Tag: forests

Handing out medals in the LULU-lympics

Submitted by Anonymous on October 3, 2011 - 9:24am

Looking at the new reports being posted on the UNFCCC website, ECO feels some empathy for the reviewers tasked with ‘judging’ the forest management reference levels.

Since there was no agreement on the rules for reference levels, each Party has had to do its own thing. And the results look as disjointed as a talent show. Some sang, while others danced. Some lifted impressive weights, while others performed magic tricks. Maybe some have shown real talent, but how can we judge the quality of their performance when we have no basis for comparison?

Perhaps Parties should take note of another multilateral, global process – the Olympic Games. In those Games, the rules are clear in advance, and thus the judges are able to score each performance on a set of common criteria – and those who don’t play by the jointly agreed rules, are disqualified.

It would have made the “judges” – the expert reviewers – job easier if Parties had agreed to a single method for setting reference levels back in Cancun. And of course, if that method had environmental integrity, the climate would be the ultimate victor. That didn’t happen in Cancun, and now Panama may be the last chance for Parties to recognize that such global reference levels are in the interest of all of our “national circumstances”. ECO says: “Go for the gold!”

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A Disturbing Disturbance

Submitted by Anonymous on October 2, 2011 - 9:50am

Parties don’t want to have to account for forestry emissions not caused by humans, like wildfires. Fair enough you might say, but this is being used as another attempt to hide emissions.

Until recently, only events classified as force majeure - large-scale events beyond the control of Parties - would be excluded. However, the language of “force majeure” has now been dropped in favour of the less specific “natural disturbance”. Whether its called natural disturbance or force majeure, the CAN view is that any mechanism agreed in the LULUCF rules must transparently and conservatively factor out emissions and removals from extraordinary natural disturbances only.

So what the heck does that mean?

“Extraordinary” has to be defined. And its definition shouldn’t be wildly at odds with a plain English meaning of, well, extraordinary. Common sense suggests that it should only be used for statistically extremely rare events and the same provisions for natural disturbance should be consistent for all Parties.

It also means you can’t hide just any (or all) of your debits. And it means you shouldn’t hide emissions if they come from stuff you did (like harvesting, or salvage logging). Because its natural disturbance, remember? It means you need to really clearly say where, why, and how much you are calling natural disturbance (i.e. show your work!)

It means that you have to treat natural disturbances in exactly the same way in your baseline as you do in the commitment period you’re accounting emissions. Finally, it means you have to be able to measure them really well, and that requires high quality data.

So in short, a natural disturbance mechanism for LULUCF has to retain the common sense meaning of force majeure. If parties are worried their carbon sequestration will go up in smoke, they should discount the credits.

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LEAKED LULUCF LOOPHOLE TEXT

Submitted by Anonymous on October 1, 2011 - 9:54am

ECO just found (under a delegates desk) the draft final decision on LULUCF for Durban. In the interest of full transparency, we reproduce it here.

Decision -/CMP.7

Land use, land use change and forestry

Acknowledgingthat we have been working on this subject far too long and may have lost all sense of proportion,

Recallingthat we made a real mess of this last time as well,

Affirmingthe need to generate credits and hide debits from LULUCF activities,

Recognisingthe need to change jargon frequently, as with force majeure natural disturbance,

Hidingforest management emissions beneath unrealistically inflated reference level projections,

ForgettingArticle 4, paragraph 2 (a) of the Convention, which states that “Each of these [Annex I] Parties shall adopt nationalpolicies and take corresponding measures to mitigate climate change, by limiting its anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and protecting and enhancing its greenhouse gas sinks and reservoirs,”

Overlookingthe urgent need to reduce emissions in all sectors,

Underminingthe ultimate objective of the Convention,

Wonderingif we will get away with this,

Decidesthat each Party in Annex B can account for LULUCF activities however it likes,

Further decidesthat other Parties shall not use this transparent accounting scam as an excuse to fiddle their own LULUCF or REDD accounting .

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LULUCF: The Countdown Commences

Submitted by Anonymous on October 3, 2010 - 7:39pm

With Cancun looming, a push is coming to get much of LULUCF finalised here in Tianjin. ECO cannot stress enough: it is more important than ever to get strong rules for forest management accounting. Proposals in the form of projected baselines for forest management that allow countries to increase anthropogenic emissions into the future without accounting them need to be rejected.

Avid readers will recall that ECO has been calling for emissions from forest management to be measured compared to what happened in the past -- just like all other sectors – and not to uncertain futures determined by Parties. In the current text, the proposal put forward by Tuvalu is the only one that attempts to incorporate this principle, and time must be found on the agenda in Tianjin to discuss this. A methodological review, while helpful in ensuring transparency, will not bring hidden emissions back into the accounts.

Meanwhile, with so much focus on this now familiar issue, we must not lose sight of the other ways in which Parties are attempting to use accounting for their lands and forests to fiddle the system. While negotiators have been knocking heads on rules that may determine whether forest management accounting becomes mandatory (and so it must), what of the fate of the other land use activities? It remains an open question as to whether Parties will still be allowed to elect for cropland or grazing land management, or revegetation.

Additionally, crucial environmental safeguards should be maintained in accounting for natural disturbances so that when the storms come or wildfires rage, these aren’t put forward as yet another excuse for not
accounting for man-made emissions.

We are often told that LULUCF accounting with environmental integrity, while technically achievable, is not politically realistic. Dealing with dangerous climate change will be a much greater political problem than good LULUCF rules could ever be.

And locking in loopholes in the climate accounting is the last thing that should be on negotiators’ minds.

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CAN intervention - REDD - COP 13,

Submitted by admin on June 28, 2010 - 9:53pm

Intervention given by Paula Moreira on behalf of CAN in Bali on REDD issues

Thank you for this opportunity, my name is Paula Moreira from IPAM Brazil, The Amazon Institute for Environmental Research

The Climate Action Network International believes that:

To avoid the worst impacts of human-induced climate change, average global surface temperature rise needs to be stabilized as far below 2C above pre-industrial levels as possible. Keeping climate change below these levels is critical to the protection of tropical forests.
Global emissions must peak and begin to decline in the coming decade and reducing emissions from deforestation has a key role to play in achieving this goal.
The question is no longer whether deforestation should be addressed as part of the evolving global climate change regime, but rather, how this can be done most effectively and rapidly, while:

Ensuring equitable and fair incentives to Indigenous and forest people and
Protecting their land rights and customary land.

CAN’s objective is to ensure that the development of policies and mechanisms will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation at the national level; fast enough to prevent dangerous climate change.
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation must:

enhance the environmental effectiveness and improve the integrity of the climate change regime;
be accompanied by deeper and additional cuts in fossil fuel emissions by developed countries after 2012.

Developed countries must provide substantial resources for capacity building and technology transfer for effective monitoring, measurement and implementation of national and conservation legislation.
It is therefore essential that the Bali Mandate includes ambition, content, process and a timetable for negotiating a mechanism that provides incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation.

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CAN Intervention - KP Opening Intervention - 1 Jun 2010

Submitted by admin on April 9, 2010 - 8:09pm

CAN_KP_intervention_opening_plenary_1June2010_final_for_delivery.pdf

Thank you Mr Chair, Distinguished delegates, Clearly, progress is needed on the KP track here in Bonn.

CAN would like to remind delegates that when the KP was first negotiated, Parties agreed targets first, and the following years were spent agreeing the loopholes to accommodate them - loopholes that have contributed to the gigatonnes gap between accounting for emissions and what the atmosphere actually sees.

It is CAN’s long-standing opinion that the underlying rules should be negotiated first, so that the needed reduction target of at-least -40% can be allocated between the Annex B Parties, based on a clear and common understanding of the underlying scope and accounting rules.

Negotiating time in Bonn and for the subsequent intersessionals should therefore be focused on reaching agreement on a number of issues, including:

Accounting rules that actually reduce net LULUCF emissions;
Modalities for the flexible mechanisms – to avoid double counting of developed country mitigation and financial support obligations, and keep out inappropriate sectors, such as nuclear and CCS
The AAU banking loophole
The scope of new sources and sectors and other accounting rules – the “other issues”
Commitment period length and base year

These issues need to be agreed, but not agreed at any cost. CAN has strong concerns about some of the proposals currently being discussed, especially for LULUCF.

In the LULUCF negotiations, Annex I Parties are proposing to make their forests part of the climate change problem, rather than part of the solution. They are proposing to increase their annual net emissions from forest management by approximately 400 Mt CO2e without even accounting for it. This type of proposal has absolutely no place in a global climate agreement.

At this session, Annex I Parties must stop the accounting games. Annex I Parties must commit to absolute reductions in net anthropogenic emissions from LULUCF and they must protect their forests and other natural ecosystems as reservoirs of greenhouse gases. Parties could then quickly agree to LULUCF rules that transparently meet these two principles.

Like so much in this process, time is not required to fix LULUCF, only political will and ambition.

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Climate Action Network

Kyoto

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Bonn 2 - 2010

Is REDD’s compass at risk?

Submitted by Anonymous on December 10, 2009 - 4:36am

Coming into Copenhagen, the REDD text included a global objective for halving gross deforestation by 2020 and halting forest loss by 2030. While ECO was coming prepared to push for greater ambition – we are now faced with the prospect of losing the global objective completely. In case Parties have lost their compass, ECO would like to remind them of the right direction. To stay below a 2˚C rise in temperature, a Copenhagen agreement must contain a strong global objective for REDD in addition to deep domestic emission reductions from developed countries.

Without a global objective for REDD, there is a risk that emissions from forest destruction will be prolonged with devastating impacts – it would be like running a race without knowing where the finish line is and without a stop-watch to measure your speed. Yet with a global REDD objective, REDD-plus can help us stay well below 2˚C warming.

Of course this contribution does not come free and it is vital for developed countries to commit to the level of funding needed to achieve this goal. Developing countries will need financial support – not just to build their capacity – but significant and reliable streams of funding to stop deforestation, protect biodiversity and sustain livelihoods of forest communities. With countries such as Brazil and Indonesia proposing ambitious national goals for reducing emissions, including those from deforestation, developed countries need to show the colour of their money for both the immediate and the long term. Only with this partnership of an ambitious global objective for REDD coupled with the necessary financial support will the supposedly constructive negotiations on REDD-plus actually deliver. While we are used to harvesting forests to get some money, it’s now time to harvest some money to save the forests.

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Anonymous's blog

CAN Response to LCA REDD text - Barcelona - Nov 2009

Submitted by admin on November 3, 2009 - 7:41am

CAN_response_to_LCA_REDD_text_October_2009_final_logo.pdf

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sustainable management of forests

biodiversity safeguards

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Forests-Sinks

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Climate Action Network

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Barcelona 2009

LULUCF Report Card

Submitted by Anonymous on October 7, 2009 - 11:19pm

End of term is nearing for LULUCF and ECO presents the report card for some Parties, indicating their grade based on interesting statements made in Wednesday morning’s contact group on Annex I Parties’ emission reductions.

ECO notes that this subject is a difficult one with several Parties routinely handing in incomplete assignments and struggling to understand the basic concept: account for emissions.

European Union: D

Although the EU’s intervention was fairly focused on the implications of LULUCF for targets, it allowed a glimpse of that most troubling idea of projected baselines (an idea the EU just does not seem able to shake). Surprise, surprise: they estimate that the impact of this approach on EU targets is zero, because it is defined to be so! The EU gets a D for handing in an incomplete assignment with a non-position that points in all directions, some of which are absolutely unacceptable.

New Zealand: D

For continuing to parade its graph showing that their planned harvest of forests creates an unacceptable hit on the national accounts. The graph on page 13 of their submission (not shown during the contact group) shows that these unacceptable forest management debits are balanced by credits from afforestation!

Canada: C

Canada deserves kudos for being the only Annex I Party to explicitly observe that countries need to account for emissions from all management activities. However, the code behind their accounting principles is clear: remove all natural disturbances from the inventory, use projected business-as-usual baselines, and account for carbon stored in wood products.

Japan: C

Japan had a mixed performance: good marks for observing that forest management projections are not a good idea, but demerits for their continued support for the existing rules when what we really need are rules with greater environmental integrity.

Australia: B

ECO considered handing out the only A for an Annex I country to Australia for being the only country to propose that the national emission reductions target apply to LULUCF as for other sectors. Great idea! But then ECO remembered that Australia had very high deforestation emissions in 1990, and that this proposal would (coincidentally?) make it much easier for Australia to meet ambitious targets.

Norway: B

Norway almost got a high grade for being willing to accept a simple accounting approach of measuring changes in emissions since 1990, but slipped behind when it observed that special adjustments may need to be made for some countries.

G77 & China: A

For giving Annex I Parties a wake-up call and proposing the revolutionary concept that the same set of simple rules should apply to all Annex I Parties: account for changes in emissions/removals compared to a base year. Although their proposal to apply a cap to the entire LULUCF sector is difficult to evaluate without more information, it appears that they are interested in using it to ensure that mitigation happens both in LULUCF and in other sectors. Makes sense to ECO! Finally, G77 & China have rightly called for a resolution to these negotiations by Barcelona so that new Annex I targets can be agreed in Copenhagen.

Micronesia: A

As well as supporting the call for simple, transparent accounting and environmental integrity, Micronesia also added some humour to the discussion in describing the data submissions by Annex I Parties: “Whoops, data gaps! Whoops, data uncertainty! Whoops, different rules for everyone!”

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