda village, about 15 km (10 miles) southeast of the Kathmandu valley.  “In return, we owe them protection (and must) keep them safe for future generations.”

 

Other residents of Godavari Kunda agree. They are part of a movement that has seen local communities across Nepal take charge of forest management – conserving and restoring woodland to mitigate the effects of climate change. At the same time, they are receiving sustainable economic benefits.

 

Today, a quarter of Nepal’s forests are managed by nearly 20,000 community forest user groups (CFUGs), the first of which were established by non-governmental organisations in the 1980s. The Nepalese government helped replicate the pioneering programme in areas where deforestation was taking place. Now more than a third of the population is now involved in the groups, which collectively manage 1.1 million hectares (2.7 million acres) of public land.

 

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By Jemima Garrett, ABC Radio Australia News, 3 February 2012 | Under former Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, PNG took on the leadership of a group of developing nations working towards the use of carbon credits as a mechanism for protecting their rainforest. Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, says PNG's credibility is at now risk and Australia needs to be concerned. "We are all now trying to come to terms with living in a carbon-constrained world and every nation needs to shoulder its bit of that, and that includes Papua New Guinea," he said. "There are concerns, and I am far from giving up hope on this, but I do think that there is a big job ahead of us, making sure that we get that clear regulatory framework in place, that respects local land rights and can operate within that." Australia is spending $273 million on its International Forest Carbon Initiative, which is helping countries get ready for using this sort of carbon credits to avoid forest destruction.

By Gus Silva-Chávez (EDF), EDF's blog, 7 February 2012 | REDD+ policies got a major boost in Durban when countries agreed that all sources of funding, including carbon markets, are eligible to pay for REDD+ activities. After years of exploring how to pay for all three stages of REDD+ (capacity building, early implementation and national-level pay-for-performance), the Estimates indicate that while public financing is needed, especially for the capacity building stage, only large-scale, sustainable funding from carbon markets will generate sufficient funding. EDF applauds this decision. The decision on REDD+ finance, in the “Long-term Cooperative Action” (LCA) negotiations, included a clear endorsement of all sources of finance, a call for a REDD+ finance workshop and a technical paper in 2012.

By Gleb Raygorodetsky, News Watch, National Geographic, 6 February 2012 | One important sign of the indigenous peoples being largely absent from the climate change policy and decision-making processes is the virtual lack of references to the existing traditional knowledge on climate change in the global, national, and local climate change discussions. To date, valuable insights held by indigenous peoples worldwide about direct and indirect impacts of, as well as mitigation and adaptation approaches to climate change, remain largely unrecognized. This is particularly apparent in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) Assessment Reports released every few years.

More companies are reporting on the impact of their operations on global forests, finds a new report. Eighty-seven global corporations disclosed their “forest footprint” in 2011, according to the third Forest Footprint Disclosure (FFD), which asks companies to report on their impact on forests based on their use of five commodities: soy, palm oil, timber and pulp, cattle, and biofuels. This is a 11 percent rise from the companies that reported in 2010, including the first reports by companies such as the Walt Disney Company, Tesco UK, and Johnson & Johnson. However a number of so-called “green” companies continue to refuse to disclose, including Patagonia, Stonyfield Farms, and Whole Foods Markets Inc. 

 

The new report also shows who didn’t disclose. One sector in particular—oil and gas—has refused to participate. Major producers like BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Valero Energy, and Petrobas failed to analyze and disclose their forest footprint. 

 

“The time to act is now: there is a commercial imperative and the risks to the world’s forests are too great to wait. More companies need to wake up to the risks deforestation presents in their portfolios. Who wants to finance the destruction of life on earth, especially when it undermines wealth creation itself?” said FFD Chairman, Andrew Mitchell, in a press release. 

 

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India’s environment ministry has blamed Maoist rebels and shifting cultivation practised in the country’s north-east for a drop in forest cover.

 

Forests and trees covered slightly less than one-fourth of the country’s geographical area, a decline of 0.03 percentage point from the previous assessment in 2009, according to the biennial forest report. The decline also reveals that the government has failed make any progress on its oft-repeated promise to bring one-third of the country under trees.

 

“There’s been significant loss in one district in Andhra Pradesh—Khammam,” environment secretary T. Chatterjee said. “That’s partly due to encroachment by Naxalites, which makes measurement and access difficult as well as harvesting of plantations that take time to harvest.”

 

Between the forest reports of 2003 and 2007, there was a nearly 10 million ha jump in forest and tree cover that saw it rise from 20.55% to 23.84% of the country’s geographical area. For the first time ever, forest officials also estimated the area under bamboo plantsand the carbon trapped within the forests. They estimated these at 13.96 million ha and 6,663 million tonnes, respectively.

 

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By Mike Shanahan, Under The Banyan, 7 February 2012 | Lambir is the world’s most botanically diverse forest. In just a 52-hectare patch of it, researchers have identified 1,178 tree species. That’s more species than in all of the temperate forests of the northern hemisphere. For a while, Lambir’s animal life was impressive too but by the time I arrived there in 1997 the bigger species were hard to find. In 2002, Igor Debski and I published a paper on the wildlife seen in the park between 1984 and 1999 (Appendix 1 here). Excluding fish, the list ran to an impressive 367 species, including 237 birds and 64 mammals. We noted though that despite spending thousands of hours in the forest we had only heard the distinctive calls of gibbons twice in two years, and had never seen the distinctive scratch marks a sun bear will leave on a tree trunk. We saw other large species such as monkeys, deer and hornbills only very rarely.

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Size of Wales, 7 February 2012 | The 7th February 2012 is a very important date for the communities of the Wapichan people of the South Rupununi in Guyana: on this date, we will present to the national and international communities a map of our traditional forest lands along with our grassroots proposals for the continued care of our lands, forests and other natural resources found in our traditional territory. Through the vision, persistence and hard work of our past and present Wapichan Toshaos (leaders) a dream has finally become a reality. Ten years ago, a Wapichan land use map and management plan were just ideas that came out of discussions in our village meetings and in meetings of our District Toshaos Councils (DTCs). Putting forward our own plans to have our lands secured, to save our forests, wetlands, mountains and savannahs from harmful development and to determine our own future was something we used to “gaff” (chat) about in our “manores”? (collective work parties).

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