Climate change mitigation and forests
In our quest to find and apply ways to
remove carbon from the atmosphere, forestry and forests are seen as a
significant sector. The first consideration is that forests themselves are a
great source of GHG emissions: world-wide, they are supposed to be the
second largest source, contributing 12-20% of GHG emissions, which of course
poses a threat to world climate. But the more the carbon in the atmosphere, the
faster does tree growth occur, so it is also an opportunity for mitigation,
because growing trees absorb CO2 and hence can be a significant
low-cost, universally applicable mitigation device.
These principles are well exemplified in
our experience with the Afforestation & Reforestation (AR) component of the
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Afforestation and Reforestation (AR) as a
route to carbon mitigation was first introduced in UNFCCC CoP-3 (1997) under
the CDM. In 2005, at CoP-11, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (RED) was
introduced, and the concept later enhanced by adding forest Degradation (REDD).
The basic concept of REDD (Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and
Degradation) is simple enough (Dilip Kumar, 2014): reducing the emissions from
existing forests would entail controlling the rate of destructive clearing of
forest, stopping the practice of burning vegetation to induce grass growth or
replace forest with rangeland or agricultural crops; and so on. However, there
is also the possibility that a sustainable utilization of wood can actually
lead to greater carbon sequestration: the utilizable trees are locked up as
structural timber in buildings, furniture, etc., and even more carbon can be
fixed; per hectare by encouraging the
growth of a new crop of trees.
This was further expanded to REDD-Plus in
the CoP-13 at Bali (2007) by adding elements of forest conservation and
sustainable forest management as devices for mitigating carbon emissions,
giving rise to the expectation, among developing, tropical countries, that they
would be paid for the carbon sequestered in trees and forests that had been set
aside in the past by sacrificing short-term benefits.
The CDM-AR component was at one time touted
as the great new mechanism for carbon sequestration, and detailed and
laboriously drafted guidelines and rules were put up on the UNFCCC websites
(e.g., UNFCCC, 2013). But these guidelines and procedures were so involved (in
my view, they constitute some sort of documents from hell!) that very few
projects were actually approved: according to an on-line article on the
ForestCarbonAsia website (Chokkalingam & Vanniarachchy, 2014), by May 2011,
there were only 22 registered CDM-AR projects (and 4 requesting registration),
as against some 3000 CDM projects overall, mostly in energy, waste management,
manufacturing, emissions, and agriculture. The main issue seems to have been
that the process of developing standards and procedures for validating such
projects (for instance, that it is an additionality, and will be long-lived) is
complex and time consuming (which the authors have cited, rather
unconvincingly, as an excusable process of learning that will help the
successor scheme to get off the mark that much faster), and the same is bound
to be true of the latest incarnation, REDD Plus, which introduces yet more
components, like sustainable forest management, to sort out.
Apart from the intractable difficulties in
actually proving that a particular afforestation or restoration project is an additionality
(over and above something called the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario), and that
the forest crop will be sure to last indefinitely with its locked-in carbon
(and not liquidated sometime in the near future), there is the fact that the
world community has been rather niggardly in providing the funds required to
implement the scheme: after a lot of meetings and discussions, some 280 million
USD were pledged at the CoP-19 at Warsaw in November 2013 by certain developed
countries for a “results-based” REDD programme in 48 partner countries, , a
miniscule amount compared to the many billions required to even secure the
existing forests, let alone produce enough new trees to sequester the extra CO2
the world is going to emit as per the IPCC scenarios. The Stern review, for
instance, estimated that the “opportunity cost of forest protection in 8
countries responsible for 70 per cent of emissions from land use could be
around $5 billion per annum initially”, and expected to rise over time (Stern,
2007).
India is in any case probably not going to
be a potential recipient of such pay-outs, and the relatively minor amounts
being discussed are an obvious indication that much of the money will actually
go to technical inputs like training, ‘capacity building’, consultancies, and
so on. For India, it is all the more meaningless to look to such sources for
its national programmes, as there is already an accumulated Compensatory
Afforestation (CAMPA) fund of over 5 billion
USD waiting to be utilised.
Another potential problem with relatively
stable and institutionally developed states like India is that it will be
difficult to find any major additionalities over and above the existing national
programmes (the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario). For India in particular, there
are already the eight national Climate Missions
devised under the previous government, of which the Green India Mission
is one (see Prof. Ravindranath’s presentation at the FAO on-line conference,
2015). It envisages the creation of 5 million hectare (mha) new growth and
improvement of 5 mha of existing forest, based on a ‘landscape approach’, over
a period of 10 years, which will sequester carbon, along with a number of
‘co-benefits’ in the form of strengthening community participation,
biodiversity conservation, and income augmentation. India
At the same time, there have been strenuous
efforts to empower communities by decentralization of political and
administrative roles through the Panchayati Raj institutions, and give them
legal entitlements on a broad range of issues, to employment, food, education,
and of course the individual and community forest rights of traditional forest
dwellers (Forest Rights Act, 2006). The forest department itself, although a
rule-bound and rather authoritarian force of uniformed officers, that has
traditionally seen its main role as protecting the forests from the people living around it, has developed mechanisms to work with the communities through the Joint Forest
Any REDD scheme in India would therefore be
but a minor augmentation over and above these targets and instruments, and is
likely to be nothing more than a token gesture of support to the international community
and perhaps a display piece for the private sector. Indeed, according to the
Second National Communication (NATCOM) of the environment ministry (Government
of India, 2012), there would seem to be little scope for REDD-type
interventions in India, because forests are reported to be contributing very
little to GHGs: just as an illustration, for 2007, of the total country levels
of CO2 emissions (14,76,357 Gg, or million tonnes) and removals (2,75,358 Gg),
forest contributed only 87,840 Gg to emissions and 67,800 Gg to removals,
leaving a minuscule net addition, nowhere near the 20% contribution worldwide of
GHG from forest degradation which is the basic assumption of the REDD strategy.
In any case, as already suggested by this
author (Dilip Kumar, 2014), it does not appear that India is being viewed as a
major destination for aid in the sphere of REDD or REDD Plus; indeed, as a
major contributor to the carbon emissions as well as a major player in the
climate mitigation and adaptation sphere (including afforestation and landscape
restoration), India may have to get used to thinking and acting as a provider, rather than a recipient, of
aid.
Sustainable development as a self-imposed precaution
Even though we may not agree to curb our
carbon emissions at present levels at the urging of the developed countries, it
is still to be recognized that each developing country should undertake
conservation and sustainable utilisation of its natural resources as a matter
of common sense and abundant precaution in its own long term interests, and not necessarily because it feels under
pressure in the world climate conferences.
In the short term, as already suggested, we
should secure and sequester those natural habitats and biodiversity centres
that are still left intact, notwithstanding the criticism of our over-sensitive
ecologists to the fact that these constitute ‘islands’ of biodiversity (the
complaint made by Gadgil in his report on the Western Ghats, see Dilip Kumar,
2014b). In the longer term, we need to have a clear pathway to higher income
(GDP, growth) and improved quality of
life of the mass of people (distribution, development). In our own interest,
quite apart from the interests of controlling global GHG emissions, we need to
become steadily more carbon-efficient, fuel-efficient, and careful about how we
use (or abuse) the environment and natural resources.
The philosopher Pascal is supposed to have
said that even if we didn’t believe there was a God, just in case we were
mistaken it wouldn’t hurt to act as if He existed. In a similar spirit, whether
one is an environmental warrior (like the IPCC), or a reformed skeptic (like Lomborg), we will have to probably agree with the IPCC
finding that “Warming of the climate
system is unequivoval, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are
unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed,
the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen”
(IPCC, 2014c, SPM 1.1, p.2, emphasis in original). Accordingly, it
is advisable that we anticipate the possible climate change effects of the
future, and start building up resilience in critical sectors. Indeed, we need
not even go so far into the future of the climate change scenario: we just have
to build up resilience to the current
environmental factors and intermittent disasters, e.g. by proper water and soil
(nutrients) management, regulating land use, controlling pollution, building
defences against floods, droughts, and other climate-related hazards, diversifying
rural occupations, increasing mobility, improving skills, minimizing losses,
developing processing and storage facilities, developing different sectors of
the economy, benefiting from the global trade and information network, moving
increasingly to renewable energy and so on.
While gross carbon use (and GHG emissions)
will inevitably be increasing many-fold given the growth targets of energy,
fuels, infrastructure, and other sectors, the country would have to take up
these sustainability measures in any case to be viable even in the current
situation. These measures would automatically contribute to better carbon
management in the long term, and as our people move to slightly higher levels
of income, reduced uncertainty and environmental hazards, lower levels of
poverty, lower birth rates, it is expected that better management of the
environment and natural resources would follow.
In doing this, we need to ensure that there is a more equitable sharing
of the benefits of development with the presently less well-off, especially
identifiable disempowered minority groups (the socially and economically less
endowed), and regional pockets of low performance. In order to make wise
choices that do not result in more poverty in the name of development, we may
have to devise and apply more sensible measures of well-being, rather than
blindly following the high-consumption paths of the developed world; therein
lies the governance challenge.
(This article series is based on my paper
prepared for the “International Conference on Climate Change and
Social-Ecological-Economic Interface-Building”, May 20-21, 2015, organized by
the Centre for Ecological Economics and Natural Resources (CEENR), Institute
for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru-560072, India.
Uploaded at: www.academia.edu/13402458/...)
(On REDD-Plus and forestry in climate
change mitigation, see my paper in the EPW May 24, 2014, p.22-25, available at:
www.academia.edu/11102870/...)
PDF of the whole paper is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxl6YxiiQzcSbnZHR2duUDBkUjA/view?usp=sharing
PDF of the whole paper is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxl6YxiiQzcSbnZHR2duUDBkUjA/view?usp=sharing
Keywords
Climate change, green-house gases,
development strategy, natural resources, forest, carbon sequestration, IPCC,
REDD
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