World Forests are Bargaining Chip in Greenhouse Debates

by Danielle Knight

At issue are proposals backed by the World Bank and some governments and non-governmental organizations -- such as the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy -- to preserve forests as natural "sinkholes" for greenhouse gases, blamed by most scientists for global warming and climate change.

Environmental think-tanks including the Union of Concerned Scientists and Worldwatch Institute, while applauding efforts to preserve forests, fear that industrialized countries will continue to pump out greenhouse gases if they preserve their forests, or pay other nations to not clearcut their trees.

"Greenhouse forestry won't necessarily be good for the forests -- and it certainly won't prevent climate change," says Ashley T. Mattoon, a researcher with Washington-based Worldwatch. "The forest issue threatens to become a giant loophole that undermines the commitments made in Kyoto."

Most scientists believe that these gases, mainly resulting from the burning of oil, coal and gas, are responsible for the heating up of the world's surface and will continue to continue to accelerate. The increase in temperatures would have major climatological and environmental effects, ranging from an increasing intensity of storms to flooding and desertification, they say.

Meteorologists at the United Nations and elsewhere, meanwhile, declared that the last 10 years comprised the hottest decade ever recorded on Earth while 1997 was the hottest year -- and that 1998 is on track to being even hotter.

To deal with this threat, industrialized nations agreed in Kyoto to reduce the emissions of six greenhouse gases by an average of six percent from 1990 levels, and to complete the reductions between 2008 and 2012.

The Protocol's basic framework provides industrial countries the option to offset their greenhouse emissions by counting the carbon absorbed by their forests and other ecosystems that absorb carbon dioxide, termed "carbon sinks." While cutting back on coal and oil is a tough sell politically, as powerful industries say such reductions will hurt them economically, planting trees has nearly universal appeal.

"I think it's a wonderful opportunity to preserve an unusual natural environment at a relatively low cost," says Linn Draper, president of American Electric Power.

Tia Nelson, deputy director of the Washington-based Nature Conservancy's climate change programs, agrees. "The benefits to watersheds, biodiversity protection and to local communities are huge," she says. "That's why we're at the table."

"At Kyoto, many scientists argued that we do not understand the cycle in its entirety well enough to predict whether carbon moving into industrialized country forests will actually stay there," Mattoon says. "In their view, carbon sinks shouldn't have been entered into the treaty until more solid data on them had been collected."

There also is no way of ensuring that the trees spared in the name of reducing emissions would not have been preserved in any event, she adds. "The protocol is highly unlikely to produce any long-term increase in the size of these sinks, beyond what would probably have happened anyway."

The long term permanence of certain forests counted as sinks is also questionable, says Mattoon.

"You cannot be sure that a forest fire or flood will not wipe out a forest area that has been counted as a sink," she says. "But you can be sure that the emissions will be in the atmosphere permanently."

Mattoon warns that, under current definitions used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the scientific body that advises the parties to the convention -- many activities that would severely reduce a forest's capacity to absorb and hold carbon would not be discouraged. This included selective harvesting of trees and road construction.

"It is likely to encourage types of forestry -- like tree plantations -- that are aren't generally very good for forests," she adds. "In a sense, the protocol has got the problem reversed: instead of looking to the forests for a way to avoid facing our fossil fuel addiction, we ought to deal with the addiction, as a way to avoid endangering forests through climatic disruption.

"After all, many of the recent forest fires were preceded by unusual droughts, and some scientists are reading at least some of the droughts as a form of climate change."

Another worry is that governments will exaggerate the estimates of carbon absorption potential of their forests in order meet their legally binding emissions cuts.

A study published last October in the journal Science concluded that trees in North America could soak up every ton of carbon discharged annually by fossil fuel burning in Canada and the United States. This finding has led to arguments over whether the United States, seemingly with the capacity to absorb its carbon, should have less responsibility to reduce its emissions.

Because of the all the uncertain factors involved in accounting for the "sinks," the IPCC has agreed to do a report on the scientific aspects of the problem due out in June 2000.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel industry corporations have poured millions of dollars into the rainforests of Central and South America, hopeful that these will one day be credited as emissions reductions.

British Petroleum America, for example, recently entered into a $9.5 million investment with the Bolivian government to protect about 630,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest.