What happened to forests at Copenhagen??

No one seems quite sure yet what the implications of the Copenhagen Accord will be. It is a three-age political agreement between six Heads of State (U.S., Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Maldives) that is vague on ambition and lacking any legally binding nature.

A big question is what happens to the draft legal agreements that nations of the UN had been working on for the past two years to extend the Kyoto Protocol and bring in the US and support developing countries? The official UN mandate for countries to work on these legally-binding agreements has been extended, but will they ever be finalized now that there is a new, loosey-goosey game in town? Just today news came out that Australia, Canada and Papua New Guinea have chosen to associate themselves with the Accord.

This uncertainty extends to provisions for developed countries to account for emissions from forestry (LULUCF) and the creation of a new mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing countries (REDD). The Copenhagen Accord recognizes the need to establish a REDD mechanism, but does not do so.

The Accord is totally silent on forestry emissions in developed countries - the negotiations on this topic were cut short when Heads of State arrived. In some sense this was a good thing because they were headed in the wrong direction: every developed country would be allowed to increase their forestry emissions without any penalty, as long as emissions didn't increase more than predicted.

Environmental groups staged a good fight against this idea in Copenhagen - in favour of Making Forests Count and against the logging loophole. We also proposed a very fair basis of accounting: account for all changes in forestry emissions relative to a historical average using all existing data that has been provided to the UN(from 1990 - 2007). Some champions emerged, notably France, who challenged the EU to take a position with environmental integrity.

I would say that we can still win this fight except, as I've said, it's not entirely clear there is still a fight to be won - will there be a new Kyoto agreement on forestry accounting rules? Will there be a Kyoto beyond 2012. The answer to both these questions must be yes if we are to have a fair, ambitious and legally-binding global agreement to tack climate change... but the next few months will tell whether that is in the cards.

French Government Makes Forests Count!

France jumped way out in front in the campaign to Make Forests Count today!

In a very bold environmental move, the French climate Ambassador Brice Lalonde served notice to the rest of the European Union that it would be opposing the EU's current position in support of a logging loophole in the Copenhagen Climate Agreement that would allow countries to hide increased emissions from logging, thereby weakening their targets.

France's proposal is for the EU to agree to collectively account for all changes in emissions in its forests since 1990 - the year for which all other sectors are measured. The EU member states that have argued this would result in too many emissions on their books would be helped by sharing the 'burden' of these impacts across all EU countries. France has specifically stepped up to shoulder some of the burden from emissions in other countries.

France made the proposal formally tonight at an EU heads of state meeting in Brussels. If France succeeds in turning the EU's position, it would be a *huge* boost to making forests count in the Copenhagen climate agreement and remove one of the irritant loopholes that undermine real action on climate change.

I had the pleasure to sit in the conference room of the French delegation's office while Ambassador Lalonde made the statement to the press. It was very exciting because, as a colleague put it, "This is a really green move by France in an area usually filled with unrelenting cheating and gloom." This really was the most positive development in the last three years on this issue. I was even moved to congratulate the Ambassador in a French that I can only assume was considered cute rather than convincing.

The move earned France the Ray of the Day award, a new award started by the Climate Action Network at the Copenhagen Climate Conference to honour truly exceptional acts of green that push the negotiations forward.

Here's a story from AFP.