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CLIMATE CHANGE: Experts Call for U.S. Leadership on Deforestation

Zach Rosenberg

WASHINGTON, Oct 8 2009 (IPS) - A bipartisan commission is calling for the United States to make halting global deforestation a major priority in both domestic and international climate change policies.

The Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests, composed of influential Washington insiders, released a report Wednesday outlining changes to U.S. policy that it says must be made to prevent catastrophic climate change.

The commission lays out an extensive initial framework for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), hinging on international partnerships and preservation incentives for developing nations.

The framework calls for the allocation of one billion dollars before 2012 to slow deforestation in developing nations, and 14 billion dollars annually by 2020. At least two-thirds of this proposed funding would come from private sources.

“Slowing deforestation is the most cost-effective choice of all the carbon emissions curbing actions,” said John Podesta, the commission’s co-chair and president of the Centre for American Progress. “We need to protect our forests. Our common future depends on it.”

The report is the latest in a flurry of efforts to influence Washington policymakers before a major international summit on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark this December.

Deforestation was cited by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as causing 17 percent of annual carbon emissions, roughly equal to the emissions of the world’s transportation sector.

The commission found that halting deforestation will be more effective and less expensive than transforming global transportation.

“If we move now, and move effectively now, we will reduce the demand for more expensive action at a later date,” said Thomas Pickering, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

Central to the report is a recommendation for a domestic cap-and-trade programme granting emissions allowances in the form of offsets, which would credit greenhouse gas emitters for actions such as investing in international emissions reduction programmes.

A proposed domestic cap-and-trade programme was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and a similar bill awaits a vote in the Senate, but supporters are unsure of Senate vote before the Copenhagen summit.

“We need to go to the international negotiations with a strong position, but more importantly, we need to take action now,” said Podesta.

Domestic commitments are seen as crucial steps in building support for a global framework on climate change.

Momentum is building in Washington for an overhaul of climate policy, with President Barack Obama signing an executive order Monday directing federal agencies to monitor their greenhouse gas emissions and set targets to reduce their emissions by 2020.

The executive order from the White House was followed by the release of a study Tuesday which found that improvements in energy efficiency, renewable energy, forest conservation, and sustainable land use worldwide could achieve up to 75 percent of needed global emissions reductions by 2020, providing a savings of 14 billion dollars.

After decades of being relegated to the fringe of the U.S. political scene, environmentalism has been embraced as an important national security factor as well as an opportunity for the U.S. to regain the initiative in setting priorities for the international community.

U.S. companies participate heavily in the increasingly lucrative “green economy” market.

Major emitters such as airlines, energy companies and truck manufacturers compete with one another to be perceived as environmentally friendly.

But political support has lagged behind grassroots efforts.

Despite the growing chorus of supporters calling for fast and widespread action on climate change, the debate is often framed in ideological terms rather than scientific.

Concerted resistance efforts by industry lobby groups and the American Chamber of Commerce often make supporting climate change legislation an expensive proposition for policymakers.

“I hoped that we would be further along today in the Senate,” said Podesta.

“There’s been a lot of speculation…that this window does not exist, I don’t believe that,” he added, referring to the likelihood of passing cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate before the Copenhagen Climate Change conference in December.

The harshest critics of cap-and-trade policies come from those worried about the economic impact of potential legislation.

Cap-and-trade programmes, claim critics, will inhibit economic recovery, but Wednesday’s report directly addressed those concerns.

“It’s very clear that this is a fiscally conservative group,” said Nigel Purvis, the executive director of the commission and the president of Climate Advisors.

In considering the report’s recommendations, “cost effectiveness was key”, added Purvis.

“The cost is an issue, but the cost is a cost no matter what,” added Dennis Welch, executive vice president of American Electric Power, at the release of the report.

American Electric Power would be forced to buy credits under the proposed plan and is “significantly short on emissions credits to the tune of 40 million tons in the first year”, he added.

Forests are major sources of carbon sequestration. Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, and release it when they die.

The world’s forests contain an estimated 283 gigatonnes of carbon, more than in Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists estimate that three percent of total forest area is annually lost worldwide.