The Newsroom
Curb Emissions, Not Business
12/03/08
Debate at Poznan over deforestation’s role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions has revealed fundamental divides over a basic question: “What should be the aim of a new global convention on climate change?”
Is it to reduce emissions? Or is it to put those who generate emissions, like non-renewable energy industries, out of business?
Though a handful of people think both of these answers amount to the same thing, the debate over forestry shows they do not.
How Forestry Absorbs Emissions
As the chapter on forestry in the Fourth Assessment of the IPCC explains, the most effective way to reduce emissions is to improve and expand forestry. That means careful cultivation, maintenance, and development of the world’s forests, as well as growing afforestation and reforestation and halting deforestation.
According to the estimates of the carbon sinks created by forestry (that includes the carbon stored in timber and paper products, and disposal of those products in landfill), this sustainable approach to managing forestry could absorb nearly half of all emissions created by human activity.
Forestry’s Unrecognized Role
The trouble is that forestry’s potential contribution to global efforts against climate change has not yet been fully recognized. Parties to the Kyoto Protocol are not permitted to properly discount their emissions by the amount of carbon absorbed through forestry and their timber and paper industries.
Why not? Because green groups like WWF and Greenpeace have persuaded environmental officials, mainly in Europe, against it. Their contention is not that that this acknowledgement wouldn’t benefit the environment, but rather that it would benefit business by easing the burden on energy industries which use fossil fuels.
Under this narrow argument, the way nations reduce emissions hold as much, if not greater importance than the amount by which they cut them. Consequently, even the most effective strategies to reduce emissions will be rejected unless they impose significant hardships on industries which create emissions.
Anti-business advocates believe they can curb business without harming people. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others, knows that’s not true. For that very reason, she’s currently searching for ways her country can accept strong emissions targets without putting a lot of Germans out of work.
Since 30 percent of German is forested, expanded sustainable forestry offers an ideal way to reduce emissions. And if heavily-forested developing nations were also encouraged to expand their forests sinks, the pressure on industry in Germany and the rest of Europe to adopt harsh emissions restrictions would ease.
Yet, so far we have not seen campaigns promoting this highly effective option from groups like WWF and Greenpeace. Instead their lobbying efforts still focus on strategies that will curb business in developing countries, particularly those in forestry.
Business In Developing World To Suffer
WWF and Greenpeace want commercial forestry in developing countries impeded or closed down altogether.
Their ambition has more to do with prejudice against commercial forestry than with promotion of the most efficacious climate change policies.
Families In Developing Nations To Suffer As Well
Sabotaging business in poor countries ultimately hurts individuals, the people who are already struggling to provide food, clothing and shelter for their families. Commercial forestry is a big employer. As such, the potential for harm in anti-forestry measures is great.
It seems the poor don’t rate in the calculations of WWF and Greenpeace.
Their answer to the devastating consequences of their anti-business attacks is to mandate that wealthy countries pay governments in poor countries to stop deforestation.
Even the European Commission understands that this so-called “solution” would still increase poverty. Many communities in developing countries clear forest lands to obtain firewood and to provide space for housing and agriculture. If their access to those resources is denied, these impoverished people will have little left.
Simply Ending Deforestation – The Worst Option
The IPCC report shows properly promoted forestry provide emissions offsets at about double the rate achieved by stopping deforestation alone.
That means narrowly-focusing on deforestation doesn’t even rank as the first or second best solution. It is the last and the worst option.
A Win-Win For Everyone
If global leaders can work together to set aside anti-business and anti-forestry prejudices, there’s hope of achieving a strategy to reduce emissions in which everyone is a winner.
All that’s required is an honest recognition of the full role forestry can play.
World Growth
World Growth announced the launching of the “Poverty and Forestry” program at Poznan. To speak with World Growth Chairman Alan Oxley or find out more about the Forestry and Poverty Project, please contact Trice Whitefield at media@worldgrowth.org or +1-202-320-3965.
World Growth is a non-profit, non-governmental organization established with an educational and charitable mission to expand the education, information and other resources available to disadvantaged populations to improve their health and economic welfare. At World Growth, we embrace and celebrate the new age of globalization and the power of free trade to eradicate poverty and improve living conditions for people in the developing world. For more information on World Growth, visit www.worldgrowth.org