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Fearnside, P.M. 2001. Environmentalists
split over Kyoto and Amazonian
deforestation. Environmental
Conservation 28(4): 295-299.

ISSN: 0376-8929

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Cambridge University Press

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Environmentalists split over Kyoto and
Amazonian deforestation

Philip M. Fearnside

Department
of Ecology

National
Institute for Research

in the Amazon (INPA)

Av. André Araújo, 2936

C.P.
478

69011-970
Manaus, Amazonas

BRAZIL

Fax:
+55-92-642-8909

Tel:
+55-92-643-1822

e-mail
[email-masked]

22 May 2001

revised
15 Sept. 2001

revised
18 Sept. 2001

For the
“Commentary” section of Environmental Conservation (EC 544)

Comment

Environmentalists split over Kyoto and
Amazonian deforestation

Controversies over tropical
forest and Kyoto

Slowing deforestation in
Amazonia would be a significant contribution to combating global warming and,
depending on decisions under the Kyoto Protocol, could provide non-destructive
support for rural population in the region (Fearnside, 2000a).  Crediting avoided
deforestation is divisive, both within and among environmental non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and governments. Positions of NGOs on inclusion of avoided
deforestation in the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
are tightly linked to geography: European NGOs oppose inclusion of forests, USA
NGOs (other than USA branches or affiliates of international groups) favor
inclusion of forests, and Brazilian NGOs (also excepting most branches or
affiliates of international NGOs) also favor forests.  The probability of chance explaining these views being clustered
in Europe, North America and Brazil in this way is miniscule.  In other words, these positions are
based on something other than the universal concerns about climate change and
future generations that predominate in public statements on all sides.

Much
opposition to avoided deforestation as a supposed “loophole” stems
from the belief that it is a “dangerous distraction” because
“The way the Protocol has been written, every ton of carbon absorbed by a
sink allows a ton of carbon to be emitted from burning fossil fuels” (WWF Climate Change Campaign, 2000).  Fortunately, this interpretation is
mistaken because one does not need to assume a ratio of one-to-one between the
carbon maintained in the forests and the credit granted that allows fossil-fuel
carbon to be emitted. More carbon can be maintained in the forests than
the amount of carbon credit granted. In this way, even if the carbon in the
forests is temporary, at some point a net benefit exists for the climate from
having a forest maintenance project instead of a smaller reduction in
fossil-fuel emissions. If well negotiated, inclusion of forests can result in
concrete gains for global climate, in addition to large advantages in other
spheres.

Opponents
of including forests point to the fact that forests could later be cut,
degraded, or burned, thereby releasing their carbon to the atmosphere.  Climatic change itself is used to attack
crediting forest conservation on the grounds that many forests in Amazonia are
doomed anyway due to predicted drying (e.g., Greenpeace International, 2000a;
see rebuttal by Niles, 2000).
Because the credits generated by a CDM project would allow carbon to be
emitted to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels in an Annex I (developed)
country, more carbon would be present in the atmosphere when the forest later
disappears than in the no-project case (Meinshausen & Hare, 2000).

Fortunately,
several factors counteract this effect. Most important is the implication of
forest opponents that the same weight should be given to events in the present as
to those in the distant future. Global warming alters the probabilities of
droughts, floods and other disasters, which can be assumed to remain higher
forever after temperature increases. Therefore, any postponement of global
warming represents a permanent earnings of all damages that would have occurred
during the interval that warming was postponed. In other words, time has value
and maintaining carbon in forests has value even if uncertain and impermanent
(Fearnside et al., 2000).  Per ton
of carbon, this value is not 100% of the value of a ton of fossil-fuel
carbon--but neither is it zero.  The
relevant question is how to quantify the conversion and make appropriate
adjustments to crediting (Fearnside, 2000b; Fearnside et al., 2000).
“Market-based” mechanisms such as the “Colombian
Proposal” also achieve this end (Blanco & Forner, 2000; Kerr &
Leining, 2000; see
also similar proposals by Dutschke, 2001
and Marland et al., 2001).

In July 2001 an agreement was reached in Bonn,
Germany, at the second round of the Sixth Conference of the Parties (COP-6-bis)
of the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UN-FCCC).  The Bonn agreement excludes avoided
deforestation from the CDM in the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment
period (2008-2012).  The question of
avoided deforestation remains relevant to the Kyoto negotiations because of the
need to define the rules for the second and subsequent commitment periods and
because of the possibility of funding avoided-deforestation projects with money
generated by the as-yet undefined compliance system (Schlamadinger et al.,
2001).   Much of the debate
over carbon accounting and possible adjustments (Noble et al., 2000) is also
relevant to other forest-sector activities, such as reforestation, which have
been included in the CDM under the Bonn agreement.

Government Positions

The USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand
have supported inclusion of forests.
Particularly the USA, Canada and Japan stand to gain financially by
buying credit to satisfy their Kyoto commitments.  This financial interest, rather than
concern for global climate change, explains these negotiating positions.   It should be noted that the
economic models used to justify these countries’ claims that domestic
reduction of fossil fuel emissions would be prohibitively expensive are based
on assumptions that exaggerate abatement costs and understate the losses from
climate change that would result from inaction; many of the groups that have
produced these studies have severe conflicts of interest with the fossil fuel
industry (see Chapman & Khanna, 2000).   Despite the often-tendentious
nature of economic analyses, the conclusion that avoiding tropical
deforestation can reduce net emissions more cheaply than many energy-sector
alternatives is correct.

The effective withdrawal of the USA from Kyoto
negotiations in March 2001 reduces, but does not eliminate, the potential
effectiveness of the Protocol.
Among other consequences is a substantially smaller demand for CDM
carbon credits than would otherwise be the case, and consequently a lower
expected price for carbon.  On the
longer term, the current position of the USA should not be viewed as permanent.  The interdependence of all nations has
been suddenly made clear on both sides of the Atlantic by the terrorist attacks
against the USA in September 2001; one may hope that this increased awareness
may result in increasing willingness to address global problems in a unified
fashion.

Opposition of European countries to crediting
avoided deforestation is best explained by the fact that fossil fuel prices are
much higher in Europe than in the USA.
In virtually any European country a liter of gasoline costs at least
double the price in the USA (Sheehan, 2001, p. 48).  This puts European industries at a
disadvantage in competition for international markets.  European governments are therefore
anxious to force the USA to increase its energy prices.  By closing the door to potentially large
sources of carbon credits available for purchase abroad, such as CDM projects
for avoiding tropical deforestation, the USA would be forced to apply carbon
taxes to fossil fuels.  While there
is fairness in leveling the playing field for international competition, this
is a separate issue from mitigating climate change.

Most Latin-American countries favor inclusion of
both plantations and avoided deforestation in the CDM. However, Brazil
currently opposes any credit for avoiding deforestation but favors credit for
silvicultural plantations.  This implies
a certain inconsistency in alleging lack of permanence as justification for
opposing avoided deforestation.  The
Brazilian foreign ministry’s position on avoided deforestation is better
explained by unstated fears of “internationalization” of the Amazon
(Fearnside, 2001a; Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force, 2001).

NGO positions

Four
major European-dominated NGOs (Greenpeace International, WWF-International,
Birdlife International and FOE-International) oppose inclusion of avoided deforestation
in the CDM.  The opposite position
is held by major environmental NGOs headquartered in the USA, such as
Conservation International (CI), Environmental Defense (EDF), the Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

Environmental
groups in the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America have varying
positions.  The Regional Alliance
for Conservation Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean (ARCA) issued a
statement in November 2000 supporting inclusion of avoided deforestation in the
CDM, signed by groups in 11 countries (ARCA, 2000).  However, several other groups are
opposed to forests, the most voluble being the Friends of the Earth branch in
Paraguay.

In
Brazil almost all environmental groups favor forests (“Manifestação...”,
2000), but a few do not (“A Brazilian NGO Declaration”, 2000).
Perhaps the situation was best summed up in a press interview by Mario Monzoni,
climate coordinator of FOE-Brazilian Amazonia: “It is very easy to be in
Washington or Amsterdam saying what nongovernmental organizations in the south
(developing world) should do.  We
live here, this problem is here.” (Bugge, 2000).  Among the organizations supporting
inclusion of avoided deforestation are the Brazilian Amazonia affiliate of FOE
(Monzoni et al., 2000), the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), Environmental
Research Institute of Amazonia (IPAM), Institute for Man and Environment in the
Amazon (IMAZON), and a wide array of grassroots groups such as the National
Council of Rubber Tappers (CNS), the Amazonian Working Group (GTA), the
Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), the Federation of Agricultural Workers of
Pará (FETAGRI), and the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples of
Brazilian Amazonia (COIAB).

It
is difficult to understand how any environmental organization could take a
stand that implies throwing away one of the most important opportunities for
maintaining tropical forests.  This
is particularly so for organizations like WWF and Birdlife International that
have protection of biodiversity as their primary purpose, since without
tropical forests the World’s biodiversity would be much reduced.  Even if achieved, the gain would be
modest from forcing the USA to meet its Kyoto emission quota almost exclusively
from reducing fossil fuel consumption (a highly uncertain payoff, given that
the USA Senate has not yet ratified the Protocol, independent of the recent
setback from President Bush).  This
opportunity results from the unusual circumstance of the USA having signed the
Kyoto Protocol before decisions had been reached on matters such as inclusion
of forests in the CDM.  This
situation is very temporary.  Any
gains would be on a “one-shot” basis because the “assigned
amounts” (the amount each Annex I country is allowed to emit without penalty)
will be renegotiated for each commitment period after the first one, so
countries like the USA will simply not agree to make emissions reductions as
large as they would have were forest mitigation measures included.  While excluding forests would be a very
important loss for biodiversity, this would be in exchange for only a modest
(or even nonexistent) gain for climate.

Greenpeace
and other groups opposing forests in the CDM base their argument on Article 2
of the UN-FCCC, which
specifies the criterion as “stabilization of greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous
anthropogenic interference with the climate system”, and Article 12,
Paragraph 5(c) of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for “long-term benefits.”
The words “stabilization” and “long-term” are
interpreted to mean that we should only be concerned about the state of the
atmosphere when equilibrium is reached centuries from now, and that what
happens between now and then has no importance for humankind. Theoretically,
the difference between the NGO positions in Europe and in Brazil could be
explained if people in Brazil were interested in their children and
grandchildren and Europeans were only interested in generations at least 200
years in the future.  However, the
probability of a difference of this type is virtually zero, as people all over
the World appear to be basically same in their priorities for the future.

The
position of European NGOs can better be understood in terms of the unconscious
attraction of an opportunity to strike a blow at the USA.  In Europe, the USA’s consumption
lifestyle and associated cultural domination is resented on many counts, and
symbols such as McDonalds, Coca Cola and Walmart are generally reviled.
Attacking this vaguely defined complex of targets finds a ready following for
reasons that have little to do with climate change. These include a desire to
punish the USA for its various sins in the world, the country’s role as
villain in climate negotiations among them.  Although reducing consumption in the USA
would have climate benefits, reducing this consumption should be viewed as a
means to an end rather than as an end in itself.  Viewed in this way, it should not be
allowed to subvert global-warming mitigation efforts in other spheres, such as
tropical forest conservation. The environmental price would be high if we throw
away a major opportunity to maintain tropical rainforest in exchange for an
expected climate benefit several centuries in the future.

Acknowledgments

This
commentary is abbreviated and updated from a paper presented at the III Congresso Brasileiro de
Sistemas Agroflorestais, 21-25 November 2000, Manaus, Amazonas (Fearnside,
2001b,c).  I thank INPA PPI 1-3160
and CNPq AI 350230/97-8 for financial support.  Three reviewers provided valuable
comments.

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Philip M. Fearnside

Department
of Ecology

National
Institute for Research

in the Amazon (INPA)

Av. André Araújo, 2936

C.P.
478

69011-970
Manaus, Amazonas

BRAZIL

Fax:
+55-92-642-8909

Tel:
+55-92-643-1822

e-mail
[email-masked]