Climate Change and Forests: Emerging Policy and Market Opportunities

Chapter 14. An Accounting Mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of Forests in Developing Countries

Tropical deforestation is an important issue in the debate over the global carbon cycle and climate change. The release of CO2 due to tropical deforestation can be estimated from three main parameters: the level of tropical deforestation and degradation, the spatial distribution of forest types, and the amount of biomass and soil carbon for different forest types. Our knowledge of the rates of change of tropical forests and the distribution of forest types has greatly improved in the last few years through the use of earth observation technology. At the same time, more information has become available about carbon stocks for different forest types.1 Using recent figures on rates of net change for the world’s tropical forests and refereed data on biomass, the source of atmospheric carbon from tropical deforestation is estimated to have been between 1.1 ± 0.3 gigatonnes of carbon per year (Gt/C yr–1 ) and 1.6 ± 0.6 Gt/C yr–1 for the 1990s.2 This estimate includes emissions from conversion of forests and loss of soil carbon after deforestation and emissions from forest degradation. It can be compared with CO2 emissions due to fossil fuel burning, which are estimated to have averaged 6.4 ± 0.4 Gt/C yr–1 in the 1990s. Reducing emissions from deforestation is therefore crucial in any effort to combat climate change. Reducing deforestation has many other positive aspects, such as preserving biodiversity, maintaining indigenous rights, and potentially bringing resources to local populations. The issue is even more important in the light of predicted future increases in deforestation rates. Between 1990 and 2000, the world’s total area under agricultural An Accounting Mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of Forests in Developing Countries danilo mollicone, sandro federici, frédéric achard, giacomo grassi, hugh d. eva, edward nir, ernst-detlef schulze, and hans-jürgen stibig 14 191 or forest use decreased at a rate of 6.9 million hectares a year, dropping from 41.9 percent to 41.3 percent because of conversion to settlements or abandonment of agricultural or forest use due to soil degradation or desertification. This global pattern is the sum of two opposite trends: land area under agricultural use is increasing, and land area under forest use is decreasing. Furthermore, these trends are linked to development, with developed countries decreasing their agricultural land and increasing their forest area, and developing countries doing the opposite.3 Here we propose an accounting mechanism that includes options for determining global and national baselines of forest conversion. The accounting mechanism builds on recent scientific achievements related to the satellite-observation-based estimation of tropical deforestation rates and their consequences for carbon emissions and the assessment of intact forests.4 We analyze these scientific and technical achievements in the context of one item in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), “reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries.”5 Guiding Principles in Accounting for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation The accounting mechanism we present is based on the principle that any method for calculating the amount of carbon preserved by reducing deforestation must meet the following criteria: —It neither competes with nor contradicts current and future provisions for mitigation. This means that the mechanism should not consist of or be more profitable than the whole national forest carbon stock—an issue currently addressed under articles 3.3 and 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol (KP). Instead, such a mechanism should be an additional instrument applicable to countries without KP mitigation commitments, that is, current non–Annex I Parties. —It correctly documents the amount of carbon that has been preserved at a national level. In tropical forests, conversion of land to other uses is often preceded by forest exploitation, with significant losses of carbon stocks.6 According to the definition adopted under the UNFCCC, a forest can contain from 10 to 100 percent tree cover; only when cover falls below 10 percent can land be classi fied as nonforest.7 Forest exploitation results in carbon pools ranging from fully stocked (100 percent of the original forest biomass remains) to highly degraded (only 10 percent tree canopy is left), even though the land remains classified as forest. For this reason the degradation of fully stocked forests (leading to the reduction of tree canopy cover to as little as 10 percent) could cause a greater loss of carbon than the conversion of already degraded forests (which may be only just above...