Interesting article on cap-and-trade and destruction of forests...
Dan Schmidt
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20heinrich.html
News to me, I was not aware of this perspective at all. What do
others know, how on-target is this / any comments? I hope this guy is
wrong, but if not, clearly cap and trade needs serious work, the point
on how Kyoto was set up was something I did not know about and is
really unfortunate, would be good to get some statistics on this to
see if this really did translate into more cutting of old-growth
forests...
DS
Alex Brown
Bernd Heinrich is a well-known naturalist and writer; although he's
really an ethologist (animal behavior) he's written about forest
ecosystems from a personal perspective, and certainly knows what he's
talking about:
_In a patch of fireweed_, Harvard University Press, 1984.
_A year in the Maine woods_, Addison-Wesley, ©1994.
_The trees in my forest_, Cliff Street Books, ©1997.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_Heinrich
The problem he's referring to, the lack of a carbon credit system for
existing forest cover, has been part of the debate for many years:
"In fact, most of the problems with the system can be traced back to
the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997. After much political
wrangling, the Kyoto delegates decided that there would be no carbon-
reduction credits for saving existing forests. Since planting new
trees does get one credits, Kyoto actually created a rationale for
clear-cutting old growth."
This is a live issue in New England, because it was in the spotlight a
few years ago when the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
was being negotiated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Regional_Greenhouse_Gas_Initiative, http://www.rggi.org) as a cap-and-
trade system for CO2 emissions within the Northeast states and
provinces. CO2 fixing and sequestration by forests is likely to
become an important part of the region's overall CO2 emissions
management, because the region is heavily forested: Massachusetts is
in fact the 4th most forested state, by proportion of land cover.
But it's very difficult to come up with quantitative estimates of the
amount of sequestration taking place in a native forest, to claim as
offsets, and when that ignorance is compared with power plant
engineers' ability to come up with estimates of emissions with quite a
few decimal places precision, the quantitative contribution of forests
is easily challenged. RGGI currently allows power companies to claim
forest offsets, but only for small portions of emissions, and with a
condition of "additionality":
"Additionality addresses whether greenhouse gas emissions reductions
will be achieved from an offset project that would not otherwise have
occurred in the absence of the offsets program. Additionality is the
key criteria for ensuring that offsets projects result in real
emissions reductions in the context of a cap-and-trade program. Since
CO2 offset allowances allow an additional ton of CO2 to be emitted by
a regulated power plant for each ton reduced through the offset
project, projects must provide assurance that they are achieving
emissions reductions that would not otherwise have occurred in the
absence of RGGI's offset provisions." (http://www.rggi.org/offsets,
http://www.rggi.org/offsets/offset_requirements)
Translation: Only new forest plantings qualify. Heinrich is
certainly right for New England's carbon offset program. Tropical
forest offsets are handled the same way under the Kyoto Protocol,
which is likely to stimulate clearcutting. (Mitt Romney claimed to be
pulling Mass. out of RGGI in 2005 because it did not allow offset
credits to be purchased from international sources offering cheaper,
more profitable tropical carbon credits, but it was more likely for
cosmetic reasons in GOP politics.)
It's partly a scientific and technical problem: there has been a
lack of good research on physiology that actually measures carbon
sequestration by forest species, and how it varies with management
practices. Some of this has been funded with interesting results
(e.g. http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/asp/hf/symposium/showsymposium.html?id=705&year=2009,
http://www.whrc.org/new_england/Howland_Forest/Carbon_Sequestration.htm,
http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0101/et0101s9.html) but it's slow work
and difficult to provide quantitative estimates. With enough
research, it should be possible to come up with methods for
quantitative estimates based on forest inventory and management data,
and aerial and satellite imagery, but they are not there yet. And
even when the methods are ready, the process of assigning "offset"
credits to particular forest resources is a process of negotiation,
not automatic equivalence. Critics who complain that this process is
complex are correct -- that's the nature of the problem.
But I think the problem is fixable -- with more research and with
experience as we go through a few decades of operating these
systems. Heinrich's point is that the old-growth forests may be long
gone before that happens.
Alex_...@uml.edu x3199
Dan Schmidt
Thanks for the detailed and enlightening reply! So, in other words,
there is a real issue here, and we need to do more to get on top of it
- makes sense, let's hope it can be done sooner rather than later...
I suppose a lot of this depends on the particular forests you're
talking about as well, be they old or new, since it's certainly not
the case that all forests / trees are created equal as far as this
goes. I know Prof. Falcone in Biology is the resident plant scientist,
I wonder if he knows folks who look into this...
DS