Bulletin Issue 37 – August 2000

The Conference of the Parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change -preceeded by a meeting of its Subsidiary Bodies in September in Lyon- will take place in The Hague in November. The obscure language used in the climate talks -and the even more obscure objectives of many governments and businesses- make it necessary to translate what's being negotiated into understandable concepts in order to facilitate very much needed public participation in the debate. As a contribution to that end, we have focused this issue of the WRM Bulletin entirely on this matter, of vital importance for the future of humanity as a whole.

In 1997, the negotiators of the Kyoto Protocol came up with an ingeniously-named project: the "Clean Development Mechanism." For the lay person, the message was that the governments of the world had finally agreed to create a mechanism that would allow development atmospherically non-polluting. But what this wording hides is anything but clean.

While climate change experts are trying to find "economically-viable" (meaning cheap) ways out of the climate mess created by Western-style economic development, indigenous peoples and local communities in many countries are in fact implementing a truly Clean Development Mechanism: they are banning oil and gas exploitation in their territories.

One of the main aims of some industrialized-country negotiators at the Convention on Climate Change is to have plantations accepted as carbon sinks within the so-called Clean Development Mechanism. The reasoning seems quite straightforward: while trees are growing, they take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and fix the carbon in their wood. They thus act as "carbon sinks" and therefore help to counter climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So what's the problem then? The answer is: plenty of things.

Deforestation contributes to climate change through the release of carbon in the forest biomass. Forest conservation and rehabilitation activities thus need to be promoted both to conserve carbon --in the case of primary forests-- and to absorb it --in the case of secondary forests allowed to regrow. But should forests be included in the Clean Development Mechanism or not? It's a difficult question for NGOs, IPOs and forest communities, but one that will need to be answered at the upcoming negotiations at the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change. Our aim here is not to give a clearcut yes or no answer, but to share our viewpoints on the matter.

CDM schemes based on carbon sinks in the forestry sector, trumpeted as the panacea for climate change mitigation, are instead socially and environmentally dangerous. Nevertheless, the discussions going on at the official levels ignore those fundamental points. Undoubtedly some have much to gain from this marketing of nature. Who are the influential actors behind the scene at the carbon market? What follows is a brief description of some of the more relevant. - Industry

The external debt is a heavy burden for Southern countries especially for the poorest ones and for the poorest sectors within them. Governments implement IMF/World Bank-promoted structural adjustment programmes in their economies to ensure punctual debt servicing, which divert funds that could otherwise have been devoted to satisfying basic needs of their population, such as food, education, housing and health.

In previous issues of the WRM bulletin we have included a number of analytical and informative articles related to climate change. WRM Declarations The WRM has produced two declarations directly focused on the Convention on Climate Change's negotiation process. The first one was disseminated at the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (Buenos Aires, November 1998). The second declaration, focused on the issue of carbon sink plantations, was issued in May 2000 . The Carbon Shop: planting new problems

Plantation projects using tree monocultures to sequester carbon being implemented in UGANDA by two Norwegian firms constitute a paradigmatic example of the rationale and the consequences of this kind of projects. The Norwegian company Tree Farms established itself in Uganda in 1996, and has one afforestation project in progress. Additionally, the Norwegian Afforestation Group got the authorities' agreement on a project in November 1999. The former --which operates in the Bukaleba Reserve-- area has already started a project to set up between 80,000 and 100,000 hectares of plantations of pines and eucalyptus. Such scheme is very similar to that adopted by the Dutch foundation FACE in the Ecuadorian Andes and so are its consequences.

Giant AUSTRALIA is a major actor in the geopolitics of Oceania. With its particular situation in the Southern hemisphere but being a Northern country and included in the Annex I countries, Australia is the only country that enjoys the possibility of increasing its greenhouse gas emissions by 8% above 1990 levels in the commitment period 2008 to 2012. Nevertheless, this country has enthusiastically embraced the idea of offering its territory for forestry-based carbon sink projects.

Responding to a request of the U.S.-based independent electrical power producer Applied Energy Services Inc. (AES), in 1988 the World Resources Institute identified and evaluated forestry projects to compensate the carbon dioxide emissions of the company's new coal-fired powerplant in Connecticut, expected to emit about 14.1 million tonnes of carbon over its 40-year lifespan. According to the WRI, "There were a number of reasons for pursuing such a project in a developing country rather than in the United States", among which that "alternatives in the United States to avoid the release of carbon dioxide or sequester it at the source appeared to be considerably more expensive" reads the presentation of the project in WRI's web site.

In the last decades several South American countries have been the scenario of the expansion of tree monocultures --basically eucalyptus and pines-- mostly devoted to pulp production. The newly created carbon market can mean a renewed push to further expand this activity, this time with a new or additional purpose. In fact, forestry companies and some governments are very enthusiastic about the idea of using part of the already existing plantations and installing new ones to serve as carbon sinks.