Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Forests in or out of carbon markets?


At the Bonn Climate Change Talks last week, Johnathon Pershing, the White House's new Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change gave a briefing to non-governmental organizations.

One of his comments was discreet but thought provoking. In response to a comment from Greenpeace International expressing concern over inclusion of deforestation credits within a fully fungible carbon market, Pershing offered this (I'm paraphrasing): it may make sense to include some kinds of forest credits in the market, and not others.

What might this mean for forest offsets in Canada and the United States? Would forest management contribute offsets to the 2 billion tons of offsets available to capped sectors under congressman Waxman's draft American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009?

It's an important and provocative question: what kinds of forest credits should be included, and under what conditions?

1 comment:

Markus said...

This is an interesting statement - seems there is some negotiations done behind the scenes...surprise, surprise!!!