| New Carbon Finance Project Will Alleviate Poverty and Address Climate Change | ||
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| Press Release No:2010/279/SDN | ||
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Contacts: World Vision Australia – Bill Pheasant, + 61 3 9287 2282, bill.pheasant@worldvision.com.au World Vision Ethiopia – Tamirat Yirgu, +521116 293349, tamirat_yirigu@wvi.org World Bank Washington DC – Isabel Hagbrink, + 1 202-458-0422, ihagbrink@worldbank.org
NAIROBI, March 3 2010 -- On the margins of the annual Africa Carbon Forum, a new initiative to bring environmental and financial benefits to local communities in the impoverished highlands of Ethiopia was announced here today.
The Humbo Assisted Natural Regeneration Project is Africa's first large-scale forestry project to be registered under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. It will bring both economic and social benefits to poor communities in Ethiopia as well as environmental benefits as the project will cut an estimated 880,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the next 30 years.
World Vision Australia CEO Tim Costello points to the Humbo Assisted Natural Regeneration Project, developed by the international development agency World Vision in partnership with the World Bank, as a highly successful example of reforestation that alleviates poverty while also addressing climate change.
“World Vision has been working with poor communities for more than 20 years to implement environmentally sustainable projects that create jobs and reduce poverty,” he said. “While the income from the carbon credits is a welcome bonus, other tangible benefits from the project come from building resilience against climate impacts.
The Humbo Project is the product of collaboration across organizations and continents, involving World Vision offices in Australia and Ethiopia, the World Bank, the Ethiopian Environment Protection Agency, as well as local and regional governments and the community. It has restored more than 2,700 hectares of degraded land in Humbo in south-western Ethiopia since 2007. Registration of the Project by the United Nations enables the future sale of over 338,000 tonnes worth of carbon credits (by 2017), of which the World Bank’s BioCarbonFund will purchase 165,000 tonnes worth of carbon credits.
The BioCarbon Fund is an initiative with public and private contributions. It purchases emission reductions from afforestation and reforestation projects under the CDM, as well as from land-use sector projects outside the CDM, such as projects that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and increase carbon sequestration in soils through improved agriculture practices.
The sale of carbon credits under the BioCarbon Fund will provide an income stream of more than US$700,000 to the local communities over a minimum of ten years. Further revenue will be available to the community from the sale of carbon credits not purchased by the World Bank as well as from the sale of timber products from designated woodlots in the Project.
The Humbo Project is the largest World Bank forestry project in Africa to gain CDM registration. “To date, Africa hosts less than 2 % of all registered CDM projects. Promotion of land-use and forestry projects in this region is key to changing the status quo. Without this, it will be difficult for a post-Kyoto climate regime to gain support from African countries. In this regard, the registration of this project has a special significance,” says Ms. Inger Andersen, Director, Sustainable Development (Africa Region) for the World Bank.
“We believe that this project will encourage project developers to scale up land–use and forestry initiatives in this region, thus allowing African countries to benefit from opportunities of growing carbon markets while providing local communities with additional social, economic and environmental benefits.”
World Vision Ethiopia, National Director, Ms. Tenagne Lemma, said the strengths of the Humbo Project had been publicly recognized by the Ethiopian Government on World Environment Day last year followed by the secondment of two World Vision field officers to the nation’s climate change negotiating team. The “Humbo model” was also being replicated in other World Vision projects across the country.
“The steep slopes of the project site had been cleared since the early 1970s, and with almost no remaining trees, erosion and mudslides were common in the rainy season,” she said. “This has now all changed.
“The multiplying benefits to the community through improved land management and the flow-on benefits to people’s health, food security and livelihoods surpassed our most optimistic expectations. Even more exciting than the carbon revenue is the income generated from the sale of fodder, forest fruits and eventually the selective harvest of wood products that contributes to household livelihoods and the local economy, and which will far exceed the carbon revenue.”
While conventional approaches to reforestation require the costly replanting of trees from nursery stock, over 90 percent of the Humbo Project area has been reforested using Farmer Managed Natural Forest Regeneration (FMNR), which encourages new growth from tree stumps previously felled but still living. Using this method, a vast ‘underground forest’ has been unearthed and indigenous, biodiverse forest species, some of which are endangered, have been restored to this region.
To date, thirteen forestry projects have been registered under the CDM, and this is the fifth LULUCF project to be registered in the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund. The development of such land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) projects is crucial, particularly on a continent that generally has not seen the realization of a large number of CDM projects.
The majority of Ethiopia’s 80 million people depend on agriculture for their living, which accounts for 50 percent of GDP and 80 percent of total employment. World Vision has worked in the Humbo area of Ethiopia since the great famine of 1984-85 when half a million people died.
For more information on the BioCarbon Fund visit: http://www.wbcarbonfinance.org
For more information on the African Carbon Forum, please visit: http://www.africacarbonforum.com/2009/english/index.htm | ||
By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff WriterSaturday, February 27, 2010
Three key senators are engaged in a radical behind-the-scenes overhaul of climate legislation, preparing to jettison the broad "cap-and-trade" approach that has defined the legislative debate for close to a decade.
The sharp change of direction demonstrates the extent to which the cap-and-trade strategy -- allowing facilities to buy and sell pollution credits in order to meet a national limit on greenhouse gas emissions -- has become political poison. In a private meeting with several environmental leaders on Wednesday, according to participants, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), declared, "Cap-and-trade is dead."
Graham and Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) have worked for months to develop an alternative to cap-and-trade, which the House approved eight months ago. They plan to introduce legislation next month that would apply different carbon controls to individual sectors of the economy instead of setting a national target.
According to several sources familiar with the process, the lawmakers are looking at cutting the nation's greenhouse gas output by targeting, in separate ways, three major sources of emissions: electric utilities, transportation and industry.
Power plants would face an overall cap on emissions that would become more stringent over time; motor fuel may be subject to a carbon tax whose proceeds could help electrify the U.S. transportation sector; and industrial facilities would be exempted from a cap on emissions for several years before it is phased in. The legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore and would provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities.
"This is a different bill," Lieberman said in an interview. "We haven't abandoned the market-based idea, but we're willing to negotiate with colleagues who have different ideas."
Many lawmakers and lobbyists say even a radically different climate bill would face big hurdles to passage, given conflicting corporate and consumer interests, regional divides and a crowded Senate calendar. Energy industry lobbyists have turned much of their attention to proposing numerous variations of more narrow energy legislation.
But President Obama has continued to push for broad legislation that he says would make the U.S. economy more efficient, slow climate change and fulfill U.S. pledges in international climate talks in December to cut the country's emissions by 17 percent by 2020. A U.S. failure to fulfill that commitment could undercut the determination of other nations to live up to their pledges.
Opponents of cap-and-trade, including GOP congressional leaders and some energy companies, have portrayed the House-passed bill as an energy tax in disguise that would hurt U.S. consumers and create a financial commodity that could be subject to manipulation. The measure also came under criticism because it gave away a large number of free allowances to coal users.
Environmental advocates, eager to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation before the November midterm elections, said the shift in strategy represents the best shot at getting something done this year.
"The Senate is understanding this is not a simple problem -- it's multiple problems, and it requires multiple solutions," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club.
The change in policy, which might even include giving money raised through carbon pollution allowances directly back to consumers, a scheme known as "cap-and-dividend," could appeal to some wavering senators. Senior Obama administration officials have also been studying the cap-and-dividend approach. But it remains unclear whether that would be enough to produce the 60 votes proponents need, especially when the Senate has yet to finish work on health-care legislation and a jobs package.
Powerful business leaders have their own priorities. Michael Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power, a heavily coal-based utility, said one much-discussed proposal for a cap-and-trade plan limited to utilities was "ridiculous" because it would place an unfair burden on coal-based utilities. He added that "cap-and-dividend would be equally inappropriate." He said it would take money from "mom in the Midwest and dividend it to Paris Hilton."
While Obama has continued to assert the need for any climate bill to raise the price of carbon-based fuels, the American Petroleum Institute has been running television ads during the Winter Olympics saying "Americans say no to raising energy taxes."
Even some moderate Republicans, seen as possible supporters of a new climate bill, remain opposed to the idea of putting a price on carbon, which Lieberman still calls "sine qua non," or an essential ingredient, of any such bill. Andy Fisher, a spokesman for Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), said the senator, who has opposed cap-and-trade and carbon taxes, could support pricing carbon "potentially at some point, but not at the moment."
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told Kerry this week that he and his colleagues need to produce a bill as soon as possible to have any chance of passage in 2010. Jim Manley, Reid's spokesman, said it is the majority leader's "hope to bring it up to the floor for a vote," adding, "But we've got a whole host of other things on our plate, and aRepublican Party that's making it difficult for us to pass all but the most routine legislation."
Kerry said that although the package the three senators will unveil will not have 60 votes when it becomes public, he is confident that it will win over skeptical lawmakers.
"What people need to understand about this bill is this really is a jobs bill, an economic transformation for America, an energy independence bill and a health/pollution-reduction bill that has enormous benefits for the country," Kerry said.