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Two interviews with Jeff Horowitz, the founder of Avoided Deforestation Partners, were published earlier this month. The interviews reveal a great deal about why AD Partners is so interested in carbon trading. For example, Horowitz estimates that “protecting tropical forests will cut the cost of U.S. climate legislation almost in half – saving Americans billions.” This week, REDD-Monitor asked Horowitz some further questions.
The Guardian reports that after only two days, “The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray.” The problem is a leaked document that Denmark hoped that world leaders would sign at the end of next week. The text “hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations,” John Vidal writes in The Guardian. The text was developed by a small group of countries, including the UK, US, Australia and Denmark, and was shown only to a handful of countries after being completed last week. The Guardian has posted the “Danish text” on its website.
In the lead up to Copenhagen, letters, articles and reports about REDD are coming out thick and fast. Before looking at them, here’s some bad news. In 2005, a drought meant that in that year the Amazon rainforest did not sequester its usual 2 billion metric tons of CO2. It also released 3 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere from dying trees. The total 5 billion additional tons of CO2 is greater than the combined emissions of Europe and Japan. This year there is another drought in the Amazon. The photograph on the right was taken last weekend by Paulo Whitaker. It shows a fisherman paddling through dead fish that died because of lower water levels on the on the Manaquiri River, a tributary of the Amazon River.
Yesterday Greenpeace launched a spoof website: Carbon Regulatory Offset Committee (C.R.O.C.). C.R.O.C.’s philosophy is simple: “do something good for the environment, then do something bad to it!” The timing is perfect. The US Congressional debate on the Waxman-Markey bill is heating up. And last week, the UN suspended SGS UK, the largest auditor of clean development mechanism projects, calling into question the legitimacy of the US$100 billion carbon trading market. A Public Service Announcement from C.R.O.C. is posted below, with an email from C.R.O.C.’s Carl Cardova.
Friends of the Earth released a new report during the recent UN climate negotiations in Bonn: “A Dangerous Distraction – Why offsetting is failing the climate and people: The Evidence“. The report examines the record of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and asks what the effects are likely to be of expanding offsetting as proposed in the UN climate talks, including through proposed offset-based REDD mechanisms. “Offsetting is now a dangerous distraction,” Andy Atkins, Executive director of FoE England, Wales and Northern Ireland writes in the introduction to the report. “Negotiators must recognise that it does not work, will not work and that it must be scrapped.” FoE explains that “Offsets are a swap of an emissions cut in developed countries for a cut in developing countries. But action in both is needed.” The report recommends that governments should “Reject plans to introduce REDD offsets, and instead negotiate effective and fair mechanisms to protect the Earth’s forests that do not involve offsetting.”
We know what The Nature Conservancy thinks about forest offsets. It loves them. It loves them so much that it has got into bed with the biggest coal-burner in the US, American Electric Power. Meanwhile, TNC has developed a “global mechanism proposal”, which includes a goal of 3 billion tons of “emissions reductions from REDD” by 2020. These would be “fully fungible with emissions reductions from other sectors”. This is precisely what carbon traders, the timber industry and polluting companies like AEP want: forest carbon offsets. At a side event at the UN Climate negotiations in Bonn earlier this week, TNC’s Greg Fishbein (whose job title, incidentally, is “Managing Director of Forest Carbon”) said, “We recognise that a goal like this needs to be combined with strict Annex I targets to ensure that these emissions reductions are in fact in addition to a contribution to overall emissions reductions and not just replacing emissions reductions that are taking place some place else.” But when TNC talks about “strict Annex I targets”, what do they actually mean?
Last week, an organisation called Avoided Deforestation Partners launched what they blandly describe as “an agreement on policies aimed at protecting the world’s tropical forests”. Under this agreement, “companies would be eligible to receive credit for reducing climate pollution by financing conservation of tropical forests”. It is a loophole allowing industry to write a cheque and continue to pollute. This is another nightmare vision of REDD, similar to that recently proposed by the Australian government. Another similarity with Australia is the support received from what is at first glance a surprising source: big international conservation NGOs. REDD-Monitor received the following anonymous contribution about the agreement. We reproduce it in full in the hope of generating further discussion about this liaison between conservation NGOs and polluting industry. A coalition of environmental and social justice organisations delivered a letter yesterday (23 April 2009) to the offices of Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) warning that the inclusion of offsets in the “American Clean Energy and Security Act 2009″ would create a giant loophole allowing US emissions to increase until 2026. Last week, a report from International Rivers and Rainforest Action Network criticised the inclusion of offsets in the Waxman-Markey bill: “Unfortunately the ‘firm’ caps exist only on paper. In reality, the caps will be blown to pieces by allowing polluters to meet their emission reduction responsibilities through buying offset credits rather than reducing their emissions.” The letter urges Waxman and Markey to:
2) Ensure that the domestic offset market does not become part of a compliance system to regulate emissions.
This week, the US Committee on Energy and Commerce is holding hearings on the Waxman-Markey bill. “The mother of all climate weeks”, Politico calls it. Three weeks ago Henry Waxman, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman, and Ed Markey, Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chairman, introduced a draft bill outlining a cap-and-trade system. But as a recent critique from International Rivers and the Rainforest Action Network points out, the Waxman-Marley Bill “is seriously weakened by its heavy reliance on offsets to substitute for actual emissions cuts by large polluters.” REDD would form part of this offset loophole. Environmental activists yesterday occupied the Washington DC offices of Environmental Defense (ED), one of the leading architects and NGO advocates of carbon trading. The protest was led by Dr Rachel Smolker, daughter of Robert E. Smolker, a Founder of ED, who said her father would be “rolling over in his grave” at the direction the organisation has taken. Environmental Defence has long argued in favour of REDD forest carbon trading, and has dismissed concerns that this would further weaken already faltering carbon markets. The eco-activists from the Global Justice Ecology Project and Global Forest Coalition said that carbon trading had “utterly failed”.
Scene of the crime: protesters point to links between ED and corporate polluters |
 
 
 
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