A coalition of start up companies, consultants and some soil scientists is promoting a new ‘solution’ for climate change: Large quantities of wood and other biomass are to be turned into fine-grained charcoal (euphemistically called biochar) and applied to agricultural soils. It's very worrying that advocates, who are organised in the International Biochar Initiative, claim that the carbon in the charcoal would remain in the soil for thousands of years and ‘offset’ fossil fuel burning, and that charcoal will make soils more fertile.
Bulletin articles
While for the majority of humanity climate change spells disaster, a few corporate-minded people perceive it as a good business opportunity. The way they see it, climate change is about carbon emissions and carbon can be traded as a commodity in the global market. This market – so they say – can be worth billions or even trillions of dollars and they expect it to bring them huge profits.
In mid-July the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board accepted a new methodology proposed as part of the controversial Plantar project in Minas Gerais, Brazil (see background on Plantar on WRM bulletins 84,http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/84/Plantar.html, 70 and 72).
The inclusion of forests on the carbon market in its REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) format was adopted by the United Nations System through the UN-REDD Programme. In 2008, the UN Secretary General presented the UN-REDD Programme, implemented by three UN agencies: FAO, UNEP and UNDP, in close collaboration with the World Bank.
The UK-based New Forests Company is establishing tree plantations in Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania. The company states that “Whilst based on commercial forestry economics, our projects are underwritten by carbon credits … in compliance with the Clean Development Mechanism. This means that its profits from the sale of wood will be increased by selling “carbon credits” to polluting industries in the North.
Forests are big news these days. Preventing deforestation will help us address climate change (at least if the carbon stored in the forests isn't traded, allowing emissions to continue elsewhere). Yet forests have never been under such serious threat.
For over a decade, the World Rainforest Movement has been denouncing that -by certifying large scale tree plantations- the FSC is greenwashing the destructive activities of plantation companies in Southern countries (for further information seehttp://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/FSC/index.html).
The indigenous people of Teluk Meranti in the Kampar Peninsula, Riau, Sumatra, are resisting efforts by a pulp and paper company to take over their customary lands.
An internal audit has revealed that the World Bank’s private sector arm – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – has allowed commercial interests to override its social and environmental standards in making major loans to the oil palm sector in Indonesia.. The uncontrolled expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia has become synonymous with widespread clearance of forests and peatlands, massive CO2 emissions and the theft of indigenous peoples’ lands.
On the World Indigenous Peoples Day – 9th August 2009 – the Malaysian Indigenous Peoples Organisations Coalition called on for Malaysian State governments “to stop large-scale plantations and other extractive activities on our customary lands until effective measures to safeguard our rights and the environment are in place”.
On 1 August 2009, members of the Latin American Network against Monoculture Tree Plantations (RECOMA) met in the locality of Villa Serrana, Uruguay, to examine the reasons for the alarming expansion of monoculture tree plantations aimed at the production of charcoal, pulp, timber and agrofuels (agrodiesel and ethanol derived from wood), mainly intended for export.
The governments of some of the world’s most powerful countries (1) recently met in Italy and produced a document titled “Responsible Leadership for a Sustainable Future”. In their statement, they inform the world that they are “determined to ensure sustainable growth and to tackle the interlinked challenges of the economic crisis, poverty and climate change.”