Forest Carbon, Business and Politics

Carbon Market Asia

2010-12-08T10:53:00.001-08:00

CARBON FORUM ASIA 2010 Presents Asia’s Views on Emissions Trading Post-2012
October 30, 2010 by Editor
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Singapore, 29 October 2010: The fifth CARBON FORUM ASIA ended today, recording yet another successful outing for carbon market professionals in Asia and around the world. Held on 27 and 28 October in conjunction with the Singapore International Energy Week, CARBON FORUM ASIA 2010 attracted a turnout of close to 1,100 participants from 44 countries, an increase of 10 percent from the previous year.
Continuing its role as a leading platform for Asia to showcase the carbon market opportunities in the region, CARBON FORUM ASIA 2010 brought together 120 exhibiting organizations from the public and private sectors as well as 120 global industry experts.
With just two years before the end of the Kyoto protocol, CARBON FORUM ASIA 2010 served as an opportune platform for governments, private organizations and financial institutions across the world to level out key issues and carry forward insightful viewpoints that will outline future dialogues.
The Future of the Asian Carbon Market
The pioneering move to consult the expertise of an advisory panel has paid off for CARBON FORUM ASIA 2010. Attendees to the CARBON FORUM ASIA Conference were able to gain insights from a wide range of viewpoints on the future international climate change framework, while keeping up-to-date on the latest developments within the regional and global carbon trading markets.
“Asia has been the dominant source of supply so far for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). However, the world’s urgent need for emissions reduction projects is not yet matched by expansion of the CDM or development of alternative systems. The debates at CARBON FORUM ASIA showed Asian suppliers are ready to adjust to the uncertainty to encourage new investors, and to deal with a fragmented market of multiple national regimes, if necessary,” said Henry Derwent, President and Chief Executive Officer, International Emissions Trading Association (IETA).
Among the sessions that tabled the future of global climate change abatement were “What will the market look like in 2012?” moderated by Henry Derwent, as well as “The new investors: Post-2012 climate and carbon funds”, moderated by Stuart Cerne, Managing Director, Enecore Carbon.
“Whilst policy uncertainty is slowing the activity of traditional carbon funds, innovative finance solutions that provide carbon pricing certainty with project development support are emerging. The panelists at the session agree that this is an exciting development and anticipate huge growth in the market,˝said Stuart, who moderated the session.
CARBON FORUM ASIA also tackled the emerging carbon forest trading sector. The session on “Growing Money on Trees: The Forest Carbon Market” generated a lively discussion among the many interested parties made up of financiers, traditional carbon market players, and the growing number of REDD organizations. While there were differences of opinion as to how the REDD market should be managed and measured, there was general agreement that there is potential in forest carbon offsets. Given that many more developed countries have exhausted their natural forest assets, the focus is on Asia and the growing number of REDD projects in countries such as Canada, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Another well-attended session was the “Roadmap to a low-carbon power sector by 2050”, which discussed the energy sectors’ investments in emissions reduction. Subhash Chandra Mathur, Managing Director, Samarpit International Group said, “Global warming is a real issue which calls for action from both the developed and the developing world to promote free flow of technology, manpower, skill sets and investment funds . CARBON FORUM ASIA, with its participants ranging from policy makers, project implementers, international experts and thought leaders, has provided the perfect platform to share and promote such thinking that will go a long way in developing globally cohesive solutions.˝
Asia up in arms to combat climate change
With climate change efforts gaining much prominence and traction in the region, the Conference sessions at CARBON FORUM ASIA 2010 focused on climate change abatement efforts in key markets across the region. Among the topics discussed were “China’s drive to create a new market” and “Japan and South Korea: New and existing forms of offset demand”.
“The carbon market is currently in a transition period. There has been growing interest in the topics of climate finance and the key question moving forward is how to bridge to the future of the Carbon Market. The coming year wil be an important one for the market as the world anticipates new developments in the fight against climate change. Japan is ready for the future emissions abatement landscape but we are also highly anticipating a new international framework,“ said Takashi Hongo, Special Advisor and Head, Environment Finance Engineering Department for the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
Developing nations still dominate the CDM landscape
The Sellers’ Pavilion, sponsored by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), drew attention to up-and-coming sustainable development projects from 16 developing nations, spanning biomass, coal gasification, CO2 capture, hydro, wind, rural development and transportation sectors. With project developers making up 40 percent of the exhibiting companies, CARBON FORUM ASIA saw many carbon credit buyers and sellers forging connections to explore opportunities for future cooperation.
Among the projects showcased was the Lanzhou Sustainable Urban Transport project which includes activities, such as road reconstruction and an intelligence system. The project seeks to reduce emissions from conventional small buses, taxis, motorcycles for motorized vehicles by introducing the Bus Rapid Transport infrastructure.
First-time participant Vietnam showcased a total of five project entities. Vietnam Electricity showcased the Song Bung 4 Hydroelectric Project, estimated to result in 235, 028 tonnes CO2 reductions per annum as well as a reduction of other pollutants associated with fossil fuels-based power generation. Nepal, also making its debut at CARBON FORUM ASIA, showcased several projects including a hydro-powered mini-grid project under its Alternative Energy Promotion Centre. Seen as a pre-grid electrification for rural areas, the project is expected to develop between 600 to 700 micro-hydropower systems, generating a total of 40,000 CERs annually.
“There are so many moving parts in the Carbon Market that it is critical for us to be able to come together to work on key issues. CARBON FORUM ASIA is a valuable platform for me to speak directly with many different people over two days in one centralized location and an important region like Asia,˝ said Robert Hansor, Head of Climate Change and CSR – Asia, Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance.
SHAPING ASIA’S VIEW
As one of the last gatherings of climate change opinion leaders prior to the 16th Conference of Parties (COP 16) meeting in Cancun, Mexico in December, CARBON FORUM ASIA has certainly aired Asia’s ardent concerns and hopes for the future climate change framework.
“CARBON FORUM ASIA 2010 attracted a notable number of CDM projects, exhibitors and event participants. We continue to see increased participation from fund owners and managers in carbon finance, mirroring the significant growth and opportunities in Asia’s carbon trading market. Experts agree that Asia will play a central role in the future climate change framework. Having established itself as an important meeting of minds for the industry in this part of the world, we eagerly anticipate the growth of CARBON FORUM ASIA in years to come,” said Michael Dreyer, Vice President, Asia-Pacific, Koelnmesse.
CARBON FORUM ASIA 2011 will be back in Singapore and held within the Singapore International Energy Week.
This is a press release from CARBON FORUM ASIA.

Forest carbon boost in California ETS offset rules

2010-11-13T18:19:00.001-08:00

Forest carbon boost in California ETS offset rules
Carbon News and Info > Climate change news > Carbon finance, emissions trading & offsets

Tuesday, 2 November 2010
[This story updates an earlier version Monday 1 Nov]

The forest carbon sector in the US has received a boost with the release of draft rules for the Californian cap and trade scheme. The rules released by the state’s Air Resources Board (ARB) for consultation include a doubling of the limit originally proposed for the use of offsets in the scheme, from 4 per cent of an emitter’s obligation to 8 per cent, and early-action recognition of voluntary-market credits back to 2005.

To help lower the cost of compliance to the scheme, Californian emitters can buy offset credits generated across the United States from projects to reduce emissions in four areas initially. The four are forestry, urban forestry, livestock manure treatment and the reduction of ozone-depleting substances.

The increased offsets limit means a total of 232 million offset credits will be allowed over the period 2012 to 2020.

Offset protocols in other reduction activities will be considered for inclusion as soon as next year. Offset projects from Canada and Mexico may also be eligible in future. As well as project-based offsetting, the ARB will also pursue larger, sector-wide offsetting programs over time, including avoided deforestation, or REDD, in tropical developing countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.

The rules of the forestry offset protocol would make carbon credits from afforestation & reforestation, improved forest management and avoided conversion activity - to the Climate Action Reserve (CAR) standard - eligible for compliance in the California trading scheme. The relevant version of the protocol is CAR’s Forest Protocol, version 3.2, which updates the voluntary market standard for use in the state regulatory compliance scheme.

In detail, ARB’s Forest Offset Protocol allows the following activity:
Reforestation; planting trees on land that has been out of forest cover for at least 10 years or has been subject to a recent significant disturbance. Sustainable harvesting is allowed, if certified.
Improved Forest Management (IFM); undertaking management activities to maintain and increase carbon stocks on forested lands. Must use a mix of native species.
Avoided Conversion; preventing the conversion of high-risk forestland to a non-forest land use by dedicating the land to continuous forest cover through a conservation easement or transfer to public ownership.
Reforestation and IFM projects on private, tribal and non-federal public lands are eligible, and only private land for avoided conversion.

Permanence of emissions reductions must be ensured for 100 years from the date of the last credit issuance in a project, via third party verification every six years over that time. A buffer reserve account must be held with ARB to cover any losses. The proportion to held in reserve will vary from project to project depending on an individual risk rating assessment.

Early action
The cap and trade scheme is set to begin in 2012 but provision for early-action recognition in the draft rules would see offset credits from voluntary-market projects already underway to earlier versions of the CAR standard in the four approved areas become eligible. Specifically, credits from projects conducted between 1 January 2005 and the end of 2014, but commencing before 2012, will be eligible. The early action recognition of voluntary credits is designed to help jump-start offsets supply to the compliance market, ARB says.

California’s cap-and-trade scheme is emerging as a critical market for forest-based offset credits, said MaryKate Hanlon, senior analyst at forestry investment manager New Forests. “The latest draft regulation takes important steps to clarify how forests can play a role in generating early action and regular offsets as well as in sector-based offset programs.”

“Increasing flexibility for covered entities to meet emission-reduction liabilities is likely to improve market performance and environmental outcomes,” Hanlon said. “A clear signal of forthcoming regulations means more projects on the ground, and specifically, commitments to long-term land management strategies for forest owners.”

Final approval of rules is expected in a vote by the Air Resources Board on December 16.

Download:
Compliance Offset Protocol for US Forest Projects [3.3 MB]

Indonesia- haze

2010-11-13T18:08:00.000-08:00

“HAZE” is a weasel word for the eye-stinging, throat-rasping smog that periodically engulfs parts of South-East Asia. The resort to euphemism points to why the pollution, which smothered much of the region in 1997, has been a nearly annual torment since the early 1990s: a reluctance to get tough with the country responsible, Indonesia, whose forest fires cause the scourge. Unlike the earthquake, tsunami and volcanic eruption that ravaged Indonesia this week, the fires are man-made.

The haze has returned this year. Air-pollution indices in Singapore and the south of the Malaysian peninsula had reached their highest levels since 2006 until rainfall on October 23rd brought relief. In parts of Sumatra, the neighbouring Indonesian island spewing out the smog, it had been getting hard to breathe.

This was trivial compared with 1997, when huge tracts of Borneo as well as Sumatra smouldered and the haze covered an area more than 3,000km (1,900 miles) wide. It affected six countries and perhaps 70m people and closed airports. That year was one of El Niño conditions and extended drought. Fires set to clear land for plantations spread into forests. Apparently extinguished, many smouldered in underground peat, then inflamed again.

This year much more limited fires have raged, mainly in Riau, a province in central Sumatra of 6m people and about 90,000 sq km—roughly the size of Portugal. But some schools in Malaysia had to shut. In Singapore, where the air quality helps attract expatriates fleeing pollution in Hong Kong, the environment agency advised people with heart and respiratory conditions to avoid outdoor activities.

The timing of the haze’s reappearance was cruel for the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), a ten-member regional block whose impotence the smog mocks. The group’s environment ministers had just met to discuss their 2002 agreement on “Transboundary Haze Pollution” and note that their efforts had helped reduce haze. The galling truth is that Indonesia—the prime source of the problem—has not ratified the agreement. A club that works by consensus and abhors sanctions has only moral suasion. And Indonesia is the regional giant.

It would be wrong, however, to think that regional diplomacy is as pusillanimous and Indonesian environmental hooliganism as unchecked as in 1997. ASEAN does, albeit ineffectually, now set some standards of behaviour for its members, as opposed to tiptoeing fastidiously away from their “internal affairs”. And, unlike in 1997, Indonesia has been quick to acknowledge its responsibility for this year’s smog, and to ask for help.

Using fire to clear land has been illegal in Indonesia since 1995. But everywhere corruption and inefficiency undermine implementation of the law. And fire remains for many smallholders and big plantations the cheapest, quickest way of clearing logged land of rejected or overlooked trees and the undergrowth, thereby making it available for other uses—often, these days, to serve the booming palm-oil industry. In Riau, even beside main roads there are bleak, blackened landscapes, shrouded in white smoke, where the peat soil still smoulders under charred tree-stumps. Between them, infant oil palms are already growing.

The haze is an acute and chronic symptom of a disease even more serious for Indonesia and the world: Indonesia’s deforestation. In 1982 more than three-quarters of Riau was forested. Only about a quarter is now. But here too there are signs of hope. Stung by the criticism Indonesia receives as one of the world’s biggest emitters of carbon—a consequence of its destruction of so much carbon-rich forest and peatland—its government is cleaning up its act. It plans to cut carbon emissions by 41% by 2020, so long as it receives the compensation from an inchoate scheme, known as REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), whereby rich countries pay poorer ones to conserve trees.

As a signal of good intent, Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in May announced a two-year moratorium in 2011-12 on commercial deforestation. The reward was a promise of $1 billion in REDD funds from Norway. Many greens are cheering this. Joko Arif of Greenpeace calls it “a really good step”. But he laments that it does not cover existing logging concessions, so felling will continue. He also cautions that much must be done to make the moratorium work—starting with a proper mapping of forests. Otherwise, enforcing the ban will be arbitrary.

Norway’s environment minister, Erik Solheim, was in Jakarta this week to thrash out some thorny disputes, such as one over who will monitor the Norwegian money—an international institution or an Indonesian one? This was not resolved, though the United Nations Development Programme is to be the conduit for an initial $30m for a “preparation phase”.

The colour REDD

That dispute is based on doubts about Indonesia that colour both regional anger over the haze and worries about whether REDD is feasible there. Cynics see the country as irredeemably corrupt. It will continue, they say, to light bonfires that shorten its neighbours’ lives, having its cake of REDD money, even as its chainsaws eat the rainforest. But there is a more optimistic interpretation: it is beginning to assume a role of regional leadership and enjoys its seat on the G20. It badly wants the respectability that comes with a reputation for environmental responsibility.

Moreover, there are two reasons for taking the moratorium seriously. Indonesia’s palm-oil, pulp-and-paper and coal-mining industries are trying furiously to scupper it. And one theory as to why so many fires have been set this year is that those lighting them fear they may not be able to clear land as easily once the moratorium is in force. If you try hard, you can see light through the haze. Just don’t breathe too deeply

Bloomberg EU May Allow Forest Carbon Credits to Fill Gap, BNP Trader Says

2010-11-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

Bloomberg
EU May Allow Forest Carbon Credits to Fill Gap, BNP Trader Says
November 11, 2010, 10:41 AM EST
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By Mathew Carr
Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The European Union may allow use of emission credits from forest protection to help fill any gap from a ban of some industrial-gas credits, a banker at BNP Paribas SA said.

The EU carbon market may have room in its third phase, which runs from 2013 to 2020, for credits under a program known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, should the bloc restrict industrial-gas credits and adopt a tighter emission-reduction target for 2020, said Christian Del Valle, director of environmental markets and forestry at the Paris-based bank. The region’s target is currently to cut emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels.

“Policy makers might seek to offer another source of credits for cost control,” Del Valle said yesterday in an interview at the Climate Finance 2010 conference in London. “Some member states may be open to allowing REDD in certain circumstances.”

Almost 200 nations are meeting later this month in Cancun, Mexico, to discuss replacing or extending the Kyoto Protocol, which runs through 2012, slowing emissions and shifting the world to low-carbon energy sources. Inclusion of forestry projects would increase the number of credits available to polluters to cover greenhouse-gas emissions after 2012.

Some EU officials are saying the bloc reserves the right to allow additional UN credits into its program, the world’s biggest carbon market, De Valle said. “Doing so would send a strong signal internationally that Europe is serious about addressing deforestation in tropical countries.”

“There is still some resistance from the east and south” of Europe to the adoption of a tighter emission target for 2020, possibly a 25 percent or 30 percent reduction on 1990 levels, he told the conference earlier.

--Editors: Mike Anderson, Catherine Airlie.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mathew Carr in London at m.carr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net

Carbon Forester, ERA Ecosystem Restoration Associates Inc.

2010-11-13T17:49:00.000-08:00

Carbon Forester, ERA Ecosystem Restoration Associates Inc.
Ecosystem Marketplace
The Carbon Forester position assists in determining the feasibility of
areas for forest carbon projects, carries out carbon modeling, prepares
project ...

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Forest carbon boost in California ETS offset rules

2010-11-11T11:02:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, 2 November 2010
[This story updates an earlier version Monday 1 Nov]

The forest carbon sector in the US has received a boost with the release of draft rules for the Californian cap and trade scheme. The rules released by the state’s Air Resources Board (ARB) for consultation include a doubling of the limit originally proposed for the use of offsets in the scheme, from 4 per cent of an emitter’s obligation to 8 per cent, and early-action recognition of voluntary-market credits back to 2005.

To help lower the cost of compliance to the scheme, Californian emitters can buy offset credits generated across the United States from projects to reduce emissions in four areas initially. The four are forestry, urban forestry, livestock manure treatment and the reduction of ozone-depleting substances.

The increased offsets limit means a total of 232 million offset credits will be allowed over the period 2012 to 2020.

Offset protocols in other reduction activities will be considered for inclusion as soon as next year. Offset projects from Canada and Mexico may also be eligible in future. As well as project-based offsetting, the ARB will also pursue larger, sector-wide offsetting programs over time, including avoided deforestation, or REDD, in tropical developing countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.

The rules of the forestry offset protocol would make carbon credits from afforestation & reforestation, improved forest management and avoided conversion activity - to the Climate Action Reserve (CAR) standard - eligible for compliance in the California trading scheme. The relevant version of the protocol is CAR’s Forest Protocol, version 3.2, which updates the voluntary market standard for use in the state regulatory compliance scheme.

In detail, ARB’s Forest Offset Protocol allows the following activity:
Reforestation; planting trees on land that has been out of forest cover for at least 10 years or has been subject to a recent significant disturbance. Sustainable harvesting is allowed, if certified.
Improved Forest Management (IFM); undertaking management activities to maintain and increase carbon stocks on forested lands. Must use a mix of native species.
Avoided Conversion; preventing the conversion of high-risk forestland to a non-forest land use by dedicating the land to continuous forest cover through a conservation easement or transfer to public ownership.
Reforestation and IFM projects on private, tribal and non-federal public lands are eligible, and only private land for avoided conversion.

Permanence of emissions reductions must be ensured for 100 years from the date of the last credit issuance in a project, via third party verification every six years over that time. A buffer reserve account must be held with ARB to cover any losses. The proportion to held in reserve will vary from project to project depending on an individual risk rating assessment.

Early action
The cap and trade scheme is set to begin in 2012 but provision for early-action recognition in the draft rules would see offset credits from voluntary-market projects already underway to earlier versions of the CAR standard in the four approved areas become eligible. Specifically, credits from projects conducted between 1 January 2005 and the end of 2014, but commencing before 2012, will be eligible. The early action recognition of voluntary credits is designed to help jump-start offsets supply to the compliance market, ARB says.

California’s cap-and-trade scheme is emerging as a critical market for forest-based offset credits, said MaryKate Hanlon, senior analyst at forestry investment manager New Forests. “The latest draft regulation takes important steps to clarify how forests can play a role in generating early action and regular offsets as well as in sector-based offset programs.”

“Increasing flexibility for covered entities to meet emission-reduction liabilities is likely to improve market performance and environmental outcomes,” Hanlon said. “A clear signal of forthcoming regulations means more projects on the ground, and specifically, commitments to long-term land management strategies for forest owners.”

Final approval of rules is expected in a vote by the Air Resources Board on December 16.

Download:
Compliance Offset Protocol for US Forest Projects [3.3 MB]

Related stories:
California issues softened ETS rules

PENNVEST Announces Results of First Nutrient Credit Trading Auction

2010-11-10T10:31:00.001-08:00

HARRISBURG, Pa., Nov. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority (PENNVEST), working closely with the Department of Environmental Protection and representatives of the Chicago Climate Exchange, held its first auction for nutrient credits on Oct. 28 and 29. Credits representing the annual removal of 21,000 pounds of nitrogen from the Susquehanna River watershed and the Chesapeake Bay over each of the next three years were sold for a price of $3.04 per credit.
"This first auction demonstrates the viability of the financial mechanism that we have developed to aid in improving the waters of the Chesapeake Bay," said Paul Marchetti, PENNVEST executive director. "This auction was a significant first step forward in our plan to foster trades in the Bay watershed."
PENNVEST is implementing a new initiative to encourage the trading of nutrient credits within the Chesapeake Bay watershed to promote cost-effective solutions to the problem of nitrogen and phosphorous discharges. These nutrients encourage algae growth in the Bay, which ultimately reduces oxygen levels needed by aquatic plants and animals.
There are many ways to reduce nutrient discharges, including implementing farming practices that reduce water runoff. Reducing discharges below certain levels creates nutrient credits that farmers can sell to wastewater treatment plants, which must meet certain permitted limits for these discharges. By using the credits purchased through the auction, treatment plants can, in many cases, meet required discharge levels in a much more affordable way than by building upgrades to their facilities.
PENNVEST will encourage the trading of nutrient credits by acting as a clearinghouse in the credit market. It will enter into contracts to both buy and sell credits. By participating in these transactions, PENNVEST will provide market certainty to both buyers and sellers which, in turn, should help encourage more activity in this market. Hosting periodic auctions, such as the one held last week, will be one way in which PENNVEST will facilitate these nutrient credit trades.
More information on the auction and the nutrient credit trading program is available online at www.pennvest.state.pa.us, under "Recent News."
Media contact: Paul Marchetti, 717-783-4496

Cloud over CO2 storage in trees

2010-10-30T14:03:00.001-07:00

Carbon News and Info > Climate change news > Forest carbon & sustainability
Projects and Activities > Forest carbon > News & commentary

Thursday, 28 October 2010
Two separate studies have thrown doubt over forests’ ability to help offset global warming. Because trees rely on carbon dioxide to grow, it has been predicted that as CO2 levels rise in a warming world, trees would thrive on the increase, grow faster, and thus help soak up excess atmospheric carbon.

As a result of their findings, the authors of both studies have called into question the growth models for worldwide vegetation being used in official climate change forecasting for this century. The results of the studies may also have implications for some types of forest carbon projects such as reforestation and improved forest management, depending on the growth models they use. Ex ante, or upfront, crediting under some standards may see too many credits issued on forecast carbon sequestration with issuances having to be revised after later verification events during a project’s lifetime.

A study led by Dr Richard Norby of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that while increased CO2 levels engender higher growth for the first five to six years, after that time the growth rate tails off.

The study team, including US and Australian scientists, found the limiting factor was the fixed level of nitrogen in the soil. After five or six years, the extra soil nitrogen being used to fuel the growth of the trees starts to run out, preventing the trees from being continuing to make the most of the elevated CO2 levels.

Researchers exposed forest stands to CO2 levels 25 per cent higher than the current global concentration, a level expected to be reached by the second half of this century.

“The implication of that for the broader landscapes is that, particularly in nutrient poor soils, the rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is probably not going to be as beneficial to plants as we've been hoping,” Dr Belinda Medlyn a biologist at Macquarie University, Sydney, said. She said the models used in the IPCC 4th assessment report are likely to overstate CO2 sequestration on land by “a fair bit”.

A second study, from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, looked at 86 types of trees at more than 2,300 sites on six continents. It found that 80 per cent failed to respond to higher CO2 levels regardless of their species or geographical location. The researchers drew their results from examining tree rings, the distinctive marks left on trees allowing researchers to see how much growth takes place from year to year.

“There might be a very slight increase in the total rate of growth in trees, but they’re not going to be these vacuum cleaners that will magically suck up the CO2 that we’re emitting,” said Ze’ev Gedalof, study co-author and Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Guelph.

Other experts examining the study questioned whether growth rates observed in tree rings give an accurate measure of overall carbon uptake.

ABC Online, Canadian Press.

American Carbon Registry lifts carbon offset benchmark

2010-10-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

28 September 2010

The American Carbon Registry (ACR) has raised the bar for the level of carbon that landowners must sequester under its forestry programmes in a move that it claims will stimulate the carbon offset market.

It has approved an Improved Forest Management (IFM) methodology for quantifying greenhouse gas removal and emissions reductions, targeting privately-owned industrial timberlands in the US already managed under a commercial timber harvesting programme.

ACR said that the methodology unleashes groundbreaking possibilities in the market, partly because it applies conservative assumptions to ensure that no additional activities are credited, a flaw that has plagued existing IFM methodologies.

Under the new methodology, which is the first to specifically target industrial timberlands, landowners must make a long-term commitment to sequester carbon on their properties above and beyond what would normally occur under an institutional timber owner’s typical business-as-usual management.

‘The Finite Carbon IFM methodology fills a critical gap in the US forest carbon market by providing a straightforward and scalable framework for commercial timber land managers to develop high-quality IFM projects,’ said Nicholas Martin, ACR’s chief technical officer.

To date, only five forest carbon projects have been registered and verified, four of which are California-based projects registered under the Climate Action Reserve, and the fifth is a large multi-state project registered on ACR.

ACR said that the methodology has been included as an eligible project type under both House and Senate cap-and-trade bills.

It is also consistent with pre-compliance recognition in recent federal bills and state programmes, making projects formed under the standard appealing for corporate social responsibility buyers.

ACR said it plans to complement the methodology in the future with additional methodologies for non-industrial private forests and public land.

‘The end result is a methodology that balances concerns of commercial operability, environmental integrity and cost, all of which are crucial for high-quality projects to be developed on a scale that will have an impact,’ said Finite Carbon president Scott Nissenbaum.

ACR was founded in 1996 as the US GreenHouse Gas Registry by the Environmental Defense Fund and Environmental Resources Trust.

Copyright © 2010 NewNet

Denman Island - 750 ha.

2010-10-25T17:03:00.001-07:00

October 21, 2010, Vancouver, British Columbia: ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd. (TSX¬-V: ESR) through its 100% owned subsidiary ERA Ecosystem Restoration Associates Inc, (ERA) is pleased to announce that it has executed a term sheet with the German-based company The Forest Carbon Group AG (FCG) for the sale of all Verified Emission Reductions (VERs) arising from the Denman Island project. This unique public – private partnership involves the acquisition of 750 hectares of private and Crown land on Denman Island for inclusion in the provincial parks and protected areas system. The transaction, which is subject to due diligence and entering a formal Verified Emissions Reductions Purchase Agreement (VERPA), would deliver several hundred thousand tonnes of VERs immediately following third party validation and verification.

The multi-faceted public-private partnership has involved the British Columbia Government, North Denman Island Lands Inc., ERA, and FCG. This arrangement involved the transfer of carbon rights associated with the private portion of the 750 hectares by North Denman Lands Inc. to ERA. The British Columbia Government will ultimately add these ecologically sensitive lands to the provincial parks and protected areas system. Without this partnership the private land area would have been slated for development. The newly protected lands are within the rare Coastal Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zone. The acquisition also includes lands within the Chickadee Lake watershed and a previously logged area that provides habitat for the endangered Taylor’s Checkerspot butterfly.

The VERs will be validated and verified to the International Standard Organization’s 14064-2 standard and to either the Community, Climate and Biodiversity Alliance’s CCBA standard or to a mutually agreed upon equivalent standard. All VERs will be serialized and registered on the Markit Environmental Registry.

Holger Mayer, director of FCG, commented: “The rich biodiversity of B.C.’s forest ecosystems makes the province, and in particular the Pacific Coast, an ideal source of high-quality forest-based carbon offsets. And Denman Island is a “charismatic” project that has marketing appeal to our potential clients in Europe, because of its beauty and protection of biodiversity. We’re pleased to continue our partnership with ERA and contribute to the restoration of Denman Island’s natural environment.”

Dr. Robert Falls, ERA’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “This agreement represents ground-breaking leadership in climate policy and environmental stewardship, using creative public – private partnerships. We wish to thank the Forest Carbon Group for seeing the value of the program, and the unique attributes of the carbon offsets that will be generated for the voluntary carbon market. The initiative and participation by North Denman Lands were essential to the success of this project. We also wish to recognize the Government of British Columbia for its forward-thinking resolve in facilitating climate mitigation solutions that provide multiple wins for the environment and for future generations.”

About The Forest Carbon Group AG.

The Forest Carbon Group works to protect and restore forests. Driven by the idea that ecology and economy should mutually benefit from one another, it invests in and co-develops large-scale forestry projects world-wide. These projects not only give value to forests’ ecosystem services but also have many social co-benefits that enable involved communities to create sustainable local economies. The Forest Carbon Group offers companies tailor-made solutions for becoming more sustainable and carbon neutral using the mechanisms of the voluntary carbon market. The full service approach includes identifying, developing and financing forestry projects, and providing guidance in marketing and communications to leverage the potential of companies’ sustainable investment. The Forest Carbon Group offers real, additional, and verifiable VERs that are approved and audited by internationally renowned third parties. Founded in 2009, the Forest Carbon Group consists of specialists with ma ny years’ experience in carbon markets, forestry, project development, marketing, communications and financing. The company’s headquarter is in Frankfurt, Germany.

Additional information on The Forest Carbon Group can be found at www.forestcarbongroup.ag or by contacting contact@forestcarbongroup.de

About ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd.

ERA is a Canadian pioneer in forest restoration and conservation carbon offset projects. The company’s Community Ecosystem Restoration Program located in the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia, began in 2005 in the District of Maple Ridge, and has grown to include five communities including Metro Vancouver. ERA has delivered over 1,000,000 tonnes of carbon offsets to the voluntary market and is engaged in the development of forest carbon projects in Canada, Africa and the Hawaiian Islands to supply international and North American voluntary and pre-compliance markets. ERA’s clients and product users include Air Canada, Catalyst Paper, HSE – Entega, Rolling Stone Magazine, Shell Canada Limited, The Forest Carbon Group, and The Globe Foundation of Canada. ERA’s carbon offsets are being validated to the ISO 14064, CCBA, and VCS standards.

Additional information on ERA can be found on the corporate website www.eracarbonoffsets.com or by contacting investor@eracarbonoffsets.com

World Bank pays $4 for forest CERs

2010-10-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

Carbon News and Info > Carbon trading prices > CER market reports
Carbon News and Info > Climate change news > Carbon finance, emissions trading & offsets
Carbon News and Info > Climate change news > Forest carbon & sustainability
Projects and Activities > Forest carbon > News & commentary

Friday, 22 October 2010

Africa’s first significant CDM forest carbon project has attracted a price of $US4 per tonne in temporary CER (tCER) carbon credits, according to a media report. The World Bank will buy the credits for half the carbon stored up to 2017 from an Ethiopian forestry project, the Humbo Assisted Natural Regeneration Project.

The first large-scale afforestation and reforestation (A/R) project to be registered under the Kyoto Protocol’s CDM, the Clean Development Mechanism, began in 2007. It involves the restoration and replanting of indigenous tree species on 2,728 hectares of degraded mountain forest area that has been stripped for fuel wood in south-western Ethiopia.

The Humbo project developer, World Vision, has arranged 800 local people into seven reforestation cooperatives. The carbon credit proceeds fund payments to the members, replacing their previous incomes from the sale of firewood. To minimise the potential leakage - the pushing of wood collection into forest outside the project area - the project also includes growing plantations for fuelwood harvest.

The World Bank BioCarbon Fund is buying tCERs for 165,000 tonnes of Humbo’s CO2 emissions reductions, nearly half the 338,000 tonnes the project is expected to sequester in its first ten years.

The Bank has agreed to pay $726,000 at $US4 per tCER, according to Hailu Tefera, manager of Climate Change Programmes at World Vision Ethiopia, one of the project proponents. His comments were published in the Addis Fortune newspaper.

The World Bank does not generally reveal the prices paid for CERs by its various carbon funds. But it did confirm in March a commitment to purchase 165,000 tonnes of CO2e for a sum suggesting a price of just over $US4 each.

Under the CDM rules for its A/R segment, permanent CERs cannot be issued over forest carbon sequestration, only temporary or long term CERs. This is because of the questions marks over the permanence of the planted forests. tCERs expire after five years and must be reissued upon verification the forest is still standing, or replaced with permanent CERs from elsewhere.

The World Bank says the development of such forestry and land-use projects is crucial for Africa, a continent that has so far attracted little CDM project investment

Wesfarmers signs carbon offset deal - Australia

2010-10-14T19:31:00.001-07:00

Published 9:44 AM, 5 Oct 2010

By a staff reporter

The insurance arm of Western Australian conglomerate Wesfarmers has signed a deal to offset its 2010 carbon emissions.

Wesfarmers Insurance says the deal will see carbon forest sink developer Carbon Conscious Ltd plant 26,000 eucalyptus trees in West Australian farmland.

“We are pleased to be a part of a program where Carbon Conscious was planting trees in many of the regional areas where our business operates. Additionally, by retiring voluntary carbon units, we have also ensured that we will be National Carbon Offset Standard compliant and this is important to our efforts around sustainability,” Wesfarmers Insurance corporate affairs manager Georgie Morell said in a statement.

Carbon Conscious has carried out similar carbon offsetting projects with Origin Energy and BP Singapore, the statement said.

ERA Denman Island Project

2010-10-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

October 12, 2010, Vancouver, British Columbia: ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd. (TSX¬-V: ESR) through its 100% owned subsidiary ERA Ecosystem Restoration Associates Inc, (ERA) is pleased to announce Canada’s first carbon project involving a unique public-private partnership. The Denman Island Conservation Project will protect over 750 hectares of ecologically sensitive lands, distributed over 18 properties on Denman Island in British Columbia.
The public-private partnership involving the British Columbia Government, North Denman Island Lands Inc, ERA Ecosystem Restoration Associates Inc (ERA), and the Forest Carbon Group AG (FCG) uses an innovative agreement involving land donations, the transfer of local development rights, and carbon sequestration rights. This multifaceted agreement enabled the British Columbia Government to purchase the land for future inclusion in the BC parks and protected areas system. Without this partnership the future park area, approximately 15% of Denman Island, would have been slated for subdivision into residential properties and agricultural properties including vineyards and hayfields.
The newly protected lands are within the Coastal Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zone, one of the rarest zones in B.C. The acquisition also includes land within the Chickadee Lake watershed and a previously logged area that provides habitat for the globally endangered Taylor's Checkerspot butterfly.
“Achieving the protection of such a large amount of both private and Crown land demonstrates that capital investment can effectively be put to the service of community and conservation goals,” said Henning Nielsen of North Denman Lands Inc.
Dr. Robert Falls, ERA’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “This project represents groundbreaking leadership in climate policy and environmental stewardship, using creative public–private partnerships – a triple win for the province, the environment and the climate. The rich biodiversity of B.C.’s forest ecosystems makes the province, and in particular the Pacific Coast, an ideal setting for high quality forest-based carbon offset programming.”
Alexander Zang, FCG’s Director, commented: “We’re pleased to continue our partnership with ERA and contribute to strengthening Denman Island’s natural environment.”
About The Forest Carbon Group AG.
The Forest Carbon Group works to protect and restore forests. Driven by the idea that ecology and economy should mutually benefit from one another, it invests in and co-develops large-scale forestry projects world-wide. These projects not only give value to forests’ ecosystem services but also have many social co-benefits that enable involved communities to create sustainable local economies. The Forest Carbon Group offers companies tailor-made solutions for becoming more sustainable and carbon neutral using the mechanisms of the voluntary carbon market. The full service approach includes identifying, developing and financing forestry projects, and providing guidance in marketing and communications to leverage the potential of companies’ sustainable investment. The Forest Carbon Group offers real, additional, and verifiable VERs that are approved and audited by internationally renowned third parties. Founded in 2009, the Forest Carbon Group consists of spec ialists with many years’ experience in carbon markets, forestry, project development, marketing, communications and financing. The company’s headquarter is in Frankfurt, Germany.
Additional information on The Forest Carbon Group can be found at www.forestcarbongroup.ag or by contacting contact@forestcarbongroup.de
About ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd.
ERA is a Canadian pioneer in forest restoration and conservation carbon offset projects. The company’s Community Ecosystem Restoration Program located in the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia, began in 2005 in the District of Maple Ridge, and has grown to include five communities including Metro Vancouver. ERA has delivered over 1,000,000 tonnes of carbon offsets to the voluntary market and is engaged in the development of forest carbon projects in Canada, Africa and the Hawaiian Islands to supply international and North American voluntary and pre-compliance markets. ERA’s clients and product users include Air Canada, Catalyst Paper, HSE – Entega, Rolling Stone Magazine, Shell Canada Limited, The Forest Carbon Group, and The Globe Foundation of Canada. ERA’s carbon offsets are being validated to the ISO 14064, CCBA, and VCS standards.
Additional information on ERA can be found on the corporate website www.eracarbonoffsets.com or by contacting investor@eracarbonoffsets.com
On behalf of the Board of Directors of
ERA CARBON OFFSETS LTD.
“Robert Falls”

Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please contact:

Alex Langer,
Telephone: 604-646-0400
Email: alex.langer@eraecosystems.com
FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This document includes forward-looking statements as well as historical information. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the continued advancement of the company’s general business development, research development and the company’s development of forest-based carbon offsets. When used in this document, the words “anticipate”, “believe”, “estimate”, “expect”, “intent”, “may”, “project”, “plan”, “should” and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements. Although ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd. believes that their expectations reflected in these forward looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties and no assurance can be given that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements include fluctuations in the marketplace for the sale of carbon credits, the inability to implement corporate strategies, the ability to obtain financing and other risks disclosed in our filings made with Canadian Securities Regulators.
NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Pulp and paper firm signs carbon deal in Sumatra

2010-10-12T08:15:00.001-07:00

Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com
October 05, 2010

Indonesian pulp and paper firm Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) has signed a deal to protect 15,640 hectares of peat forest in Sumatra in exchange for carbon payments, reports Reuters.

Under the agreement signed with Carbon Conservation, a forest carbon broker based in Singapore, APP supplier PT Putra Riau Perkasa will forgo conversion of a concession located in carbon-dense peat forest on the Kampar Peninsula in Sumatra. The deal could avoid emissions of million tons of carbon dioxide over its 33-year life.

To complete the deal, Putra Riau Perkasa will need to change its Industrial Timber Plantation (HTI) conversion permit for the concession into one that allows for conservation or restoration. If the licensing change is approved by the forest ministry, it would set a precedent for Riau province, potentially ushering in other forest carbon pacts.

The Kampar Peninsula, which has one of the largest intact peat forests in the province in Riau, is a chief battleground between APP and international environmental groups, including the Rainforest Action Network, WWF, and Greenpeace. Greens blame APP for destructive logging practices, while APP maintains it operates in compliance with Indonesian law.

Location of PT. Putra Riau Perkasa (PRP) plantation forest concession in Semenanjung Kampar, Riau, Sumatra. APP's suppliers manage about 2.5 million hectares according to Aida Greenbury, sustainability director for APP. The animosity between APP and environmentalists recently reached new heights following Greenpeace's release of How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet, a report that alleged environmental transgressions by APP's suppliers. APP fired back with a report of its own, claiming that Greenpeace made errors in its mapping and sourcing of information. Greenpeace responded by affirming its conclusions and noting that APP's 'auditor' is controlled by Alan Oxley, who also is involved in the company's public relations efforts, negating the claimed independence of the report.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, activists were skeptical of the forest carbon deal.

"While we support the conservation of the Kampar, this project in no way makes up for the tremendous amount of damage that APP and its affiliates are having on rainforests and peatlands across Indonesia," said Lafcadio Cortesi, forest campaign director at the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), in a prepared statement. "APP should not be praised or compensated for doing something that they should have been doing in the first place."

"A critical question that needs to be answered, with public private partnerships and all land related agreements, is whether or not local communities and government know that this is happening and have a meaningful role in decision-making," he continued. "RAN maintains that if these types of conservation projects are to be successful, they must have the free, prior and informed consent of local communities and these communities must participate and receive an equitable share of the benefits."

But Dorjee Sun, CEO of Carbon Conservation, which has another project in Aceh Province in northern Sumatra, told mongabay.com, the Kampar is an opportunity to engage a historic destroyer of forests, perhaps helping it down a more sustainable path.

Conversion of forest land for a plantation in Riau, Sumatra, May 2010. Photo by Rhett A. Butler "This is an important project that Carbon Conservation had to undertake," he said via email. "After 2 years of deliberation on this APP opportunity we realized that to change the world we must change the economy. To change the economy we must change the multinational corporations. To change the multinational corporations, we must engage multinational corporations. Furthermore in Indonesia someone has to engage massive land owners like APP and it needs to be a credible carbon partner and not a fly-by-night operation."

Ultimately though, for this project to work we must ensure long lasting community benefits and that is only possible via active conservation bring poverty alleviation, healthcare, family planning & alternative livelihoods. This is of great significance because it comes at a time when UN leadership is adrift and REDD+ is one of the few rays of hope prior to Cancun. So as the first commercial REDD peatland plantation concession and will lead to a globally replicable pilot all partners have agreed to having total accountability and regular updates the media because so much is at stake.”

American Carbon Registry Approves IFM Methodology for US Commercial Timberlands

2010-09-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

Unleashing US Forest Carbon Offset Potential
September 27, 2010 7:42am EDT

ARLINGTON, Va. — The American Carbon Registry (ACR) announces approval of an Improved Forest Management (IFM) Methodology for Quantifying GHG Removals and Emission Reductions through Increased Forest Carbon Sequestration on U.S. Timberlands developed by Finite Carbon Corporation, a leading U.S. forest carbon project developer.

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The methodology targets privately owned industrial timberlands in the U.S. managed under an existing commercial timber harvesting program. Landowners must make a long-term commitment to manage their properties to sequester carbon above and beyond what would normally occur under an institutional timber owner’s typical business-as-usual management.

The methodology approval is groundbreaking for the possibilities it unleashes in the market. Despite the enormous potential for hundreds of millions of acres of private forestlands in the U.S. to participate in the carbon market, to date only five forest carbon projects have been registered and verified. Four of those are California-based projects registered on the Climate Action Reserve (CAR), and the fifth is a large multi-state project registered on ACR. The dearth of projects is due to the lack of workable, scientifically sound methodologies for key project types such as IFM. The methodology, the first to specifically target industrial timberlands, applies conservative assumptions throughout to ensure no crediting of non-additional activities, a flaw that has plagued existing IFM methodologies. It will be complemented in the future by other ACR methodologies for non-industrial private forests and public lands.

“The Finite Carbon IFM methodology fills a critical gap in the U.S. forest carbon market by providing a straightforward and scalable framework for commercial timber land managers to develop high-quality IFM projects,“ said Nicholas Martin, ACR’s chief technical officer. “We expect to see many good projects come to market.”

IFM has been included as an eligible project type under both House and Senate cap-and-trade bills and ACR’s methodology approval process of public consultation and expert peer review is consistent with criteria for pre-compliance recognition in recent federal bills as well as state and regional programs. This means that offsets resulting from projects developed following the new ACR methodology are a strong pre-compliance choice. Forest carbon offsets are also widely sought after in the voluntary market, where corporate social responsibility buyers seek “charismatic” carbon offsets, such as those that protect forests.

“We appreciate the rigor of ACR’s public comment and external scientific peer review process for methodology approval,” said Sterling Griffin, Finite Carbon’s vice president for project development and the methodology’s lead author. “The process really helped clarify and improve the methodology. Finite Carbon has been impressed by how quickly, yet comprehensively the process was completed, creating confidence that the methodology was meticulously evaluated by experts and found to be environmentally sound.”

“This is a major milestone for Finite Carbon and our forest carbon project portfolio throughout the United States,” added Scott Nissenbaum, president of Finite Carbon. “We need to offer solutions and options to landowners and quality offsets to buyers. We have been impressed with the knowledge and expertise at Winrock and ACR, which will facilitate this process,” he continued. “The end result is a methodology that balances concerns of commercial operability, environmental integrity and cost, all of which are crucial for high-quality projects to be developed on a scale that will have an impact.”

About the American Carbon Registry

The nonprofit American Carbon Registry (ACR), an enterprise of Winrock International, is a leading carbon offset program recognized for its strong standards for environmental integrity. Founded in 1996 as the GHG Registry by Environmental Defense Fund and Environmental Resources Trust, ACR has 15 years of experience in the development of rigorous, science-based carbon offset standards and methodologies as well as in carbon offset issuance, serialization and transparent online transaction and retirement reporting. As the first private voluntary GHG registry in the world, ACR has set the bar in the global voluntary carbon market for offset quality and operational transparency. For more information, please visit www.americancarbonregistry.org

About Finite Carbon Corporation

Finite Carbon is the country’s No. 1 forest carbon developer based on listed U.S. projects. It provides landowners with a single-source, end-to-end solution to create and monetize carbon offsets. Solely focused on forest carbon, the company was founded in 2009 by forestry and finance experts, and offers the most comprehensive forest carbon project development and commercialization service in the country. Finite Carbon, which has to date secured contracts for two million carbon offsets, valued at $12 million, is headquartered in Wayne, Pa., and has offices in San Francisco, Calif., and Cherry Creek, N.Y. For more information, please visit www.finitecarbon.com

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6443684&lang=en

Read more: http://www.centredaily.com/2010/09/27/2233508/american-carbon-registry-approves.html#ixzz10lTCaEJg

Tanzania project first to earn VCS forest credits

2010-09-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

Thu Sep 23, 2010 2:24pm GMT Print | Single Page [-] Text [+]
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A Tanzanian reforestation project has become the first forestry investment to be issued carbon offsets under an industry-backed standard that assures investors the emission reductions are credible and long-term.

The Voluntary Carbon Standard said on Thursday the first batch of credits had been issued this week and placed in the VCS registry.

London-based The CarbonNeutral Company, which helps firms cut their carbon emissions, is marketing the credits.

The project in the southern highlands of Tanzania involves converting degraded grassland into sustainably harvested eucalypt and pine forests that soak up carbon dioxide from the air as they grow, earning CO2 offsets.

The forests cover 7,250 hectares (18,125 acres) in Uchindile district and 3,560 hectares at Mapanda district, the VCS and The CarbonNeutral Company said in a statement.

To protect investors, 40 percent of the initial batch of 232,264 credits would be placed in a special buffer account, they said. This is to guarantee delivery of the credits going forward in case the trees are destroyed by fire or other reasons.

Pricing of the nearly 140,000 credits varied depending on sales volume and other factors, Jonathan Shopley, managing director of The CarbonNeutral Company, told Reuters, without giving a range.

He said the flow of credits is expected to increase as the project reaches full development.

The VCS sets strict carbon accounting criteria that aims to assure investors that offset projects are properly designed and transparent. They were created to try to address investors' fears about forestry projects that might be poorly managed or where the trees are later cut down, for example, through illegal logging.

The Tanzania project also met the standards of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance, the statement said.

Ten per cent of the carbon credit revenues would be returned to the local communities to build classrooms, teachers' houses, dispensaries and roads, while 200 local people were employed in the forests.

Oil palm plantations on peatlands won't get carbon credits under CDM

2010-09-24T10:26:00.001-07:00

mongabay.com
September 19, 2010

Plantations on peatlands will no longer be supported by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a framework for industrialized countries to reduce their emissions via projects in developing countries, reports Wetlands International.

The decision, which came last Friday during the executive board meeting, will bar biofuel plantations established on peatlands from earning carbon credits that could then be sold to industrialized countries to "offset" emissions. The concern is that under the CDM, carbon finance is used to perversely subsidize conversion of carbon-dense peatlands for oil palm plantations, a process that generates substantial greenhouse gas emissions, thereby undermining any potential carbon dioxide savings from use of palm oil-based biodiesel.

“We are very relieved that within a year, the CDM Board has decided to revise the existing methodology," said Marcel Silvius of Wetlands International in a statement. "This decision now ends a perverse incentive for development of plantations on peatlands.”

A Wetlands International statement explains:
Last year, the CDM Executive Board approved a methodology that now gave till last week CDM credits to biodiesel plantations on so-called ‘degraded lands’ in developing countries. The CDM allows industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol (Annex B Party) to reduce their emissions via projects in developing countries. Such projects can earn saleable certified emission reduction (CER) credits, which can be counted towards meeting Kyoto targets. This methodology was meant to stimulate sequestration of carbon via replanting of degraded, devegetated land areas with renewable energy crops as alternative for conventional diesel.

In practice, this methodology gave an additional financial boast to new palm oil plantations on the logged peatswamps in Southeast Asia. These ‘degraded’ lands however still contain large amounts of carbon in the case of water logged organic peat soils. This carbon will be rapidly released upon drainage for plantations.

Draining and clearing of peat forest in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Research led by Dr. Susan Page University of Leicester found that producing one ton of palm oil on peatland generates 15 to 70 tons of CO2 over 25 years as a result of forest conversion, peat decomposition and emission from fires associated with land clearance. In other words, biodiesel produced under such conditions has a greater climate impact than conventional fossil fuels.

As such, environmental groups are calling for a moratorium on the conversion of peatlands for biofuel production. Already about 33% of all oil palm is on peat, according to Wetlands International.

The decision by the CDM Executive Board now removes one incentive from peatland conversion, although developers—especially in Indonesia—are still targeting peat swamps for expansion. Peat lands tend to be cheaper and more available than other soil types suitable for oil palm cultivation.

BNP Paribas and Wildlife Works Ink $50 million REDD Deal

2010-09-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

21 September 2010 | LONDON | BNP Paribas Corporate & Investment Banking (BNP Paribas) has announced an agreement between its Commodity Derivatives business and Wildlife Works Carbon LLC, in which BNP Paribas will provide up to US$50 million in finance to combat tropical deforestation and climate change.

The bank’s Carbon Finance business and Wildlife Works will develop a portfolio of large scale Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) carbon projects in Africa. BNP Paribas will have the option to purchase avoided emission credits created from the portfolio.

The facility provides funding for Wildlife Works’ efforts to source, develop, implement and manage REDD projects in Africa. With BNP Paribas’ backing, Wildlife Works now has the financial resources to support its efforts to protect endangered forests in the region and reinforces its ability to manage large-scale preservation projects.

In addition BNP Paribas has the right to purchase 1.25 million tonnes of avoided emissions credits over the next five years from Wildlife Works’ Kasigau Corridor REDD project in Kenya. This project is East Africa’s first avoided deforestation project to receive validation under the Climate Community and Biodiversity Alliance standards, and is designed to bring substantial benefits to local communities in education and job creation, while protecting biodiversity at the same time.

“We intend to develop a portfolio of valuable REDD+ projects, known as much for an uncompromising approach to biodiversity protection and community development as for strong financial returns,” said Mike Korchinsky, Founder and President of Wildlife Works. “Through this agreement, African communities will benefit financially while safeguarding their environment for future generations.”

Christian de Valle, Director, Environmental Markets in Commodity Derivatives at BNP Paribas, said: “We believe that REDD+ projects will have an important role in efforts to mitigate climate change as well as in the post-2012 carbon markets. We are very pleased to form a partnership with Wildlife Works and view the agreement as an important milestone in managing forest carbon.”

Forest Fund to Invest in New Zealand

2010-09-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

Monday, 20 September 2010 - 7:48pm
Wellington, Sept 20 NZPA - A new fund in Australia has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in forests in New Zealand and Australia.

New Forests Pty has closed the approximate $A500 million ($NZ648m) Australia New Zealand Forest Fund, which will invest in timberland properties and forestry-related assets in Australia and New Zealand.

The fund's investors include international and regional institutional investors who have identified Australian and New Zealand timberland as an attractive component of their alternative asset portfolio allocation.

"Now is the right time for investors to be weighting toward the timberland asset class because of its low volatility and positive correlation to inflation," David Brand, managing director of New Forests, said.

"Australia and New Zealand's timberland sectors are restructuring as a result of the failure of several forestry Managed Investment Scheme businesses in Australia and the flow on effects of the global financial crisis. This has created a once-in-a-generation change of ownership of the forestry and land asset base -- which may be worth $A3 billion-$A4 billion -- but the strong underlying market fundamentals of the sector remain, driven by growth in Asia."

The fund's establishment comes after Harvard Management Company (HMC), the manager of Harvard University's endowment and owner of plantation forest assets in New Zealand, recently highlighted natural resources as an area of investment.

HMC is the majority owner of Kaingaroa Timberlands, the second largest owner of plantation forest assets in New Zealand behind US fund manager Hancock Natural Resources Group. NZ Superannuation Fund owns 40 percent of Kaingaroa Timberlands and it is its largest single investment.

"We believe natural resources is a core strength in our portfolio, offering inflation protection, cash flow and long-term growth," HMC said.

Port of Tauranga has said a 24 percent rise in log exports helped lift its full-year underlying earnings.

Forestry-related exports through the port rose 19 percent to 6.04m tonnes in the year to June 30. This includes pulp, paper and timber products. Log exports rose 24 percent from the previous year.

Chief executive Mark Cairns said log exports were back at 2003 levels. Log exports in July were up 7 percent on the same month last year.

China has been a big market but in July the port handled more logs destined for Korea than China.

Mr Cairns said the Indian market was also emerging strongly and the Japanese market was bouncing back. "We are seeing a firming of other markets," he said.

NZPA WGT pjg g

EU re-examines forestry's climate role

2010-09-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

Carbon Positive
Being shut out of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme has been a big negative
for the forestry and forest carbon project industries, denying them access
to ...

DOMTAR AND THE NATURE CONSERVANCY TEAM UP ON PILOT PROGRAM FOR WORKING WOODLANDS

2010-09-21T13:19:00.001-07:00

DOMTAR AND THE NATURE CONSERVANCY TEAM UP ON PILOT PROGRAM FOR WORKING WOODLANDS

The Nature Conservancy's Model Forest Conservation Program Will Help Enroll Private Landowners Near Domtar'sJohnsonburg, Pa., Mill

MONTREAL, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Domtar Corporation (NYSE/TSX: UFS) and The Nature Conservancy today announced that they have partnered to help private landowners maintain and sustainably manage their forested land through a program called Working Woodlands.

The Nature Conservancy will cooperate with Working Woodlands landowners to develop sustainable forest management plans that are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council(TM), a nonprofit group devoted to ensuring the highest standards of responsible forest management. In addition to generating FSC(R) certified forest products, the certified lands are also managed to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ensure that more carbon is stored in the forest.

The Conservancy then works with Blue Source, one of the world's leading greenhouse gas offset developers, to market and sell the landowners' forest carbon credits. In return, landowners agree to manage the forest sustainably for at least 60 years.

"Working Woodlands is an innovative approach to help forest owners manage their properties for ecological health, productivity and better economic return," said Lewis Fix, Domtar Vice-President, Brand Management and Sustainable Product Development. "The program marks the first time private landowners can gain access to markets that will help them sustain healthy, diverse, rich forests. We are excited to team with The Nature Conservancy and help show how proper forestry practices lead to sustainable and renewable paper and wood products that consumers can feel good about using."

This marks the latest effort by Domtar, a global leader in paper manufacturing, to help better manage forests. As a founding member of the Canadian Boreal Leadership Council, Domtar joined forces in 2003 with First Nations communities, environmental groups and other resource companies to help sustain the Canadian boreal forest region. A few years later, Domtar transferred 15 square miles of land in the Eastern Townships region of Quebec and sold 20,000 acres in New York'sAdirondack Mountains to The Nature Conservancy. This year, Domtar contributed to preserving an additional 2,011 acres of wetlands in the Eastern Townships region with a land transfer to Ducks Unlimited Canada, a non-profit organization dedicated the conservation of wetlands.

The Nature Conservancy and Blue Source launched Working Woodlands in December 2009, and the program has already attracted interest from landowners whose total holdings exceed 10,000 acres. Additionally, the Conservancy has certified its own Pennsylvania forest properties under FSC(R), and has led efforts globally to promote forest certification and carbon trading as incentives for conservation.

Under the pilot program with The Nature Conservancy, Domtar will donate US$30,000 over the next two years to help enroll a total of 20,000 acres in Working Woodlands. At least 4,000 acres are expected to be from owners of small plots of forested land near Domtar's Johnsonburg paper mill in Central Pennsylvania, but the impact could be far more extensive. Domtar and The Nature Conservancy said the pilot program may also expand to areas surrounding Domtar's mills in the Southeast United States.

"Well-managed forests can help both the environment and the economy," said Dylan Jenkins, Director of Forest Conservation for The Nature Conservancy's Pennsylvania chapter. "We want to encourage well-managed forests to remain forests. Working Woodlands is a win for our forests, our wildlife, our landowners, our economy and our planet," he said. "We're pleased to work with Domtar to help protect Pennsylvania's forests."

    For more information:     Working Woodlands http://www.nature.org/paforests     Sustainable Forestry http://www.domtar.com/fr/croissance-durable/index.asp

Loggers, Environmentalists Co-Manage Canadian Boreal Forest

2010-09-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement was signed a few months ago by 21 forest companies and 9 leading environmental organizations. Components of the three-year agreement include the suspension of logging on parts of Boreal Forest equal to the size of Nevada and representing almost all Boreal caribou habitat within company tenures, to allow for intensive caribou protection planning while maintaining uninterrupted mill operations, and the suspension, by participating environmental organizations, of divestment and "do not buy" campaigns targeting the Boreal operations and products of companies participating in the Boreal Agreement.

Nat Geo News Watch invited Avrim Lazar, President and CEO, Forest Product Association of Canada, and Richard Brooks, Forest Campaign Coordinator, Greenpeace Canada, to write the accompanying op-ed article about the groundbreaking collaboration.

By Avrim Lazar and Richard Brooks

On May 18, 2010, the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement was announced. It is one of the world's largest conservation agreements, setting forward a roadmap for achieving greater community, industry and forest sustainability and conservation in one of the world's last remaining and most important wilderness forests.

Our organizations plus eight other leading environmental organizations and 21 forest products companies signed the Agreement because it is ambitious and solutions-orientated and because we believe it will deliver results.

"It is what some have called one of the world's most astonishing partnerships."

It is what some have called one of the world's most astonishing partnerships.

Paradigm Shift

The Agreement is a paradigm shift and is a testament to leadership, courage and creativity. It creates the space to do conservation planning in an area twice the size of Germany at 72 million hectares [278,000 square miles]. If we are successful, and after a lot of hard work, it will lead to the creation of vast new protected areas, the application of new world-leading forest practices, a revitalization of the companies who are participants and support for the renewal of the communities which depend on the forest industry for jobs.

This revolutionary understanding between environmentalists and the forest industry did not come about over night. The negotiation process for the Agreement itself took close to two years in an environment fraught with tension and mistrust, targeted campaigns and marketplace uncertainty.

Click on the image to enlarge the map.

Map courtesy of Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement

It started as a conversation in which each party was speaking nearly a different language. With the aid of a translator, our facilitator, many long meetings, and a lot of good will and desire for change, we achieved the Agreement.

"This is the game-changer and the start of doing it differently."

In Canada, we had been butting heads and battling it out with a few notable but much smaller partnerships for nearly twenty years. This is the game-changer and the start of doing it differently.

The Canadian Boreal Forest is one of the world's most important forests. It is one of the largest storehouses of carbon on the planet--banking more than 200 billion tonnes in its soils and trees.

It is home to more than 600 First Nations and Aboriginal communities. It is the source of billions of dollars in forest products sold globally.

It is home to one billion migratory birds and is the source of fresh water for half of Canada. It is one of the few remaining, truly vast wilderness spaces left in the world.

Caribou a central driver

One of the central drivers of the creation of the Agreement was the state of woodlandcaribou, an iconic and umbrella species in the Boreal Forest.

The woodland caribou are threatened or endangered through much of their range and in recent years have become the poster child of environmental campaigns in regards to the Boreal Forest in Canada and internationally.

The plight of this animal has been dire and one of the Agreement's main goals is to have the trend towards extinction reversed though the achievement of conservation plans and new protected areas.

From the outset, the Agreement restricts logging and forestry on more than 26 million hectares of prime caribou habitat in order to create the space for our work to be done.

NGS stock photo of caribou bull by George F. Mobley

The Agreement also encompasses other main goals including the establishment of the world leading sustainable forest management practices, collaboration on life-cycle forest carbon projects, and support for communities.

Another important goal of the Agreement is the marketplace recognition for signatory companies in relation to progress on the goals of the Agreement.

Rewarding companies for leadership

Organizations such as Greenpeace, Canopy and ForestEthics, who have traditionally run "do not buy" and flashy boycott campaigns against the companies, will work with the companies to garner support in the marketplace for the achievements under the Agreement. In essence, rewarding the companies financially for their leadership work.

We have put important mechanisms in place to help us achieve our goals--a series of milestones to direct and track our progress in all aspects of our work, for example, designing conservation plans for caribou in a set period of time.

The milestones will be reported on regularly by an independent auditor who will not hold back in noting missed milestones and laggards. Leading customers and investors are also being convened to review and support progress.

Permanent change has not yet been achieved, but through our work over the coming months and years and much-needed trust-building, we hope to see radical change become long-lasting.

VIDEO: The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement--a conversation hosted by the Pew Environment Group, between the Forest Products Association of Canada and Greenpeace on what the Agreement means to Canada and the world.

Through the Agreement, we will be able to come to the table with government as partners offering win-win solutions, rather than zero-sum choices between competing visions for how to manage our precious forestry resources. We tried the old way for a long time; now we are trying it a new way on the grandest scale possible.

"Companies of the Forest Product Association of Canada (FPAC) understand that the marketplace is changing, and that their customers care about where their products come from."

The member companies of the Forest Product Association of Canada (FPAC) understand that the marketplace is changing, and that their customers care about where their products come from. The environmental credentials of the products customers are buying is of key concern, and a prime condition in purchasing decisions.

When implemented, the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement will provide FPAC members with a competitive market edge as it shows the marketplace the dedicated leadership the industry has to the environment, conservation efforts, and the importance of building lasting partnerships that commits them to secure the world's best sustainable forest management practices now and into the future.

In short, the Agreement recognizes that winning in today's global market for forestry products requires a focus on going green and working smart. FPAC's members get it, and the Agreement reflects this.

The Agreement and its signatories will not impose obligations on anyone other than the signatories. It recognizes the authority of governments and the role other stakeholders will need to play in the years ahead.

Aboriginal Peoples recognized

Importantly, the participants recognize that Canada's Aboriginal peoples, its First Nations, are governments as well, equal but different from provincial and national governments. These First Nations have say over their traditional territories on which the participant companies operate. We believe these governments and their communities will be decision-makers just like provincial governments and we hope they will support the outcomes of our planning work.

The collaborative leadership approach to the Agreement indicates that the values of 21st-century leadership must include the interwoven aspects of the environment and the economy. Without one supporting the other the feasibility of a sustainable future is virtually impossible.

It is this leadership that spurs innovative thinking, collaborative partnerships and successful future endeavours in both business and in resource management.

The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement is the backbone to the idea that more can be done and that boundaries should never be drawn on environmental progress. This Agreement is the new environmental and business model for the world.

--Avrim Lazar, President and CEO, Forest Product Association of Canada
--Richard Brooks, Forest Campaign Coordinator, Greenpeace Canada

Richard Brooks (left), Steve Kallick of the Pew Environment Group (center), and Avrim Lazar shake hands on the deal.

Photo courtesy of Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement

Environmental Organizations Participating in the Agreement:

Canadian Boreal Initiative, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Canopy, David Suzuki Foundation, ForestEthics, Greenpeace, The Nature Conservancy, Pew Environment Group International Boreal Conservation Campaign, and Ivey Foundation

Forestry Companies Participating in the Agreement:

AbitibiBowater Inc., Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc., AV Group, Canfor Corporation, Canfor Pulp Limited Partnership, Cariboo Pulp & Paper Company, Cascades inc., Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd., F.F. Soucy Inc., Howe Sound Pulp and Paper Limited Partnership, Kruger Inc., Louisiana-Pacific Canada Ltd., Mercer International, Mill & Timber Products Ltd., NewPage Corporation, Papier Masson Ltée, SFK Pâte, Tembec, Tolko Industries Ltd., West FraserTimber Co. Ltd., and Weyerhaeuser Company Limited -- all represented by the Forest Products Association of Canada

Full text of the Agreement (1.08MB pdf)

BUSINESS: CARBON COWBOYS MAKE A MOVE ON VANUATU

2010-09-13T06:47:00.000-07:00

ECO2 Forestsâ multi-million dollar deal a worry

Bob Makin
Many in Vanuatu see the internet start-up of this forestry (re-forestation) company as the arrival of what in the United States is termed as “carbon cowboys”. This company’s executives call themselves “eco-imagineers”—some say this is a further reason to worry.
Presently, re-forestation in Vanuatu means just one place, Espiegle Bay, north-west Malakula. It means one company, Eco2 Forests. This company says it owns 20,000 acres of Big Nambas territory for a “multi-million dollar carbon credit deal”.
ECO2 speaks of 31 square miles of re-forestation even though they only have a title comprising only 900 hectares.
A recent tour by environmental and forestry personnel learned that only one lease, the original for 900 hectares, had been completed. The price paid for that lease seems to have been a truck and roughly A$20,000.
The company and its executives have been making expansive internet claims concerning their properties and product, a cultivar of the Asian paulownia tree called kiri, for more than a year now, all in the name of carbon trading.
The idea behind forestry for carbon trading is that trees suck carbon dioxide from the air, making them a tradeable ‘offset’ for greenhouse gas emissions.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol emanating from that major environmental conference in Japan sets rules for obtaining credits through re-forestation.
Whilst environmentalists generally support the principal of re-forestation for the purpose of carbon sequestration in Vanuatu, it is extremely important to governments and communities that such projects are undertaken properly and in accordance with established protocols.
ECO2 Forests says it will be seeking enlistment through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol, but this is no easy matter.
It begins with establishing what the base line happens to be. There is quite a lot of vegetation already where they plan to grow kiri trees, and that means achieving this starting point figure will be daunting, to say the least.
For a company which has not admitted to any local presence and only answered a few questions in the media, carrying this out and calculating the leakage of carbon in the removal of that secondary bush, before going any further, ought to be a real worry for the eco-imagineers.
Then, there is the question of additionality. What does the commercial undertaking add, by way of carbon sequestration, in a country in which logging has been banned for 20 years?
Owing to the complexity of registration, only a handful of companies worldwide have managed to become registered under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which also involves third party auditing and approval before any carbon credits are sold.
Vanuatu does not have a cadre of professionals ready to administer the CDM mechanisms.
Early sales of carbon credits by ECO2 are therefore a really big worry. Like the missing acreage.
There has to be an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), but how to fit that with the missing acres is also a worry. In Vanuatu, land is leased out, but ownership remains with the customary landowners and his descendants in perpetuity. There must be consultation with stakeholders. Firstly, this would have to establish any ‘tabu’ areas such as burial grounds and places of earlier settlement.And stake-holders have a variety of interests, especially who will receive the benefits of the undertaking.
The company has promised up to 300 jobs for local landholders. The custom owners, however, say there are to be 600. The kind of work likely, for a start, is bound to be large-scale bush clearance, and it is certain to be hard work of a kind largely unknown to Vanuatu’s subsistence gardeners.
ECO2 Forests is a publicly listed company in the United States. Forestry (renewable resource lumber) and carbon credits are what they say they are concerned with in Australia and South America, as well as Vanuatu.
Vanuatu authorities are disturbed that the public disclosure information of the company (as evidenced in the missing acreage) falls short of the actual situation.
ISLANDS BUSINESS spoke to the University of the South Pacific’s Dr Justin Rose, who teaches environmental legislation at the Law School of the Emalus Campus, Port Vila, concerning the ECO2 Forests project.
He said: “This project proposal, together with recent reports coming out of Papua New Guinea about carbon traders seeking to quickly acquire the sequestration rights to forests from rural landowners, highlights the need for the Vanuatu government to give some urgent consideration as to how best to regulate forest carbon sequestration projects, both the afforestation and avoided deforestation ones.
“The aim should be to engage in the international financial mechanisms while ensuring that projects genuinely sequester CO2, that benefits are equitably shared with local people, and that negative social and environmental impacts are minimised

WANTED - the truth behind climate funds

2010-09-09T08:29:00.000-07:00

03 September 2010

The Netherlands government launched a web site at the informal Geneva Dialogue on climate finance held over two days in Geneva 2-3 September 2010. The website aims to provide transparency over sources and allocation of climate finance commitments. So far six European countries, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and UK, and have detailed some fast-track climate related information on the new website. Eurodad and Publish What You Fund responded to the Netherlands initiative with the following press release.

PRESS RELEASE

Civil society organisations are calling for greater progress on making information on climate finance available, following the Netherlands’ launch of a new website to track climate finance at the ministerial meeting on climate finance taking place in Genevatoday.

“We welcome efforts to improve access to information on climate finance commitments, but the new web site does not meet the minimum standards of transparency needed to ensure that these funds can be tracked and used effectively,” says Nora Honkaniemi, Advocacy Officer at the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad).

At the climate summit in Copenhagen last December, developed countries pledged to provide developing countries with $US30 billion to finance adaptation and mitigation in developing countries during the period 2010-2012. In the run up to Copenhagen, the EU and its 27 Member States committed to funding totalling €2.4 billion annually and recognized that “a Copenhagen agreement will require a gradual but significant scaling up of both public and private financial flows to developing countries.” [1]

”European governments must build on the Netherlands government initiative and take the lead in swiftly integrating global transparency standards for climate finance with the emerging International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standards to generate comprehensive, timely and comparable information,” says Karin Christiansen, Director of Publish What You Fund. This must be a first crucial step to ensure that money is effective and additional, that donors can be held accountable for their climate and aid promises, and that citizens in Europe and around the world know the truth behind the climate funds for impoverished countries.

To ensure that European governments live up to their promises and do not double count previous aid commitments against their new climate finance pledges, comprehensive, comparable and timely information standards are urgently needed.

These standards must:

Define what qualifies as climate financing to ensure that it genuinely contributes to achieving climate objectives and does not undermine development goals;

Define what is new and additional – clarify which funds were already pledged before Copenhagen and how these are additional to previous ODA commitments; [2]

Be compatible with the emerging aid transparency standards being developed in the International Aid Transparency Initiative in order to enable the tracking, coordination, effectiveness and additionality of climate finance; and to ensure the quality of the delivered funds meet internationally agreed aid effectiveness commitments, UN criteria and G77 demands;

Ensure that the information provided is comprehensive, covering the full range of channels, policy, terms and conditions, allocations and disbursements, details of transactions, and governance arrangements of the climate funds.

Contacts:

Nora Honkaniemi, Advocacy Officer, Eurodad – tel. 00 32 28944645

Karin Christiansen, Director, Publish What you Fund – tel. 00 44 20 7022 1909

Notes to Editors:

Eurodad (the European Network on Debt and Development) is a network of 59 non-governmental organisations from 19 European countries who work together on issues related to debt, development finance and poverty reduction. The Eurodad network offers a platform for exploring issues, collecting intelligence and ideas, and undertaking collective advocacy.

Publish What You Fund is the global campaign for aid transparency, advocating for a significant increase in the availability and accessibility of comprehensive, timely and comparable aid information , with the World Bank, U.S., and EU as our main targets – http://publishwhatyoufund.org/

The International Aid Transparency Initiative, know as IATI, was launched by the Netherlands Minister for Development in Accra Ghana in Oct 2008. It “aims to make information about aid spending easier to access, use and understand”. Its main function is to develop a global standard for the disclosure of aid information. The 18 IATI signatories are: Australia, Denmark, Finland, Germany (BMZ), Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland (SDC), UK, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, the European Commission (EC), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), Hewlett Foundation.

[1] EU position for the Copenhagen Climate Conference, Council conclusions 21 October 2009, 14790/09

[2] Disaggregate how much funding is additional to current ODA levels and how much is additional to the ODA targets pledged for 2010 and 2015 (0.56% GNI: EU collective target for 2010; and 0.7% GNI: EU target for 2015).

Australian Greens Seek ‘Fast, Furious’ Climate Steps

2010-09-07T08:24:00.000-07:00

Bloomberg

September 07, 2010, 4:00 AM EDT

(Updates with Gillard retaining power in second paragraph.)By James Paton

Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- The Australian Greens plan “fast and furious” action to establish a climate change committee and impose a price on carbon emissions under a government led by the Labor Party’s Julia Gillard.

“This is the best political opportunity collectively we’ve ever had,” Christine Milne, deputy leader of the Greens Party, said in Sydney today before Gillard won the support needed to form a government. With Labor retaining power, “this committee will be on track fast and furious,” Milne said.

Two independent lawmakers, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, backed Gillard’s minority government after the closest election in 70 years left neither of the main parties with a majority. Gillard, 48, gained support last week from the Greens and agreed in exchange to establish a climate change committee made up of lawmakers and scientists with the aim of setting a penalty for carbon emissions.

The forum’s goal is to determine the best way to introduce a carbon price, not to “decide whether climate change is real,” Milne said. Australia will be able to implement a carbon price with Gillard as prime minister, Milne said. “I would like that as soon as possible.”

Lawmakers plan to decide by the end of this month on how many members the climate committee will have and how it will work, she said. “We’ve had the debate about whether we need a carbon price and in my view there is a consensus by anyone who understands it,” she said. “What we haven’t had a proper debate about is how best to deliver it.”

‘Completely Inappropriate’

The Labor-Green proposal of a climate change committee composed only of people who back a carbon price is “completely inappropriate,” Australian opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt told reporters earlier today at the conference.

“I don’t believe parliament has ever, or should ever, have a committee where there is a belief test as a prerequisite,” he said. “Parliament should be a place for free thought.”

Both Gillard’s Labor Party and Tony Abbott’s Liberal- National coalition targeted a 5 percent cut in emissions by 2020. While the Labor Party delayed plans to introduce an emissions trading system until after 2012, Abbott opposed a carbon price. Neither party won the 76 seats in the Aug. 21 election needed to form a government.

Abbott advocated a fund to encourage businesses and farmers to curb carbon emissions and a 15,000-strong “green army” to repair environmental damage.

‘Contested Ground’

Hunt today reiterated support for the A$2.55 billion ($2.3 billion) emissions reduction fund, saying it would provide certainty compared with the lack of clarity of when emissions trading would begin.

While there is “common ground” surrounding Australia’s target of generating 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, there will continue to be “contested ground” over how to tackle climate issues, Hunt said.

Windsor, who has a farm in his northern New South Wales electorate of New England, said today there are “enormous opportunities” for rural Australia to benefit from developing renewable energy sources.

Gazprom, Shell and Clinton Fdn Back Rainforest Carbon Deal in Borneo

2010-09-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

The following article, though one week old, is very important, as it is the first REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) project to be approved through the “Voluntary Carbon Standard Program”. It allows the privatization of forests in Indonesia for use as carbon offsets by Shell and Gazprom–enabling them to continue polluting. This project could also signal the future of REDD, with forest carbon offset projects brought online through bilateral agreements organized outside of the UN’s Climate Convention.

It is clear to us that putting forests in the carbon market will not solve climate change, but will certainly create economic incentives to rob Indigenous and marginalized peoples of their forested lands.—GJEP

mongabay.com

August 24, 2010

A forest conservation project backed by Shell, Gazprom Market and Trading and the Clinton Foundation on the island of Borneo has won approval under a carbon accounting standard, reports Reuters.

The Rimba Raya project, which covers nearly 100,000 ha (250,000 acres) of peat forest in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province, could reduce projected emissions by 75 million metric tons over the next 30 years, generating hundreds of millions in carbon finance under the reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) program backed by the U.N. and World Bank.

Rimba Raya is being developed by Hong Kong-based InfiniteEARTH in partnership with Orangutan Foundation International, which aims to protect red apes and their habitat. The project avoids carbon dioxide emissions by protecting peatlands and forests, which sequester massive amounts of carbon in their vegetation and soils.

Draining and clearing of peat forest in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

According to Reuters, Rimba Raya marks “a milestone” in the development of a global market in forest carbon credits.

“The project has earned the first-ever approval of an accounting method for measuring the reduction in carbon emissions under REDD,” wrote David Fogarty and Sunanda Creagh for Reuters. “The Voluntary Carbon Standard program, the most respected standard for voluntary carbon offsets, approved the methodology after it passed a mandated double auditing process. The project itself is now undergoing third-party validation and is likely to become the world’s first VCS-approved REDD project later this year.”

Fogarty and Creagh say Rimba Raya’s approval will pave the way for other REDD projects currently in development, reducing some of the uncertainty that has plagued the nascent forest carbon market.

Gazprom, which controls 17% of the world’s natural gas reserves and is the world’s largest gas producer, agreed in a statement.

“This is seen as a landmark moment for the carbon market,” said Gazprom in a press release.

Deforestation, forest and peatlands degradation are a larger source of greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s cars, trucks, ships, and planes combined. Tropical forest conservation is now seen as one of the most cost-effective ways to fight climate change, although the details surrounding a potential mechanism for compensating reduced deforestation remain unsettled.

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0824-rimba_raya.html

CITATION: David Fogarty and Sunanda Creagh. Indonesia project boosts global forest CO2 market. Reuters. Tue Aug 24, 2010.

Forest Carbon has new free online tool

2010-08-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, 24 August 2010, 1:32 pm
Press Release: EITG

Forest Carbon can now be assessed using a FREE on line tool

EITG has released a new on line tool that allows owners of post 1989 or Kyoto Forest under the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme quickly assess the amount of NZU units they would receive if they entered into the ETS.

EITG Director Richard Hayes stated “this simple tool provides forest owners a way of estimating the number of carbon credits or NZU units they will receive if they enter the ETS. It is a straightforward matter of entering area, age class, species and location and we email back an estimate of NZU that would be issued” he said. The service is FREE.

Gazprom Wins Approval From Voluntary Standards Group for Forestry Credits

2010-08-23T17:22:00.000-07:00

By Catherine Airlie - Aug 23, 2010 9:53 AM PT

Gazprom Marketing & Trading, a unit of the world’s largest natural-gas producer, said its method for generating carbon credits from forestry projects was approved by the Voluntary Carbon Standard.

The International Emissions Trading Association and the World Economic Forum helped develop the voluntary carbon standard in 2005 to verify which credits companies can use to comply with carbon-reduction programs. The European Union, which runs the world’s biggest emissions market, may accept a limited number of forestry credits through 2020.

Policy-makers are working on ways to create carbon credits for projects tied to reducing emissions from forest degradation, believed to be one of the main contributors to climate change. So-called REDD credits, excluded from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, will be on the agenda in December when about 190 nations meet in Cancun to discuss extending or replacing the international climate treaty.

“The approval of a methodology like this has real potential to be a game-changer in forest conservation,” Keith Martin, commercial director of Kingston, England-based Gazprom Marketing & Trading, said today in an e-mailed statement. “The gauntlet is thrown down to the negotiators at Cancun.”

Removing trees, which absorb carbon dioxide, may account for as much as 20 percent of manmade greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Challenge in Cancun

Gazprom’s method will produce REDD credits in the Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve in Borneo, southeast Asia. The area is made up of 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of tropical peat swamp forest and wetlands next to an area of expanding plantations, according to Gazprom’s statement.

The project will create as many as 75 million metric tons of emission reduction credits over the next 30 years, Dan Barry, Gazprom’s director of global carbon trading, said today in an e- mail response to questions. They could be valued at as much as 600 million pounds ($932 million) at today’s price for United Nations offsets, or Certified Emissions Reductions.

“The Rimba Raya carbon credits, however, are likely to trade at a discount to the ones that are eligible for the UN schemes at the moment due to the nature of the voluntary market,” Barry said. Prices would rise if forestry credits are accepted internationally as a way of curbing emissions.

Brazil, Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria may be the top producers of REDD credits, according to analysis from Barclays Capital. The four countries have generally supported a REDD-based mechanism and account for more than 900 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually as a result of cutting down trees. That’s about the same emissions spewed from 50 average-sized coal-fed power stations each year.

Gazprom and the New York-based Clinton Foundation funded the research of the methodology, which was developed by InfiniteEARTH and written by Winrock International. The proposal to curb emissions from forests was audited by the Rainforest Alliance and Bureau Veritas Certification.

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Airlie at cairlie@bloomberg.net

Road to Nowhere

2010-08-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

Those observing the current state of federal climate policy in Australia – as judged by policies released by Julia Gillard’s Labor and Tony Abbott’s Liberals ahead of the 21 August federal election – might find themselves inadvertently humming Talking Heads’ 1985 song Road to Nowhere.

Meanwhile across the Tasman, New Zealand’s ETS has made a fairly ho-hum start with neither fanfare nor catastrophe. NZ’s largest power supplier, Contact

Energy, said in a statement that electricity price rises would not surge in double figures, as feared, but average residential energy prices would lift by around 3.2 per cent – less than the government’s estimate of 5 per cent.

Australia, of course, came very close to legislating for an economy-wide ETS under the Rudd Labor government – the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) – but in the end the Abbott-Liberals’ “great big tax” scare campaign has seemingly killed the prospects of an ETS in Australia until 2013 at the earliest – assuming even then that Labor is returned to power on 21 August.

So where to for Australian climate policy?

We will again see Australian state governments taking action to fill the policy vacuum that has been left with the sinking of the CPRS – just as they did under the Howard government some years back. Already Victoria’s Labor Premier John Brumby has stolen the limelight in this regard by announcing some ambitious plans.

Yet while the prospects for an economy-wide ETS in Australia remain slim before 2013, a price of sorts on carbon will slowly emerge regardless of who wins the election. This won’t start out as the top-down, economy-wide price under an ETS, but more informal pricing in certain sectors in response to the mixed bag of federal policies to be put in place over the coming three years.

Labor has announced that all new coal generators would face tougher emissions standards and would have to be “carbon capture and storage ready”. This will require the adoption of best available technology, clawing back the competitive price advantage that traditional coal-fired generation has had over gas and renewable energy sources. There is also an expectation that Labor will soon announce the establishment of mandatory energy efficiency targets, potentially coupled with a tradeable energy efficiency certificate scheme.

Whilst Labor’s promise to reward early movers remains vague, it provides some hope that companies won’t sit on their hands in undertaking abatement until 2013. Perhaps

more ambitiously, the Abbot-Liberal “direct action” plan envisages a fund that will support businesses and industries that reduce emissions below a historic baseline

– by buying abatement with government revenues at a competitive tender price.

With sustained public support for action on climate change, pricing of carbon in the voluntary market will push on. Here, we will see renewed demands from the sector to expand the National Carbon Offset Scheme (NCOS) to enable accreditation of forestry and other “CPRS covered sector” projects – NCOS currently only recognises non-Kyoto offsets on the assumption that Kyoto sectors would have been covered by the CPRS.

We can expect the greatest pressure on the government to move to price carbon to come from the business sector itself. According to the Energy Supply Association of Australia, investment in energy infrastructure is set to slump partly due to uncertainty over climate change policies. Only this week debt held against one of Australia’s most emissions-intensive coal generators, Loy Yang B in Victoria, has been downgraded by Standard & Poor’s to one step above junk because of carbon policy uncertainty.

Clearly neither Gillard’s citizens’ assembly on climate, nor Abbot’s army of environmental volunteers doing green projects across the country, will do anything to turn this investment uncertainty around. So expect then increased pressure on the next government from business – in particular the energy and finance sectors –to finally tackle this issue with a proper policy to price carbon. Even the Business Council of Australia has warned that unless investment in electricity generation is encouraged, then “we’re heading for real problems”. But hopefully not a on a road to nowhere.

Australia, Victoria, Forest Carbon Legislation

2010-08-18T17:59:00.000-07:00

Australia
August 17 2010

In brief

In the absence of a national Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, Victoria is launching a broad action plan to address climate change. The plan seeks to optimise Victoria's position in responding to the challenges and opportunities inherent in climate change.
The White Paper includes a proposal to introduce a Climate Change Bill which will set a target of a 20% reduction in Victoria's emissions below 2000 levels by 2020.
Businesses that emit greenhouse gases should familiarise themselves with the proposed amendments to the Environment Protection Act 1970 (Vic) and update their compliance programs.
Investors in the renewable sector should consider the opportunities in solar energy projects and carbon sequestration projects supported by the White Paper and associated Climate Change Bill.

The Victorian Government has released a new White Paper on climate change entitled "Taking Action for Victoria's Future". The White Paper is a broad action plan, with 10 key policies. It demonstrates Victoria's intention to address climate change in the absence of a national emissions trading scheme.

The White Paper seeks to optimise Victoria's position in responding to the challenges and opportunities inherent in climate change. It sets Victoria ahead of the other States and Territories in terms of developing a relatively comprehensive legislative and policy response to climate change.

The White Paper indicates that the legislative changes proposed in the White Paper would be immediately reviewed if a national carbon price were introduced.

10 key policies

The Victorian Government released its Climate Change White Paper, outlining the State government's climate change policy, on 26 July 2010.

The White Paper sets out 10 key policies:

legislating to cut Victoria's greenhouse pollution;
moving towards a cleaner energy future;
making Victoria the "solar State";
supporting cleaner and more efficient homes;
positioning Victoria to be a global leader in clean technology;
creating new opportunities in agriculture, food and forestry;
delivering innovative transport solutions;
greening government;
helping Victorians adapt to climate change; and
strengthening our climate communities.

The essentials

The essential elements of the White Paper are:

targets of:
- cutting the State's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 20% below 2000 levels by 2020 (equivalent to a 40% reduction on a per-capita basis);
- a target of reducing GHG emissions from coal fired power stations by 28 million tonnes from the brown coal-fired electricity sector by 2020 (equivalent to closing two units of Hazelwood power station); and
- increasing Victoria's electricity supply from large scale solar power to approximately 5% by 2020 (approx 2500 GWh) through a large scale solar feed-in tariff;
a commitment to no new approvals for new coal fired power stations based on conventional brown coal technologies;
$30 million to further assist the development of a carbon capture and storage hub in the form of the CarbonNet project in the Gippsland basin;
new powers for the Victorian Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to regulate GHG emissions from industry, through changes to the Environment Protection Act 1970 (Vic);
a target emission level for proponents of new coal-fired power stations of 0.8 tonnes of C02e/MWh;
the establishment of a Victorian Carbon Exchange, to allow the general public and businesses to voluntarily offset their emissions by purchasing Victorian-based offsets;
a 20% improvement in the energy efficiency of government buildings by 2018, on top of the 5% improvement expected by the end of 2011;
increasing government GreenPower purchases from the current level of 25% of electricity purchases to 30% by 2015 and 50% by 2020; and
raising the energy efficiency of Victorian homes to an average of a 5 Star Energy Rating by 2020.

Many of these initiatives will be brought into effect through the proposed Climate Change Bill 2010, which was introduced into Parliament on 29 July 2010 (the Bill). The Bill would, according to the White Paper, be reviewed immediately if a national carbon price were introduced, and would be subject to a routine review after 2015.

A white paper implementation plan will be released later this year following further consultation with the community and industry.

Emissions targets, policy development and adaption planning

The Bill introduces a legislative GHG emissions target of reducing Victoria's GHG emissions by 20% below the amount of Victoria's emissions in 2000, by 2020. The Minister is required to report biannually on progress in meeting this target, as part of a climate change science and emissions report.

The Bill also sets out:

climate change policy objectives that the government is to consider in making government policy;
requires the formulation of a Climate Change Adaptation Plan every four years, and specifies guiding principles for that Plan.

These changes attempt to consciously place climate change considerations at the forefront of government decision making. It remains to be seen whether these changes will result in real changes to the decision making culture of the Victorian Government.

Changes to the Environment Protection Act (EP Act)

The Bill contains a number of significant amendments to the EP Act. The key changes are:

new GHG definitions;
new powers for the EPA to regulate GHG emissions and standards;
establishment of a voluntary Victorian Carbon Exchange; and
establishment of Climate Covenants and a Climate Communities Fund.

Definition of GHGs

The Bill inserts a definition of GHG substances into the EP Act. The definition corresponds to wording in the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007. It also amends the definition of "waste" to include GHG substances.

New powers to regulate GHG emissions

The Bill gives the EPA a major role in regulating, and encouraging action to reduce, GHG emissions. The Bill requires the EPA to consider climate change in developing policies, and in its decisions relating to works approvals and licences.

The EPA has a new power to develop regulations prohibiting or regulating GHG emissions and prescribing standards or conditions for their discharge.

The Minister has new powers to issue guidelines on how the EPA and other nominated decision-making entities are to take account of climate change in exercising their responsibilities.

Premier John Brumby has indicated that as a first step in exercising its new powers, the EPA would set an emissions intensity standard for new power stations (to give effect to the target set out in the White Paper of GHG emissions from new power stations of 0.8 tonnes per MWh). He also said the powers could be used for other purposes – such as setting standards for existing generators.

The Victorian Carbon Exchange

Changes to the EP Act will also provide for the establishment of the Victorian Carbon Exchange, to allow the general public and businesses to voluntarily offset their emissions by purchasing carbon offsets generated in Victoria. This is designed to create a market incentive (in the absence of the CPRS) for landholders and forest operators to create offsets through activities such as soil carbon sequestration, changed farming practices and new forest plantations.

The Exchange will also feature a voluntary vehicle registration offset program (motorists would pay an extra amount for carbon offsets when they register their vehicle, with the revenue directed to the Exchange).

Climate Covenants

Other changes to the EP Act would allow businesses to enter into voluntary Climate Covenants with the Premier and Minister – an approach modelled on the existing provisions for sustainability covenants.

Legislative recognition of carbon sequestration and soil carbon rights

Part 4 of the Bill prescribes a new regime dealing with carbon sequestered in forests, other vegetation and soils on both private and Crown land.

Forest carbon rights

The provisions applying to private land create "forest carbon rights", which are defined to include carbon sequestration rights, forestry rights and soil carbon rights.

Forest carbon rights are interests in land. These rights may created and transferred by the registered proprietor of the land, with the consent of any lessee. It is not possible for the land owner to create more than one kind of forest carbon right for any piece of land, because the Registrar of Titles is prohibited from registering more than one of each right.

Carbon sequestration rights

"Carbon sequestration rights" are exclusive rights to the economic benefits associated with carbon sequestered by vegetation, other than vegetation which has been harvested, lopped or felled. This does not include any rights to manage or access land (which are to be addressed in Forestry and Carbon Management Agreements – see below).

Forestry rights

"Forestry rights" are rights to plant, establish, manage and maintain vegetation on land and to take and deal with vegetation which has been harvested, felled or lopped and includes a right of entry for that purpose.

Soil carbon rights

"Soil carbon rights" are exclusive rights to the economic benefits of carbon sequestered underground, excluding carbon stored within plants. It does not include rights to manage or access land.

Forestry and Carbon Management Agreements

The Bill allows landowners to enter into Forestry and Carbon Management Agreements, with the owner of a forest carbon right (or any other .person). A Forestry and Carbon Management Agreement would impose management obligations in relation to carbon sequestration by vegetation or underground (such as preservation, enhancement or management of vegetation or soil).

The Bill also makes provision for financial securities to ensure compliance with an agreement.

Upon application by the landowner, these agreements can be recorded on the property title. Where it is recorded on the title it will run with the land and bind future owners.

Parties to the agreements can apply to VCAT to enforce the provisions of the agreement or to resolve disputes.

Crown land

The provisions dealing with carbon sequestration on Crown land allow the Government to declare specified land available for carbon sequestration and to invite expressions of interest to develop it for carbon sequestration purposes.

The Crown land provisions also provide for "Carbon Sequestration Agreements" between the Government and third parties. These can grant third parties carbon sequestration or soil carbon rights and provide access to Crown land to allow them to plant and maintain vegetation or "control and exploit" carbon sequestered within vegetation or soil.

The Bill allows the Government to require security as part of a Carbon Sequestration Agreement, including indemnities and insurance.

The Bill also sets out matters to which the Secretary must have regard in deciding whether or not to enter a Carbon Sequestration Agreement.

Opportunities for business

The White Paper is a sound attempt at responding to climate change in the absence of an emissions trading scheme, but remains a piece meal policy solution compared to the comprehensiveness of the CPRS. However, the raft of measures which Victoria proposes to introduce should create significant new opportunities for Victorian businesses in carbon sequestration, renewable energy (particularly solar) and energy efficiency.

Action points

Victoria proposes to legislate a GHG target, and set climate change as a priority consideration in government policy and decision making.
Greenhouse gas emitting businesses will be subject to increased regulation by the EPA, including enforcement action.
The White Paper should create new opportunities for investment in carbon sequestration, including in forests and soil on private and Crown land, and in large and medium scale solar projects
.

Terra Global Capital’s VCS Mosaic REDD Methodology Completes the First Validation

2010-08-13T15:10:00.001-07:00

August 12, 2010 10:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Terra Global Capital’s VCS Mosaic REDD Methodology Completes the First Validation

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Developed by Terra Global Capital, LLC in partnership with Community Forestry International, the pioneering Mosaic REDD methodology submitted to the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) has completed the first of two required validations. The methodology, designed to support the development of a REDD project in the Oddar Meanchey province of northwestern Cambodia, was supported by the Cambodia Forestry Administration, Pact, and the Children’s Development Association, with validation funding provided by the Clinton Climate Initiative. The quantification of carbon credits from mosaic-type REDD projects as developed in the methodology present unique challenges. Mosaic REDD projects, by design, address situations where a complex set of deforestation drivers and agents interact. The methodology covers a broad set of applicability criteria and can be used for a number of REDD projects with deforestation drivers, including conversion of forest to farmland and settlements, logging, fuel wood collection, forest fires, economic land concessions and forest encroachment. “The methodology is expected to be broadly applicable where mosaic patterns of deforestation occur throughout Southeast Asia and Africa. The completion of this first validation after 18 months demonstrates the technical leadership and commitment of the Terra team and the methodology’s validator TÜV SÜD. The effort was worth it as it will reduce the development time for many REDD projects,” said Leslie Durschinger, Founder and Managing Director of Terra Global Capital.

Detailed in the methodology are the carbon accounting procedures for activities that avoid deforestation and forest degradation, and restore degraded forests. The baseline, or without-project scenario, is determined using a land-use change model that is calibrated based on data on historical land-use change in a reference region that has forest dynamics similar to the project area. Leakage, which refers to the displacement of deforestation outside of the project area, is accounted for using a combination of monitoring in a leakage belt surrounding the project areas, and a pre-determined discounting factor for leakage that occurs beyond the leakage belt. The methodology explicitly includes rigorous accuracy tests and discounting procedures that are designed to reward project participants who improve monitoring accuracy over time.

The methodology will be used to create the VCS Project Document for the Oddar Meanchey REDD project, which is being developed by Terra Global Capital, in collaboration with Pact and the Cambodian Forestry Administration. The project, which involves 13 Community Forestry Groups and 58 villages, is expected to protect nearly 70,000 hectares of forest and generate 7.1 million carbon credits over a thirty year period. In exchange for their commitment to conserve and enhance the forest carbon stock in the 13 community forests, members of those community forests receive the following: legal tenure to the land, at least 50% of net income from the sale of carbon credits, employment opportunities in the forest (monitoring, enforcement, restoration, fire brigades, etc.) and community safety (fire breaks, fire control, enhanced enforcement to prevent poaching and illegal logging). To recognize the exceptional co-benefits to communities and biodiversity, the project has also completed a Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Project Document and is expected to be the first dual VCS and CCB REDD project. The Oddar Meanchey REDD project will begin marketing credits shortly, which will be managed by Terra Global Capital, on behalf of the Cambodia Forestry Administration and the communities of Oddar Meanchey, with legal counsel from Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP.

AB32 - California - REDD

2010-08-12T14:38:00.001-07:00

5 August 2010 | The winds of change are blowing across the climate change policy landscape. With legislation stalled in the US Senate, attention now shifts to state and regional initiatives. In California, the Global Warming Solutions Act, better known as AB32 and passed in 2006, establishes a statewide mandate for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reductions, including participation in a regional cap and trade system.

The California Air Resources Board (ARB) is the state agency responsible for implementing AB32, and it’s been busy readying the emissions trading framework set to take effect in 2012. On July 30, the ARB held a public workshop to discuss the role of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in a California cap and trade system and offered glimpses of a new pathway to incentivize tropical forest conservation.

Read the full article here…..http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/dynamic/article.page.php?page_id=7670&section=news_articles&eod=1

JOAS Not Involved In Deal With Australian Company

2010-08-10T17:11:00.001-07:00

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 10 (Bernama) -- Indigenous Peoples Network of Malaysia (JOAS) said Tuesday that it was not involved in a forest carbon deal with an Australian carbon company.

Referring to a news report on Aug 6, "Australia firm signs forest CO2 deal with Malaysian Tribes", JOAS president Adrian Lasimbang said: "We will like to state that our network was not involved in this and to the best of our knowledge, we do not know which of the 24 villagers or nine community leaders are involved in that project."

According to the report, an Australian carbon services company had signed a deal with nine Malaysian tribal leaders to certify carbon offsets from a project aimed at preserving more than 100,000 hectares of tropical forest.

The deal, according to the report, would allow the tribes in Sarawak to earn a share of proceeds from the sale of carbon offsets to help them manage and protect the forest over a period of 20 years, with potential payment worth millions of dollars.

Adrian said that JOAS did not support the implementation of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) in any form, unless the parties involved in the deal have adequate consultation and FPIC (free, prior informed consent).

"We feel it is important to make it clear that it was not our network that was involved in this deal as we strongly and consistently endorse a process of FPIC before signing any deal that involves our forests and territories," he said.

Adrian said the tribes were fully aware about a mandatory process and at the same time know that an independent workshop should be conducted to allow tribal communities to make their own decisions regarding communal forest.

"We hope that the company has at least ensured that the communities have access to their own lawyers who can independently advise them on the legal matters involved," he added.

Australia firm signs forest CO2 deal with Malaysia tribes

2010-08-10T17:05:00.001-07:00

Friday, 06 August 2010 01:52

An Australian carbon services company has signed a deal with nine Malaysian tribal leaders to certify carbon offsets from a project aimed at preserving more than 100,000 hectares of tropical forest.

The deal allows the tribes in Sarawak state on the island of Borneo to earn a share of the proceeds from the sale of carbon offsets to help them manage and protect the forest over a period of 20 years, payments potentially worth millions of dollars.

Forests soak up large amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, and preserving the remaining tropical forests in developing countries is seen as a key part of the fight against climate change.

The project aims to improve the livelihoods of at least 10,000 people in 24 villages and is part of a U.N.-backed scheme called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation.

The United Nations hopes REDD will lead to a multi-billion dollar trade in forest carbon credits and the Malaysian project is one of several pioneering investments aimed at building up the REDD sector.

REDD seeks to reward developing nations and indigenous forest owners with carbon credit payments to save their forests. There are about a dozen REDD projects in neighboring Indonesia. The firm, Shift2Neutral, said it will work with the tribes and a local NGO to help manage the forest, survey the area and access the carbon stored in the trees and soil. The project would be certified under an enhanced form of REDD that also aims to reward any enhancement to a forest's carbon stock.

A long-term management plan would also be created and a committee of comprising tribal leaders, investors and local and company officials would guide how the money is spent with the aim of improving livelihoods and curbing incentives for logging.

"It's a 50-50 deal. We ensure they get their funding and they use that funding as per an economic development committee that is established," said Brett Goldsworthy, chairman of Shift2Neutral, adding the aim was to make sure the money wasn't squandered.

The tribes are the customary owners of the land and the legal owners of the carbon but many still have subsistence livelihoods.

"You've got tribal people who have barely got any money and they are desperate for money for things like medical aid," Goldsworthy said on Friday.

"What we will do with our funding is to start instigating other programs along the lines of medical, food aid, schooling, clothing to make sure there is a sustainable future," he said.

PROTECTION

Besides boosting incomes, better monitoring of the forest was also crucial.

"The main threat they face is illegal loggers," he said.

"It is key to get more forestry people involved for the protection of the forest and having checks and measures on their boundary borders to ensure that people aren't getting through."

Goldsworthy said he hoped the carbon survey and management plan for the area would be finished by next year, followed by the issuance of the first batch of carbon offsets called VERs, or voluntary emissions reductions, to be sold to investors.

It was too early to provide an accurate estimate of the number of VERs per hectare from the Sarawak site, he said.

"As the land is first-growth vegetation one could expect 50 per hectare but again we have not provided anything at this point."

Avoided deforestation VERs fetch anything from $10 to $30 each depending on the project, country and risk.

He said the company is developing similar projects in the Philippines, Indonesia and South Africa with VER buyers being governments, large corporates and wealthy individuals.

(Source: reuters

Nisga’a hope to profit from carbon

2010-08-10T16:53:00.001-07:00

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Published: August 03, 2010 11:00 PM

THE NISGA’A Lisims Government expects to develop a business in storing carbon through the planting of forests on its lands.

The expectation follows legislation unanimously enacted July 29 by the Nisga’a legislative assembly, the Wilp Si’ayuukhl Nisga’a.

The legislation amends the Nisga’a Forest Act to enable ecosystem restoration and carbon sequestration projects to take place on Nisga’a lands.

The new legislation grants the Nisga’a Lisims Government executive the authority to enter into ecosystem restoration and carbon rights agreements with designated contractors, indicates a release from the Lisims government.

“Under such an agreement, the Nisga’a Nation may grant an ecosystem restoration contractor the exclusive right to deal with the carbon credits that will be available in relation to the trees planted on Nisga’a Lands as part of an ecosystem restoration project,” the release continues.

“The purpose of the new legislation is twofold. First, and foremost, it will encourage the restoration of the areas of Nisga’a Lands that were devastated by logging that took place in the 1960s and 1970s.

“Second, it will enable economic benefits to be derived from the carbon that will be stored in the trees that will be planted in those restored areas, by taking advantage of emerging forest carbon sequestration markets.”

Nisga’a Lisims Government president Mitchell Stevens said the Nisga’a believe the carbon sequestration potential first of its kind in Canada when it comes to aboriginal governments.

“The ability of the Nisga’a Nation to govern its own land under the Nisga’a Treaty has allowed us to be at the forefront of a new and exciting development. This is something all Nisga’a can be proud of,” said Stevens,

Government Opens Applications For Compensatory Carbon Credits For Forest Owners

2010-08-10T16:39:00.000-07:00

Government Opens Applications For Compensatory Carbon Credits For Forest Owners

| Sourced From Voxy |
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has announced that the owners of forest land established before 1990 can now apply for a one-off compensatory allocation of carbon credits valued from $700 to $1000 per hectare.

From 1 August 2010, owners of forest land that was planted in exotic forestry before 1990 have until November 2011 to apply from the government to receive an allocation of tradable carbon credits that is valued between NZ$700 and NZ$1000 per hectare of forest.

Carbon Business Manager for Independent Forestry Services Mike Mitchell said that this is an opportunity that forest owners should not pass up.

“This free allocation of tradable carbon credits is essentially compensation for the impact of deforestation rules brought in under the Emissions Trading Scheme has had on pre-1990 forest land. These credits can be sold tax free. This is a windfall for some forest owners, and they should be looking to apply as soon as possible”.

For southern forest owners, the value of this allocation is over NZ$50 million, and over the whole country hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mitchell says that it is expected that government will have a backlog of applications so it is important that forest owners contact IFS now to submit the required details so that forest owners can receive and sell their credits sooner rather than later.

IFS is a New Zealand based forest management and consulting company that provides a full forest management service that integrates traditional forest management with carbon management. They have been providing advice on carbon management to major New Zealand corporates, forest owners and overseas investors since the inception of the New Zealand carbon market.

Timmins forestry firm turning carbon into cash

2010-07-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

Timmins forestry firm turning carbon into cash

Mikro-Tek rapid growth tech recognized by UN

By: Nick Stewart

Mark Kean, president of Mikro-Tek, displays just some of the cultures being grown in the Timmins laboratory to prepare for enhanced tree growth in Chile.

Among the foothills of Chile's Andean mountain range lies the handiwork of Timmins environmental bio-tech firm Mikro-Tek, whose rapid tree growth project is turning it into a global carbon credit trader.

After undergoing rigorous inspection by international auditors, accountants and forestry experts, the company's proprietary forest management technology is now registered by the United Nations.

This makes Mikro-Tek the first Canadian company to meet the stringent Kyoto Protocol registration process for forestry projects, and just one of seven such small-scale forestry projects worldwide.

"It's been an awful lot of hard work, but we're proud of this designation," says Mark Kean, president of Mikro-Tek.

"This puts us in a good position for the future and the types of things we have planned."

The move now gives the company the official green light to trade carbon credits between countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Through this system, credits are created through the reduction of greenhouse gases in developing countries, which in the case of Mikro-Tek is accomplished through the absorption of carbon by the trees they grow in places like Chile. These credits can then be sold to developed countries who need to meet emissions targets as part of a system to achieve a sort of global balance.

It's a process that's already begun, with Mikro-Tek regaining some of its initial investment costs by selling some of the credits produced through the Chilean project to various European states.

Since 1990, the company has studied the use of natural soil microbes, known as mycorrhizae, to enhance the speed of tree growth, applying them to forest seedlings prior to planting or through irrigation.

It's an effort with proven results: a three-year study done by the company with 10 million seedlings in the late 1990s showed average growth increases of 25 per cent. Re-examination of some of the trees since then has indicated the growth rate has held steady, and in some cases, has actually improved.

It's a proprietary technology Kean has used to help re-green mine tailings areas with the likes of Vale, Xstrata Nickel and Goldcorp.

This success is further enhanced in places like Chile, where trees naturally grow faster than in Canada due to a year-round growing season.

It's something that prompted the establishment of a branch office in the country. Through this, Kean reached out to a coalition of small-scale Chilean farmers who traditionally grow grapes and citrus fruits in areas where forests were cleared 100 years prior to make room for agricultural work.

In the back end of these lands, however, are non-productive hilly regions where farming is all but impossible due to the lack of any real irrigation.

With that, Mikro-Tek struck deals to reforest these clearings, with the farmers needing only to build fencing to protect the young trees from hungry cattle or roving mountain goats.

Back at the Timmins biotechnology facility, testing was conducted to adapt the soil bacteria from its traditional use in Boreal-forest environments to those in Chile. It has since been applied successfully to pine and eucalyptus growth projects in the area, providing UN approval and hope for the company.

Despite the positive results, using forestry projects as a basis for carbon credits has its own challenges. Unlike solar and windmill-driven projects, the amount of carbon credits generated by trees can be challenging to quantify. Trees absorb different amounts of carbon depending on their stage of growth, meaning projects such as those in Chile require updating and monitoring through satellite photography and site visits.

Unexpected events can also threaten the project, as Mikro-Tek discovered when an earthquake registering 6.8 on the Richter Scale shook the region in 2003. The loss of trees to disasters or weather means a smaller carbon capture and a reduction in credits, though a forester hired by the company found no damage, thereby preserving the integrity of the project.

"There are lots of checks and balances to the system," says Kean.

With its Chilean success and UN registration under its belt, the company's plan is now to begin using things like its proprietary C-Trade Carbon Pool to allow investors to put up money for projects. In return, they would obtain the financial equivalent of carbon credits spread over a set period of time, something Kean likens to a mutual fund.

Plans also include the expansion of projects both in Canada and abroad.

Western Climate Initiative offers cap-and-trade

2010-07-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

By JEFF BARNARD (AP)

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A coalition of seven western states and three Canadian provinces on Tuesday offered its most detailed strategy yet for controlling greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change, saying they hope it will stand as a model for national systems in the United States and Canada.

At the core is a cap-and-trade system that would go into effect in January 2012, gradually ramping down emissions levels. The system, which gives financial incentives to reduce carbon emissions, would start with power plants, then extend to large industrial producers and transportation.

The goal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the next 10 years to levels 15 percent below those in the year 2005.

Building on a less detailed strategy issued two years ago, the plan comes as Congress has been unable to produce a climate bill to address the same issues.

The document includes the first details of how the carbon auction would work, and it recommends that offsets from programs that store carbon would be limited to a fraction of total emissions. There would be a floor price on emissions, and the auction would be open to anyone.

Art Sasse, a spokesman for Pacificorp, which serves about 1.7 million electricity customers in the northwestern U.S., said the utility had not seen enough specifics about the plan to comment.

So far, only two states — California and New Mexico — and three provinces — Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia — are writing regulations in anticipation of joining the Western regional carbon auction when it begins in 2012, said Michael Gibbs, California's deputy secretary for climate change and co-chairman of the initiative.

The two states and three provinces account for 70 percent of the emissions produced by the signers of the strategy, creating enough liquidity to get the cap-and-trade system up and running, said Robert Noel de Tilly, climate change adviser for Quebec's Ministry for Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks.

An economic analysis estimated that fuel savings would offset the cost of investing in new more energy-efficient equipment to meet limits on carbon production, Gibbs said.

Not all of the states in the climate group are enthusiastic. The Utah Legislature has passed a resolution urging Republican Gov. Gary Herbert to pull out, and GOP Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has ordered the state not to adopt cap-and-trade.

The other states in the coalition are Montana, Oregon, Utah and Washington.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the coalition's plan is an important step toward reducing dependency on oil, increasing energy security, and creating jobs and investment.

"Action continues to be needed at the national and international levels to address clean energy and climate change, but California and the rest of the Western Climate Initiative partners are not waiting to take action," Schwarzenegger said in a written statement.

Jim Whitestone of the Ontario Ministry of Environment said the coalition hopes the cap-and-trade system will serve as a model for the United States and Canada governments.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged to keep pushing for broad climate legislation, and the White House expressed fresh hope the Senate and House might strike a deal on a sweeping energy plan this year.

Robert Stavins, professor of business and government at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, said he did not anticipate Congress taking action that soon, and he was skeptical anything could be achieved in the next two years if Republicans gain seats in the House and Senate. Republicans have strongly opposed creating a cap-and-trade system for carbon.

"Hence, it's not surprising that sub-national entities, such as states, will move forward on their own," Stavins said in an e-mail. "The state model will be less effective and more costly for what is achieved than a national cap-and-trade system would be, but it may be the second-best approach."

The strategy also called for linking up with other carbon markets in the East and Midwest, an approach Stavins said would make them more efficient.

___

Online:

Western Climate Initiative: http://www.westernclimateinitiative.org

Forest Cover Loss Indonesia: Norway $1 Billion

2010-07-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

Forest Cover Loss in Indonesia, 2000-2005: The Starting Point for the Norwegian Billion to Reduce Deforestation

Overview
Up to 84% of Indonesia’s national greenhouse gas emissions arise from land use change and deforestation. This map shows the extent and location of forest cover loss in Indonesia—detected by satellite—for 2000 to 2005, when deforestation averaged 0.71 million hectares per year and Indonesia was the second-most deforesting country, following Brazil. Globally, Indonesia accounts for approximately 27 percent of GHG emissions from land use change and forestry.
Norway and Indonesia recently signed a letter of intent (LOI) worth $1 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by loss of Indonesia’s forests. Through the LOI, Indonesia has agreed to a two-year moratorium on the conversion of natural forests and peatlands to other uses, such as palm oil plantations. In addition, Indonesia has pledged to move agricultural development from forests to already degraded lands. Through this agreement, Indonesia has pledged to reduce total national emissions by 26% relative to business as usual levels by 2020. With assistance from international partners emission reductions could reach 41%.

Sources
Forest cover loss data: Matthew Hansen et al., Global Forest Monitoring project, South Dakota State University

Forest cover density data: Vegetation Continuous Fields project, University of Maryland
Hansen, M.C., Stehman, S.V., Potapov, P.V., Arunarwati, B., Stolle, F., and Pittman, K., 2009, Quantifying changes in the rates of forest clearing in Indonesia from 1990 to 2005 using remotely sensed data sets, Environmental Research Letters, 4(3) doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/4/3/034001.

Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT) version 7.0. (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 2010).

Copyright
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Cite “World Resources Institute.”
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NZ Forest subsidy chopped

2010-07-27T04:05:00.000-07:00

Forest-planting subsidy gets the chop
By Brian Fallow
4:00 AM Wednesday Jul 14, 2010
The Government is winding down a scheme to subsidise the planting of new forests, saying the emissions trading scheme makes it unnecessary.
Labour forestry spokesman Stuart Nash disagrees, saying a range of options is needed to encourage planting and the ETS doesn't suit everyone.
But critics of the afforestation grants scheme say it is badly designed and open to abuse.
About $16.5 million has been allocated under the scheme so far. But this year's Budget cut the funding for 2011/12 and 2012/13 from $7 million to $5 million a year. The scheme will then be closed, a year earlier than intended.
This frees up $6 million to be "reprioritised" towards the cost of executing the forestry-related aspects of the ETS, estimated to be about $8 million over the next two years.
Forestry Minister David Carter said that was mainly for the forestry allocation plan, making sure units distributed under the ETS were accurately allocated and registered.
"We are dealing with an allocation value of something in excess of $1 billion.
So we have to do our best to get that right."
He said that under the previous Government significant net deforestation had occurred so it had developed the afforestation grants scheme, which at least got some people interested in planting trees again.
"Now we have a credible emissions trading scheme established and we are seeing a significant increase in interest from rural landowners in planting trees. I don't think we need the afforestation grant scheme to get more trees in the ground."
But under the ETS eligible forest owners who opt into the scheme to earn credits for the carbon their trees lock up while they are growing, also accept liability for the emission of that carbon when the trees are harvested.
Nash said some were deterred by those potential liabilities. "The Government needs to have options available where landowners don't necessarily take up the carbon credits."
Under the afforestation grant scheme ownership of the credits generated by a new forest for its first 10 years remained with the Crown.
One forestry consultant spoken to by the Business Herald said although the scheme was supposed to be fiscally neutral, in practice up to twice as much had been paid out in subsidies as the carbon sequestered in the trees' early years would be worth.
"The industry loves it. But it's a rort," he said.
It had, however, helped to keep forestry nurseries in business during a particularly lean time.
Nash said it was a strength of the scheme that half of the funding available was administered by regional councils and could help them to meet sustainable land management objectives such as reducing erosion or improving water quality.
Other schemes to encourage afforestation remain, though both are under review. One is the East Coast forest scheme, aimed at erosion-prone country in the eastern North Island.
"It is being scaled back quite a lot and that is a worry as well," Nash said.
The other is the Permanent Forest Sinks Initiative which awards carbon credits for new permanent, as distinct from plantation, forests.
The more stringent environmental standards which need to be met to qualify for the latter make them more attractive to European Governments fastidious about the credits engendered by plantation forestry.
Carter said it was a bit rich for Nash to accuse him of taking a chainsaw to the afforestation grants scheme when Labour had presided over more than 30,000ha of net deforestation. That was the real chainsaw massacre.
"He does have a point," Nash said. "I acknowledge that."

ERA - First in Canada to receive gold level CCBA standard validation

2010-07-27T03:56:00.000-07:00

ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd.: Community Ecosystem Restoration Program First in Canada to Receive Gold Level-Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard's Validation

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Jul 14, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd. /quotes/comstock/11v!esr (CA:ESR 0.25, 0.00, 0.00%) , through its 100% owned subsidiary ERA Ecosystem Restoration Associates Inc. (ERA), is pleased to announce that their Community Ecosystem Restoration Program (CERP) has received final validation to the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance's (CCBA) Gold Level Project Design Standard as of June 24th, 2010.
The CCBA Project Design Standards evaluate land-based carbon mitigation projects in the early stages of development. The CCBA Standards were created to foster the integration of best-practice and multiple-benefit approaches into project design and evolution. The Standards identify projects that simultaneously address climate change, support local communities, and conserve biodiversity, while promoting excellence and innovation in project design.
In order to meet CCBA's "Gold Level Project Standard" a project must meet or surpass the following criteria:
"The Gold Level Climate Change Adaptation Benefits criterion identifies projects that will provide significant support to assist communities in adapting to the impacts of climate change. Communities and biodiversity in some areas of the world will be more vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. Land-based carbon projects have the potential to help local communities and biodiversity adapt to climate change by: diversifying revenues and livelihood strategies; maintaining valuable ecosystem services such as hydrological regulation, pollination, pest control and soil fertility; and increasing habitat connectivity across a range of habitat and climate types."
Dr. Robert Falls, ERA's Chief Executive Officer, commented: "In being the first in Canada to have attained the rigorous Gold Level Standard, ERA has again demonstrated its pioneering spirit and its capacity for developing high quality projects and carbon offset products for growing international carbon markets."
The third party validation was completed by KPMG Forest Certification Services Inc. The CERP project is the first project in Canada to be double validated to both the ISO-14064-2 standard and the CCBA Gold Standard.
CERP is a large scale urban ecosystem restoration program that began in the District of Maple Ridge in 2005, and now includes projects in the District of Mission, the City and Township of Langley, and Metro Vancouver. To date, CERP has generated over 700,000 tonnes of Verified Emission Reductions (VERs) for the international carbon markets. The VERs generated from CERP are serialized and registered on the international Markit Environmental Registry.
About CCBA
The Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) is a partnership between leading companies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and research institutions seeking to promote integrated solutions to land management around the world. With this goal in mind, the CCBA has developed voluntary standards to help design and identify land management projects that simultaneously minimize climate change, support sustainable development and conserve biodiversity. Website address http://www.climate-standards.org/index.html
About KPMG Forest Certification Services Inc.
KPMG Forest Certification Services Inc. (KPMG FCSI) is a wholly owned subsidiary of KPMG LLP, the Canadian member firm of KPMG International. KPMG FCSI is accredited to conduct forest management and chain of custody certification audits worldwide by the Forest Stewardship Council. KPMG FCSI's team of professional foresters, biologists, and environmental management systems assessors has been actively involved in the evolution of forest practices auditing for over eight years, and brings a wealth of auditing expertise to task in conducting each assessment.
http://www.kpmg.ca/en/
About ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd.
ERA is a Canadian pioneer in forest restoration and conservation carbon offset projects. The company's Community Ecosystem Restoration Program located in the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia, began in 2005 in the District of Maple Ridge, and has grown to include five communities including Metro Vancouver. ERA has delivered over 1,000,000 tonnes of carbon offsets to the voluntary market and is engaged in the development of forest carbon projects in Canada, Africa and the Hawaiian Islands to supply the North American pre-compliance market. ERA's clients and product users include Air Canada, Catalyst Paper, HSE - Entega, Rolling Stone Magazine, Shell Canada Limited, The Forest Carbon Group, and The Globe Foundation of Canada. ERA's carbon offsets are being validated to the ISO 14064, CCBA, and VCS standards.
Additional information on ERA can be found on the corporate website www.eracarbonoffsets.com or by contacting investor@eracarbonoffsets.com
On behalf of the Board of Directors of ERA CARBON OFFSETS LTD.
Robert Falls, Chief Executive Officer
FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This document includes forward-looking statements as well as historical information. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the continued advancement of the company's general business development, research development and the company's development of forest-based carbon offsets. When used in this document, the words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intent", "may", "project", "plan", "should" and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements. Although ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd. believes that their expectations reflected in these forward looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties and no assurance can be given that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements include fluctuations in the marketplace for the sale of carbon credits, the inability to implement corporate strategies, the ability to obtain financing and other risks disclosed in our filings made with Canadian Securities Regulators.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contacts:
ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd.
Alex Langer
604-646-0400
alex.langer@eraecosystems.com
www.eracarbonoffsets.com
SOURCE: ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd.

TNC/WCS On-the Ground REDD experience

2010-07-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

On-the-Ground REDD Project Experience (The Nature Conservancy / IISD)
Posted on July 24, 2010 by willem van cotthem
Read at : Forest Policy Info Mailing List
New Casebook of On-the-Ground REDD Project Experience
The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International and Wildlife Conservation Society are pleased to share with you a new publication entitled Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD): A Casebook of On-the-Ground Experience, which we hope you will find of interest. The full report is available electronically at: http://conserveonline.org/workspaces/redd/documents/redd-a-casebook-of-on-the-ground-experience
Today, there is widespread consensus that we cannot solve the climate change crisis without addressing deforestation. Yet, there are on-going attempts to cast doubt on whether forest carbon can be a credible part of the climate solution, and a debate is in full swing about the inclusion of forests in U.S. and international climate policy. Against this backdrop, we felt it was important to document and share our experience. To that end, we set out several months ago to painstakingly synthesize over a decade of history and thousands of pages of technical documents into the attached 70-page casebook on a selection of our REDD efforts.
For a combined 38 years, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International and Wildlife Conservation Society have been leaders in piloting 17 on-the-ground REDD demonstration projects. Through these projects, we have helped pioneer and further the state of knowledge of forest carbon measurement, carbon accounting methodologies, conservation strategies, and community involvement approaches.
This casebook draws on four specific experiences in Bolivia, Madagascar, and Indonesia. The report examines the principal aspects of demonstrating REDD credibility (e.g., baselines and additionality, measuring and monitoring, leakage, impermanence, etc.). For each issue, a project is examined in depth, describing how the challenges were dealt with and lessons learned for the future. The bottom line is simple: These projects demonstrate that REDD can produce credible carbon benefits, often with positive effects on local people and biodiversity.
As the discussions continue about whether and how to structure climate policy and financial investments to address emissions from forests, there is much to learn from on-the-ground activities. We hope that you find our experiences both interesting and informative.

Australia Forest Industries Climate Change Research Fund

2010-07-27T03:31:00.000-07:00

Forest Industries Climate Change Research Fund
– July 26, 2010

1. Overview
The Australian Government is committed to ensuring Australia meets its responsibilities in facing the global challenge of climate change.
Climate change has significant implications for Australia’s forests and forest industries. The Australian Government, as part of its 2007 election commitments, has provided $8 million in government grants over three financial years from 2008–09 to 2010–11 to address major knowledge gaps about the impacts of climate change on forestry and forest industries. The forest industries ministerial advisory committee, the Forest and Wood Products Council, has assisted in identifying priorities for investment.
As part of this commitment, the Australian Government will provide $5 million in government grants through the Forest Industries Climate Change Research Fund, which will commence in 2009-10 and cease on 30 June 2011.
These guidelines provide details on the Forest Industries Climate Change Research Fund program, which is to be administered by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (the department).
2. Purpose and aim of the program
The Forest Industries Climate Change Research Fund will provide $5 million in government grants in one round of funding to address major knowledge gaps about the impact of climate change on forestry and forest industries in Australia.
Through research, this government grant program will assist the industry to better understand the implications of climate change and build industry capacity to adapt to predicted scenarios and capitalise on emerging mitigation opportunities.
Addressing knowledge gaps will assist commercial forest planners and managers to better manage their forest assets in a changing environment. Generating information and developing tools and expertise will assist sustainability benefits to flow through the value chain and contribute to growth and development in forestry dependent communities.
Projects funded through this program aim to achieve the following outcomes:
Forest industry stakeholders are better able to adapt to changed climatic conditions through the availability of new technologies and techniques which encourage different practices
Forest industry stakeholders are better equipped with the knowledge, tools and strategies to manage their emissions, including a greater ability to participate in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
Forest industry stakeholders and forestry dependant communities better understand the range of climate change impacts and the future implications for their enterprise and region.
Collaborative research projects involving industry, scientific and government organisations are supported. This will ensure that relevant expertise and experience is brought together so that commercial realities are taken into account in achieving outcomes and improve the transition from applied research to demonstration and implementation of commercial applications.
3. Delivery of the program
This program is a competitive government grants program. Expressions of Interest (EOIs) from research providers will be assessed on a competitive basis by an independent assessment panel including relevant experts from the industry, scientific and government sectors.
In assessing EOIs, the panel will draw upon work completed to date to ensure that projects sufficiently advance the forest industries’ understanding of the implications of climate change, the ability to adapt to predicted climate scenarios, to manage emissions, and capitalise on emerging mitigation opportunities.
Based on the assessment by the independent panel, proponents of highly ranked EOIs will be invited to prepare full project proposals. The department will negotiate these project proposals with the proponents. Finalised research project proposals will also be sent to the Rural Research and Development Council for consideration. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry will be responsible for the final approval of projects under this program.
Larger scale collaborative projects with cross sectoral applications, and which combine the efforts of a number of eligible parties in consortia, are strongly encouraged.
Government grants from this program will generally be up to $500,000. Higher grants may be considered in special circumstances where collaborative and integrated projects seek outcomes that will apply across the whole industry. Some very specific projects in priority areas will not require the full available allocation. The funding will be provided on the basis of cash and in-kind co-contributions by proponents. Funding from other Australian or state/territory government sources, research institutions and industry partners will be accepted as an applicant’s contribution to a project.
Government grants under this program will complement not duplicate, other research initiatives.
Government grants will be paid when an applicant completes each milestone specified in a negotiated Funding Deed. The program will end on 30 June 2011. Approved projects must be delivered by 30 May 2011, in order to ensure final funding is paid before 30 June 2011.
4. Who is eligible?
To be eligible to apply for government grant funding, you must satisfy the following criteria:
1. Your organisation must be able to provide, upon request, professionally prepared financial statements demonstrating your ability to fund your share of project costs
2. The proposed project must primarily involve new work
3. The proposed work must be completed and reported by 30 May 2011
4. Your EOI must address the assessment criteria
5. The proposed work must not duplicate other research activity
6. EOI proponents must be an Australian registered company or research agency, for example:
Peak national or state forestry organisations
Australian, state or territory government agency
Australian tertiary education institution
Australian Cooperative Research Centre
Australian registered business or registered industry group
Australian public sector research agency
Australian private, not for profit, research organisation.
5. What activities are eligible for funding?
Project proposals need to address major knowledge gaps about the impact of climate change on forestry, forest industries and forestry dependent communities in Australia, while providing skills, knowledge or strategies to help industry address these issues and respond to the challenges and opportunities arising from climate change.
Priority areas for addressing knowledge gaps for the industry include, but are not limited to:
Adaptation
Further research, which will allow all commercial forest sectors, forest planners and managers, and forestry dependent communities, to better adapt to climate change is a priority. The fund will support research in the following area:
Development of diagnostic tools and techniques to determine when (and what) specific management intervention is required to respond to the threats and opportunities of climate change. This will include but will not be limited to determining interactions between; increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, changed rainfall regimes, water availability, fire risk, incidence and severity of pests and disease outbreaks; and forest enterprises, to inform the development of management systems and intervention options
Develop methods to identify critical infrastructure necessary for the industry where viability is at risk from climate change
Develop, provide and facilitate farm forestry and other regional-scale tree planting and sustainable forest management options, which can be used in the business models of forestry, agricultural and other land use sectors as a means of adaptation.
Mitigation
As a sequesterer of carbon, the forestry sector has opportunities to make contributions to the national climate change mitigation effort. Projects on mitigation techniques and technologies which attempt to integrate economic and social analysis are strongly encouraged as it would assist in informing the development of commercial applications.
Mitigation priorities include:
Expanding and strengthening the dataset underpinning the fate of carbon in harvested wood products during use and after disposal; and demonstrating how net emissions from harvested wood products could be recognised within international carbon trading protocols
Research and demonstration projects that identify and investigate opportunities to reduce emissions and improve carbon sequestration potential in the industry, and determining the social and economic implications of these opportunities
Develop measures to identify and address critical bottlenecks to greater use of recycled wood and paper products
Bioenergy
Bioenergy currently contributes just 0.5% to Australia’s total electricity supply, with energy generation from wood related waste and residues occurring on a very small scale. The Australian biofuels industry is also small, supplying less than 0.5% of Australia’s transport fuel. Research projects may be considered that promote the development and deployment of sustainable bioenergy generation based on forest industries resources on a commercial scale. Projects that identify required resources to realise the opportunities presented by bioenergy may also be considered.
Inventory and data
A basic level of information about the forestry and forest products industry is required urgently to establish a benchmark against which the results of strategies addressing the challenges and opportunities faced by the industry from climate change may be assessed in the future. A stocktake of existing relevant data sets and a gaps analysis of existing baseline data have been undertaken. The Data Gaps Overview is available from the Secretariat by request. A priority is to fill the data gaps so that quantitative analyses on climate change responses can be undertaken in the future.
Projects demonstrating the results and integration of applied research will be considered. The assessment panel will seek to balance the level of investment across priority areas.
6. What activities are not eligible for funding?
Government grant funding will not be provided for:
Projects that look at non production forests
Capital expenditure for the purchase of assets such as office furniture and equipment, motor vehicles, computers, printers, photocopiers, construction, renovations and utilities
Any cost incurred prior to the commencement date of a Funding Deed with the Commonwealth
Staff relocations costs
Administration/overhead and infrastructure costs
Travel and living expenses
Hospitality/catering costs
Costs involved in the purchase/upgrade of software including licences
Costs associated with the protection or patenting of intellectual property
Feasibility projects/studies
Costs associated with market research for products or research carried out by surveys to assess the size of the market and/or the price of a particular service or product
Costs associated with activities of a distinctly commercial or proprietary nature that are aimed at selling or attracting investment
Costs associated with product development and the building or production of commercial prototypes
Marketing campaigns
Projects funded solely by other Australian Government programs.
Expressions of interest close on 20 August 2009

Property Rights in relations to CPRS Bill-Australia

2010-07-27T03:14:00.000-07:00

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By John Sheehan
27 July 2010 – The Australian Property Institute has called for a major review of property rights ahead of a carbon price and trading of carbon credits.
According to NSW API carbon spokesman John Sheehan, the carbon pollution reduction scheme, which the Labor Government has put on hold, contained a vital flaw, quite apart from any political issues: it fails to provide secure property rights to allow trading in carbon credits. He called on the states to enter a dialogue to create harmonious legislation to deal with the issue ahead of a carbon trading scheme.
Following is the text of a paper that Mr Sheehan, deputy director of the Pacific Centre for Complex Real Property Rights, presented to the Australian Property Institute Victorian Division Annual Conference last year. Mr. Sheehan calls for debate on whether emissions trading schemes like the CPRS or carbon tax schemes can offer a better pathway to decarbonisation for Australia.

Carbon and Rural Property
Introduction
In December 2007, the Australian Government ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and as a result the necessary national response to the obligations of the Protocol emerged in the form of the Exposure Draft of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) legislation. The CPRS proposes an emissions trading scheme utilising a “cap – and – trade” system where the cap is slowly reduced on the quantum of green house gas (GHG) emissions permitted annually expressed as equivalent carbon dioxide emissions.
Such a system involves the creation of Australian Emission Units (AEUs) which will be issued by the proposed Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority to industry equaling the annual permitted cap on carbon dioxide emissions. Some industries may have more AEUs than required and will trade those permits to other industries that do not have an adequate number of AEUs. This is the fundamental nature of the carbon permit trading market that is proposed in the CPRS.
The following section of this paper examines the relevant components of the CPRS, and the emerging fragile relationship with land property rights.
CPRS and Property
The proposed CPRS legislation was first released by the Department of Climate Change as an Exposure Draft on 10 March 2009 by Senator the Hon Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change and Water, in response to Australia’s anticipated carbon dioxide equivalent emissions over the period 2012 – 2020. In this period the Department of Climate Change suggests that emissions in 2012 will be at an average of 108 per cent of 1990 levels and rising in 2020 to 120 per cent[1]. The Department states that for Australia to meet its Kyoto Protocol target of limiting emissions, a “comprehensive response to climate change”[2] is needed and that Australia:
…is well placed to provide the necessary financial services to support developing carbon markets in the Asia-Pacific region.[3]

Increasing Australian levels of GHG since 1995 reveal there is “considerable momentum in national emissions”[4] and unsurprisingly CPRS is the critical tool for the Government necessarily to manage “the transformation to a low-carbon economy”[5]. Arguably, the proposed AEUs and the associated trading scheme create a form of “new property”[6] given established notions of property are of little relevance in the current carbon constrained environment. According to Boydell et al, AEUs as “new property” are a form of right hitherto unknown in Australian property law, allowing:
…the commodification of the “right” to pollute the environment. Conceiving this right accurately could have implications on the future institutional arrangements of governments.[7]

Confounding this collision between climate change and property law, the CPRS Bill adopts at Section 240 a definition of carbon sequestration right for Torrens system land which states inter alia:
…the person has the exclusive legal right to obtain the benefit (whether present or future) of sequestration of carbon dioxide by trees to which the [reforestation] project relates…[8]

Further, the above proposed definition is expanded by the following:
…in determining whether a person has the exclusive legal right to obtain the benefit (whether present or future) of sequestration of carbon dioxide by trees to which a reforestation project relates, it is immaterial whether that right extends to sequestration of carbon dioxide by the soil in which the trees are growing.[9]

This breathtaking definition of carbon sequestration right conveniently ignores the historic legal nexus between the ownership of the elemental land property right and all things in or on that land, such as the living fibre of vegetation (trees). The definition does not explain how the right to carbon in the living fibre will be crystallised out of the land property right. A number of States have adopted profit a prendre[10] as a basis for the right to carbon, however this action offends the common law notion of land property, and is fundamentally flawed.

Underpinning the definition of carbon sequestration right is the notion of a forest stand which is defined as a stand of forest where:
(a) under the regulations, the stand is taken to have been established by means of direct, human-induced methods; and
(b) the stand occupies an area of land of 0.2 hectares or more; and
(c) the stand consists of trees that:
(i) have attained, or have the potential to attain, a crown cover of at least 20 per cent of the area occupied by the stand; and
(ii) have reached, or have the potential to reach, a height of at least 2 metres; and
(d) on 31 December 1989, the area occupied by the stand was clear of trees that:
(i) had attained, or had the potential to attain, a crown cover of at least 20 per cent of the area occupied by the stand;
(ii) had reached, or had the potential to reach, a height of at least 2 metres; and
(e) the stand meets such other requirements (if any) as are specified in the regulations.[11]

However, this definition of forest stand was expanded by the Commentary to the Exposure Draft which states at paragraph 6.30 that:
It is envisaged that the regulations will specify requirements going to the calculation and reporting of net greenhouse gas removals, including that the trees comprising a forest stand be established at the same time within a single encompassing boundary (and excluding all non forest stand areas) and are of the same (set of) species and are subject to the same management regime.[12]

Given biologically diverse stands of vegetation may arguably have a greater capacity for carbon sequestration than a mono species stand, the requirement that a forest stand should contain the same species is somewhat curious. Clearly, further detailed scientific investigation is required before a mono species regime is adopted, to ensure that greater harm is not actioned upon the natural environment.

The CPRS Bill in the outline to Part 10 states at Section 190 that the number of free AEUs will be determined by the “net total number of tonnes of greenhouse gases”[13]
which are removed by each reforestation project subject to the unit limit determined by the Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority. Of concern, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) had already withdrawn in March 2005 its accounting standard for the attribution of forest-derived GHGs which utilised sequestration levels of 40 per cent, 60 per cent and 8 per cent% net tradeable carbon respectively in the three forest classifications[14].

The IASB withdrew the accounting standard reportedly:
…as a result of pressure from the European Union and other international bodies, expressing concern that the document was unworkable.[15]

Clearly, the approach adopted at Section 190 is problematic given continuing absence of scientific clarity.

At Section 195(2) the bill requires that the issue of a certificate of reforestation only be issued if the applicant holds “the carbon sequestration right in relation to the project”[16]. The unclear nature of the right to carbon in vegetation crystallised out of the elemental land property right denies the authority the capacity to ascertain that the right to carbon is held as asserted by any applicant. The capacity of the authority to satisfy itself as to the fundamental nature of the right to carbon asserted by any applicant, will be severely limited by the resources of the authority. Sequestration through reforestation throughout the Australian continent requires a level of accuracy in mapping of vegetation, species identification and biomass assessment which is currently not possible.

Further, at Section 240(1)(e) it is proposed in the bill that a carbon sequestration right in Torrens system land will be held by:
…the person [who] has the exclusive legal right to obtain the benefit (whether present or future) of sequestration of carbon dioxide by trees to which the project relates…[17]

The common law concept of land property has not been approached correctly in this Section which purports to identify an exclusive legal right to the benefit of sequestration. Legislation in the Australian states variously attempt to distil such a right out of the elemental land property right, however, as previously mentioned the general basis used is profit a prendre which is neither exclusive nor correct in application for this purpose.[18]

The use of the terminology “exclusive” in Section 240(1)(e) highlights the poorly understood nature of the carbon sequestration right in vegetation, which currently lies firmly with the landowner. This area of Part 10 is significantly flawed, further confounded by the disparity between the states in adopting either a profit a prendre or a statutory carbon right in land.[19]
Hepburn points out that by the adoption of disparate concepts of carbon rights rather than a clear universal statutory interest, Australia has moved to a complicated position which now:
…depends heavily upon a rigorous regulatory framework.[20]

Adding further complexity to this situation, the CPRS bill states at Section 240(8):
For the purposes of this section, in determining whether a person has the exclusive legal right to obtain the benefit (whether present or future) of sequestration of carbon dioxide by trees to which a reforestation project relates, it is immaterial whether that right extends to sequestration of carbon dioxide by the soil in which the trees are growing.[21]

This area of the bill purports to include sequestration rights of carbon dioxide in the soil in which the trees are growing. This section is poorly drafted, and demonstrates an appalling misunderstanding of common law concepts of land property. It is inconceivable under current Anglo-Australian property law that carbon in soil could be separated from the elemental land property right. The prospect of separate carbon property rights in soil was examined and discounted by Sheehan and Kanas in 2008 who concluded that:
…the huge potential carbon sink in Australian soil cannot as yet be assured scientifically, Indeed whether this pathway is a sustainable solution for carbon sequestration and trading in the future is at best problematic. Although the effects of carbon in soil is well reported in the scientific literature, paradoxically an understanding of carbon sequestration continues to develop albeit much more slowly than emerging property theory and law.[22]

The somewhat cavalier approach adopted in the bill to the obvious difficulties in conceiving nationally consistent land based carbon property rights perhaps reflects the support for soil carbon storage in particular by both major political parties given pressure from Australian farm groups, who reportedly:
…have begun lobbying the Government for support to offset their emission costs, such as carbon sequestration in soil or trees.[23]

On 3 March 2009 Tony Burke, Commonwealth Minister for Agriculture announced $32M funding for around 20 research projects to explore the capacity of national soils to “emit and capture greenhouse gases” reportedly:
…to help build the knowledge to support Australia’s bid to change global greenhouse accounting rules on soil carbon storage.

Soils can add or subtract from the nation’s greenhouse account depending on their composition and management, but their role is yet to be acknowledged in international negotiations.[24]

The following section of this paper canvasses the policy implications of adopting a cap and trade emissions trading scheme as proposed in the CPRS Bill, rather than the alternative of a carbon tax regime, which may be less complex and expensive.CPRS v Carbon Taxation?
Given that Australia is now internationally obligated to reduce national GHG emissions the manner of decarbonisation is of crucial importance. An alternative way of reducing GHG emissions is a carbon tax whereby a tax of per tonne of carbon is imposed on industries emitting carbon dioxide. The principle is that the cost of producing goods and services which are emissions intensive increases due to the carbon tax, and hence the consumption of those particular goods and services is reduced as they become more expensive. Arguably, a carbon tax encourages industries to produce goods and services which are less emissions intensive through alternative pathways. The alteration of manufacturing behaviour is one pathway which avoids raising the price of goods and services significantly.

A carbon tax would arguably continue to increase until evidence existed that a reduction in emissions was occurring and indeed had fallen to the desired level. Economists such as Gittins note that a carbon tax:
…is intended to discourage the consumption of [emissions intensive] goods and services, while also providing producers with an incentive to find ways of reducing the amount of emissions generated by their production process.[25]

Arguably, the sophistication of emissions trading schemes are more difficult to monitor and administer than a carbon tax system, which involves the imposition of a specific tax rate for a specific purpose. Michael Costa, former NSW Treasurer argues that the proposed CPRS is too complicated in a country which currently has “one of the most complex personal tax regimes in the world, and now another rebate scheme has been added”.[26]

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers highlights the already speculative nature of carbon emission trading, that company previously seeking to enter the carbon market in the:
…hope to dominate…centred on the buying and selling of carbon permits, through the EU’s[27] Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) set up in 2005, the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (DM) and the “cap and trade” system proposed for the US by both McCain and Obama.[28]

The interest that Lehman Brothers had in carbon emission trading centres on the concept that the number of permits[29] available will fall each year resulting in an increasing shortfall in emission capacity. This reduction in permits can only be addressed in two ways, either through active reduction in carbon emissions or through the purchase of further permits, presumably at increasing cost. This aspect was not missed by Lehman Brothers:
..[b]ecause the [carbon] titles are transferable and because large numbers were allocated to large corporations when the licenses were first introduced [by the EU and UN], there arose a market in carbon trading. Powerful businesses were able to sell their CO2 permits to smaller companies that needed to emit a certain amount of CO2.[30]

In addition, China one of the world’s largest GHG emitters is in the bizarre position of reportedly being a net “carbon creditor” because it has constructed huge dams for hydroelectric power which according to the International Energy Agency generated from that source 397017 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2005[31]. Hence, China will be capable of selling offset credits in the future to the EU in particular. This potential to sell carbon credits occurs against a backdrop where China constructs one additional coal based electricity power station every four days.[32]
Mark O’Neill, the executive director of the Australian Coal Association observed in 2006 that the annual Australian energy output at approximately 30,000 megawatts was equalled by the combined output of those Chinese coal fired power stations constructed every nine months.[33]
All of the above demonstrates that any reduction in carbon emissions on a global scale will be difficult to achieve, although there is increasing evidence that some countries such as Australia are taking their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol seriously. The earlier CPRS Green Paper highlighted the evolution that is occurring in international accounting rules, indicating that:
[t]here is a general movement towards a more comprehensive and scientifically accurate international accounting framework, however, as negotiations are at a very early stage, the direction of any changes cannot be predicted.[34]

The issue of accuracy has also been highlighted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in its findings arising from investigations into claims being made about carbon offsets. There are strict obligations under the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth.) prohibiting misleading and deceptive conduct together with a series of prohibitions against specific misrepresentations. Importantly the Commission published an Issues Paper in January 2008[35] seeking comments on claims about carbon offsets and whether such claims when assessed against the requirements of the Commonwealth trade practices legislation could involve breaches.

In June 2008 the Commission released subsequent guidelines on carbon claims observing that:
[t]he development of a credible and transparent carbon offset market and straightforward carbon offset marketing will assist Australia to reach its climate change goals. However, false or deceptive claims damage consumer perception of carbon offsetting, thereby damaging the emerging industry.[36]

The following section of this paper canvasses the costs associated with decarbonisation irrespective of the regime chosen.

The cost of decarbonisation
Much debate has occurred since the release in March 2009 of the CPRS Bill focused particularly on the cost to carbon emitters of the introduction of an emissions trading scheme. Issues of cost are obviously of great interest not only to Australian emitters, but also elsewhere. It is reported that the current wholesale cost of UK electricity is around GBP32 billion, and it is calculated that every ton of carbon dioxide emitted in electricity production will cost GBP35, with UK electricity suppliers paying an additional GBP8 billion for carbon permits. This is calculated to add 25 per cent to the total annual cost of electricity in that country.[37]

The UK government recently detailed its plans to reduce carbon emissions by 34 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020. It is also proposed to increase the amount of electricity generated from renewable sources whereby in 2020 it is estimated 40 per cent will be obtained from wind and tidal energy as well as continuing nuclear power generation and “clean coal” generation.[38]

The EU Environment Committee has decided approval of new rules will be sought from the European Parliament and the EU member states requiring coal power electricity generators to meet the cost of “all their carbon dioxide emissions from 2013”.[39] The Committee also decided on 7 October 2008 that all large power stations constructed from 2015 are to be equipped with carbon capture and storage technology (CCS), rather than release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.[40]

However, in British Columbia Canada, concerns have been expressed over the cost of decarbonisation, following the introduction on 1 July 2008 of an alternative approach to the CPRS, namely a carbon tax scheme. The current Provincial Budget published on 17 February 2009 lists a carbon tax collection of CAD300million for the 2008-2009 fiscal year. For the fiscal year 2009-2010 the carbon tax has been estimated in the Budget at approximately CAD546 million rising to CAD754 million in 2010-1011 and CAD968 million in 2011-2012.[41]
When the tax was introduced in 2008 the base was CAD10 per tonne of carbon dioxide, increasing to CAD15 on 1 July 2009 and in successive similar amounts annually until reaching CAD30 per tonne in 2012. The tax collected is returned under the scheme to individuals and industry in the form of reductions in personal and corporate income tax, together with low income tax credits.[42] It has been estimated that the projected increases in the carbon tax in 2009-2010 will add CAD0.0117 (1.17cents) to the cost of a litre of petrol and CAD0.0135 (1.35cents) to the cost of heating oil or diesel.[43]

Whether this Canadian carbon tax is actually encouraging decarbonisation is yet to be determined, however British Columbia also has a “cap –and – trade” system which was introduced on 3 April 2008.[44] However, whilst offsets gained by reforestation have a potential to be used by carbon intensive industries, the Canadian government when signing the Kyoto Protocol declared that it was the owner of all “forest carbon sinks”, an issue which has created concern amongst First Nations[45] and the Provincial Government of British Columbia.[46]
Given the above discussion concerning the likely cost of the CPRS and the alternative carbon tax regime, the final section of this paper briefly canvasses the reality of decarbonisation in Australia.

Closing Comments
It is surprising that there has been so little debate on whether emissions trading or carbon tax regimes offer better pathways to decarbonisation for Australia. Emissions trading schemes such as the proposed CPRS actually operate in a somewhat similar manner to carbon tax schemes, through limiting annual allowable emissions hence increasing the cost of goods and services which are emissions intensive. The difference between the two methods is that the quantity of permitted emissions is controlled by the cap, while a carbon tax determines the price of emissions, with the market place deciding on the quantum of emissions that are economically possible.
However the global financial crisis has resulted in the overall price of carbon traded to drop significantly. In the first few weeks of October 2008, the price of carbon traded dropped from USD30 per tonne to below USD22 per tonne. Given that the price in July 2008 had been as high as USD37 per tonne, the necessary market stability for a carbon tax scheme is now problematic.[47]

Similarly the CPRS relies on an increasing scarcity factor for AEUs, and hence their tradable value is of critical importance for the success of the scheme. The worrying collapse in the worth of carbon tonnes and the resultant impact upon international emissions trading is however not unexpected, with Martijn Wilder, Chair of the Sydney Carbon Market Taskforce observing in December 2008 that:…[a] good emissions trading scheme needs broad coverage and a carbon price sufficient to drive change…[48]

The prospects for success of the CPRS are yet to be determined, especially given that emissions trading and carbon taxation are blunt tools attempting to offset economic activity (GHG emitting) against environmental protection (decarbonisation). Perhaps, on balance emissions trading schemes such as the CPRS appear preferable as they are more in harmony with international trends, Gittins recently observing that:
One good reason for preferring a trading scheme is that it fits better with what other countries are doing and allows international trading in permits. Where other countries can reduce their emissions more cheaply than we can, we effectively pay them to do it for us.[49]

Whilst the CPRS Bill has not passed the Senate, when the Bill is resubmitted in November, if passed in its current form it will not become operative until 2011.
Irrespective, when the Conference of Parties meets in Copenhagen on 1-12 December 2009, the likelihood of a global agreement to reduce emissions for the period 2012-2020 will commit Australia to further its obligations to decarbonisation, which emerged with the ratification in December 2007 of the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, there have been suggestions an “international carbon-trading regime” should be established with the World Bank acting as the broker for “carbon rights” to be traded between the developing and the developed economies.[50]

Statutes
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 (Cth.) Exposure Draft.Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 (Cth.)Carbon Rights Act 2003 (WA).Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, 2008 (BC).Kyoto ProtocolTrade Practices Act 1974 (Cth.)
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Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (2008) Issues Paper: The Trade Practices Act and carbon offset claims, (Canberra) (16 January).
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (2008) Carbon claims and the Trade Practices Act, (Canberra) (June).
Bond, Patrick, (2009) “Climate Justice False Solutions: A timely death?” New Internationalist 419, (January/February), 14.
Boydell, S., Sheehan, J., Prior, J., & Hendy, S., (2009) “Carbon Property Rights, Cities and Climate Change”, in J.-J. Helluin (ed.) Proceedings of 5th Urban Research Symposium – Cities and Climate Change: Responding to an Urgent Agenda. (Marseilles, France: World Bank).
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper (2008) (Canberra: Department of Climate Change), (July).
Department of Climate Change (2009) Exposure Draft of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009: Commentary, (Canberra).
European Parliament Press Release 20081006IPR38802 (2008) “Equipping power plants to store CO2 underground”, (7 October).
First Nations Forestry Council (2008) Carbon Credit Opportunities for First Nations in BC. Briefing document for BC Forestry Round Table (Vancouver).
Gelonesi, Antonio (2007) Carbon Accounting Standard for Planted Forests. Paper prepared for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, (26 February).
Hepburn, Samantha (2008) “Carbon Rights as New Property: Towards a Uniform Framework”. Paper presented to Australian National University (ANU) College of Law Seminar, (21 August).
International Energy Agency (2008) Electricity/Heat in China, People’s Republic of in 2005, IEA Statistics (Paris), http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/electricitydata.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=CN, (20 October).
Sheehan J. & Kanas, O., (2008) “Carbon Property Rights in Soil”. Paper presented to the 14th Annual PRRES Conference, Hotel Istana, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, (22 January).
The Age (2009) “Britain outlines major carbon cuts”, (17 July), 11.
The Australian (2008) “EU law makes power firms pay for all emissions”, (9 October) 8.
The Australian (2009) “$32m for research on carbon storage in soil”, (3 March), 4.
The Australian (2009) “Green-industrial complex gets rich from carbon laws”, (3 July), 12.
The Australian Financial Review (2007) “Accounting for carbon credits is still a grey area (26 September) Special Report Sustainable Investments, 8.
The Globe and Mail (2009) “Long-term returns, B.C.’s carbon tax and ABCP”, Report on Business, (19 February), B5.
The Sunday Telegraph (UK) (2008) “Lehman misses out on carbon credit scam”, (21 September), 28.
The Sunday Telegraph (2009) “Inconvenient truth of carbon policy”, (8 March), 42, 95.
The Sydney Morning Herald (2006) “The green backers”, (8 April) Good Weekend, 34.
The Sydney Morning Herald (2008) “Balancing act on the carbon tightrope”, (13-14 December), 22.
The Sydney Morning Herald (2009) “Economists fiddle while climate burns”, (14-15 March), 5.
[1] Department of Climate Change (2009), Exposure Draft of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009: Commentary, (Canberra), 8.[2] Department of Climate Change, 8.[3] Department of Climate Change, 8.[4] Department of Climate Change, 8.[5] Department of Climate Change, 8.[6] Boydell, S., Sheehan, J., Prior, J., & Hendy, S., (2009) “Carbon Property Rights, Cities and Climate Change”, in J.-J. Helluin (ed.) Proceedings of 5th Urban Research Symposium – Cities and Climate Change: Responding to an Urgent Agenda (16)( Marseilles, France: World Bank), 9.[7] Boydell, 9.[8] Part 10 Division 14 Section 240 (1)(e) Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill, 2009.[9] Part 10 Division 14 Section 240 (8) Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill, 2009.[10] A right to go on another’s land and take produce from it, as by logging, mining, drilling, grazing animals, etc.[11] Part 1 Section 5 ‘Forest Stand’, Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill, 2009.[12] Department of Climate Change (2009) Exposure Draft of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009: Commentary, (Canberra) 168.[13] Part 10 Division 1 Section 190 Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill, 2009.[14] Gelonesi, Antonio (2007) Carbon Accounting Standard for Planted Forests. Paper prepared for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (26 February).[15] The Australian Financial Review (2007) “Accounting for carbon credits is still a grey area (26 September) Special Report Sustainable Investments, 8.[16] Part 10 Division 3 Section 195(2)(b) Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill, 2009.[17] Part 10 Division 14 Section 240(1)(e) Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill, 2009.[18] In Western Australia the Carbon Rights Act 2003 (WA) created a new statutory land interest rather than adopt the pre-established common law notion of profit a prendre.[19] Ibid.[20] Hepburn, Samantha (2008) “Carbon Rights as New Property: Towards a Uniform Framework”. Paper presented to Australian National University (ANU) College of Law Seminar, 21 August, 7.[21] Part 10 Division 14 Section 240(8) Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill, 2009.[22] Sheehan J. & Kanas, O., (2008) “Carbon Property Rights in Soil”. Paper presented to the 14th Annual PRRES Conference, Hotel Istana, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, 22 January, 17.[23] The Australian (2009) “$32m for research on carbon storage in soil”, (3 March), 4.[24] Ibid.[25] The Sydney Morning Herald (2009) “Economists fiddle while climate burns” (14-15 March) 5.[26] Michael Costa cited in The Sunday Telegraph (2009) “Inconvenient truth of carbon policy”, (8 March), 95.[27] European Union.[28] The Sunday Telegraph (UK) (2008) “Lehman misses out on carbon credit scam” (21 September), 28.[29] In Australia these are known as AEUs.[30] The Australian (2009) “Green-industrial complex gets rich from carbon laws”, (3 July), 12.[31] International Energy Agency (2008) Electricity/Heat in China, People’s Republic of in 2005, IEA Statistics (Paris), http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/electricitydata.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=CN, (20 October).[32] The Sunday Telegraph.[33] Mark O’Neill cited in The Sydney Morning Herald (2006) “The green backers”, (8 April) Good Weekend, 34.[34] Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper (2008) (Canberra: Department of Climate Change) July, 121.[35] Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (2008) Issues Paper: The Trade Practices Act and carbon offset claims (Canberra), 16 January.[36] Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (2008) Carbon claims and the Trade Practices Act (Canberra) (June), 2.[37] The Sunday Telegraph (UK) (2008) “Lehman misses out on carbon credit scam” (21 September), 28.[38] The Age (2009) “Britain outlines major carbon cuts”, (17 July), 11.[39] The Australian (2008) “EU law makes power firms pay for all emissions” (9 October), 8.[40] European Parliament Press Release 20081006IPR38802 (2008) “Equipping power plants to store carbon dioxide underground”, (7 October).[41] The Globe and Mail (2009) “Long-term returns, B.C.’s carbon tax and ABCP”, Report on Business (19 February), B5.[42] Ibid.[43] Ibid.[44] Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, 2008 (BC).[45] First Nations Forestry Council (2008) Carbon Credit Opportunities for First Nations in BC. Briefing document for BC Forestry Round Table (Vancouver), 4.[46] The Provincial Government owns over 90% of all forests in British Columbia – personal communication from Chris Rolfe, Chair Climate Action Legal Team, Ministry of Attorney General, (19 February 2009).[47] Bond, Patrick, (2009) “Climate Justice False Solutions: A timely death?” New Internationalist 419, (January/February), 14.[48] Wilder, Martijn cited in The Sydney Morning Herald (2008) “Balancing act on the carbon tightrope” (13-14 December), 22.[49] Gittins, Ross cited in The Sydney Morning Herald (2009) “Economists fiddle while climate burns” (14-15 March), 5.[50] The Australian (2009) “Green-industrial complex gets rich from carbon laws”, (3 July), 12.

John Sheehan is also Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building, University of Technology, Sydney, Chair, Carbon Property Rights Committee, chair, Government Liaison, past president NSW Division, Australian Property Institute, director, Spatial Industries Business Association, Australia

US forest strategy boomerangs in Brazil

2010-07-27T03:09:00.000-07:00

Natalia Viana Update: Carbon Watch July 26, 2010
US forest strategy boomerangs in Brazil
A recent ad campaign aimed at gaining Midwestern senators support for US climate change legislation has backfired in Brazil. The ad by the National Farmers Union and Avoided Deforestation Partners, an alliance of major environmental organizations and utilities, advocates for farm state senators to support U.S. emission limits by offering an incentive: the ability of companies to purchase emission offsets in the form of standing tropical forests, which sequester the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Thus, the coalition argued, the land would not be cleared for the cultivation of soybeans and other crops that compete with US agriculture. A report accompanying the ad, called “Farms here, Forests there” claims that US farmers could gain up to $221 billion between 2012 and 2030 from less foreign competition.
The report states “the expansion of pasture and plantation to previously forested land in nations such as Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia and Malaysia has contributed to these countries becoming lead producers and exporters of these commodities."
“If the forests are conserved,” the report states, “the land will not be converted to pasture or plantation…. [and] we can expect to see reduced production from these [tropical forest] countries as a result of restricted land use and higher production costs.”
A video created by Avoided Deforestation Partners goes further: “Did you know that saving forests can save American consumers billons…Did you know that saving forests can protect American jobs?" The video concludes: “No new technology is necessary, no new systems need to be invented."
The advertising campaign aimed to win support from conservative legislators for the inclusion of rainforest protection in US domestic climate legislation. Here in Brazil, however, it went seriously wrong. The ad landed in the middle of a debate in the Brazilian Congress, which is considering a proposal by the government to loosen restrictions on the development of the Amazon.
A coalition of major Brazilian environmental NGOs repudiated the claim that protecting the world’s forests would benefit US agriculture. The coalition, including the Instituto Socioambiental, Conservation International-Brazil, WWF-Brasil, Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica and Greenpeace-Brazil, charged that the Avoided Deforestation Partners' argument "ignores the Brazilian reality." According to data compiled by the University of São Paulo, Brazil has at least 61 million hectares (roughly 150 million acres) of low-productivity land, which “can be quickly converted into areas of agricultural expansion” without intrusions into the nation’s forests. "We could double our production of food without having to bring down new forest and still recovering those areas where reforestation is done needed for their potential to provide ecosystem services," it said. The statement also denounced use of the report by deforestation advocates in Brazil to support their assertion that preservationists were playing into the hands of foreign agricultural interests.
US environmental groups that are members of Avoided Deforestation Partners—including The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, The National Wildlife Federation and the Environmental Defense Fund—later distanced themselves from the report, saying it “is based on the assumption, totally unfounded, that deforestation in tropical countries can be easily interrupted, and its conclusions are therefore also unrealistic."
The groups also cited “several scientific studies [that] show that to reduce deforestation it is necessary to increase the competitiveness of agricultural production outside the forest frontier. Large tropical countries have large under-utilized rural areas where agriculture could be increased without increasing deforestation." The statement came out a month after the report was released, right when then the debate was heating up in Brazil.
Hurriedly, AD Partners responded with a new report that claimed Brazil would actually benefit from forests protection, estimating that its gross revenues from a policy designed to link forest protection to global strategies against climate change—known as REDD (Reduced Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation)—could amount to as much as $306 billion by 2030.
But the harm had already been done. The news about the report came out in Brazil right in the middle of a heated debate in the Brazilian Congress about the revision of the National Forests Code, which would weaken existing forest protections. At the end of June a congressman from Mato Grosso, a soy producing state, Jorge Yanai, cited the report to discredit Brazilian environmentalists, asserting that they were actually driven toward conservation by foreign interests seeking to restrict Brazilian development.
His proposals include, among other things, an amnesty on anyone guilty of illegal logging before July 2008 and permission for small properties not to keep what's known as the legal reserve—the amount of forest on a farm or settlement that must be protected.
The current law obliges all farms to preserve legal reserves in different percentages according to the region. In the Amazon, for instance, legal reserves must occupy 80 percent of the land; in the cerrado (a Brazilian type of savannah), the legal reserve is 35 percent of the land; and in forests elsewhere in the country, 20 percent. The word that small farms won’t have such an obligation has already reportedly led farmers to split their properties into smaller units. The proposed changes to the Forest Code also include a reduction in the width of land to be preserved alongside water courses—from 30 meters to 15.
In early July, the proposed weakening of the rules governing forest protections was passed by a key committee in the Lower House. The bill is expected to be voted on by both the Brazilian House and Senate in the fall—but not until after the presidential elections in October.
Before the revised report from Avoided Deforestation Partners was published, Glenn Hurowitz, the Director of the Tropical Forest and Climate Coalition, which participated in releasing the original ad campaign, told me that the study had been misinterpreted. “The report didn't analyze the impact on Brazil, and it's unfortunate that it has been interpreted that way."
Brazilian environmental NGOs claim, however, that the original report's intention was too clear to be misunderstood. They claim it was based not only on a false assumption, but also on two misunderstandings by the US lobby group.
AD Partners believed that to convince US farmers to preserve forests you have to say they will benefit economically at the expense of competitors. This generated a dichotomy that no environmental groups in Brazil would embrace.
The other mistake, they say, was to assume that nobody else outside the US would care. While within the US, environmental and news organizations generally praised the report’s conclusions, outside the US it was seen as an outrage. It’s something nobody at the US lobby group had thought about—that the report would have an impact on countries with tropical forests. Thus far, it seems to have had a negative impact on Brazilian’s own struggle to conserve its forests.
Natalia Viana is an independent journalist based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She writes for The Guardian and The Independent (UK), as well as several Brazilian publications, and as a reporter for PBS Frontline. She recently published a three-part series on the debate over forest preservation and U.S. policy in Brazil on the Brazilian internet magazine Opera Mundi.
Tags: Brazil, carbon offsets, climate change

VICTORIA CARBON EXCHANGE

2010-07-27T03:05:00.000-07:00

Victoria's farming and forestry industries will be able to play a major role in tackling climate change through the establishment of the Victorian Carbon Exchange, Premier John Brumby announced today.

(Media-Newswire.com) - Victoria’s farming and forestry industries will be able to play a major role in tackling climate change through the establishment of the Victorian Carbon Exchange, Premier John Brumby announced today. Under the Taking Action for Victoria’s Future, Victorian Climate Change White Paper – The Action Plan, the Victorian Carbon Exchange will allow farmers, the forestry industry, community and Government to voluntarily offset greenhouse gas emissions through a central offset purchasing system that will see incentives for tree planting and improved farming practices. The action plan will also see a greater investment in understanding how to store carbon through soil sequestration and will set a course for a sustainable food future through the development of the new Victorian Food Strategy.“Our Government is rising to the challenge of climate change, supporting new initiatives to cut emissions and creating a climate of opportunity,” Mr Brumby said. “Our Government’s disciplined economic management means Victoria is in a position to lead the country in tackling climate change and locking in our sustainability for the future.“Victoria’s farming and forestry industries are worth billions of dollars to the Victorian economy which is why the Government is taking action to ensure they will remain vibrant and become even more sustainable in the future.“The Victorian Carbon Exchange will create an incentive for landholders and forest operators to develop offsets through activities such as new forest plantations, improved farm practices and soil carbon sequestration.”“This exchange will not only see more trees planted in new forest plantations but will also promote a move towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly use of farming resources,” Mr Jennings said. Environment and Climate Change Minister Gavin Jennings said the Government would release a Victorian Food Strategy, which would help ensure a sustainable food supply for all Victorians and help the farming and forestry industries combat climate change through improved practices.“Through the Victorian Climate Change White Paper, the Victorian Government will also invest in research into how to maintain and enhance the amount of carbon stored in our natural eco-systems by analysing the science and practice of soil carbon sequestration.“This research will give Government a better understanding of how best to achieve our aims of harnessing carbon storage in our natural environment with supporting a sustainable timber harvesting industry.”

All the major petrol chains, but not the smaller chain Gull, raised their prices on Thursday as the next stage of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) c

2010-07-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

As of 1 July, all motorists will have to pay their part of the ETS.

One by one, the oil companies bumped up prices by 3c a litre for petrol, which took 91-octane petrol at most stations to about $1.79 a litre.

The AA thinks that that on its own will not change driver behaviour but might do so in conjunction with higher ACC, GST and excise levies.

The big chains in fact raised prices by slightly less than the full impact of the ETS, citing competitive needs as their reason.

Even so, emissions trading in the energy sector will generate immense transfers of wealth. Drivers burn 3.2 billion litres of petrol a year, and at 3.1c more a litre the oil companies must accumulate $90 million in order to buy emissions credits payable to groups such as foresters, whose growing wood absorbs the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

Transport price rises too

Gull says it will hold prices until at least Monday, in part because it uses 10% biofuel, which does not attract an emissions charge.

The cost of freight and some passenger transport is also predicted to rise under the extended scheme.

Road Transport Forum chief executive Ken Shirley says trucking firms can't afford to absorb costs associated with the ETS, and will have to pass them on - which could reduce demand for freight, which in turn could hurt the economy.

KiwiRail says it will pass on a small increase to its freight customers, and some ferry fares will increase by about $1.

Air New Zealand has already increased its domestic fares.

Significant first step - minister

The Government predicts the extended ETS will stop 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere in its first three years.

Climate Change Issues Minister Nick Smith says the predicted drop is not large but is a significant first step.

Dr Smith predicts that because of new forest plantings, the halting of deforestatation that would otherwise occur, industry efficiency gains and incentives for renewable energy production, the country will meet its international target on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.

'Little more than a guess'

Greenpeace political adviser Geoff Keey says however that the prediction of a 19-million-tonne reduction in carbon dioxide is little more than a guess.

Mr Keey says the estimate is largely based on the number of carbon-absorbing trees that will not be cut down during that time, rather than on any efficiencies in transport or energy.

The Government expects 95% of the money gained from higher fuel and power prices to find its way to foresters who sell credits.

The Carbon Project in Uganda

2010-06-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

Published on Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:09 | Updated at Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:53 | Source : Forbes India

By: Deepa Krishnan

A small experiment in Uganda that uses carbon credits to fund reforestation could provide a viable template for poor nations to conserve their green cover

In the peak afternoon sun, a pickup truck rumbles through the dirt track flanked on either side by rolling hills of neatly lined pine trees as far as the eye can see. At a clearing in the middle of the pine forest, the truck comes to a halt, raising a cloud of dust. It is the only irritant to the fresh smell of pine. This isn’t a temperate coniferous forest in North America. It’s the heart of equatorial Africa, Uganda. And these alien, fast-growing, Caribbean pines are gaining popularity as the solution to reforest degraded land.

“We have reached the carbon project area,” says Lemmy Kasimbazi, forest supervisor, National Forestry Authority (NFA), as he gets out of the truck. A nondescript signboard hanging on a shrub reads, “RECPACarbon Project Area funded by World Bank”.

NFA is the Ugandan government body partnering with World Bank to establish the Nile Basin Reforestation project 2,015 hectares of pine forests that will earn carbon credits under United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). RECPA, or Rwoho Environmental Conservation and Protection Association, is the local community group that will manage 17% of the project area as part of a collaborative forest management plan.

This World Bank initiative aims to provide a new financing mechanism to help countries like Uganda restore degraded forests, allowing local communities to benefit from the CDM. The basic idea is that trees trap carbon dioxide and hence planting more trees is an effective offset against carbon emissions. One tree in a tropical forest could potentially trap one tonne of “carbon dioxide equivalent” over a lifetime of 50 years.

If the Uganda experiment succeeds, it could hold valuable lessons for developing countries like India.

Of the 10 carbon forestry projects approved ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, three are in India. None of the Indian projects is World Bank funded, but the bank is actively looking at India. And it is using its existing pilots as critical groundwork to replicate them in other countries.

A patient game

The Nile Basin Reforestation project is divided into five sectors, of which Project No. 3 in Rwoho Central Forest Reserve, 320 km southwest of the capital Kampala, is the first in Africa to be approved for trading on the CDM market.

A lot hangs in the balance. Trees can’t store carbon dioxide forever. They could be cut down in which case the carbon credit would be lost. Under CDM rules, such credits would need to be replaced with credits from other types of clean energy projects which a poor country like Uganda may not be able to. Keeping the new forests going despite the economic demands of the community and natural disasters will be a challenge.

Also, the minimum timeframe for these projects is 20 years. The credits have to be sold to developed nations with the World Bank acting as a conduit. Credits developed from forests get a lower price than the ones developed through other means. It remains to be seen how successful this plan will be in getting the community its rewards.

In the centre of a small village in Rwoho, people crowd into a tiny yellow room whose walls are covered with photographs, handwritten charts, and a vision statementthat reads “Towards a sustainable healthy, and environmental healthy community.” The room, overlooking the plantations, is the headquarters of RECPA, a voluntary environmental organisation formed in 2003. Jerome Byesigwa, chairman of RECPA proudly introduces the project: “You must have planted trees in your land to be a member,” he announces to his guests.

Its mission plant trees reflects the community’s concern over the depletion of a resource its members are heavily dependent on. Till the World Bank project came along, the group had been planting trees on their own land.

RECPA has 270 members and the annual subscription is 5,000 Uganda shillings (USD 2.2) with a one-time initial fee of about 10,000 shillings (USD 4.4). This money is used for maintaining the plantation; NFA provides free seedlings and land and the group members manage all operations on the 60 hectares they have planted so far. (The World Bank has given NFA an initial grant of USD 300,000 to upgrade technology.) Those members who choose to be part of the carbon projectpay an additional 100,000 shillings for a share, and can own six such shares. These shares also entitle them to carbon credits under the project. The earnings from the credits are yet to come and the projections are modest. They are expected to get about USD 65 a year per hectare from permissible forest activities and carbon credits combined.

The community is fully aware of the challenges. The people have not got any carbon money but they have no doubt it’s on its way. “Recently, the accountant of World Bank visited us and promised that the money will come as soon as possible,” Byesigwa says. “We dig deep in our pockets, but it’s for the long-run,” says Amanyire Deo, project co-ordinator, RECPA. The community cannot access forest resources freely for nearly five years after planting.

Yet, the members of RECPA are somewhat lucky. Theirs is a self-motivated initiative that fits in like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle with NFA’s collaborative forestry plans. The carbon projects aim at restoring ‘degraded grasslands’. But the pastoral communities living in the vicinity have no option but to graze their herds on these lands. Since the carbon projects came up in 2006, their access has been severely restricted. Now they can collect firewood only twice a week, or collect herbs, keep bees and so on. Inter-cropping is prohibited. So their expenses are mounting.

Johnson Tiboruhame, a young man at a nearby trading centre, rues that he cannot graze his animals. Not that he’s unhappy with the adjoining RECPA. He simply cannot afford the fees, nominal as it is, to join them.

Realistic optimism

About 13% of Uganda’s landmass is under forest cover, but every year 2.7% of these forests disappear. And barely a few thousand of the 3.5 million hectares of forests are under sustainable plantation. Forest conservation is clearly a priority for Uganda.

The community is concerned about deforestation, but restrictions on the forest activities could have serious repercussions. “The pastoral community is hampered, and we hope the children won’t end up malnourished without enough milk,” says RECPA’s Deo, visibly concerned.

“Convincing the community is a challenge. They always look for quick returns,” he adds. So the economic appeal of carbon projects is certainly a lure.

However, carbon trading itself is an amorphous concept and CDM is mired in rules causing extended delays. They require governmental support that is either sporadic or nonexistent in most countries. Despite this, two new communities have expressed interest to work with NFA.

A fine balance

The World Bank is still verifying parts of the project and NFA believes that all five blocks will be registered under CDM this year. “The money will be based on the verified report and NFA and World Bank have agreed on an annual payment,” says Xavier Mugumya, co-ordinator for climate change, NFA.

Annually Carbon Project No. 3 is expected to sequester an average of 5,590 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per year over 20 years, and by 2012, it is expected to sequester 29,795 tonne of CO2e, according to the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change Project Document for Nile Basin Reforestation project. It’s not simple to quantify reduced emissions for forestry projects. The yields would still be based on statistical modelling, explains Mugumya.

Also carbon credits from forestry are priced lower because they are not permanent. At USD 4 a tonne, it’s a fraction of the prices enjoyed by permanent CERs (certified emission reduction), currently from USD 12 to USD 24. Further, there is no price incentive for developers to choose CDM forestry over the alternative voluntary market.

The choice of non-native trees like eucalyptus and pine, which mature in a relatively short time of 20 years (native trees like mahogany take 70 years) is also hotly debated by environmentalists. “Non-native species deplete water and do not support agro-forestry or biodiversity,” protests Frank Muramuzi, executive director of National Association of Professional Environmentalists. Despite all the uncertainty around carbon trading, developing countries like Uganda have welcomed the idea. Such CDM projects bring in the much-required money for forest conservation. Communities have great income expectations from them.

The green goblin

Finally, the project is dependent on nature. Forest fires are a real threat, especially in the dry season (June to September). The carbon pricing has been risk-reduced by 25% for this, but there is no guarantee against a complete wipe-out. “We have no manpower,” confesses Moses Kabaireho, sector manager, Bugamba, NFA.

“Compensation and crop-insurance... We haven’t even discussed it with the community,” he says. It will be 20 years before the first full harvest. The jury is still out on the risks and benefits of carbon forestry. Yet, in Rwoho everybody is more eager than not. Outside the RECPA office, 75-year-old Alanzio Gakibayo points to his trees across the hill and says, “These are for my grandchildren. I won’t be there to cut them down; I’m too old for that.” He smiles smugly at the prospects of a healthy future. But if there’s a fire, what next?

Soros bolsters global forest aid effort

2010-06-26T11:54:00.001-07:00

May 31, 2010

By Green Stuff

(Reuters) -Billionaire investor George Soros said on Wednesday he would guarantee $50 million to help slow deforestation and contain climate change, bolstering Norwegian plans for a partnership of rich and poor states to save forests.

Soros announced the move a day before about 50 nations meet in Oslo to seal a deal on protecting forests from the Amazon to Indonesia by helping to unlock cash promised at the Copenhagen summit for combating climate change.

“I’m ready to do it if it helps to accelerate the implementation of the process,” Soros told Reuters in an interview after meeting Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

“It could be in the form of a guarantee for performance.

“If you can stop the eradication of the forest before it happens, it’s much easier than to reclaim the degraded land.

That is why I think quick action is so important,” Soros said.

Plants soak up carbon dioxide as they grow, helping to curb a surge in carbon levels since the Industrial Revolution.

Norway says that developed nations have promised some $500 million to fight deforestation by 2012 on top of $3.5 billion agreed to last December in Copenhagen, and new pledges at the conference may bring the total aid closer to $5 billion.

“Reducing deforestation is the biggest, fastest, cheapest way to cut carbon emissions,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

Norway, rich in oil, formally announced $1 billion in aid to Indonesia to help protect forests in the southeast Asian state, which has been clearing forests at a fast rate for palm oil plantations.

Oslo is spending money it had previously pledged as part of its drive to combat climate change.

The partnership between donors and forested developing nations will be one of the first signs ofaction to combat climate change after the U.N. Copenhagen summit failed to deliver a legally binding deal on man-made emissions.

Rich nations did agree to provide $30 billion from 2010-12 to help poor countries combat global warming, rising to at least $100 billion a year from 2020. The United States, Australia, France, Japan, Britain and Norway agreed on $3.5 billion from 2010-12 to save forests.

But getting the climate aid flowing has become tougher as many governments of rich countries face sharp cuts in public finances to save their economies from mounting debt problems.

“Four billion dollars is a very good start but clearly bigger amounts will be needed in the years ahead,” Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim told Reuters.

“You cannot expect poor nations to bear the cost of reducing deforestation without the support of big polluters like Europe, the United States, Japan and others.”

Deforestation — mainly by countries making way for farms, roads or towns — accounts for about 15-20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

Business groups say that the proposed partnership should do more to involve the private sector and encourage markets to trade carbon dioxide stored in forests, while environmentalists want stronger strings attached to any cash.

Denmark makes purchase of NZ Carbon Credits

2010-06-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, 15 June 2010, 2:42 pm

Press Release: Permanent Forests

Denmark makes purchase of New Zealand Forest Carbon Credits

The Danish Energy Agency (DEA) recently concluded an agreement to purchase forest carbon credits from nine Permanent Forest Sink Initiative (PFSI) projects located across both the North and South Islands of New Zealand totalling 1700ha.

The deal was facilitated by Permanent Forests International (PFI), a New Zealand based company that specialises in long term carbon forests. Director Mark Belton said it was pleasing to be able to achieve this groundbreaking agreement with Denmark because they are one of the most discerning buyers of project based carbon credits. Denmark applies stringent environmental standards in assessing carbon projects and requires that carbon credits are real, verifiable, additional and permanent (at a project level).

Mr Belton says this transaction represents a number of firsts. It is the first time Denmark has purchased carbon credits from forest projects and the first time it has purchased credits outside the Kyoto Protocol CDM/JI mechanisms. It is also the first time an EU Member state has purchased forestry credits from a developed country. While the EU ETS does not accept forestry credits EU Members can use them to meet Kyoto Protocol emission obligations.

“It is a huge affirmation of our Government’s PFSI mechanism and the integrity of the participating PFSI projects that they possess the right attributes to pass Denmark’s high standards of due diligence” Belton says.

A key feature of the PFSI is it requires forest cover to be maintained for a minimum of 99 years, in effect a forest conservation covenant, with maintenance of the forest as a carbon sink as the primary goal. Harvesting if it were to occur at all is only permitted on the basis of low intensity individual tree or small coupe removals. Clear felling is not allowed.

Belton says the PFSI is a leading legislative framework for ‘gold standard’ carbon forestry and is now gaining worldwide recognition. Belton believes the New Zealand Governments practical experience could be shared with other countries that may wish to develop effective carbon forestry mechanisms.

“A distinction of the PFSI mechanism is it enables remarkably efficient and low cost project registration, carbon measurement, and credit issuance compared with other international standards.”

The practical benefit of the PFSI’s low set up cost is that it can be commercially viable over very small project areas. This efficiency factor is critical because much of the suitable land for conservation forest management for carbon both in New Zealand and overseas is in relatively small land ownerships. If carbon forestry is to realise its enormous potential globally it requires efficient delivery mechanisms. The PFSI is a working example of how this can be achieved.

Belton says that in the New Zealand context the PFSI has the potential to be a transformative mechanism by making conservation management more economic on land areas that are environmentally high risk and high cost. The key is to secure attractive levels of payment for carbon sequestration and other environmental services. Only then will landowners be positively incentivised to change landuse over these “at risk” areas within their properties.

Permanent Forests International has recently presented another aggregation of PFSI credits to New Zealand emitters and prospective overseas buyers. PFI expect to have an increasing supply of PFSI carbon credits into the future

Forest Owners Reap Benefits from Carbon Sale

2010-06-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

Friday, 25 June 2010, 4:44 pm

Press Release: Independent Forestry Services

From: Independent Forestry Services Ltd

Mediapak: METROPAK plus INTERNET & FORESTRY SPECIAL LIST

Forest Owners Reap Benefits from Carbon Sale

A collection of South Island based forest owners and investors have recently concluded a landmark agreement for a European government to purchase forest carbon credits.

The deal was facilitated by Independent Forestry Services Ltd (IFS), a New Zealand based forest management and consulting company which has been at the forefront of the carbon market since its inception in New Zealand.

The deal illustrated that the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme was working well for forest owners and provided some exciting opportunities for existing forest owners and those wishing to invest in forestry.

“It’s satisfying to facilitate access to the international carbon market for our clients, allowing them to benefit from the opportunities that carbon forestry presents.”

“Carbon credits are currently trading between NZ$16-NZ$20 per unit and we have secured a sale at the upper limits of this range.”

“Successful deals such as this represent the beginning of a significant ongoing income stream for forest owners.”

Mitchell says whilst this sale has been to a European buyer, he expects demand from domestic purchasers to increase over the coming months with domestic emitters coming into the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme from 1 July.

IFS will be looking to facilitate further aggregated sales of forestry credits throughout the year with a view to establishing long term purchase agreements for carbon credits sourced from its New Zealand wide client base.

Canfor Pulp, PCT strike forest carbon offset deal

2010-06-26T10:53:00.001-07:00

VICTORIA

Canfor Pulp Limited Partnership has signed a letter of intent with Pacific Carbon Trust for a multi-year deal to sell carbon offsets related to emission reductions at the Northwood pulp mill in Prince George, B.C. The emission reduction project will generate up to 80,000 tonnes in CO2e reductions, announced PCT CEO Scott MacDonald.
"Canfor Pulp has made significant investments over the past two decades to reduce its carbon footprint," said Canfor Pulp president and CEO Joe Nemeth. "Between 1990 and 2010, Canfor Pulp has reduced its carbon emissions by nearly 40%. We are pleased that Pacific Carbon Trust has taken a leadership role in Canada, to provide a vehicle that financially recognizes proactive investments that further reduce carbon emissions."
Located at the Northwood Pulp Mill in Prince George, the aggregated emission-reduction project has three component sub-projects. One is the installation of a side stream scrubber which allows the mill to achieve higher biomass-fuel-burn rates, supporting a reduction in the burning of natural gas.
Also, equipment improvements to the biomass delivery systems will reduce the need to supplement the fuel supply with natural gas, resulting in reduced greenhouse-gas emissions.
In addition, major upgrades to the recovery boiler will increase mill pulp production, improve combustion efficiency, increase internal electricity generation and reduce steam requirements from the mill's power boilers.
Collectively, these improvements will also significantly reduce sulphur and particulate emissions.
Under the agreement, Pacific Carbon Trust will purchase all third-party-verified offsets originating from the project from 2010 to 2012, with future purchases dependent on the parameters of any cap and trade systems developed at the regional or national levels.
To qualify greenhouse gas emission reductions as carbon offsets, project developers must demonstrate financial, technological or other obstacles that are partially or fully overcome by revenues from offset sales.
"The growing demand for carbon offsets is a new and exciting opportunity for the B.C. forest sector," said Forests and Range Minister Pat Bell. "Recognizing the economic and environmental value of this opportunity, Canfor has upgraded its Northwood Pulp Mill with innovative technologies that will help fight climate change and supply the market for forest carbon offsets."
Pacific Carbon Trust is a Crown corporation established in 2008 to deliver B.C.-based greenhouse gas offsets.

UN-REDD, World Bank Respond to REDD+ Partnership Proposal

2010-05-22T04:52:00.001-07:00

Climate-L.org - IISDRS | 19 May 2010, 10:35 am

12 May 2010: The UN-REDD Programme and the World Bank’sForest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and Forest Investment Program (FIP) have released a joint statement in response to a draft document released by the organizers of the meeting on the interim REDD+ (reducing emission from deforestation andforest degradation in developing countries, conservation, sustainable forest management and enhancement of forest carbon stocks) partnership, to be held in Oslo, Norway, on 27 May 2010.

The draft document describes the intent of partner governments to provide a voluntary, non-legally binding framework for the interim REDD+ partnership, whose purpose is to serve as an interim platform for partner governments to take immediate action to scale up REDD+ actions and finance, while a future mechanism under the UNFCCC is negotiated and implemented. The document lists the principles of the partnership, which include: focusing on support for developing countries’ REDD+ efforts; being inclusive; providing transparency around financing, actions and results; promoting safeguards provided by the draft decision being negotiated under UNFCCC; and coordinating delivery of scaled up REDD+ financing.

In terms of organization, the document states that the partnership will meet regularly and will draw on the knowledge of the Facility Management Team of the FCPF and the UN-REDD Programme Technical Secretariat for the partnership’s secretariat services, including organizing meetings, designing and maintaining the REDD+ coordination database, and providing logistical support and analyses, reports and papers. A representative group of stakeholders will participate as observers to the partnership.

The document then lists a series of operational measures, including establishing a voluntary REDD+ database, determining the modalities for stakeholder participation, sharing lessons and best practices, identifying and addressing gaps and overlaps in financing, and facilitating discussion on the effectiveness of relevant initiatives.

In the UN-REDD, FCPF and FIP response to the draft document, the organizations highlight their actions towards enhancing cooperation and coordination, including efforts towards developing a joint delivery platform for REDD+ readiness. They express their support for the objectives of the proposed partnership, and state their readiness to provide the secretariat services envisaged in the draft document. [UN-REDD, FCPF and FIP Joint Response Statement] [Draft Document on Interim REDD+ Partnership]

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