The role of forests in global climate change: whence we come and where we go |
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| Authors: | CHARLOTTE STRECK SEBASTIAN M SCHOLZ |
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| Institution: | International legal expert in climate change and carbon finance law and policy. Before she joined the consultancy company Climate Focus as Director in February 2005, she worked for five years as counsel with the World Bank in Washington DC. She has published extensively and serves as a board member of the Global Public Policy Institute, adjunct lecturer at the University of Potsdam and fellow of the Center of International Sustainable Development Law at McGill University, Montreal. She is the co-editor (with David Freestone) of Legal aspects of implementing the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms. Making Kyoto work;(2005). Recent publications also include, The World Summit on sustainable development: partnerships as new tools in environmental governance (2004) and the Yearbook of international environmental law 2002. Robert Bosch PhD research fellow at the Center for Development Research (ZEF)in Bonn, Germany and a Research Associate at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania. He worked previously for the Berlin-based Institute for Applied Ecology on synergies between the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity and gained international work experience in forests and climate change as a research fellow at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, and with the World Bank's BioCarbon Fund. He is the author (with Ian Noble) of 'Generation of sequestration credits under the CDM' in Legal aspects of implementing the Kyoto Protocol mechanisms. Making Kyoto work;, edited by David Freestone and Charlotte Streck (2005). |
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| Abstract: | Neither the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) nor the Kyoto Protocol include a satisfying mechanism for reducing the substantial emissions from deforestation which are responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is acknowledged that planting forests, for example through afforestation and reforestation in the Clean Development Mechanism, clearly provides an opportunity to sequester carbon in vegetation and soils. However, it takes decades to restore carbon stocks that have been lost as a result of land-use changes. Reducing the rate of deforestation is the only effective way to reduce carbon losses from forest ecosystems. As negotiations on a post-Kyoto agreement have already started the authors argue that a complete and fair post-Kyoto regime will have to expand existing regulations by creating a framework to encompass all land-use and forest-related changes in carbon stocks. Developing countries administer the majority of the world's environmental resources and provide a vital global public good by maintaining environmental assets. However, with increasing pressure on development and the use of resources, developing countries can hardly be expected to provide these services free. Therefore, they will have to be integrated into a more comprehensive incentive framework which also rewards forestry conservation, sustainable forest management and afforestation. The authors discuss how an incentive system for the protection of forests can be included in a future climate regime. Different design choices are considered and two recent approaches to reward developing countries that avoid further deforestation are compared: the 'compensated reduction of deforestation' approach and the Carbon Stock Approach. |
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