REDD: Saudi Arabia & Brazil fight of “forests in exhaustion” based carbon credits.
When it comes to carbon credits from reduced deforestation big
agriculture and invasive tree farmers intend to sink their hooks far deeper
than any effort that will actually protect primary forests. Here’s
more information about one of their strategies! –Editor, Forest
Policy Research
On the final day in Poznan, a dispute took place between Saudi Arabia
and Brazil over the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Saudi Arabia
wants carbon capture and storage to be included in the CDM. Brazil
wants carbon credits for “forests in exhaustion”. Saudi Arabia’s
motivation is obvious.
It wants to continue extracting and selling
oil. But what is Brazil’s motivation? And what, exactly, are “forests
in exhaustion”? I admit that I’d never heard of “forests in
exhaustion”. But neither had anyone else, outside the Brazilian
delegation, it seems. When I googled the phrase a few days after the
Poznan meeting, there were no hits. Now there are four — all related
to the last minute CDM discussions at Poznan. I asked one of the
government delegates, who explained that Brazil is asking for carbon
credits for industrial tree plantations that have over several
rotations sucked so much water and nutrients out of the soil that the
trees will no longer grow fast enough for the plantation to be managed
as a commercial venture. In other words, these “forests in exhaustion”
are abandoned plantations, not forests. At a side event about the
Amazon Fund the previous day, Brazil’s Minister of Environment, Carlos
Minc, said that its proposals for reducing the rate of deforestation
in the Amazon will not create any carbon credits or rights to
emissions. But under its proposals for the CDM, Brazil does want
carbon credits from abandoned industrial tree plantations. As
REDD-Monitor has previously pointed out, the UNFCCC forest definition
fails to differentiate between forests and plantations. Meanwhile,
Brazil’s government representatives talk about reducing the rate of
“net deforestation” — meaning that old-growth forests could be
clearcut, replaced by soya or sugar plantations and an equivalent area
planted with monoculture tree plantations. With the current definition
of forests, the UNFCCC would not notice the difference. Brazil already
has two extremely controversial industrial tree plantation projects
which are attempting to register under the CDM in order to claim
carbon credits for their operations. One is run by Plantar and the
other by Valourec & Mannesmann. The companies claim that these vast
areas of eucalyptus plantations are reducing greenhouse gas emissions
by producing charcoal for the steel industry. The argument runs that
if it did not use charcoal from eucalyptus plantations, then the steel
industry would use coal. Neither of these plantation companies is
currently registered with the CDM, although both have had applications
underway for several years. http://www.redd-monitor.org/2009/01/15/why-is-brazil-so-interested-in-carbon-credits-for-forests-in-exhaustion/
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com