Forest offsets in danger without emissions trading system
Updated
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates about 15 per cent of global carbon emissions are caused by the cutting down of forests. At last year's Copenhagen climate summit, countries pledged to invest 100 billion dollars by 2020 to reduce global deforestation rates. Australia is a big supporter of the initiative, it has already signed deals to protect forests in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. But most of the money for those deals was going to come from industry buying forest credits through the emissions trading system. With that scheme now on hold, the viability of these forest credits is now uncertain.
< i>Presenter: Jennifer Macey
Speakers: Francis Seymour, director general of the Centre for International Forestry Research; Hugh Saddler, managing director of the SustainAbility Advice Team; Andrew Macintosh, associate director of the ANU's Centre for Climate Law and Policy
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JENNIFER MACEY: One of the few actual commitments to emerge from the Copenhagen climate change summit was a pledge to fund a program to preserve the world's forests. Six nations including Australia promised almost $4 billion towards the initiative, known as REDD - reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation.
FRANCIS SEYMOUR: Close to 20 per cent of total annual global emissions result from deforestation and forest degradation so it's quite a significant part of the problem.
JENNIFER MACEY: Francis Seymour is the director general of the Centre for International Forestry Research, or CIFOR.
FRANCIS SEYMOUR: Most of the analyses that have been done suggest that the cost of avoiding much deforestation and forest degradation is significantly less than the cost of other emissions mitigation opportunities and they don't require any new technologies. They're basically ready to go and so they, in a sense, can help buy the world time.
JENNIFER MACEY: While much of the attention in the wake of the Copenhagen conference has focussed on the delegates' failure to come up with a legally binding treaty to replace Kyoto, there was another casualty. No rules were set for the deforestation fund. That's still to be nutted out at the next summit in Mexico this year.
However, Australia still had a plan - the carbon pollution reduction scheme. Under the scheme, industry would be encouraged to offset their emissions by buying credits from developing countries in the region, such as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. But now the CPRS has been shelved.
Energy consultant Hugh Saddler is the managing director of the SustainAbility Advice Team.
HUGH SADDLER: Without a CPRS the Government will have to pay for the imported permits. It can still do that but with the CPRS the burden of paying for the imported permits would have been carried by the businesses that had to meet their emissions trading permit requirements under the scheme. So it's a question of who pays for it really.
JENNIFER MACEY: The Australian Government has promised $120 million towards pilot projects in Indonesia and PNG (Papua New Guinea) and already, Indonesia and Australia have signed two deals to protect forest regions there.
Andrew Macintosh is the associate director of the ANU's Centre for Climate Law and Policy. He says the demonstration projects are worthwhile, but without an ETS it's now unclear where the money will come from to make the REDD scheme fully operational.
ANDREW MACINTOSH: With the emissions trading scheme now dead it looks like if the Government wants to get a REDD scheme up internationally that it's going to have to be the primary funder of this, and by "it" it really turns into every taxpayer. So every taxpayer is basically paying for the pollution offsets for the polluters domestically and internationally.
