First Climate Change Negotiations of 2009 About to Begin

I'm off today by air to Germany for the first official negotiations of this year. These negotiations should culminate in a new global climate change agreement by December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

As always, I will be focusing my attention on how emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry are included in the international agreement. I will be following the positions taken by Parties (countries), meeting with negotiators, and working with other environmental reps there to plan our activities and communications. Watch for my posts!

I now have a pretty good idea of what I think needs to come out of this process - what we need on the land use and forestry file. So I will be assessing progress towards reaching this eventual outcome in Copenhagen:

· Emissions resulting from industrial activities in natural/wild ecosystems are accounted for under the new global climate change agreement:

Þ Add mandatory ‘peatland management’ activity

Þ Add mandatory ‘forestry in primary forests’ and ‘forest conversion to plantations’ activities or account for forest management

· Emissions from natural disturbances are addressed using approaches that reduce compliance risk but do not exclude emissions from accounting

· There is a built-in expectation of climate change mitigation from this sector through such means as a minimum ‘bar’ or threshold of emissions/removals.

· National emission reduction targets and LULUCF rules are designed to ensure that credits generated by this sector do not substitute for emission reductions in the fossil fuel sector, either through increased national emission reduction commitments, or through limits on the use of LULUCF credits for compliance.

· Domestic policies, markets and incentives for mitigation in the forest sector should be appropriate to the forest landscape context:

Þ Largely intact forested landscapes: Avoiding emissions by protecting carbon stocks

Þ Landscapes in which forests have already been largely cleared and degraded: Growing new carbon stocks

Þ Forested landscapes subject to ongoing clearing and degradation: reducing emissions from deforestation, degradation and land-use change, including through sustainable forest management