5 Reasons a Tree Farm is Not a Forest

This is a guest column by Brent Hardy of Extra Space Storage.

On a recent trip to visit family in Georgia, I noticed a familiar illusion as we sped down a country road. Rows and rows of trees lined up perfectly, deep into what looked to be a forest.

Just as that thought struck me, I recalled a short video I encountered recently, called 'A Tree Farm is Not a Forest' (http://www.denveropenmedia.org/project/promos/show/a-tree-farm-not-a-forest). I hadn't done any follow-up research after watching the 30-second clip, apart from a long, "Hmm..." but as I let myself become mesmerized by row after row of perfectly planted pine trees, I decided to look a bit further into the topic.

The E-books vs. paper books debate (http://www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp) will likely rage on for years to come, and even the most devoted environmentalist would be foolhardy to call for the complete elimination of paper, a medium that has allowed for most of the progress we've made as a society over the last millennium.

Still, every time we pick up a book or magazine, it's important to realize that what we hold in our hands was once a tree. It was cut down and shredded into wood chips, turned to a watery pulp mixture, and then flattened and dried with steam and giant rollers.

In order to manufacturer the paper that we need, tree farms are a necessity. But destroying the few remaining old growth forests we have should no longer even be considered.

Logging companies are fond of saying that for every tree they cut down, three are replanted. That may be the case, but a tree farm does not make a forest.

Here's why:

1. Diversity
   

   In a forest, every acre boasts a wide variety of plant species, each providing shelter and sustenance to different animals. When a mix of pine, oak, magnolia, and bay are all cut down in order to plant one species of pine, what results may still look like a forest, but it's little different from a field of corn.
   

   Some animals may still utilize the new one-species tree farm, but others will be forced to migrate elsewhere (and finding a place to go gets more difficult every day).
   

2. Different Canopy
   

   In a forest, the trees all vary in age. That results in a layered canopy. Light can penetrate in some places, allowing young saplings to grow. Different species can coexist because they're not overwhelmed by a faster-growing competitor that blocks out there light.
   

   In a tree farm, each tree was planted at exactly the same time. They grow at the same pace, creating an even canopy that blocks out light and prevents new species from growing underneath them.
   

3. Different Ground Cover
   

   Decomposing logs are good for a forest. As they breakdown, they provide nutrients back to the soil. Mammals, reptiles and amphibians find shelter in them, and rainwater is absorbed in their decaying wood, slowly releasing water into the soil around them (and helping to slow the spread of forest fires).
   

   In a tree farm, there are rarely rotting logs on the ground. By removing a step in a plant's life cycle, the natural, circular progression of the forest is broken.
   

4. Native Species May Not Be Present
   In Georgia, native longleaf pines have long been replaced with loblolly pines in tree farms, which grow faster and are thus more profitable. While loblolly causes no direct harm to the land it grows on (it's not an invasive species, like eucalyptus, choking out other species around it), its proliferation leaves little room for the longleaf to grow.
   

   When we replace important native species with farmed species, the other plants and animals that rely on the native species lose habitat and disappear as well.
   

5. Different Purposes
   A forest exists for its own intrinsic value. Humans enjoy them for hiking, camping, and simply getting away from the business of city life.
   

   Tree farms are operated and controlled for profit, just like any other crop. They are planted and cut down at intervals, providing no longevity or diversity.
   

   It's a very simple difference.

In January, the 3,500-year-old Senator bald cypress tree burned to the ground (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/us/disbelief-still-as-florida-reacts-to-burning-of-3500-year-old-tree.html), a needless accident caused by a careless woman smoking drugs inside the tree.

It's a shame, not only for the loss of the tree, but due to the realization that we're not likely to have more trees like the Senator come along. We're still cutting down old growth redwoods on the Pacific coast and in Canada.

In a tree farm, we're raising wood and cutting it down when it's ready. The trees will never become millennia-old behemoths. That's because to grow giant trees, you have to let them live in a forest, and leave them alone.

Brent Hardy is the driving force for Extra Space Storage corporate responsibility through energy management and sustainability programs at www.extraspace.com. Brent leads a conversation about sustainability at http://extraspace.com/blog/category/Sustainability.aspx.

The New Treehuggers? Check my article on Triple Pundit about the Forest Footprint Disclosure's new report

Here's an update on an article I published on Friday on Triple Pundit on a new report presenting the latest efforts of large corporations to measure and manage their forest footprint.

The article is entitled 'Get Ready for the Forest Footprint Disclosure'. Here's the first part of the article:

If you were wondering what the next step in corporate transparency is, you got an answer earlier this week. Companies all over the world have been working in the last couple of years with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) to disclose, manage and eventually reduce their carbon footprint and later on their water footprint. Now, another project, the Forest Footprint Disclosure (FFD), is working similarly with companies on their impact on forests. This week they released their third annual report.

To read the full article go to http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/02/ready-forest-footprint-disclosure/

Links to other articles I wrote for Triple Pundit can be found at http://www.triplepundit.com/author/raz-godelnik/

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

My article on Triple Pundit about the help SFI certification gets from Maine Governor Paul LePage

Here's an update on a new article I published today on Triple Pundit with the latest news on the new battleground between SFI and FSC certifications.

This time it's Maine, where Governor LePage signed an executive order directing that that “any new or expanded state buildings shall incorporate ‘Green Building’ standards that give certification credits equally to forest products grown, manufactured, and certified under the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Standard, Forest Stewardship Council, American Tree Farm System, and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification systems.”

The article is entitled 'Maine’s Governor Helps SFI Win an Important Battle Over FSC'. Here's the first part of the article:

I have to admit that I got it wrong. Last September, I wrote here about the battle between the competing forest products certification Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Forest Stewardship Council (SFI). I thought that the fact that seven large companies decided to reject the SFI certification meant that SFI is going to lose this battle, unless it worked with environmental organizations to improve its credibility. I didn’t take into consideration one factor that can change this balance of power and help SFI swiftly recover: friendly politicians.

To read the full article go to http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/12/sfi-wins-battle-fsc-maine-timber-friendly-governor/

Links to other articles I wrote for Triple Pundit can be found at http://www.triplepundit.com/author/raz-godelnik/

To read more on the fight between FSC and SFI, visit our website at http://www.ecolibris.net/SFI_or_FSC.asp

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

SFI is losing another battle against FSC with seven companies deciding to stop using it

ForestEthics announced earlier this week that seven companies, including five Fortune 500 companies has joined a growing corporate movement against the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), a controversial forestry certification.

Here is a summary of actions or commitments by these seven companies as provided by ForestEthics:

• Sprint will shift all billing statement paper from SFI to Forest Stewardship Council, a more rigorous label, and will phase out use of the SFI logo on billing envelopes. Finally, Sprint has committed to give purchasing preference to FSC-certified paper.
• Norm Thompson Outfitters removed all references to SFI in print materials and websites and committed to avoid promotion of SFI.
• King Arthur Flour stopped using the SFI logo on its catalogs and switched to FSC certified paper.
• AT&T committed to avoid using the SFI logo and name in its materials, and to give purchasing preference to FSC certified products for all new paper purchases.
• State Farm changed the paper for its biggest promotional item, the State Farm Road Atlas, from SFI to FSC – and committed to state a preference for FSC when the company revises its comprehensive paper policy.
• U.S. Bank committed to avoid using the SFI name and logo on printed materials and other company communications, and to use only the FSC seal when a forest eco-label is used.
• Comcast committed to steps that will avoid future company promotion of SFI.

You can read my analysis on the latest round in the fight on the credibility of the SFI certification and its implications on Triple Pundit.

More articles on this issue:

SFI has released an upgraded standard. Will it be enough to compete with FSC?

ForestEthics is fighting the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) certification

You can find more resources on our page - SFI vs. FSC

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

Greenpeace wants you to think how many trees it takes to make chopsticks next time you order Chinese food!

Greenpeace launched last year a campaign in China to call attention to the urgent need for forest conservation in China. One of the main issues they focused on was chopsticks.

According to statistics from the Forestry Administration, China produced 57 billion pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks in 2009 alone. How many trees were cut down for these chopsticks? According to Greenpeace , the production of disposable chopsticks required wood from 3.8 million trees!

Last year Greenpeace and Ogilvy Beijing have teamed up to plant an eye-catching “chopstick forest” that was displayed outside The Place, a popular shopping center in the heart of Beijing.

Ogilvy explained how it worked:

Over the last several months, Ogilvy worked with Greenpeace, local artist Yinhai Xu and more than 200 volunteers from 20 Chinese universities to collect more than 80,000 pairs of used (and sanitized) disposable wooden chopsticks from restaurants and repurposed them into a forest of chopstick trees that stand approximately 5 meters tall.

Aihong Li, director of Greenpeace's Forest Protection Program, said: “These trees should have been abundantly green and vibrant, but now they are pieced together with wasteful disposable chopsticks. Our hope is that everyone in China will join us in saying "no" to disposable chopsticks to protect our forests.”

Now, 6 months later, Greenpeace is coming out with a video entitled "Disposable Project" that is showing the campaign and calling for greater awareness among chopstick users for the materials the chopsticks are made from. In other words: Trees. Their suggestion? Very simple - replacing wooden chopsticks with a plastic or metal version, a reusable and environmentally-friendly alternative. Think about it next time you order Chinese take-out.



Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

Green news from the pulp and paper industry in North America

I read two interesting stories this week with a promise for a better future for the forests and the paper industry in North America.

The first story is not all that new, but I read about it only this week, so it was new to me :) It is about Georgia-Pacific (GP), one of the largest wood and paper products companies operating in the Southern United States, which announced that "it will no longer purchase trees from endangered forests and special areas, or from new pine plantations established at the expense of natural hardwood forests."

NRDC, which worked with GP to develop this new policy (together with other environmental groups - Dogwood Alliance and Rainforest Action Network) explained in a press release from last November that "While GP’s new forest policy applies to all of its operations, as a first step in implementing its commitment on Endangered Forests and Special Areas, GP worked with the environmental groups and scientists to identify 11 Endangered Forests and Special Areas totaling 600,000 acres in the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Eco-Region, as well as 90 million acres of natural hardwood forests in the Southern region. Endangered Forests and Special Areas in other regions will be mapped in a similar process, over the coming years."

The South’s natural forests are home to more plant and animal species than anywhere else in North America, yet less than two percent of the region's forests are protected, and the South produces more wood and paper than any other place in the world.

This is an important step - “No other U.S. company has demonstrated this level of initiative in mapping unique forests across such a broad region,” said Debbie Hammel, NRDC Senior Resource Specialist in the NRDC's press release. And as Zacary Shahan of Planetsave that wrote on this story this week said "hopefully, the NRDC, RAN, and Dogwood Alliance can get other companies to follow suit soon."

The second story is definitely new - AFP reported yesterday that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a 278-million-dollar (279-million US) investment to help Canada's pulp and paper industry become more environmentally friendly.

"Speaking in Windsor, Quebec, Harper said Ottawa would namely allocate nearly 25 million dollars to paper manufacturer Domtar Corporation to help its pulp and paper mill "invest in energy-efficient and environment-friendly technologies."

The 24.8-million-dollar (24.9-million US) investment is part of the government's much touted Pulp and Paper Green Transformation Program, which seeks to help mills in Canada reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and produce renewable energy from forest biomass. The rest of the investment would go to plants in New Brunswick, Alberta and British Columbia."

Harper is not considered very green and is blamed for refusing to make combating climate change a priority, so it will be interesting to see if he will prioritize the efforts to green up the pulp and paper industry in Canada. He himself said about the new investment in the industry that "I'm well aware of the criticisms. But what we need are concrete measures in order to really meet those targets. And this government has been the first one to take concrete measures such as the one being announced today."

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Avoided Deforestation Partners wants to make living trees more profitable than dead ones

"One ton of carbon dioxide is presently trading on European markets at about £10. A hectare of rainforest stores about 500 tons and therefore has a potential value of £5,000; but, as the New York Times recently pointed out, millions of hectares of rainforest are being cut down to create agricultural land worth £100 a hectare. Why are we allowing people to be deprived of their natural habitats, biodiversity to be diminished and climatic catastrophe to be hastened, and all at a loss of £4,900 a hectare? There are no easy answers, but I am sure that part of the blame, and more importantly of the solution, is down to us accountants." - Sir Michael Peat.

I found this quote in a book I'm currently reading (The Sustainable MBA: The Manager's guide to green Business by Giselle Weybrecht), and it's from an article published by Sir Peat in 2007. The price of one ton of CO2 have gone up since then (about £11.3 if you look at the Spot price last month in the European market) and it looks like this concept that living trees should be more profitable to their owners than dead trees is getting more and more support.

As we reported here before, policymakers globally and in the U.S. are having difficulties to establish a program, such as REDD, that would actually make it happen. The vacuum left is beginning to be filled in with voluntary initiatives. We wrote here last October on Carbon Canopy, and now I've just learned about a coalition called 'Avoided Deforestation Partners' which has similar plans.

According to their website, Avoided Deforestation Partners is an international network of thinkers, strategists and practitioners, founded by leaders in forest carbon policy and project implementation, science, finance, and conservation in 2007, to support international efforts to halt tropical deforestation. It includes environmental groups and companies that represent a range of business interests, from heavy emitters that include American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Pacific Gas and Electric, and El Paso Corp., to other companies such as Starbucks, Marriott and Disney.

As described by Marc Gunther on ClimateBiz.com, Avoided Deforestation Partners is the brainchild of Jeff Horowitz, a 58-year-old architect and newcomer to the environmental movement who has quietly become an influential player as climate change legislation inches its way through a divided Congress. Gunther had a very interesting talk with Horowitz about the coalition's plan to create a "a mechanism through which either regulated companies or unregulated companies, or governments, can make payments to help prevent deforestation in the global south."

The interview is available at http://www.greenbiz.com/podcast/2010/02/12/growing-money-trees

It will be interesting to see if initiatives such as this one or Carbon Canopy will succeed in a place where policymakers seem to fail. And it's even more interesting to see if these initiatives can help promote broader programs such as REDD. We'll keep you posted!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Is it a REDD Christmas? not really, not yet.

Santa's red suit got me wondering if there's any kid out there who asked Santa to do something about the REDD mechanism and put life into it. I'm not sure about it, but it sure looks like REDD needs some help, even after Copenhagen, when for a minute it looked like the only shining star around.

The agreement that came out of the negotiations in Copenhagen (Copenhagen Accord) includes a reference to REDD, as follows:

"We recognize the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries."

The translation of this language is that basically there's a lot of good will and understanding of the need to initiate a mechanism with financial incentives that will protect the forests, but no promises are made and no time frame is provided.

There was also a draft that went into more details about the REDD mechanism, but as mongabay.com reported, it was weakened from earlier versions. REDD-Monitor adds that this draft "includes no mention of targets for stopping deforestation. There are no commitments for long-term finance. Safeguards are weak to the point of non-existent. Leakage is not meaningfully addressed. The principle of free, prior and informed consent by indigenous people is nowhere to be seen."

And there's also some money on the table as a result of the negotiations. The US, UK, France, Japan, Australia and Norway pledged $3.5bn in Copenhagen to start REDD in the over the next three years. Still, as Carbon Positive reports, there is some doubt as to whether these promises still stand in the absence of a comprehensive climate agreement.

Are these results satisfying? well, it depends who you're speaking with. It's depressing," Kevin Conrad, executive director of the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, a group of 40 forested nations, told the Associated Press. "REDD gets punted along for another year." John O. Niles of the Tropical Forest Group also didn't like the results and told mongabay.com that "The REDD text published is a major backdown from what almost everyone thought was an advanced text on many regards."

Others, like Jeff Horowitz, founding partner of Avoided Deforestation Partners, a group pushing for U.S. leadership on REDD, were more optimistic. He told mongabay.com that "We cannot let this procedural setback diminish our resolve to create policy frameworks that addresses this immediate and scalable solution to climate change. I am certain this delay in Copenhagen will serve to fire up the US environmental community, and our private sector partners, to be more motivated than ever to see the U.S. Senate pass climate legislation that includes robust international forest protection provisions in the first quarter of 2010."

The bottom line is that even though it looked for a couple of days that the REDD issue can be finalized separately and does not have to be dependent on a general agreement, it looks like it won't work this way. I think it's a bit naive to believe that REDD has a life of its own and can be launched successfully no matter what framework is agreed upon, if at all. Strong and effective REDD mechanism is possible only as a part of a strong and effective global accord.

This is I believe one of the main lessons from Copenhagen and I hope it will drive all of us who are worried about the forests to keep pressing the politicians to agree on a meaningful global accord with a meaningful REDD mechanism in it.

More articles about REDD:

Everything you always wanted to know about forestry carbon credits - A special interview with Paulo Lopes of Carbon Clear

Is REDD going bad? Is it going to enable conversion of natural forests into industrial plantations?

The potential and risks of forest-based carbon offsets:

Part 1 - the Carbon Canopy

Part 2 - Noel Kempff and the Greenpeace report

Part 3 - How it can actually work?

Happy Holiday!
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Everything you always wanted to know about forestry carbon credits - A special interview with Paulo Lopes of Carbon Clear

Today the U.N. Climate Change Summit (COP15) gets underway and no matter how optimistic you are about these talks, I think it's an exciting day and I hope the last day will be even more exciting!

One of the issues that will be brought up during these talks is the REDD mechanism, which is supposed to provide monetary incentives to prevent deforestation. We covered this issue several times in the last couple of month (see our 3-part series on the potential and risks of forest-based carbon credits).

Today, just in time for the Copenhagen talks, we have an interview with Paulo Lopes, a Carbon Management Consultant at Carbon Clear, who holds Msc in Environmental Technology at Imperial College London and did his thesis on forestry carbon standards. Paulo is one of the most knowledgeable persons I know on forestry based carbon credits and we thank him for the opportunity to get a better understanding of one of the most interesting issues to be discussed in Copenhagen in the next 12 days.

Hello Paulo. You did your Master's Thesis about Forestry carbon standards (“Review of Forestry Carbon Standards – Development of a tool for organizations to identify the most appropriate carbon credit") - what brought you to write about this issue?
My masters degree had a large focus on climate change policy and the carbon market. To gain a deeper understanding I decided to work with Carbon Clear as a Forest Carbon Offset Analyst and learn from their knowledge and experience.

One would think that all carbon credits are the same, but they are like any other product whereby quality influences price. While researching forestry projects to invest in, I came across a range of carbon credits coming from a multitude of different forestry standards.

This can be confusing, even for people working in the sector. As there were only a limited number of independent reviews about the standards available, I decided to do a research and comparative study of all the forestry standards that are up and running in the world. This helps to understand what makes them different from each other and most importantly which standards are validating high quality carbon credits.

What is the biggest problem we have right now with forestry carbon credits and how it can be solved?
At the moment, the biggest problem is that only tree planting projects are accepted under the Kyoto Protocol. On top of that, the rules to validate these projects are so complex that only less than 0.5% of the carbon projects are forestry ones.

In addition, deforestation accounts for almost 20% of global GHG emissions, and there is no mechanism (such as REDD – Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) to reduce it under the Kyoto Protocol. It means that no carbon finance has been invested in projects to stop deforestation.

The voluntary carbon market, which regulates outside the Kyoto Protocol, began to fill the gap for forestry carbon credits and several standards flourished to provide the rules to validate forestry projects. But we are still at a very early stage, most of the standards were only started to validate forestry projects in 2009.

The post-Kyoto agreement is the key to boosting carbon finance in forestry projects. Governments, NGOs and businesses need to work hard to include it in their negotiations. While we are waiting for governments to put their policies into practice, we as consumers and businesses need to provide carbon finance to these projects.

What's your response to the criticism on carbon offsetting and especially on forest-based offsetting schemes, such as Justin Francis of Responsible Travel who stopped using it and says "Carbon offsetting is an ingenious way to avoid genuinely reducing your carbon emissions" (Ethical travel company drops carbon offsetting, Nov 7)?
It’s remarkable that a business promoting Western Australia as its destination of the month is now encouraging its clients not to offset their emissions in an effort to protect the environment. My view is that consumers and businesses must cut their emissions but the technology is just not in place to get this to zero. As nearly all human activity results in carbon emissions, offsets provide a valuable and effective tool in reducing our unavoidable emissions.

Therefore, the question is not whether we should reduce OR offset. What we must do is to reduce AND offset. We do not have the luxury to be fussy about how we reduce the emissions. We must use every solution that is in our hands. More than 350 million tonnes of CO2e have been reduced from offsetting projects in the developing world. These reductions would not have been possible without the money coming from carbon credits.

The offsetting market has evolved significantly in the last few years and is now much more sophisticated. Once an offset project is set up, independent certifiers will visit the project and check if the project meets the criteria and if it is reducing emissions. Every year a certifier will come back to the project and verify the emissions reductions. All the process is documented and available online to anyone.

Forestry projects add complexity to the process. While planting a tree absorbs carbon emissions thus reducing GHG, if the tree dies, the tree will release most of the carbon it has absorbed during its lifetime. One of the requirements to validate a carbon credit is that it should be permanent. All the standards developed solutions to solve this problem.
There are many mechanisms to prevent this, I will only exemplify two solutions:

Another tree must be planted in order to reabsorb the carbon released.
Use a buffer zone. It means that a forestry project can only sell part of the carbon it has reduced. Let’s say, a project uses a 50% buffer zone. It means that it can only sell 50% of the carbon credits. If something happens to some of the trees, it will be able to use the carbon credits from the buffer zone.

When it comes to carbon credits, should we make a difference between conservation (REDD) and reforestation/ afforestation projects or they're just the two sides of the same coin?
REDD and reforestation/afforestation projects are developed differently. A REDD project will prevent a forest to disappear. It means that a project developer will need to find solutions to prevent that illegal logging, diseases, fires or any other risks will occur. If it does occur, the certifier will not validate the carbon credits and the project developer won’t be able to sell the carbon credits.

A reforestation/afforestation project needs another type of expertise. Trees need to be planted and a full management system must make sure that the project will run for decades. In addition, it should absorb as much carbon emissions as possible in order to produce more carbon credits. If a tree dies, the carbon released must be discounted accordingly.

Carbon credits will always have one point in common: they have reduced one tonne of carbon emissions. Then, you can find out where it is coming from, whether it be REDD or reforestation/afforestation.

Do you believe providing monetary incentives to discourage deforestation is possible on global level? can we really overcome issues such as additionality or leakage?
We have no choice at this stage. We have to work to make this possible.

We have seen that most of the policies in place do not stop deforestation. The evidence is that in the last 30 years an area equivalent to the size of Texas has been felled down in the Brazilian Amazon. This does not account for all the deforestation in Central Africa and Indonesia. Only a few countries such as Costa Rica managed to protect their tropical forests thanks to government intervention and the financial returns from the tourism industry and the resources from the forest itself.

The only way to really avoid leakage is to monitor all the forests in a country. It is actually relatively inexpensive to monitor all the forests thanks to the use of imaging satellites and aerial photography in addition to ground monitoring. Brazil is working hard to develop such a system, however poorer countries may find this difficult to implement and manage without outside help.

Will the REDD mechanism be included in the next global protocol? and if so, do you believe it can be done without badly compromising it during the process?
It is very likely that REDD will be included in the next protocol. Negotiations between countries/ industries/ NGOs always end up in compromises. From a climate change perspective, compromise is not enough. We should follow what the scientific community is telling us which is that we need to reduce the levels of carbon in the atmosphere dramatically.

The key point for the success of any cap and trade scheme is that the cap should be set in accordance to the science and not to politics. The caps are too high at the moment which makes the price of carbon too low. An increase on the price of carbon will help the world to evolve to a low carbon economy much faster. If the price of carbon is high enough you will start to see thousands of organisations protecting forests and standing in opposition against illegal logging because it makes economic sense for them to do so.

You analyzed in your research several seven voluntary standards - why do we have so many standards? is there a chance they can be merged into one or two main standards?
It is unfortunate that we have so many standards, but this is a new market and until recently nobody knew how to calculate the carbon and address all the issues surrounding forestry projects. Several organizations started to take initiative independently and provide the tools to make it happen.

The positive aspect is that the standards are competing against each other which brings innovation and lowers costs. However, this is not sustainable and nobody in the market wants to deal with so many standards, therefore it is very likely that only a few of them will survive. It’s up to the market and governments to decide which will remain.

You used 12 criteria to compare these standards - What do you think is the most important criteria among them and what criteria was found to be the biggest differentiator between the best standards and the inferior ones?
The most important criteria for any standard are:

Additionality: provide evidence that a project would not have been possible without carbon finance.

Permanence: ensure that if a tree is destroyed (fire, disease, illegal logging…), there are mechanisms to replace the carbon released.

Leakage: provide evidence that by stopping deforestation in a project, the logging activity has not been displaced to another forest.

Registry: each carbon credit must have a serial number; this means that a carbon credit is traceable back to its origin and is unique.

Transparency: when buying a carbon credit, the buyer should be able to have access to all the documentation of that carbon project (project documentation, validation report, monitoring report, stakeholder consultations, pictures…)

All the standards take into account these criteria, but only a few of them address these points properly. If I want to buy a forestry carbon credit for my personal offsets, I would buy from Voluntary Carbon Standard & CCBS or CarbonFix.

Finally, what's your advice to a business or an individual who want to minimize their environmental impact and their carbon emissions and just get more confused with all of this data - what they should do? where to start?
The first step is to take advice from experts such as reputable carbon management companies. There is a lot of misunderstanding around carbon credits/ offsets/ carbon management and a simple phone call can help to clarify these issues.

To find a good carbon management company, you should look for the ICROA logo on their website. A carbon management company can only become a member of ICROA, if it follows the code of best practice. Among many aspects, it means that a member can only provide high quality carbon credits (VCS, Gold Standard and CDM/JI) and uses the best practice methodologies to reduce carbon emissions.

Regarding minimizing the environmental impact, there is a simple rule to follow:

Measure. Reduce. Offset.

Measure: the first step is to measure your impact, determine the carbon footprint. We need to understand the problem before we can reduce emissions. Most of your emissions may come from your travel, your energy consumption or your waste for example.

Reduce: after identifying where the carbon emissions come from, we need to reduce them as much as possible by setting up a plan and objectives, looking for solutions and put them into practice.

Offset: after putting in place an emission reduction plan, you need to offset the remaining ones. We will always have an impact, no matter how green we are and we need to take action to offset that impact. On top of that, you are providing finance to people in developing countries to grow sustainably.

Thank you Paulo!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: check our special holidays offer!

*photos credit: Paulo Lopes and SHI accordingly

Is REDD going bad? Is it going to enable conversion of natural forests into industrial plantations?

Last month we had a 3-part series on the potential and risks of forest-based carbon credits following the growing discussion about the Deforestation and Degradation in developing countries (REDD) mechanism. Now it looks like the risks part should to be updated.

Bloomberg reported about a proposal that was made during the climate talks in Bangkok last month didn’t include wording to protect natural forests from being used to cultivate managed woodlands. In other words, carbon credits will be given also to those who wish to convert large-scale natural forests into industrial plantations.

According to Mongabay.com, the provision, which included safeguards against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations, was removed the negotiating text during the final session at climate talks in Bangkok. The European Union, backed by Democratic Republic of the Congo and other Congo Basin countries, blocked reinstatement of the conversion safeguard, despite strong requests to do so from Brazil, India, Mexico, Switzerland, Norway, and more than a dozen other countries.

Environmentalists say that without the provision, forestry companies could receive REDD payments for logging tropical forests and replacing them with single-species plantations, which are biologically impoverished and store less carbon relative to natural forests.

Some observers described this move as a tactic one and were quite sure this provision, which included "the words “against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations,” will be added eventually to whatever proposal will hopefully will be approved in Copenhagen next month.

In the meantime, the talks which ended Barcelona didn't provide any encouraging signs about it as REDD-Monitor reports today. It quotes Roman Czebiniak, political advisor on climate change and forests for Greenpeace International, who told SolveClimate that “Right now, we have a pretty worthless safeguard and no rules to implement it, at a time when we need strong safeguards and strong rules are needed.”

Zebiniak remains optimistic that safeguards and monitoring could still be inserted into a REDD agreement, even after Copenhagen, and we also keep our fingers crossed that this mechanism, which as we reported last month has a promising potential, won't becme worthless because of political agendas and lack of will to make sure it will benefit the environment and not just couple of big forestry companies.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

The potential and risks of Forest-based carbon offsets: part 3 - REDD: how it can actually work?

On the first part on our series on forest-based carbon credits we talked of the potential of this concept as we saw on the example of Canopy Carbon. On the second part we discussed the risks of this mechanism following the report of Greenpeace on Noel Kempff Climate Action Project (NKCAP) in Bolivia. Today on our final article in this series we try to rap it all and find out if this option can actually work.

WWF wrote couple of days ago on their website that "failure by the world’s financial leaders to support responsible forest finance will allow rampant deforestation to continue and contribute to the disastrous effects of climate change." This logic is very clear and I definitely agree with it and think that REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) can be one of the implementations that follow this logic.

But no matter how tempting are the prospects of REDD both for the environment and the participants, there are some issues that remain a problem. A big problem. Just as a reminder, here are the main issues we need to deal with, as summarized by REDD-Monitor:

• monitoring the state of forests and the volumes of carbon either being emitted or stored;
• in preventing ‘avoided deforestation’ efforts in one location simply shifting the problem elsewhere; and
• finding ways that funding can be got to the people living in the forests – who should ultimately make the decisions about whether their forests stand or fall.

So what do we do? how we do it right? the answer I believe is a set of guiding rules that every REDD project will need to follow to be considered part of this mechanism. Now, it doesn't have to be necessary in a form of regulation - it can be a voluntary guidelines, just like the FSC or the Equator Principles. The only thing is that there should be only one benchmark - if every project will use its own set of guidelines, then it's worthless. Uniformity is a must here.

For example, Carbon Canopy will be using "the highest standards in the voluntary market will be used– the Voluntary Carbon Standard and Climate Action Reserve." Now, these two standards are great, but according to 'Review of Forestry Carbon Standards', a research of Paulo Lopes, a Carbon Management Consultant at Carbon Clear, when it comes to REDD, there are some couple of other standards that can be a good fit such as the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Standard (CCBS), Plan Vivo, or American Carbon Registry (ACR).

So what happens if another project choose to use one of these standards? it will have a similar reliability but we won't be able to effectively follow, evaluate and compare these projects. And therefore we need all projects to follow the same set of standards and rules, and it should address all the main issues, such as how to calculate the carbon savings, additionality, leakage, benefits for local communities and permanence.

And this can and should be part of the Copenhagen Conference in December. The REDD effort can succeed if it will be a global effort and hence Europe, U.S., China and other countries should unite in Copenhagen and promote one solution for all. This is the time to do it and no better place to start with than Copenhagen.

Other parts of this series:

Part 1 - the Carbon Canopy

Part 2 - Noel Kempff and the Greenpeace report

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

The potential and risks of Forest-based carbon offsets: part 2 - Noel Kempff and the Greenpeace report

On the first part of our series about forest-based carbon credits we talked about the potential of this model and presented the example of Carbon Canopy. Today we talk about the risks and the lessons we can learn from the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project (NKCAP) in Bolivia.

Noel Kempff is probably the most known project of forest offset scheme under REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). On October 15, Greenpeace released a detailed report calling this project a "Forest Carbon Scam".

The project began more than a decade ago, in 1996, where a group of three energy companies (American Electric Power(AEP), BP-Amoco (BP), and Pacificorp) and the Nature Conservancy and Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN) joined forces with the Bolivian government in the first large-scale experiment to curb climate change with a strategy that promised to suit their competing interests: compensating for greenhouse gas emissions by preserving forests.

Together with the Bolivian government and three energy companies, the partners terminated logging rights in 4 areas just adjacent to a pre-existing national park and incorporated the land into the national park, creating the 3.9 million acre Noel Kempff Mercado National Park. The partners also initiated a comprehensive community development program to address the problem of small scale deforestation by local communities living just outside of the park.

There was also a financial aspect to the project: In return for millions of dollars of investment for the protection of an area of rainforest from logging for 30 years, they would be allocated the carbon offsets generated by keeping the trees standing. These offsets could then be bought and sold in carbon trading systems, in order to offset some of the CO2 pollution produced by these power companies.

So far, so good. But in reality, according to the report, the model just didn't work. Here are the main claims of Greenpeace (from their website):

Since the project started in 1997 the estimated CO2 emission reductions have plummeted by more than 90 per cent, from about 55 million tonnes to "up to" 5.8 million tonnes. Had the original false estimates been used on carbon markets there could have been an INCREASE in greenhouse gas emissions. Companies could have claimed non-existent emission reductions while continuing to emit the amount supposedly offset. These serious errors in counting emissions are reason enough to avoid sub-national offsetting altogther – but as if we didn't have proof enough, here's more. The project has failed to protect against:

1. “Leakage” — the companies promised that they were effectively monitoring leakagage but in percentage terms overall deforestation rates have actually increased in Bolivia. In fact, leakage from the project could be as high as 42-60 per cent.

2. ““Additionality” — Changes in Bolivian law mean that Noel Kempff may have been protected anyway, without company involvement, and therefore any C02 savings may not be additional.

3. "Permanence" – The project is at risk from forest fires, pests, disease and political changes, all of which can undermine forest protection. This could mean that the carbon stored, and used to offset the company emissions, could still be released.

4. "Community benefits" – Industry claims the project has benefited local communities in many ways, but testimonies we captured tell a different story. "Well, the reality is that the Noel Kempff project has not delivered any benefits," says local Pastor Solís Pérez.

Now, these are serious accusations, and of course they generate a big question mark on the real value of the carbon credits from the project. The Nature Conservancy, NKCAP's main broker and one of the world's largest conservation groups, strongly disputes this notion (and so is FAN, the other organization involved in the project).

As reported on the New York Times, the Nature Conservancy doesn't dispute some of the specific figures on the report, but their interpretation. For example, the estimation of the CO2 that the project will save, which was at first about 55 million tonnes and was reduced over the years to only 5.8 million tonnes. Now, Greenpeace sees it as an indication that it's difficult if not impossible to provide an accurate calculation of the savings. The Nature Conservancy on the other hand, sees these adjustments as an indication of how much the science and on-the-ground measurements have improved over the last decade and how serious efforts are to ensure legitimate credits.

There are some lessons from this case that can more easily implemented. For example, the question whether forest-based carbon offsets should come from individual projects. As reported on the NYT, practically everyone involved in the debate agrees that countrywide programs that measure deforestation against a national baseline are better because they eliminate carbon leakage within a country's own boundaries - a fact that the NKCAP experience effectively demonstrated.

There can be some exceptions (such the ones on the House-passed climate bill, relating to small countries and states in Brazil and Indonesia to submit individual project credits into the market), but this can definitely be the guiding rule.

But that of course won't help when it comes to issues such as the reliability of the calculations of the CO2 reductions. How do you make sure you're providing a figure that is meaningful and reliable? And is the risk in making false estimations too high and therefore we should not get into this forest-based carbon offsetting concept in the first place? These are though questions and we'll try to answer them on our third and last part of the series this Sunday.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

The potential and risks of Forest-based carbon offsets: part 1 - the Carbon Canopy

This week we're issuing a 3-part series that will cover one of the most interesting issues in the green market.

It's getting more and more attention (also on this blog) as a promising way to deal with global warming under the cap and trade scheme. At the same time, it is also the center of a heated debate between organizations, companies and others on its legitimacy and effectiveness.

Yes, we're talking about forest-based carbon offsets. Or in other words, enabling landowners who keep their trees standing and not cut them down, or selectively log their forests to earn carbon credits they can trade on the open market. Such a trading system does not exist yet and it's part of legislation before Congress, as well as one of the issues to be discussed on global level in Copenhagen in December.

Today we'll talk about the Carbon Canopy, which according to their website, "seeks to establish a new model to support landowners who expand protection, restoration and conservation of their forests and certify management practices to the high standards of FSC certification. The Carbon Canopy is focused initially on building a credible carbon market model for landowners in the Southern US. "

The group includes timber and paper supply companies, such as Domtar Corporation, Columbia Forest Products and Staples, as well as environmental NGOs such as the Dogwood Alliance, Rainforest Alliance, the Forest Stewardship Council and our friends at the Green Press Initiative.

The coalition starts a pilot project in South U.S. offering what they see as a win-win model: "Private landowners receive revenue for the ecological benefits their forests provide. Forest product manufacturers receive a stable supply of FSC certified wood to use in their products. In turn, large paper and wood end-users and retailers are able to offer FSC certified products to reduce their environmental impacts. And all of us, including our future generations, will benefit from forests that not only support a more stable climate but also biodiversity and watershed protection."

I like this model. It does a good use in the cap and trade mechanism and everybody wins. It also deals with a severe issue - according to the Washington Post, "ninety percent of forests in the South, which ranks as the largest paper and wood-producing region in the world, is privately owned. Some farmers in the region still clear cut their forests, or convert them to pine plantations that are fast-growing but less environmentally beneficial."

Now, there are some that question the concept like Greenpeace. Daniel Kessler, a spokesman for Greenpeace, praised on the Washington Post the idea of managing forests according to the Forest Stewardship Council's standards, but added, "We also believe that forest offsets should not be used in a compliance carbon market."

Still, I think that there's something right in providing incentives to keep trees alive. We discussed it many times in the past and we always get to the same conclusion: no matter how many flows this system has, it's the most realistic way to fight deforestation.

The Carbon Canopy explains it very clearly on their website: "Currently, forest landowners do not have access to viable roadmaps or sufficient economic incentives to help them conserve, restore and/or manage working forests to a high environmental standard. The potential of earning income from forest carbon sequestration could provide incentive for private landowners to enhance forest protection, restoration and conservation."

There are of course issues that shouldn't be ignored like the validity of carbon offsetting in general and forest-based ones specifically (how do you measure them? are they sustainable? what happens in a case of a fire where the whole forest is burned?) as well as their ability to actually reduce emissions.

The later issue is a very important one, as not matter how good you do carbon offsetting, if you eventually didn't reduce emissions then it's just not the right way. The Carbon Canopy doesn't ignore this question and I actually liked what they had to say about it:

"Carbon offsets are often criticized as serving as a crutch for polluters who prefer to buy their way out of having to implement true carbon emission reductions. Because the Carbon Canopy’s members strongly believe in the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before and alongside of purchasing and retiring offsets to compensate for emissions that can’t be reduce, we seek to work with corporations that are committed to transparency in reporting and demonstrate real leadership in developing sustainable conservation models to significantly reduce their operational and supply chain climate impacts."

I don't know what the results of this pilot will be and neither the Carbon Canopy, but it looks like they know what they're doing, dealing openly with difficult questions and issues and moving forward to find the right model that will both save our forests, fight global warming and will be worthwhile to all sides involved.

On the second part of our series we'll discuss some of the problems that were found in another pilot of forest-based carbon offsets, this time in Bolivia.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

More on FSC on Green Talk Radio

I love the Green Talk Radio with Sean Daily. He always brings interesting people of the green world to his show and it's a great way to get to know these people and the issues they're involved with better.

Today I want to recommend to listen to his conversation with Katie Miller, Communications Director for the Forest Stewardship Council.

It's an interesting talk and if you want to learn more about the FSC certification I'm sure you'll find this talk valuable.

Here's a link to the podcast (thanks to Sustainablog for the link): http://sustainablog.org/2009/09/01/green-talk-radio-sustainable-forestry-management-with-the-fsc/

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Paying to keep the trees in the Amazon alive - it ain't that simple as it might look like

We talked here many times about the concept of paying landowners to keep their trees standing and not cut them down.

This idea is gaining more popularity as a tool to fight climate change and a very interesting article in the New York Times presents some of the difficulties involved with the implementation of this concept, especially in Brazil.

Here are some of the issues Elisabeth Rosenthal brings up the article ("In Brazil, Paying Farmers to Let the Trees Stand"):

1. How much money is enough to keep the trees standing? The payment strategy includes direct payments to landowners to keep forests standing but with uprising demand to the alternatives, which are mainly cleared farmland to raise soy or cattle, the price can be high. Too high. For example, the article presents José Marcolini, a farmer that is offered by an environmental group $12 per acre per a year to keep it untouched, but at the same time can get for cleared farmland here up to $1,300 an acre.

2. How to avoid paying for tree plantations? as the article explains, "one proposed version of the new United Nations plan would allow plantations of trees, like palms grown for palm oil, to count as forest, even though tree plantations do not have nearly the carbon absorption potential of genuine forest and are far less diverse in plant and animal life." This is a situation that should be avoided - the programs should be solely focused on forests because of both environmental and monetary (limited resources) reasons.

3. Clearing away the trees is often the best way to declare and ensure ownership - the article mentions that "in parts of Southeast Asia, early experiments in paying landowners for preserving forest have been hampered because it is often unclear who owns, or controls, property."

4. Need to change - We have to remember that until not too long ago, developing the Amazon was the priority and the Brazilian government encouraged settlement through homesteaders’ benefits like cheap land and housing subsidies, many of which still exist today. It means that you need to change the state of mind, believes and values of the whole country to make real changes in the way the Amazon is considered and valued by the people.

As we see there are many issues to deal with and the success of such programs is still far from being a sure thing. But nevertheless for the first time there's money in forest preservation and this is going to be a game changer this way or another.


More related posts:

Will the new Climate Bill help protecting forests or become a source of income for timber companies?

How investors can save the forests? check out the Ethical Corporation Magazine

Al Gore and Wangari Maathai calls the U.N. General Assemby to support protection of forests

Merrill Lynch is investing in forest protection

How to deal with the growing deforestation in the Amazon rain forest?

Prince Charles wants to team up with Norway to save forests

Preserving forests to fight global warming

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing

Will the new Climate Bill help protecting forests or become a source of income for timber companies?

The Climate bill passed in the House last Friday. It might not be only a new era in fighting climate change, but also the first time when it is worthwhile to keep trees alive instead of cutting them down.

The Huffington Post reported last Friday that trees will be part of the credits scheme that is presented in the bill, and this time it means not only reforestation projects, but also protection of existing forestlands.

The article explains the mechanism:

"Say an acre of forestland sucks up two additional metric tons of carbon after a landowner plants more trees on his land or promises to rotate the way he cuts them down so more are standing at once. If the pollution market created by the legislation is currently trading at $20 a ton, then the landowner could stand to make $40 per acre if he qualifies for the program"

The legislation, according to the article. would also extend to international forests, promising to pay some countries that agree to slow their harvesting of trees abroad. We mentioned this idea in the past (see links below) and we're definitely in favor of giving economic incentives to preserve the forests and to make it worthwhile to keep them alive, avoid logging and prevent further deforestation.

This idea was discussed in the U.N.’s Bali meeting in December last year, and though it is not approved yet, there's a good chance it will be part of the post-Kyoto protocol that will be discussed in Copenhagen in December. It also enjoys the support of many international parties, such as Prince Charles, Norway, Al Gore and Wangari Maathai.

So we should be happy as forest protection finally becomes part of the carbon market, right? well, we are but it seems that the way it was integrated in the Bill is a little bit problematic..

Well, there are of course concerns about measurement, monitoring and making sure carbon capturing is actually taking place (especially outside the U.S.), but in all these concerns are no different really from the concerns you have with every other component in the "trade" part of the cap and trade scheme under the Bill. The more significant issue here might be who is eligible to take part in it in the first place.

The article on the Huffington Post mentions that owners of large swaths of forestland, such as timber companies and large farms can benefit from it. Frank O'Donnell of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch is quoted saying "In effect, the public is going to pay polluters to plant trees. Does that really lead to a major improvement in global warming? I don't know and I'm not sure anybody knows."

The fact that the Agriculture Department, which includes the U.S. Forest Service, will oversee the domestic program and develop regulations for verifying whether a forest owner's particular tract of land is actually capturing carbon, brings up questions like will they make tree farms eligible as well and how much will they will take sustainability into account?

If eventually we'll have timber companies being paid for having single-species tree farms that have replaced highly diverse forests (you can see that in the Southeast U.S. for example), then we're very far from what the idea of forests protection was meant to achieve in the first place.

So how it can be prevented? here is just one idea - how about limiting forest protection to highly-diverse forests and/or forests that have FSC certification. I believe that these kind of restrictions can provide a better chance that this measure of forests protection will truly help fighting climate change and not just become another way for land owners to make money without making any significant impact on the environment.

What do you think? I'll be happy to hear your thoughts about it so feel free to add your comments.

More related posts:

How investors can save the forests? check out the Ethical Corporation Magazine

Al Gore and Wangari Maathai calls the U.N. General Assemby to support protection of forests

Merrill Lynch is investing in forest protection

How to deal with the growing deforestation in the Amazon rain forest?

Prince Charles wants to team up with Norway to save forests

Preserving forests to fight global warming

Yours, Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing