Why is Brazil so interested in carbon credits for “forests in exhaustion”?

15th January 2009

On the final day in Poznan, a dispute took place between Saudi Arabia and Brazil over the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Saudi Arabia wants carbon capture and storage to be included in the CDM. Brazil wants carbon credits for “forests in exhaustion”. Saudi Arabia’s motivation is obvious. It wants to continue extracting and selling oil. But what is Brazil’s motivation? And what, exactly, are “forests in exhaustion”?
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Indigenous Peoples and REDD NGO statements on REDD

reddisms:

“The [US] cap-and-trade bill is a travesty. Its net effect on short- to medium-term carbon emissions will be small to none. This is by design…. It relies heavily on offsets – theoretical carbon reductions bought from other countries or other industries – so that big US emitters will not need to try so hard…. It creates a vastly complicated apparatus, a playground for special interests and rent-seekers, a minefield of unintended consequences – and the bottom line for all that is business as usual.” — Clive Crook, Financial Times, June 2009

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