{"id":234418,"date":"2010-01-26T11:24:04","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T16:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3078"},"modified":"2010-01-26T11:24:04","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T16:24:04","slug":"climate-talks-near-deal-to-save-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/234418","title":{"rendered":"Climate talks near deal to save forests"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Times:<\/a> Negotiators have all but completed a sweeping deal that would compensate countries for preserving forests, and in some cases, other natural landscapes like peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Environmental groups have long advocated such a compensation program because forests are efficient absorbers of carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas linked to global warming. Rain forest destruction, which releases the carbon dioxide stored in trees, is estimated to account for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally.<\/p>\n

The agreement for the program, if signed as expected, may turn out to be the most significant achievement to come out of the Copenhagen climate talks<\/a>, providing a system through which countries can be paid for conserving disappearing natural assets based on their contribution to reducing emissions.<\/p>\n

A final draft of the agreement for the compensation program, called Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation<\/a>, or REDD, is to be given on Wednesday to ministers of the nearly 200 countries represented here to hammer out a framework for a global climate treaty. Negotiators and other participants said that though some details remained to be worked out, all major points of disagreement \u2014 how to address the rights of indigenous people living on forest land and what is defined as forest, for example \u2014 had been resolved through compromise.<\/p>\n

A final agreement on the program may not be announced until the end of the week, when President Obama<\/a> and other world leaders arrive \u2014 in part because there has been so little progress on other issues at the climate summit meeting, sponsored by the United Nations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is likely to be the most concrete thing that comes out of Copenhagen \u2014 and it is a very big thing,\u201d said Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For poorer countries, the payments will provide a much-needed new income stream. For richer nations, the lure of the program is not cash but carbon credits that can be used to cancel out, in part, their industrial emissions under a carbon trading system, like the cap-and-trade<\/a> plan currently under consideration by Congress.<\/p>\n

Forests \u201chave become a pot of money or a get out of jail free card,\u201d said Peg Putt, a consultant to the Wilderness Society<\/a>. \u201cEither way, there\u2019s the prospect of financial benefit now, as opposed to just being told, \u2018Do the right thing,\u2019 like it was two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new plan represents an important shift from earlier United Nations climate programs, like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which countries committed to curbing their industrial emissions but got no credit for reducing emissions through changes in land use.<\/p>\n

The agreement is also being closely watched in Congress, where climate legislation passed the House in June and is currently stalled in the Senate.<\/p>\n

Under the cap-and-trade system preferred by Democratic leaders and the Obama administration, companies that cannot meet their greenhouse gas pollution limit could buy extra permits by investing in carbon-reduction programs abroad. Plans to preserve forests under REDD would presumably qualify.<\/p>\n

The forest program \u201coffers the opportunities for U.S. companies to reduce emissions at lower cost, which is very important politically,\u201d Mr. Krupp said.<\/p>\n

Under the final draft of agreement, other habitats that absorb carbon dioxide \u2014 like peat bogs, which store large amounts of carbon dioxide in their soil<\/a> \u2014 could be eligible for payments. This prospect has environmentalists scrambling to calculate the carbon storage capacity of other resources like swamps and fields, not for the sake of preserving beauty or biodiversity, but for their potential financial benefit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is everyone thinking about forest and peat land while overlooking oceans, the biggest carbon store on the planet?\u201d said Dan Lafolley, marine vice chairman for the World Commission on Protected Areas of the Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature<\/a>. \u201cIt would be a travesty if Copenhagen addressed forests but not other carbon stocks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The potential for payments has even pitted advocates for some types of forest against advocates for other types.<\/p>\n

\u201cWere not sure in Copenhagen there will be a definitive mechanism for monetizing forests, but if there is we think all forests should be included,\u201d Steve Kallick, director of the Boreal Conservation Pew Environment Group<\/a>, who studies northern forest stocks and noted that by some measures, boreal forests store twice as much carbon dioxide per unit as tropical forests.<\/p>\n

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New York Times: Negotiators have all but completed a sweeping deal that would compensate countries for preserving forests, and in some cases, other natural landscapes like peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change. Environmental groups have long advocated such a compensation program because forests are efficient absorbers of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}