Forest Plans Cause Sinking Feeling
11/11/98
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Forest Plans Cause Sinking Feeling
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 11/11/98
Byline: Danielle Knight
WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 (IPS) - Plans to harness the ability of
forests to absorb 'greenhouse' gases, as a way to combat global
warming, could allow industrialised countries to continue
polluting the atmosphere, say environmentalists.
At issue are proposals backed by the World Bank and some
governments and non-governmental organisations - such as the US-
based Nature Conservancy - to preserve forests as natural
'sinkholes' for greenhouse gases, blamed by most scientists for
global warming and climate change.
Environmental think-tanks including the Union of Concerned
Scientists and Worldwatch Institute, while applauding efforts to
preserve forests, fear that industrialised countries will continue
to pump out greenhouse gases if they preserve their forests, or
pay other nations to not clear-cut their trees.
Sceptics point out there is no scientific precision in
measuring the ability of forests to absorb carbon gases , and no
way to know that preserving one forest area will not lead to the
clear-cutting of another area.
''Greenhouse forestry won't necessarily be good for the forests -
and it certainly won't prevent climate change,'' says Ashley T.
Mattoon, a researcher with Washington-based Worldwatch.''The
forest issue threatens to become a giant loophole that undermines
the commitments made in Kyoto.''
International negotiators in Buenos Aires are attempting to
hammer ouit by Friday an agreement on details of the Kyoto
Protocol in Climate Change, drawn up last December in Japan, which
seeks to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Most scientists believe that these gases, mainly resulting from
the burning of oil, coal and gas, are responsible for the heating
up of the world's surface and will continue to continue to
accelerate. The increase in temperatures would have major
climatological and environmental effects, ranging from an
increasing intensity of storms to flooding and desertification,
they say.
Meteorologists at the United Nations and elsewhere, meanwhile,
declared that the last 10 years comprised the hottest decade ever
recorded on Earth while 1997 was the hottest year - and that 1998
is on track to being even hotter.
To deal with this threat, industrialised nations agreed in
Kyoto to reduce the emissions of six greenhouse gases by an
average of six percent from 1990 levels, and to complete the
reductions between 2008 and 2012.
The Protocol's basic framework provides industrial countries
the option to offset their greenhouse emissions by counting the
carbon absorbed by their forests and other ecosystems that absorb
carbon dioxide, termed 'carbon sinks.' While cutting back on coal
and oil is a tough sell politically, as powerful industries say
such reductions will hurt them economically, planting trees has
nearly universal appeal.
''I think it's a wonderful opportunity to preserve an unusual
natural environment at a relatively low cost,'' says Linn Draper,
president of American Electric Power.
Tia Nelson, deputy director of the Washington-based Nature
Conservancy's climate change programs, agrees. ''The benefits to
watersheds, biodiversity protection and to local communities are
huge,'' she says. ''That's why we're at the table.''
At the Buenos Aires conference, which began Nov. 2, the Nature
Conservancy and World Bank unveiled a plan outlining ways
countries could meet their emission limits by planting or
preserving trees. But Worldwatch's Mattoon warns that, with no
scientific basis to make an accounting of 'carbon sinks', the
forestry provisions in the Protocol could actually result in
activities that are harmful both to forests and to the climate.
''At Kyoto, many scientists argued that we do not understand
the cycle in its entirety well enough to predict whether carbon
moving into industrialised country forests will actually stay
there,'' Mattoon says. ''In their view, carbon sinks shouldn't
have been entered into the treaty until more solid data on them
had been collected.''
There also is no way of ensuring that the trees spared in the
name of reducing emissions would not have been preserved in any
event, she adds. ''The protocol is highly unlikely to produce any
long-term increase in the size of these sinks, beyond what would
probably have happened anyway.''
The long term permanence of certain forests counted as sinks is
also questionable, says Mattoon.
''You cannot be sure that a forest fire or flood will not wipe
out a forest area that has been counted as a sink,'' she says.
''But you can be sure that the emissions will be in the atmosphere
permanently.''
Mattoon warns that, under current definitions used by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the scientific
body that advises the parties to the convention - many activities
that would severely reduce a forest's capacity to absorb and hold
carbon would not be discouraged. This included selective
harvesting of trees and road construction.
''It is likely to encourage types of forestry - like tree
plantations - that are aren't generally very good for forests,''
she adds. ''In a sense, the protocol has got the problem reversed:
instead of looking to the forests for a way to avoid facing our
fossil fuel addiction, we ought to deal with the addiction, as a
way to avoid endangering forests through climatic disruption.
''After all, many of the recent forest fires were preceded by
unusual droughts, and some scientists are reading at least some of
the droughts as a form of climate change.''
Another worry is that governments will exaggerate the estimates
of carbon absorption potential of their forests in order meet
their legally binding emissions cuts.
A recent study published last month in the journal Science,
concluded that trees in North America could soak up every ton of
carbon discharged annually by fossil fuel burning in Canada and
the United States. This finding has led to arguments over whether
the United States, seemingly with the capacity to absorb its
carbon, should have less responsibility to reduce its emissions.
Because of the all the uncertain factors involved in accounting
for the 'sinks', the IPCC has agreed to do a report on the
scientific aspects of the problem due out in June 2000.
Meanwhile, fossil fuel industry corporations have poured millions
of dollars into the rainforests of Central and South America,
hopeful that these will one day be credited as emissions
reductions.
British Petroleum America, for example, recently entered into a
9.5 million dollar investment with the Bolivian government to
protect about 630,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest.