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Three straws in the wind: Two pieces of policy news and a new piece of research. Two weeks ago, a leaked document from the EU revealed that the European Commission and some member states hope to include oil palm plantations in the definition of forests. Yesterday, the Jakarta Post reported that Indonesia’s Forestry Ministry is drafting a decree to reclassify oil palm plantations as “forests”.
From 7-9 September 2009, environment ministers and senior officials from the European Union took part in a high-level meeting in Strömstad, Sweden: “Visions for Biodiversity Beyond 2010 – People, Ecosystem Services and the Climate Crisis“. At the end of the meeting, the chair produced a series of conclusions. Surprisingly, for this sort of meeting, the problem of over-consumption in the North was acknowledged. Paragraph 18 of the conclusions states: “The impact of European consumption on global biodiversity needs to be addressed.” The conclusions also include two paragraphs about REDD. FERN’s EU Forest Watch reports on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme directive, which was adopted on 17 December 2008. Forest credits are excluded from the ETS until at least 2020. This is good news, although they should be excluded after 2020 as well. The EU’s target of 20 per cent emission reductions by 2020 is already too weak. The EU needs to reduce dramatically its greenhouse gas emissions, not use the offsets scam to allow industry to continue polluting. Allowing carbon credits from forests to be traded under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) would create a enormous loophole, allowing EU Member States to buy their way out of emissions reductions. A coalition of European NGOs is campaigning to keep forests out of the ETS. The December 2008 issue of FERN’s EU Forest Watch provides a succinct summary of the current state of the EU/ETS discussions. The EU outlined its plans for carbon markets in relation to forests at a press conference today (5 December 2008) in Poznan. The EU aims “to halve the total forested area loss in the tropics by 2020, and to halt the global forest cover loss completely by 2030 at the latest” and estimates that this will cost somewhere between €15 and €25 billion a year. A “global forest carbon mechanism” is to be established to fund this, followed by “a pilot scheme to test the inclusion of forest credits in carbon markets, which could be used by governments to achieve their compliance.” Yesterday, 4 December 2008, the EU held a press conference, during which Reuters asked the question: “Will forest offsets be used within EU ETS? And what is EU’s view on avoided deforestation?” Here are the responses from Brice Lalonde from the French delegation and Jurgen Lefevre from the European Commission. As REDD-Monitor reported last week, the European Commission has decided not to include forests in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). FERN and Global Witness released the following press release praising the Commission’s decision. The European Commission will tomorrow state that it is opposed to the inclusion of forest-based carbon credits in the ETS, in a wide-ranging Communication on deforestation and how the European community plans to deal with it. The Communication will say that the aim should be to reduce deforestation by 2020 and halt it by 2030. |
 
 
 
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