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Fearnside, P.M. 2001. Saving tropical forests as a global warming countermeasure: An
issue that divides the environmental movement. Ecological Economics 39(2): 167-184.

ISSN:  0921-8009

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SAVING TROPICAL
FORESTS AS A
GLOBAL WARMING COUNTERMEASURE:  AN
ISSUE THAT DIVIDES THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT

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]

For:  Ecological
Economics

revised:
7 July 2001

COMMENTARY

Saving
tropical forests as a global warming countermeasure: an issue that divides the
environmental movement

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

Received _______

*Corresponding author. Fax:
+55-92-642-8909.

E-mail address:
[email-masked].

Abstract

Saving tropical forests as a
global warming countermeasure has become one of the environmental
movement’s most divisive issues.  Divisions are just as sharp as the
better-known ones between government positions.  While the debate is often couched in
scientific terms and with appeals to high universal principles, the positions
of the different partisans to the debate are better understood in terms of
hidden agendas, conscious or not.
In the case of European governments, which oppose inclusion of forests
in the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, the exclusion of
forests would lead to improvement of industrial competitiveness as compared to
the United States.  In the case of Brazil,
opposition to including avoided deforestation fits with conspiracy theories
regarding internationalization of the Amazon.  For European and European-dominated
NGOs, opposition to forests is best explained as an opportunistic blow at US
consumption culture, which is reviled for reasons largely unrelated to climate
change.  From the point of view of
Brazilian NGOs concerned with maintaining Amazonian forest, these alternative
agendas are side issues that, attractive as they might be, do not merit
throwing away a major opportunity for obtaining monetary flows for forest
maintenance.  . 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 the forest project instead of a
smaller reduction in fossil-fuel emissions. Proposals
for ton-year accounting and for temporary credits effectively deal with issues
such as carbon permanence to make the climatic benefits of avoided
deforestation real, allowing both a gain for climate and the maintenance of
biodiversity and other values through carbon mitigation activities. The
importance of tropical deforestation in global greenhouse gas emissions means
that agreement will eventually have to be reached on how to account for the
benefits of avoided deforestation and incorporate them into mitigation
activities.  This will continue to
be the case regardless of the course of negotiations in the coming months in
the wake of the March 2001 announcement by US
president George W. Bush of his desire to renege on US commitments under the
Protocol.

Keywords: Global warming, Kyoto
Protocol, Deforestation, Tropical forest, Greenhouse gases, Non-Governmental
Organizations

1. Introduction

The
place of tropical forest conservation in efforts to combat global warming has
become a source of sharp disagreement among environmental non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), and also, although they are very loathed to admit it, within their
ranks.  This paper gives the
viewpoints of one participant in these controversies and makes no pretense of
detachment or neutrality.  For
almost 20 years the author has been a strong advocate of slowing tropical
deforestation as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and much of his
professional work over this period has been devoted to providing the scientific
basis, both in terms of data and theory, that is needed to make this
possible.  This is part of a wider
strategy to shift the support of human populations in tropical forest areas
such as Brazilian Amazonia from a system based on destroying the forest to one
based on maintaining the forest for its environmental services (Fearnside,
1997a).

The
positions of environmental NGOs on inclusion of avoided deforestation in the
Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) are tightly linked to
geography, with European NGOs opposing inclusion of forests, US NGOs (other
than US branches or affiliates of international groups) favoring inclusion of
forests, and Brazilian NGOs (also excepting most branches or affiliates of
international NGOs) also favoring forests.
If one
were to represent opinions on this issue by throwing colored darts at a map of
the World, the chances of the colors representing these views being clustered
in Europe, North America and Brazil in this way would be
vanishingly small.  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.  The reasons for these
differences are not scientific, despite the debate frequently being couched in
scientific terms.  The European-dominated
NGOs have a scientific argument that, combined with moral choices regarding
time horizon, time preference and “ancillary” effects, leads to
their rejecting avoided deforestation.
However, an equally sound scientific argument, combined with different
moral choices on the other critical factors, leads to the opposite conclusion.

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 make the assumption of 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 the forest 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.  The same logic that
applies to permanence also applies other aspects of forest projects, such as
uncertainty and leakage.

Avoided deforestation should not be confused with
plantation silviculture, despite the two being virtually always lumped as
“sinks” in European NGO discourse (eg., Greenpeace International,
2000a,b; Hare and Meinshausen., 2000).  They are very different, both in terms
of carbon benefits and in terms of their impacts and benefits for biodiversity
and social concerns.  Avoided
deforestation almost always is more beneficial than tree plantations
(Fearnside, 1995, 1996a).

It
is very important to distinguish between what is a scientific conclusion and
what is a moral judgment.  Science
can provide answers to questions such as “how much carbon will a given
project hold out of the atmosphere, for how long and with what degree of
certainty.” It cannot tell us whether that answer means that the CDM
should include or exclude avoided deforestation.  Such a conclusion requires moral
choices.  We must have the courage
to admit that we are making moral decisions, and to go ahead and make
them.  Decisions on the value of
time, as reflected in the discount rate and the time horizon, are based on the
value that society (represented by “decision makers”) places on a
suite of different considerations, such as the importance placed on present
versus future generations. 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.

People involved in the debates
over forests in the Kyoto Protocol are only rarely aware of underlying
motivations that affect the various positions, including their own.  Most people are not consciously pursuing
a hidden agenda while cynically mouthing an intellectual argument.  Rather, people are carried along by the
social context in which they live: in general virtually everyone any given
individual knows is on the same side of the issue, and those on the other side
are painted in the blackest terms.
Trusted “trademarks” of known NGOs serve as substitutes for
individual analysis of the issues involved.  For example, very few European
environmentalists chanting “Don’t sink the Protocol” could
explain the difference between an avoided emission and a sink, or the
assumptions and implications of time-preference choices underlying different
means of accounting for carbon.

In
the following pages I will suggest rationales for government and NGO positions
that explain such facts as the highly improbable geographical distribution of
opinions.  These must be understood
in the context of the role of tropical forests in climate change and the carbon
and non-carbon considerations in policy choices for mitigating global
warming.  When viewed from the
perspective of the wider environmental concerns that many environmental NGOs
hope to address, one must conclude that those groups that oppose inclusion of
avoided deforestation in global-warming mitigation measures should rethink
their positions.

2. Tropical forests and
climate change

The United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UN-FCCC), signed by over 150 countries in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (UN-FCCC, 1992),
provided a general framework for continuing international negotiations over
reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
Negotiations have proceeded at a series of Conferences of the Parties
(COPs), the most important being the third such conference (COP-3) in Kyoto,
Japan, where the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in December 1997 (UN-FCCC,
1997).  COP-6 took place in November
2000 in the Hague to decide on the role of forests under the Kyoto
Protocol, including the role of tropical forests under the Clean Development
Mechanism.  No agreement was
reached, and the conclusion of COP-6 was delayed to another meeting in Bonn, Germany in May, later postponed to
July 2001. Negotiations on the inclusion of tropical forests in efforts to
combat the greenhouse effect have behind them a series of hidden agendas,
although the debate is frequently expressed in terms academic and moral
arguments. Understanding the unspoken underpinnings of the debate so far is
essential to finding solutions in the future, regardless of the direction that
negotiations may take in the coming months or years.

The statements by US President George W. Bush and
his spokespersons in March 2001 voicing opposition to the Kyoto Protocol as a
whole have shocked all those concerned with climate change.  The urgency of pressuring the United States into admitting its
responsibilities as the World’s largest net emitter of greenhouse gases
and taking effective measures to reduce these emissions should not be allowed
to smother ongoing discussion of the merits of the different mitigation
options, including slowing tropical deforestation.

Regardless of
what is decided in the coming months concerning the first commitment period of
the Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012), or even on the fate of the Kyoto Protocol as a
whole, the greenhouse effect will be with us for centuries to come, and, as its
impacts become more obvious and undeniable, the measures taken to combat it
will increase in scale.  Sooner or
later the role of tropical forests will be recognized and incorporated into
global warming mitigation measures because the logic behind the carbon benefits
of maintaining tropical forests is scientifically sound.

No option exists to do
nothing about global warming. “Business as Usual” scenarios
indicate tremendous impacts over the course of the 21st century
using the best available information, such as the “IS-92a”
scenarios in the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report or SAR (e.g., Pearce et
al., 1996). Developing countries are expected to bear the greatest losses from
global warming, especially human life losses.  Under the obviously optimistic
assumption that world population does not grow after 1990, increased mortality
from doubling pre-industrial CO2 (i.e., in approximately 2070) would
be 138,000 lives/year (115,000 of which would be in developing countries),
while monetary losses independent of loss of life would be US$221billion/year
in constant 1990 dollars according to the reference scenario used by the SAR
(Pearce et al., 1996, p. 197).  The
realization that developing countries will suffer greatly has not yet
penetrated many developing countries.
For example in Brazil global warming is popularly
viewed as a problem that primarily affects northern countries.  Unfortunately, the IPCC Special Report
on Regional Impacts points out Brazil as one of the countries
where agriculture will suffer the most from global warming (Canziani et al.,
1998, p. 213).

Concern about the gravity of
climate change and the urgency of action should not be confused with the
question of what should be done about it.  One often sees European NGO presentations
beginning with dramatic statements on the gravity of climate change, followed
by condemnation of “sinks”.
The subliminal implication is that anyone who favors any
“sink”, a category in which European NGOs include avoided
deforestation, is somehow not concerned about combating climate change.  This implication is quite erroneous, as
those who favor crediting avoided deforestation are just as concerned about
climate change as anyone else; the difference of opinion is over what should be
done about it.

The carbon emissions from
tropical land-use change indicate a substantial contribution to global warming.
For tropical countries throughout the World over the 1981-1990 period the net emissions
from all clearing of natural vegetation and of secondary forests (including
both biomass and soil fluxes) was 2.0 X 109 t C, equivalent to
2.0-2.4 X 109 t of CO2-equivalent carbon considering the
global warming potentials adopted under the Kyoto Protocol.  Adding emissions of 0.4 X 109
t C from land-use category changes other than deforestation brings the total
for land-use change (not considering uptake of intact forest, recurrent burning
of savannas or fires in intact forests) to 2.4 X 109 t C, equivalent
to 2.4-2.9 X 109 t of CO2‑equivalent carbon.  If one considers the average annual
fossil fuel emission of 6.0 X 109 t C over the 1981-1990 period
(Watson et al., 1992, p. 29), the 2.4 X 109 t C land-use change
emission represents 29% of the combined total.

Deforestation
in Brazilian Amazonia releases quantities of greenhouse gases that are
significant both in terms of their present impact and in terms of the implied
potential for long-term contribution to global warming from continued clearing of
Brazil's vast area of remaining forest (Fearnside, 2000a).  Brazil is the largest single contributor
to land-use change emissions, with 23% of the tropical land-use total; Brazil's
0.462 X 109 t C annual emission from forest clearing, plus 0.094 X
109 t C from category changes (a proportional share of this
emission), together represent 6.6% of the global total from fossil fuels and
land-use change (Fearnside, 2000b).

3. Impasses in negotiations

3.1. National positions

3.1.1. European Union

The representatives of the
European countries are the ones who press hardest for a reduction of the
inclusion of activities in tropical forests as measures to combat the
greenhouse effect (Table 1). The rationale given is that carbon in forests is
inherently at risk of emission to the atmosphere, and that the only acceptable
form of mitigation should therefore be reduction of fossil fuel emissions
“at source”. Later on, the weakness of this justification will be
examined.

[Table
1 here]

The position of the European
countries is best explained by the basic fact that fossil fuel prices are much
higher in Europe than in the United States.  In virtually any European country a
liter of gasoline costs at least double the price in the US.  This increases production costs for
European industries and puts them at a disadvantage in competition for
international markets.  European
governments are therefore anxious to force the US 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 US would be forced to apply
carbon taxes to fossil fuels.  For
the same reason, the European countries would like to institute a limit on the
percentage of each country’s Kyoto commitment that can be met through the
CDM and/or through other “flexible mechanisms” such as joint
implementation and emissions trading among members of Annex B of the Kyoto
Protocol (the countries that have agreed to national caps on their
emissions—a list of countries currently almost identical to Annex I of
the UN-FCCC).  These considerations
can lead to a tendency to question practical and theoretical aspects of
forest-sector applications of the CDM beyond what would otherwise be the case.
While there is a certain fairness in leveling the playing field for
international competition, this is a separate issue from mitigating climate
change. Obviously, the diplomatic struggle between Europe and North America is not based on the
national interests of tropical forest countries such as Brazil, and tropical countries
would be wise to consider carefully where their own interests lie.

The hypocrisy of European countries in claiming that
their opposition to inclusion of avoided deforestation in the CDM stems from
concerns about permanence (the time that carbon remains out of the atmosphere)
and certainty, as opposed to geopolitics, is shown by the priorities of the
same countries expressed outside the context of the Kyoto Protocol.  In 1991, prior to both the June 1992
UN-FCCC and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Germany, France and the UK were key players in
drafting the objectives of the PP-G7, or G-7 Pilot Program to Conserve the
Brazilian Rainforest.  Concern over
reducing Amazonian deforestation as a means of reducing greenhouse gas
emissions is explicitly stated as a primary motivation of the Program, formally
presented in the World Bank’s January 1992 Rain Forest Trust Resolution:
“The overall objective of the pilot program is to .... reduce Brazilian
rain forests’ contribution to global carbon emissions...” (World
Bank, 1992).  These countries have
now invested over US$250 million in the PP-G7.  In the negotiations following from Kyoto
these European countries oppose assigning any value to avoided deforestation
based on the notion that only the very long term (i.e. equilibrium) composition
of the atmosphere matters and that combating tropical deforestation is
therefore unimportant because forests are likely to be cut and/or burned anyway
for one reason or another over the course of a few centuries.  Obviously, in the context of the PP-G7
the European countries think that avoided deforestation has a real value for
climate, even though the impossibility of controlling history over a time scale
of centuries means that the carbon in the forests might eventually be emitted
to the atmosphere.  The European
countries were not wrong in 1991, nor in the years since then over which they
have supported this ongoing program.
Instead, they are being hypocritical now in claiming that emissions
avoidance only has value if it is permanent and certain.  From the point of view of climate change
and its impacts, however, maintaining carbon in forests has value even if uncertain
and impermanent.  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 the appropriate adjustments to
crediting (Fearnside, 2000c; Fearnside et al., 2000).

3.1.2. Brazil

The
aversion of Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Relations to including forest
protection mystifies many people because of the very large potential benefits
to the country both from carbon revenue and from help in achieving national
objectives such as controlling deforestation. Deforestation in Brazilian
Amazonia produces little economic benefit because most of the deforested area
becomes cattle pasture with low productivity and a tendency to degrade to
secondary forest (Fearnside, 1996b).
Reducing deforestation in Brazil represents a great opportunity to avoid
carbon emissions because of the country’s large areas of remaining forest
and rapid rate of deforestation, because clearing could be substantial reduced
on large cattle ranches with little economic loss or social hardship and
because Brazil could profitably accept an arrangement that grants a smaller
fraction of the “real” benefit in credit terms, thereby
guaranteeing an advantage for the atmosphere (Fearnside, 2000a,d).

The official justifications
of Brazil’s negotiating
position are rather confused, since Brazil opposes inclusion of
avoided deforestation but at the same time wants plantation silviculture to be
included.  Appeal to the EU argument
regarding permanence is contradictory because carbon storage in silvicultural
plantations and wood products is inevitably temporary (with the exception of
charcoal or other fossil-fuel substitutes).  The position of the Ministry opposing
inclusion of avoided deforestation is best explained by the widespread belief
that the rest of the world is engaged in a permanent conspiracy to take Amazonia away from Brazil (Fearnside, 1999b; Council
on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force, 2001). A scenario of
“internationalization” of the Amazon using environmental protection
as an excuse is frequently evoked by politicians and has a popular following
that cuts across all educational levels. It is worth noting that the opposition
of the Ministry of Foreign Relations to including forests in the CDM is not
shared by the governors of the Amazonian states, nor by most of Brazil’s scientific
community.  It is also not shared by
the Minister of the Environment, who, in Cochabamba, Bolivia in June 1999 signed a joint
statement of ministers of the environment in Latin American countries
supporting inclusion of forests in the CDM.

A supposed institutional incapacity to reduce
deforestation is sometimes mentioned as a reason for Brazil not wanting any
international commitment to slowing deforestation, as the country could be
exposed to penalties if it later found itself unable to meet the commitments.
However, Brazil is not incapable of
controlling deforestation. A strong indication of this was provided by the
dramatic drop in the number of fires on 1 July 2000, when a prohibition on
burning came into effect. The drop was more than 80% in Mato Grosso, which is
one of the states that traditionally has the greatest problems with burning.
The critical factor is self-confidence in the country’s ability to make
any changes it decides upon, and I believe that Brazil doesn't lack for
patriotism.

Brazil currently holds the
chairmanship of the G-77+China (the “Group of 77 and
China”, a negotiating block now totaling 131
countries).  Thus, in addition to being
the most important tropical forest country because of its current and potential
deforestation emissions, Brazil has tremendous influence in
international climate negotiations (Dutschke, 2000).  The members of the G-77+China have
diverse views, ranging from oil-producing countries in the Middle East that
oppose much of the content of the Protocol to countries on both sides of the
avoided-deforestation issue that are strongly concerned about climate change
(Mwandosky, 1999).  Brazil takes a leading role in
discussions within the group, and its views count heavily in group decisions.

3.1.3.
Other Countries

Most tropical forest
countries in the Spanish-speaking portion of Latin America favor inclusion of avoided
deforestation in the CDM: Bolivia and Costa Rica have been particularly
vocal, and Colombia and Mexico have also been influential;
Peru, however, has opposed inclusion of
forests.  The Association of Small
Island States (AOSIS), represented by the Island of Tuvulu, has opposed inclusion of
forests

The
“Umbrella Group” of the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand have supported inclusion of
forests.  Particularly in the case
of United States, Canada and Japan, these countries stand to
gain financially by buying credit to satisfy their Kyoto commitments.  These countries have an interest in
having carbon mitigation activities under the Clean Development Mechanism be
accompanied by few if any requirements for promoting sustainable development,
including safeguards to prevent environmental and social impacts. Strong
safeguards are needed (Fearnside, 1999a,b).  The United States has made a diplomatic play
for a huge credit for alleged domestic forest activities that appear to be
essentially “business as usual”.  In August 2000 the US claimed that the
country had 148 X 106 ha of forest in the country under management,
and that as a result of this management 300 X 106 t C were being
absorbed annually (Smaglik, 2000).
A large part of this represents soil carbon from the ongoing shift of US agriculture to no-till
methods (Kaiser, 2000).  The total
is half of the “gap” of 600 X 106 t C/year by which the US expects to need to reduce
its emissions during the 2008-2012 first commitment period in order to comply
with its Kyoto Protocol commitments.
At COP-6 in the Hague in November 2000, the US initially tried to obtain
credit for the full 300 X 106 t C under Article 3.3 of the Protocol
(for domestic afforestation, reforestation and deforestation activities) and
Article 3.4 (“other” activities, which are as yet undefined but may
include activities such as timber management in native forests and no-till
agriculture to enhance carbon stocks in agricultural soils).  Over the course of the meeting in the Hague, this proposal was reduced
to a claim of around 70 X 106 t C—still a tremendous
subterfuge of the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol.  The US was rightly considered the
principal villain of the event, culminating in the head US delegate receiving a
pie in the face (Dickson, 2000).
The vehemence of other parties and of NGOs of all types in rejecting the
US maneuvers based on Articles 3.3 and 3.4
tends to overshadow the discussions on the more modest quantities of carbon
involved in the Clean Development Mechanism of Article 12.  It is important that the debates over
these different articles of the Protocol not be confused by lumping them
indiscriminantly into categories such as “sinks” or
“loopholes”.  With
proper safeguards, avoided deforestation under the CDM need not be a loophole
(“Scientists’ Call for Action...”, 2000).  The fact that the US has earned itself a
reputation as the principal villain in climate change negotiations and that the
US also supports credit for avoided
deforestation does not mean that avoided deforestation is necessarily tainted
or suspect as a legitimate effort to combat climate change.

3.2. NGO positions

The
fact that the climate sectors of the European head offices of four major
environmental NGOs (Greenpeace International, WWF-International, Birdlife
International and FOE-International) oppose inclusion of avoided deforestation
in the CDM (Table 1) is not easily understood – at least in terms of the
arguments presented.  US branches or
affiliates of these NGOs follow the positions of the European head offices, but
the opposite position is held by major environmental NGOs headquartered in the US, such as Conservation
International (CI), Environmental Defense (EDF), the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The Indigenous Peoples’
Forum on Climate Change, an association of indigenous groups throughout the
world that is lead by groups from Southeast Asia, opposes inclusion of any
forests in the CDM.  It is
significant that not a single representative of Brazil’s indigenous peoples
was present at the meetings in September and November 2000 that approved this
position (Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change, 2000a,b).

Environmental groups in 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.

Environmental groups in Brazil are virtually all in favor
of including forests (“Manifestação...”, 2000),
including the Brazilian Amazonia affiliate of FOE (Monzoni et al., 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).

One reaction not infrequently heard to the
controversies around the world over forests in the CDM is that “I’m
so confused, I go to bed thinking one thing and get up thinking something
else”.  However, no one is
confused who is closer to the heat of the burning in Amazonia, as evinced by
the positions of Brazilian NGOs, most of which support inclusion of forests
(“Manifestação...”, 2000; see Table 1), but a few do
not (“A Brazilian NGO Declaration”, 2000; see Table 1).  Among the organizations supporting
inclusion of avoided deforestation are grassroots groups such as the National
Council of Rubber Tappers (CNS), which is composed of people who both before
and after Chico Mendes have been living at the front lines of an environmental
battle that gives them much better credentials than anyone in European NGOs,
the Amazonian Working Group (GTA), which represents over 390 grassroots
organizations in Brazilian Amazonia, the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), which
represents many small-farmer groups linked to the Catholic Church, the
Federation of Agricultural Workers of Pará (FETAGRI) that represents a
large number of small-farmer groups, and the Coordinating Body of Indigenous
Peoples of Brazilian Amazonia (COIAB), the largest indigenous peoples
group.  These organizations support
forests in the CDM not as a result of decisions by a few leaders, but rather
after extended meetings and discussions with their memberships. The key
difference between the thinking of most Brazilian NGOs, especially grassroots
groups, and the ethereal intellectual arguments regarding permanence and
uncertainty is that in the grassroots groups the people know what it looks,
smells and feels like to be at the frontier where the forest is being
chain-sawed and burned.

It is interesting to note that, prior to the 1997
Kyoto Protocol, the climatic value of reducing tropical deforestation was
stressed by the same NGOs that now claim that only permanent offsets by
reducing fossil fuel use have value.
In a report for Friends of the Earth-UK, Norman Myers (1989) even
described the effect of plantations as “positive” for climate,
although these are now anathema to the same groups on carbon accounting
grounds. However, it is the shift in position on avoided deforestation, the
subject of the present paper,  that
represents the greatest mystery.

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.  The gain from attempting to force the US to meet its Kyoto emission quota almost
exclusively from reducing fossil fuel consumption (a highly uncertain payoff,
given that the US Senate has not yet ratified the Protocol) would be very
modest if achieved.  This opportunity
results from the unusual circumstance of the US being “over a
barrel” in the current negotiations because it signed the Kyoto Protocol,
accepting an assigned amount 7% below its 1990 emission level, before decisions
had been reached on the rules of the game, such as whether or not forests would
be included 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 United States 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.

The counter proposal often raised by governments and
European-dominated NGOs opposed to forest inclusion is that forest protection
is a biodiversity concern and should be handled through the UN Framework
Convention on Biodiversity. Saying that tropical forests should be protected
with money from other sources, such as the Biodiversity Convention, is only a
diversion, since significant amounts of money simply do not exist in these
“other” sources.  None
of the countries suggesting that these sources be used is offering to put
billions of dollars on the table.

The
same applies to suggestions that forest protection should be done with funds
from Articles 4.8 of the UN-FCCC and 12.8 of the Protocol (the
“adaptation fund”).
Setting up forest reserves in Brazil by taking money from Bangladesh and other countries that
will desperately need funds for adaptation measures would hardly be a fair
solution.

A ceiling on use of Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) projects is
likely to be adopted.  It is
important to realize that this is a reflection of diplomatic reality rather
than of scientific argument.  If
LULUCF carbon benefits are real and, one might presume, adjusted in value to
give a greater benefit to climate than fossil fuel carbon for each unit of
certified emissions reduction (CER), then it would be logical to use as much
LULUCF mitigation as possible rather than restricting it.  A proportionality with the land-use
emissions of either the Annex I party or the global total does not follow
unless the CERs [Note: not the tons of actual carbon] are less beneficial to
climate if derived from forest rather than fossil fuels.

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 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 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 here generations at least 200 years in the future, but the
probability of a difference of this type in priorities for future generations
is virtually zero, as people all over the World appear to be basically same in
their priorities for the future. Since any explanation of the motivations of
the different groups must explain the peculiar geographical distribution of
opinions, the public declarations and publications of the groups are of little
usefulness. Other motivations, even if unconscious, are more probable.

The position of European NGOs can better be
understood in terms of a logic parallel to the motivations of the European
governments that want to improve European industrial competitiveness relative
to the US.  While the NGOs are by no means doing the
bidding of the EU governments, the desire use the Kyoto Protocol as an
opportunity to force the US to drastically reduce its
consumption is shared.  In Europe, the US consumption lifestyle and associated
cultural domination is resented on many counts, and symbols such as McDonalds,
Coca Cola and Walmart are generally reviled. An opportunity to strike a blow at
this vaguely defined complex of targets finds a ready following among
environmental groups for reasons that have little to do with climate
change.  These include a desire to
punish the US for its various sins in the
world, the country’s role as villain in climate negotiations among
them.  Although reducing US consumption would have
climate benefits, reducing 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.

International NGOs should take stock of what they
are trying to accomplish. Organizations like WWF represent their memberships,
which are composed of people who contribute funds primarily because they are
concerned about biodiversity.  In
the 21st Century the greatest threat to biodiversity is likely to be
habitat loss, especially tropical deforestation.  Only on longer timescales would climate
change rise to such major importance, and in this case would act mainly in finishing
off species that had escaped a century of direct habitat destruction.  In the case of WWF, the organization
functions as a “network”, with major decisions being taken in
meetings of representatives of the different countries.  Once a group decision is made, all of
the national offices are obliged to abide by it.  This can go against the perceptions of
people in countries like Brazil as to what is best for the
environment in their countries.  For
example, at the October 2000 meeting in Belém that produced the
“Belém manifesto” supporting inclusion of avoided
deforestation in the CDM, the WWF-Brazil representative (Manuel Cesário)
presented the WWF-International position opposing inclusion, but signed the
manifesto as an individual (“Manifestação...”, 2000).
It is worth noting that at the highest levels of WWF-International the
anti-forest discourse of the climate sector is less evident; in October 2000
WWF-International signed a declaration at the IUCN International Congress in Amman, Jordan that leaves the door open
to inclusion of forests in the CDM (IUCN, 2000).

4. Policy choices in
mitigating global warming

4.1. Carbon considerations

4.4.1. Time and permanence

Permanence and other temporal issues represent an
area of resistance against inclusion of forests, since it is always possible that
forests could later be cut, degraded, or burned for some reason, thereby
releasing their carbon to the atmosphere.
Climatic change itself has become a weapon used in attacking forest
conservation as a mitigation option, on the grounds that many forests in Amazonia and other tropical
locations are doomed anyway due to predicted drying (e.g., Greenpeace
International, 2000a; see rebuttal by Niles, 2000).  Due to the fact that an amount of carbon
would have been emitted to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels in Annex I
countries based on the credits generated by the CDM project, more carbon would
be present in the atmosphere than in the no-project case (Meinshausen and Hare,
2000).

Fortunately, there are several factors that
counteract this effect. Most important is the implication of the argument
against forests that the same weight should be given to events in the present
and those at very distant times in the future. Such an assumption is completely
inconsistent with the way in that social decisions are made in general. In the
case of global warming, consistent arguments exist to give a value to temporary
storage of carbon, although of course this value does not need to be the full
value that would represent a permanent storage of the carbon. Global warming
alters the probabilities of droughts, floods and other disasters, which, after
the temperature increase, can be assumed to remain higher forever. Therefore,
any postponement of global warming represents a permanent earnings of all the
damages that would have occurred during the temporary time interval that the
warming was postponed. In other words, time has value (Fearnside et al.,
2000).

This value can be incorporated into carbon
accounting in several ways, in addition to the traditional mechanism in
economics of applying a discount rate. Choosing a time horizon has this effect,
for instance the 100-year time horizon already adopted by the Kyoto Protocol
for the global warming potentials (GWPs) used to translate the impact of the
various gases into CO2-equivalents. In the Special Report on Land
Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (SR-LULUCF) of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), different proposed accounting methods are reviewed,
including “ton-year” methods that would allow equivalences to be
established between permanent and temporary storage of carbon (Noble et al.,
2000).

It is important to understand that credit is only
received for carbon that is actually stored, not for promises.  While critics view liability issues
under the CDM as “essentially insoluable” (Lanchbery, 2000),
ton-year accounting offers a mechanism for rewarding carbon benefits as they
are achieved, thus obviating the need for liability arrangements (Fearnside et
al., 2000).  However, in order to
grant credit up-front in a manner comparable to energy projects, liability
could be assumed. Certified emissions reductions (CERs) with finite periods of
validity have been proposed under what is known as the “Colombian
Proposal” (Blanco and Forner, 2000).
Under this proposal, the CERs would expire when the carbon is emitted to
the atmosphere for whatever reason, and the country holding the CER would have
to either reduce national emissions by that amount or buy the same number of
CERs from another forestry project.
Two small modifications to the Colombian Proposal have been proposed by
Kerr and Leining (2000) with which this proposal could effectively solve the
permanence issue if adopted: provision for verification at least once per
commitment period with immediate payback of CERs if carbon has been lost, and
liability for payback being carried with ownership of specific CERs.

The treatment of the non-permanence of carbon in
forests depends io the means adopted for compensating the climatic benefits of
the projects. Payment could only be made after the atmospheric benefits take
place, such that a liability system is not necessary to cover the case of
non-delivery of the expected benefits. Although this has the advantages of the
simplicity and of minimizing risks, it also implies the loss of part of the
financial value of the projects when compared to projects in the energy sector,
which would receive payment in advance due to the presumed certainty of the
permanence of the carbon offsets. The “Colombian proposal” would
create temporary credits for forest projects, with the requirement that they be
replaced by the buyer at the end of the period, either with a permanent credit
(for instance from fossil fuel), or with another temporary credit.

4.1.2.
Baselines

One of the criticisms frequently raised against
including avoided deforestation in the CDM it is that it would be impossible to
establish reliable baselines. The baseline is the scenario without the
mitigation project, which is compared with the observed stocks of carbon after
the project to calculate the carbon gain. It is important to understand that,
although constructing baselines is not easy, it is also neither impossible nor
inherently different from the problems with baselines in the energy sector. In
all cases it involves a control scenario of the future without the project,
which is necessarily counterfactual. Difficulties exist in modeling future
deforestation (Carvalho et al., 2001; Laurance et al., 2001; Nepstad et al.,
2000), but Brazil has a great advantage in this area compared to other tropical
countries due to the series of surveys of deforestation that the National
Institute for Space Research (INPE) has carried out (Brazil, INPE, 2001).

An
objection sometimes raised against inclusion of avoided deforestation in the
CDM is that a large part of the deforestation that takes place is illegal, and
therefore any payment to enforce the law implies a reward for a illegal acts if
the value is derived from a baseline that represents an illegal situation.
However, there is nothing in the Protocol that demands that the baseline be
based on legality instead of using a description of reality independent of the
legal situation. Using the real situation is consistent with basing the
calculations only on things that can be seen from satellites, thereby
minimizing the chances of situations where carbon credit ends up being granted
for projects that do not produce real benefits for climate.

4.1.3. Leakage

“Leakage”
is the loss of carbon that a project provokes indirectly, outside of the
physical or temporal boundaries of the project or outside of the conceptual
boundaries of the subject under study. For instance, if a forest reserve is
created and the people who would be deforesting in that place otherwise simply
move to another place in the forest to clear, the emissions from the clearing
would represent “leakage.” In some situations this type of problem
can be prevented through “leakage contracts”, as was done in
Bolivia in the case of the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project, where logging
companies were legally bound (with provisions for inspection) to not invest the
funds they received in logging operations elsewhere (Brown et al., 2000a,b). A
generic way to minimize the leakage problem is supporting projects in the area
of deforestation avoidance through large-scale regional programs instead of
localized projects (Fearnside, 1995b).

4.1.4. Verification

An
inherent problem with forest maintenance projects for global warming mitigation
is that virtually all parties have conflicts of interest leading to biases in
the same direction: exaggeration of the benefits.  Imagine, for example, a hypothetical
proposal to preserve a tract of forest in a tropical country.  The government of the tropical country
would have an interest in exaggerating the carbon benefits of the project,
because more credit would be earned.
An industrialized country financing the project would likewise want the
benefits exaggerated, as its investment in the project would yield more credit
towards the country’s Kyoto Protocol commitments.  Environmental NGOs that want to use
carbon projects as means of maintaining tropical forests for their biodiversity
will also want the carbon accounting to indicate the highest possible climate
benefit.  Local communities will
want carbon benefits to be large, since the amount of money represented by
their slice of the correspondingly greater financial flows will increase.  The “independent” firms
contracted to assess and monitor the project will also want maximal carbon
benefit to result, as this will please the governments that hire them and
increase the probability of future contracts, much in the same way as
consulting firms that prepare environmental impact assessments in many
countries have a built-in bias to produce favorable reports (e.g., Fearnside
and Barbosa, 1996).  In other words,
a proposal that greatly exaggerated the claimed carbon benefits could easily
pass through the system if stringent provisions are not included to
counterbalance these built-in tendencies.
This is not a problem that is specific to the forest sector, since
energy projects suffer the same temptation. This would be counterbalanced by a
system of certification and independent verification (Fearnside, 1997b).

4.1.5. Uncertainty

Provisions
to restrict the amount of uncertainty in carbon mitigation calculations have
substantial potential losses for climate and other interests because they
threaten to remove credit for avoided deforestation projects with major
potential for large “jackpot” carbon gains if effective.  Canada
(1998) has proposed requiring 95% certainty on all carbon calculations.  This presents a problem analogous to
Type II error in statistics, where desire for a miniscule risk of accepting an
erroneous conclusion can often lead to the unintended and sometimes more
detrimental result of considering a relationship to be nonexistent when it
really exists.  In this case, the
understandable desire of countries such as the small island states to be
certain that all carbon receiving credit towards assigned amounts under the
Protocol is real may be throwing away the opportunity to get much greater
expected gains for climate in exchange for a modest amount of Kyoto credit
(Fearnside, 2000c).  This is because
the credit granted can be less than the expected carbon value of avoided
deforestation projects.

4.2. Non-carbon considerations

4.2.1. Biodiversity

Biodiversity maintenance is an important benefit of
avoided deforestation that is not attained by other mitigation measures such as
promoting energy efficiency, planting eucalyptus or no-till agriculture.  Considerable urgency is appropriate in
taking actions to stem biodiversity loss. If we wait until after the Kyoto Protocol’s
First Commitment Period in 2013, there won’t be much tropical forest left
to save.  The efforts of opponents
of including forests in the CDM to focus discussion exclusively on carbon and climate
does a disservice to the wider objectives of the UN-FCCC and of the governments
and NGOs involved in the debate.
Particularly for the CDM, “sustainable development” is
explicitly specified in Article 12 of the Protocol as the primary goal of the
projects.

Strong parallels are evident between European NGO
discourse and the “right to life” (anti-abortion) lobby in the United States, which convinces its
partisans to engage in “single-issue politics,” or voting for or
against political candidates based solely on their position on the legal status
of abortion.  Essentially the same
strategy is being promoted in the global warming debate, by insisting that the
decisions that will determine which mitigation measures are taken be based
solely on carbon benefits, independent of the social and environmental impacts
or benefits that these choices may have.

Decisions
on what global warming mitigation measures should be supported involves a mix
of considerations that includes the various values not related to global
warming that are associated with different outcomes.  In addition to the “hidden
agendas” of the European Union and the Brazilian foreign ministry, more
appropriate environmental concerns include the biodiversity value of
maintaining tropical forests, as compared to other mitigation options such as
planting eucalyptus or promoting, no-till agriculture.  The environmental and social impacts of
mitigation options, such as large hydropower projects, mega-plantations or
nuclear energy contrast with the “ancillary” benefits of forest
maintenance.

4.2.2. Sustainable Development

An important aspect of the
CDM is that Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol, which creates the CDM, explicitly
states that the primary objective of the projects is sustainable development. Therefore, it is essential to clarify
who defines what “sustainable development” is and what criteria
characterize a project as conforming to this requirement. One line of
diplomatic thought holds that sustainable development should be defined by each
country for itself. Since all of the proposals for projects are sent to the
Executive Council of the CDM by the CDM office of the government of the country
where the proposed project would be located, any project that is forwarded to
the Executive Council implicitly already has the approval of the country in terms
of sustainable development, rendering the sustainable development clause in
Article 12 completely innocuous. Although attractive because it avoids any
possibility of undesirable influence on development decisions in the country,
this line of thought also implies disadvantages in cases like Brazil. Brazil has a system of
environmental impact assessment (EIA/RIMA) and a system of labor laws, while
other countries exist without any of these. If each party defines sustainable
development for itself, without any minimum set of standardized criteria,
countries like Brazil with environmental and
labor restrictions will not be able to sell carbon as cheaply as the countries
without any restriction of this type, thereby creating unfair competition.

The concept of sustainable development requires
leaving future generations with the conditions needed to satisfy their own
needs (Brundtland Commission, 1987), which implies both disqualifying projects
with serious environmental and social impacts and offering the possibility of
providing some type of additional bonus for projects that make positive
contributions in this sense, for example in alleviating social inequalities and
maintaining biodiversity. Therefore two possible complementary mechanisms exist,
one to supply a screen against harmful projects and the other to reward
projects with positive contributions. These possibilities are discussed in the
IPCC’s SR-LULUCF (Noble et al., 2000).

5. Conclusions

The
issue of saving tropical forests as a global warming countermeasure has sparked
tremendous controversy and divisiveness among and within NGOs and
governments.  While the debate is
often couched in scientific terms and with appeals to high universal principles,
the positions of the different partisans to the debate are better understood in
terms of hidden agendas, whether conscious or not.  In the case of European governments,
which oppose inclusion of forests in the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean
Development Mechanism, the national positions would lead to improvement of
industrial competitiveness as compared to the United
States.  In the case of Brazil,
opposition to including avoided deforestation fits with conspiracy theories
regarding internationalization of the Amazon.  For European and European-dominated
NGOs, opposition to forests is best explained as an opportunistic blow at US
consumption culture, which is reviled for reasons largely unrelated to climate
change.  From the point of view of
Brazilian NGOs concerned with maintaining Amazonian forest, these alternative
agendas are side issues that, attractive as they might be, do not merit
throwing away a major opportunity for obtaining monetary flows for forest
maintenance.  The technical
arguments presented by critics of avoided deforestation contain distortions of
the climatic consequences of projects in this area.  Proposals exist to effectively deal with
issues such as carbon permanence to make the climatic benefits of avoided
deforestation real, allowing both a gain for climate and the maintenance of biodiversity
and other values through carbon mitigation activities.

6. Acknowledgments

An
earlier version of this paper was presented at the III Congresso Brasileiro de
Sistemas Agroflorestais, 21-25 November 2000, Manaus, Amazonas (Fearnside,
nd).  Portions
of the text are adapted from Fearnside (2000e) and the author’s written
contributions to the Reunião Técnica sobre Florestas no Mecanismo
de Desenvolvimento Limpo, Secretaria da Amazônia Legal, Ministério
do Meio Ambiente, Brasília, 9 October 2000.  I thank INPA PPI 1-3160 and CNPq AI 350230/97-8 for
financial support and two reviewers for valuable comments. All opinions
expressed are those of the author.

7. List of acronyms

AOSIS
– Association of Small Island States

ARCA
-- Regional Alliance for Conservation Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean

CAN – Climate Action Network

CDM – Clean Development Mechanism

CER – Certified Emissions Reduction

COIAB
- Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples of Brazilian Amazonia

COP – Conference of the Parties

CNS –National Council of Rubber Tappers

CPT – Pastoral Land
Commission

EDF – Environmental Defense

EIA/RIMA – Environmental Impact Study/Report on
Impact on the Environment

EU-European Union

FETAGRI - Federation of Agricultural Workers of Pará

FOE – Friends of the Earth

G-7—Group
of seven: USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan.

G-77+China-Group
of 77 and China: 131
developing countries, plus China.

GTA – Amazon Working Group

GWP—Global Warming Potential

INPE – National Institute for Space Research

IMAZON-Institute for Man and the Environment in Amazonia

IPAM-Institute of
Environmental Research of Amazonia

IPCC –Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

ISA-Socio-Environmental
Institute

IUCN – World Conservation Union

LULUCF – Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry

NGO – Non-Governmental Organization

NRDC – Natural Resources Defense Council

PP-G7
- G-7 Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rainforest

SR-LULUCF – Special Report on Land Use, Land-Use
Change and Forestry

UCS
– Union of Concerned Scientists

UN-FCCC - United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change

Vitae Civilis –
Institute for Development, Environment and Peace

WWF – Worldwide Fund for Nature

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Table
1

Positions
on including land use, land-use change and
forestry projects in the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism(a)

Plantations    Agro-      Avoided

forestry
deforestation

A.)
Blocks of countries

Brazil
+
+
-

Umbrella Group

(USA,
Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand)     +
+
+

European
Union
-
-
-

AOSIS
(Association of Small Island States)
-
-
-

G-77
+ China

B.)
International NGOs

Greenpeace-International
-
-
-

WWF-International
-
-
-

FOE-International
-
-
-

Birdlife
International
-
-
-

Climate
Action Network
-
-
-

Indigenous People's Forum

on Climate Change
-
-
-

C.)
US NGOs

National
and US-headquartered NGOs

EDF
(Environmental Defense)
+
+

CI
(Conservation International)
+
+

TNC
(The Nature Conservancy)
+
+

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)
+
+

UCS
(Union of Concerned
Scientists)
+
+

Branches
or affiliates of International NGOs

WWF-US
-
-               -

FOE-US
-
-                -

D.) Brazilian NGOs

National
NGOs

CNS    (National Council of

Rubber
Tappers)
+
+

GTA    (Amazonian Working
Group)                                                  +
+

COIAB
(Coordinating Body of Indigenous

Peoples of Brazilian Amazonia)
+
+

FETAGRI
(Federation of Agricultural

Workers of
Pará)
+
+

CPT
(Pastoral Land Commission)
+
+

IMAZON
(Institute for Man and the

Environment in Amazonia)
+
+

IPAM
(Institute of Environmental

Research of Amazonia)
+
+

ISA
(Socio-Environmental Institute)
+
+

Vitae
Civilis (Institute
for Development,

Environment and Peace
-   -
-

Branches
or affiliates of International NGOs

Friends
of the Earth--Brazilian Amazonia
+
+

Friends
of the Earth--Porto Alegre
-
-
-

Greenpeace-São Paulo
-
-
-

WWF-Brazil
-
-
-

(a)
Plus sign indicates favoring inclusion, minus sign opposing, and blank
indicates no position. Often, NGOs that support avoided deforestation and
agroforestry and do not have positions on silvicultural plantations would be
likely to oppose many plantation projects on the basis of their environmental
and social impacts (not on the basis of carbon accounting).  The G-77 + China does not have a unified
position (see text).