Ontario considers use of cap-and-trade auction revenue for forestry

Ontario introduced Cap-and-Trade legislation today. The details can be seen on a dedicated website.

On offsets, the supporting discussion paper states "The experts indicated strong support for project types in agriculture, forestry and waste management and priority be given to landfill gas, wastewater treatment, manure management, including anaerobic digestion, and afforestation/reforestation project types. "

Of greater interest to me, is the suggestion that auction revenues could be used to achieve emission reductions through such activities. I've been thinking for some time that this type of approach would be preferable to offsets because it would avoid the additionality problem:

"Ontario recognizes that although some of the agricultural and forestry related activities may not be initially feasible for an offsets approach, such as urban forestry and native grasslands, they represent important forms of bio-sequestration that offer multiple environmental benefits to Ontarians. Benefits include improved adaptive capacity for climate change, biodiversity preservation, improved water quality and improved wildlife habitat. These activities could be supported in other ways, such as using a portion of the allowance value (e.g., auctioning revenues or a set aside) under a Cap-and-Trade system (see section 2.2). This approach has been taken in recently proposed U.S. climate change legislation (e.g., WCI, Waxman-Markey, Lieberman Warner). Ontario also recognizes that some of the initial challenges and complexities facing some agricultural and forestry-related activities will be resolved over time as various offset systems gain experience and as these types of activities are further integrated into future international climate change agreements."

New Article on Forests and Kyoto Negotiations

I have published an article on forests within the Kyoto Negotiations at The Mark, Canada's newest online source of news and ideas: http://beta.themarknews.com/articles/117-into-the-woods

Federal Critical Caribou Map Overlaps Massive Carbon Stores

The Canadian government released a science report last week that identified the critical habitat of the boreal woodland caribou, confirming the need to protect at least half of Canada's entire boreal region in order to prevent the extinction of any additional herds of this threatened species.

Of the 57 herds assessed, the report concludes that 21 are in need of active habitat restoration efforts, 25 require active habitat conservation and 11 are healthy enough that they could tolerate some additional development in their habitat.

If the boreal woodland caribou's habitat were protected, this would also protect much of one of the World's biggest carbon stores - the intact boreal forests and peatlands of Canada. This is because these carbon rich ecosystems are the primary habitat of this threatened species.

For more information, visit www.caribouandyou.ca

Scientific Report on Climate Change Impacts Supports Forest Protection

A report was released yesterday predicting serious impacts of climate change on forests and discussing management strategies to help forests adapt.

Although by no means highlighted by the authors or the accompanying media release, one of the most interesting findings to me is that 'protecting primary forests' and 'reducing forest degradation and deforestation' stand out among the management strategies as having the highest scientific support and agreement for conserving biodiversity and to prevent future emissions from forests that would otherwise accelerate climate change. Check out Appendices 6.2 and 6.7 on pages 172 and 181 of the main report.

Here are some Canadian media stories that have resulted from the report:

Edmonton Journal

Vancouver Sun

Globe and Mail

Calgary Herald

Ottawa Citizen

Coalition Launches New Website to Support Implementation of One of the World's Greatest Conservation Announcements

There's been a great new website launched by the Ontario Boreal Futures Coalition in an effort to secure protective legislation for Ontario's far north. This legislation would be the implementation of Premier McGuinty's major conservation announcement last Summer written about in one of my previous blog posts. On the main site you can read about and support this important initiative.

The site also contains a fantastic virtual tour of the region. The Aboriginal narrator is from Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI), located in the heart of this region. There is also a boreal scrap book where you can post stories and pictures from your adventures in Ontario's boreal north.

Map source: http://borealopportunity.ca/maps.php

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?

The Scale of Impact Negotiated Bars Could Have on National Emissions Accounts

I presented the results of an ititial calculation done today by the Climate Action Network. The presentation of these results begins at about the 6 minute mark of the media conference webcast and resumes with a follow-up question at 16:30.

Here is the text of the statement:

An idea put forward by the European Union (EU) at the Bonn Climate Change Talks could introduce a loophole that would result in countries not being accountable for some of their emissions from forest management. The EU introduced the concept of “The Bar,” which would be a reference against which countries would measure their forestry emissions. The potential loophole results from the option that countries could negotiate their own “bar”. This could be like getting to start a football match with your team four-nil up. So far, no details have been released about how this loophole might be constrained.

Climate Action Network released an initial calculation today illustrating a potentially significant impact of this flexibility on the emission accounts of industrialized countries. In order to calculate the impact this flexibility would have on the scale of forest carbon credits for industrialized countries, CAN looked at sixteen years of historic emissions (1990 – 2006) for thirty-six industrialized nations (not including USA), using the last five years as a hypothetical commitment period.

In measuring the size of the potential loophole, CAN considered the relative impact of setting a weak and an strong bar. The strong bar was set as the lowest level of historic emissions, meaning countries would be expected to do even better than this. The weak bar was the highest level of historic emissions, creating little expectation for improvement. We also compared the accounting impact of these two scenarios to the current accounting rules for forest management.

The accounting difference between the strong bar and the weak bar was roughly seven billion tons of CO₂. This range corresponds to roughly twelve percent of total emission allowances for the first commitment period. The weak bar produced 2.8 billion tons of CO₂ credits more than would be created with the current rules for forest management.[1] This 2.8 billion ton increase corresponds to roughly five percent of total emission allowances for the first commitment period. Our calculation did not consider other improvements in the forest accounting rules that might be made. In all scenarios, the actual emissions to the atmosphere were the same, but the method would make a massive difference in the level of accountability of countries.

Creating a disconnect between accounting and real changes in emissions would not provide the proper signals for governments to unlock the mitigation potential from forest management. These numbers also illustrate the very significant impact that this potential accounting loophole could have on a Party’s overall emission reduction target.

This potential loophole could be most effectively closed by removing the ability of Parties to negotiate their own ‘bar’.

[This has also been published as an article in ECO - see issue 10 from Bonn I, 2009]

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[1] The strong bar resulted in 820 Mt of carbon debits. The weak bar resulted in 1113 Mt credits of carbon. Application of the current rules for forest management, which include gross-net accounting with a cap would result in a credit of approximately 349 Mt of carbon if all countries included in the Appendix of Decision 16/CMP.1elected to account for forest management. Application of net-net accounting with a 1990 base year would result in a credit of 189 Mt of carbon.