Copenhagen ended without an agreement but a lot of progress has been made, so we shouldn't be too discouraged.

For the first time ever, specific proposals have been discussed to fund REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) and there's widespread support from many countries to put a price on the preservation and rehabilitation of the rainforests, and to allocate funds to do so.

The "accord" presented (a five-page draft document presented by the UNFCC without specific signatories and certainly not ratified) contains a statement of funding REDD with up to $30 billion during the period prior to the expiry of Kyoto (i.e. 2010-2012) and setting up a "Copenhagen Green Climate Fund" that will put together up to $100 billion per year by 2020 to "address" the needs of developing countries.

This so-called accord is remarkably unspecific, but the explicit inclusion of REDD in all this is very good news.

The devil is in the detail and all of it is missing. It's not clear where this money is going to come from and how it's going to be spent, when and if put together, and in particular the REDD scheme needs a detailed protocol of verification and disclosure so that it achieves the right objective. We are not there yet.

This accord was put together in haste pressumably in the early hours of Friday morning and tweaked by world leaders during the day, and by all accounts it's a very sloppy document, containing meaningless statements such as the intention of keeping global warming under 2C (I am afraid we don't have such supernatural powers or control over the laws of physics). The Appendix contains a table of emission reduction targets for 2020 and it is tellingly blank. A statement of intentions that emission reductions would be worked out sooner rather than later during 2010 would have reassured the markets.

The first predictable reaction to this uncertainty has been a nose-dive in the price of carbon. The long term damage is that carbon markets are left to their own without any clear sense of direction.

Copenhagen has shown that the UN can always be counted on to mount a circus, and a very slow moving one. Perhaps this demonstrates that  serious climate change agreement can only happen outside of this framework.  After all, world leaders haven't taken this meeting seriously, only showing up in the last minute and trying to dash off a poorly structured document just to save face.

Actually one can say that we don't need the nearly 200 countries that took part in Copenhagen to agree on a consistent and strong climate change treaty. We just need to put together the top 10 emitters around a table and agree on specific emission cuts and the logistics -and  costs- of how to achieve them. The agreement will be global, but to be blunt, we don't particularly need to know the opinion of countries whose emissions are negligible - the emissions game has relatively few players. And more to the point, we certainly do not need the oil/gas rich countries to sit around the table determined to derail the talks, as has happened in Copenhagen.

The challenge in all this is to get the US to extricate itself from the financial interests of the oil industry. It is difficult. We already know that we will never persuade the likes of Saudi Arabia or Russia to support global decarbonisation and turn the taps off. Decarbonisation will only happen by addressing energy policy consistently and creating capacity for low-carbon energy, effectively reducing demand for fossil fuels as much as possible (the supply side is not something we can aspire to change).

Mikel Susperregi

Writing in yesterday’s Nature, a group of academics says that if Copenhagen leads to a “weak” agreement then temperature rises could reach 4C, and to stay under 2C we have to aim for the most ambitious and dramatic emission cuts (although as discussed yesterday emission cuts don’t guarantee any outcome).  

A global temperature rise of 4C would mean plummeting food yields, water scarcity for about 3 bn people, heatwaves, floods, droughts.. It’s the climate porn scenario sceptics talk about. But most importantly 40% of ecosystems would switch from being carbon sinks to becoming net carbon emitters, and hundreds of gigatonnes of CO2 –dwarfing by orders of magnitude all the carbon we have emitted-- that is now locked away in vast volumes of mile-deep permafrost could be released within a span of decades. Almost all high-latitude forest and large parts of the Amazon forest could be lost.  

The problem with any global warming prediction is that it leads to a decrease in the planet’s carbon sinks. Forests are affected by warming and they are at risk if the water cycle is disrupted in key geographical latitudes.  

It may be the case that all efforts to tackle reforestation in the tropics and rainforest owning countries will be in vain by the end of the century if global warming changes our ecosystems significantly. This means that in order to plan ahead to manage mitigation we need to look for efficient carbon sinks, extrapolating what “efficient” means not now but in several decades’ time, in a warmer world. This could mean that large-scale reforestation in Europe and the United States can be in the long term a clever thing to do as it may be the case that in future tropical rainforests will be net carbon emitters and forests in higher latitudes could possibly lock away carbon more rapidly and as efficiently as tropical rainforests do now.  

After all, restoring Europe’s forests to about 75% of their natural extent in the nineteenth century could increase the Earth’s carbon sink capacity by as much as 10%, and this percentage would be much greater if Europe becomes a warmer and wetter place.    

Indonesia is the world's third biggest CO2 emitter, owing to its forestry emissions. According to the World Bank, its emission figures for 2007 are 3 billion tons of CO2 per annum (about half that of the US), and this is mostly from illegal logging and palm oil plantations for biofuels.

Indonesia is the best example of how key it is to preserve the world's rainforests.

For a population of 230 million, many of whom live under the poverty line, this means the carbon footprint per capita is 11.1 tons p.a. (which is 2.2 tons more than EU emissions).

Indonesia emits 5 times as much through deforestation than other means (energy production), so its emissions problem could be addressed rapidly without a radical transformation of its economy, but simply through forestry preservation. This would bring its emissions down to about 450 million tons p.a.

In Copenhagen the UN-REDD programme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in developing countries) is going to play a key role in determining emission cuts in countries like Indonesia (as well as other smaller rainforest-owning countries). However, UN-REDD is still at its infancy. At the moment it has only 7 programmes, with a trust fund of $37 million, which was only set up a year ago. This is loose change to even start addressing the problem.

Indonesia has a project approved in the UN-REDD framework for $5.6m and the province of Papua New Guinea another one for $6.4m. Potentially Indonesia should be the main recipient of these funds together with Brazil.

The REDD trust fund is at the moment smaller than the budget of a round-of-the-mill Hollywood movie.

These are tiny figures to create any form of incentive for a country where the palm oil industry is growing at 13% p.a. and there are huge financial interests to continue with deforestation and the drainage of peatlands.

Papua's forests in the island of New Guinea have a vast wilderness spanning 42 million hectares, and its carbon sink capacity is comparable to the EU's annual GHG emissions. At the current rate of deforestation (such as is experienced in Bormeo and Sumatra), most of it will be gone by 2030. This is what we stand to lose - it will cause an alarming reduction of the Earth's capacity to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere.

My concern with UN-REDD funds is that this system can only work if the government officials involved make good use of the funds. Indonesia's notoriously corrupt regime is a doubtful candidate to carry out this task and the likelihood is that forest degradation will continue, with or without the REDD subsidies.

Illegal logging is directly correlated with poverty, and the root causes of it have to be addressed. Otherwise loggers are bound to move away from protected areas and carry on logging elsewhere. This activity is virtually impossible to police in large areas of forest.

Indonesia needs to articulate a credible proposal to be a worthy recipient of UN-REDD funds. It must eradicate both illegal and legal logging and confine land conversion to areas of shrub and grassland, where palm oil can be produced, not through the depletion of rainforests. Once it can show it can manage its rainforests as protected carbon sinks and ultimately as financial assets then the case for UN-REDD funds will be a no-brainer.

Brunella

The Guardian newspaper published on Monday a selection of the top ten ideas to combat climate change.

The article is entitled "The Manchester Report" - it's so ridiculous, you've got to laugh. The name of the report is apparently "to underscore the city's carbon hungry past" and the Guardian gathered there last weekend a bunch of candidates who pitched their global warming busting ideas to a panel. The result is the top ten selection (plus the ten runners up).

I completely miss the point of meeting in Manchester, that Ian Katz deputy editor calls "the birthplace of man-made global warming". You've got to be kidding. Poor manchunians, they are so doomed. Who is doing their PR? Is there some alignment of planets or secret sorcerer's motive to meet up at the centre of this epicentre of pollution that will bring about the solution? Answers please.

Since Mr Katz (who is described as "deputy editor responsible for environmental coverage") has decided that industrial manufacturing is the key culprit and origin of global warming then we know the answer (and blame) sounds like it's got to be in Manchester. Bless. I adore to be in the company of intellectual giants.

I must apologise for my flippant tone, but this article is infuriating because it's very much a case of the elephant in the room. Let me explain. As it's no secret that we believe in reforestation as the main solution to global warming, imagine the anti-climax when I didn't see it even mentioned in the top ten, or the runners up. The small matter of deforestation (it alone causes more GHG emissions than could be saved by any of the top ten candidates on the list) and the even smaller matter of protecting our rainforests (whose surface area is in direct correlation with the planet's ability to capture CO2) doesn't obviously deserve the attention of the Guardian's panel and we understand that. We wouldn't expect them to be interested in anything so obvious if one tries to be cutting edge and in order to justify a "report" and expenses for a weekend away in the pit of pollution then one needs to be more recherche.

Brunella

brunella@carbonica.org

Comments are welcome and unmoderated. Irrelevant or inappropriate comments will be removed.

Prince Charles's campaign to save the rainforests is going from strength to strength. Carbonica fully supports the campaign and we'd like to ask everyone to visit the website, www.rainforestSOS.org, to demonstrate your support for urgent action. 

The campaign began in May as an initiative to create a climate of awareness and public concern that encourages action to end tropical deforestation. The focal point of the campaign is a 90-second public awareness film, created by the agency HMDG, in which the Prince of Wales appears alongside his sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, an array of well-known figures including Harrison Ford, the Dalai Lama, Daniel Craig, Robin Williams and children from around the world.

Each individual appears alongside an animated frog. The frog, created by Framestore, the Oscar-winning computer generated imagery (CGI) experts behind the film The Golden Compass, serves as a symbol of the rainforest.

The film can be viewed, and the public can demonstrate their support for the cause by visiting www.rainforestSOS.org or by texting ‘SOS’ and their email address to 60777*.

The campaign was given a substantial boost by fashion icon and now environmental activist Vivienne Westwood, who appeared last Friday on Jonathan Ross's BBC1 programme and urged everyone to sign up to the campaign.

Brunella

brunella@carbonica.org

Comments are welcome and unmoderated. Inappropriate comments will be removed.

In view of the recent report by Friends of the Earth against the use of carbon offsetting and the inclusion of forestry programmes in a future Copenhagen treaty, Carbonica wishes to make the following statement in defence of forestry (REDD) carbon offset programmes (and carbon offsetting in general).

London, 3 June 2009 

Carbon credits and carbon offsets are an integral part of the Kyoto protocol and have enabled an entire sector of the economy to invest in emission reduction programmes, contributing to the mitigation of climate change. Furthermore, CDM has contributed to raise awareness among companies and individuals about their priority to reduce emissions and pay the cost for the environmental damage caused by GHG emissions, in particular CO2. Putting a price on carbon is a good way to manage our environmental damage.

CDM is far from being a perfect mechanism and the forthcoming Copenhagen treaty gives us the opportunity to improve the framework. There are obviously fundamental questions that must be addressed. The principle that an emissions reduction programme generates a "carbon credit" which in turn legitimises a company to pollute and entitles it to emit a permissible amount of GHG gases into the atmosphere must be completely dismissed. In order to mitigate climate change we must start from the premise that the only permissible level of emissions is zero and our net global GHG emissions must be negative. The reason for this is very simple: the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is already too high and for our mitigation efforts it is mandatory that we capture CO2 from the atmosphere, not simply reduce our emissions.

However there is a very good reason why CO2 emission quotas are allocated within the Kyoto framework. It helps us keep our emissions under control. These quotas, however, should not be interpreted as "permissible" emission levels within our mitigation efforts, and within the Kyoto protocol's main remit every conceivable measure must be adopted to gradually reduce them.

For this reason, cap-and-trade mechanisms where companies gradually and continually try to find ways to reduce their emissions and overall carbon footprint, will be the more realistic foundation of a future Copenhagen agreement, and will pave the way to an orderly and gradual transition to a low-carbon or decarbonised economy.

Carbon offsetting is an umbrella term that is used for many different products. It is important to distinguish carbon offsets that are created from emission reductions and those that stem from carbon capture and result in a net negative amount of GHG emissions. Forestry carbon offsets are the only type of offset where net GHG emissions are negative, and therefore the only ones that play an active role in mitigating and reversing global warming. Other offsets, such as renewable energy projects, contribute to net emission reductions and make no more than a neutral contribution to our mitigation efforts.

One could ask the question of why a carbon credit is created by investing in, say, a hydro project in developing countries, whilst investing on a wind turbine in the UK would not entitle a company to create an emission credit that it can sell on. It is an interesting question. 

One answer is that by placing a price on emissions, developed countries can fund emission reductions and green energy projects in the developing world. This can only be positive.

Forestry projects on the other hand, are very different instruments. They are pivotal to climate change mitigation and for this reason not only should they be high on the agenda of the Copenhagen talks, they must be the cornerstone of our global climate change mitigation and reversal strategy.

Carbonica dismisses the claims contained in the FoE document that offsetting contributes to global warming and forestry projects will lead to land grab and poverty in developed countries. On the contrary: the only sustainable forestry carbon offset programmes are those carried out in collaboration with local communities, by enabling them to make a living out of the forests and the environment around them, and empowering them to look after the land and have a vested interest in protecting it. For these projects to work, local communities must have sufficient autonomy and there can be no land purchase for the purposes of creating the offsets. The local farming communities will look after these assets best when they work on their own land. These carbon offsets are a fundamental vehicle for developed countries to protect the rainforests, and provide local communities with the skills to make a living and protect the wildlife, biodiversity and the living environment around rainforests. 

Other rainforest projects that are based on land purchase are not sustainable in the long term; they create fenced-off areas that entail a greater financial liability to the owners of the asset than the ecological service derived from it.

In order to takle climate change and draw a significant mitigation and reversal strategy, REDD programmes must be extensive and well funded to permit reforestation in quite an unprecedented scale. Forest owning countries will benefit from this cash flow and their deprived communities will reap greater benefits from reforestation than illegal logging, which is a problem directly correlated with poverty.

Mikel Susperregi

Chief Executive

mikel@carbonica.org  

A study published in Nature last week shows that the extra CO₂ in the atmosphere is causing trees to grow bigger in the rainforests, absorbing a net extra 5bn tons of CO₂.

Tropical trees are absorbing more carbon than they would naturally, grow bigger, and unwittingly provide a helping hand in the fight against climate change.

It is very much a case of eat as much as you can, while food is abundant and readily available. It appears that trees, like humans, do have a good go at the buffet while it's there. It's not surprising that in areas such as the tropics, where rain is abundant and growth can be sustained, the excess of CO₂ can just be the thing for the largest tree specimens to go supersize.

This emphasises the importance of the rainforests as carbon sinks and how urgent it is that we restore them to their past glory. The earth has lost over three quarters of its forests during the last century, so we do have quite a lot of ground to recover. This is the challenge to combat climate change.

It's good news that governments are now talking about REDD (reduction of emissions by preventing deforestation) to include reforestation and prevented deforestation in the successor to the Kyoto protocol. For a while reforestation projects didn't have a good reputation but this is fortunately changing and there's now talk of financial commitments to prevent deforestation.

The UK government commissioned a report, the Eliasch Report, on financing global forests and the cost of preventing deforestation. Indirectly, all this has a lot to do with the financial incentives for countries such as Brazil and Indonesia to prevent illegal logging. I think this might be the wrong angle - paying people to stop destroying their own forests doesn't address the issue of why they are doing it in the first place. Illegal logging can move elsewhere and the subsidies will be money wasted. The real solution is to turn deprived communities into skilled farming communities who will benefit from sustaining the rainforests. So long as everyone can have a vested interest and views the rainforest as an asset of greater financial value than its timber content, then we will have a solution.

I believe, as we all do in Carbonica, that reforestation is the only acceptable form of carbon offset. The rainforests are the only mechanisms we have to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Other projects, such as renewable energy projects are often a disguised form of deception. For example, if I was to put a wind turbine on my roof and sell carbon offsets from the emissions I have saved (by not connecting to the national grid and being self-sufficient in my electricity consumption), I would probably be able to get CDM certification, the Gold Standard and all possible rubberstamped "certified" and "authenticated" credentials one can imagine. However, it does seem ethically objectionable. Why should I pay for my own wind turbine by allowing other people to emit CO₂ into the atmosphere with these so-called carbon "credits"?

How can we talk about "credits" or "allowances" to release CO₂? It is a farce in this day and age of global warming. 

I don't know how my wind turbine differs from some hydroelectric project in the developing world. Such a project would be deemed as contributing to "renewable energies" but it would create tons of CO₂ in carbon credits because the local community is no longer using a coal-fired station. Well, my question is that they shouldn't be using a coal-fired station in the first place. If they stop doing that, then that's great, but that does not entitle someone else to spew into the atmosphere all the junk that the coal-fired station would have emitted. Otherwise the end result is the same, and we have gained absolutely nothing in terms of addressing climate change.

If, on the other hand, we restore the rainforest as a form of carbon offset, we recapture the CO₂ emitted and in the long term even more than was emitted, as well as adding to the planet's biodiversity, and helping local communities earn a living. And it's important that we talk about reforestation and not only about prevented deforestation. Reforestation means progress in the fight against climate change, because we increase the capacity of the planet to absorb CO₂. Prevented deforestation simply leaves us where we are.

In my opinion deforestation can be prevented by turning illegal loggers into farmers and effectively the drivers of reforestation.  

Brunella Bell

brunella@carbonica.org

"Even if your steak was reared in the UK, there's a good chance it was fed on food grown on land that was once rainforest" is the message of a report by Friends of Earth ("What's Feeding Our Food?"), discussed on this month's issue of The Ecologist.

It is a chilling message, showing that our appetite for meat (and the growing trend in China) is turning huge areas of rainforest in Mato Grosso into monoculture soybeans farming at record speed. 

Apparently, the area of land required to produce soybeans for Europe's livestock farming industry since 1996 is roughly equal to the amount of rainforest that has been cut down in Brazil to make way for plantations since then.

In the last 15 years, production of soybeans has skyrocketed by 170% since it became the preferred animal protein feed since the BSE crisis. The large soybeans plantations are detrimental to local communities because they're industrially run and require very small numbers of staff (on average 1 employee per 500 acres).

I think that now more than ever before a true commitment to fight climate change means to eat less meat. The carbon footprint of meat is simply astronomical. Livestock production is a major source of emissions, using valuable resources such as drinking water (often in countries such as Australia where these resources are a more valuable commodity than they are at the country of consumption, e.g. UK). Then for good measure the feedstock is produced largely from depleting rainforest (greenhouse emissions from change of use of land amount to more than all our transport emissions combined).

A low-carbon footprint diet is to a large extent an "almost vegetarian" diet. Eating red meat is an archaic and barbaric habit that stems from our most primary instincts as hunters. After all, each time you are taking a bite at a steak you're munching a bit of muscle. How disgusting is that? It's positively pre-historic. Besides it clogs your arteries and it is a major factor in causing cancer (because you're eating less veg if you're appetite is satiated with animal protein). Obviously clogging one's arteries was not a problem when men lived to the age of 30 before the Stone Age, but in our day and age it does matter once you hit the age of 80 and beyond.

I can see the roaring abuse and rotten eggs coming my way from opinionated food critics and red meat fundamentalists, but it is true.

A sensible low-carbon footprint diet derives animal protein exclusively from fish and low-fat dairy. A switch to a much more significant consumption of fish should make us rethink sustainable fisheries and creative ways to regenerate fish stocks quickly to keep up with demand. But that's another topic altogether.

It's a fact that a vegetarian person using a 4x4 (SUV) as sole means of transport has a much lower footprint than a meat-eater who cycles. Here's some food for thought for all meat-eaters out there.

Brunella Bell

brunella@carbonica.org

CARBONICA - PROTECTING THE WORLD'S RAINFORESTS 

Click  here to reduce your carbon footprint

You can send an eCard selecting a design from The Prince's Rainforest Project Christmas Card Competition for Schools.

The overall winner is:

Ben Keene, The Greville Primary School. Ben's design will not only be made into an eCard for supporters to send online, it will also be the official card of The Prince's Rainforests Project. Ben's school will receive 200 printed cards of his design. Congratulations Ben.

Our carbon footprint is a small part of our ecological footprint. In addition to greenhouse gases and our carbon emissions, we dispose of many things with our rubbish on a daily basis that stay in the environment for a long time.

In addition to plastic bags and packaging and synthetic materials that are slow to degrade, there are also lots of toxic substances, which cause a number of environmental issues.

It is incredible that nowadays one can still buy thermometers containing significant amounts of mercury and a range of very toxic chemicals, such as those contained in most household paints. For example, let me cite what it says on the label of a gloss paint manufactured by a well-known British manufacturer (ICI/Dulux). It indicates the paint contains "volative organic compounds which contribute to atmospheric pollution". Oh dear, and I just wanted to paint a door, I didn't want to destroy the environment. The label continues: "Contains ethyl methyl ketoxime. May produce an allergic reaction. Contains white spirit. Avoid contact with skin and eyes. Do not empty into drains and watercourses. Some local authorities have special facilities for disposing of waste paint."

It is scandalous that manufacturers are still allowed to sell this kind of thing and rely on the consumer to dispose of it safely. Everyone knows that most people will at the very least wash their brushes in running water in the sink, and the majority will dispose of the empty or not-so-empty pot of paint in the rubbish, which will end up at a landfill and add to the toxicity of the environment through the rainfall that drains through the landfill.

There is an impressive range of organic paints in the market already and there is the know-how to produce all sorts of household paint without any toxic component. Why then are manufacturers allowed to sell household paints that are toxic to the environment?

Turpentine remains one of the most popular items in art shops. A look at the label of another well known British manufacturer (Winsor & Newton) says: "Toxic to aquatic organisms, may cause long term adverse effects in the aquatic environment." This is from a product that is meant to be a medium for oil paints and also the most popular solvent to clean oil paint brushes, which needless to say is then disposed down the sink and ends up in the ocean via the sewage systems.

Governments must scrutinise the toxicity of substances more closely and forbid manufacturers from making them available to the public. There is the technological expertise to replace these subtances by harmless equivalents.

The general principle of sustainable development is to transform our ecological footprint into something that is self-degrading and can be absorbed in our planet's natural cycles. We should eradicate the use of non-degradable synthetics and toxic substances. For example, the use of formica in furniture and plastic components makes no sense when nature gives us wood as a perfect and high-quality element to manufacture our furniture.  

CARBONICA - PROTECTING THE WORLD'S RAINFORESTS 

Click  here to reduce your carbon footprint

George Monbiot writes in yesterday's Guardian ("The planet is now so vandalised that only total energy renewal can save us", 25/11/08) saying that to prevent runaway climate change we need a total decarbonisation of our economy. 

 This is correct. Emission cuts on their own will not deliver the mitigation of climate change that we need.

"Mitigation" is a widely brandished term to talk about how to combat climate change. We talk of a "mitigation model" to prevent our planet from warming, and usually this involves CO₂ emission cuts, in the hope that we lessen the damage we are causing to the environment. This is not the same as reversing it.

We can take the analogy of an obese person who is getting fatter and fatter every day because they eat 20 hamburgers a day. Telling them to cut their intake and eat 10 burgers a day instead, will help them decrease the rate at which they are putting on weight, but it will not be a recipe for slimming. If they are more drastic and cut their intake to just a few a day, that will bring them closer to a stable situation, but to reverse this and start slimming requires other ingredients in their life, such as physical exercise.

Our atmosphere has a concentration of greenhouse gases of 430 ppm in CO₂ equivalent, which is tremendously high, and very close to the threshold of 450 ppm that is widely accepted to be a point where climate change can begin to take a very dramatic turn. It is time to start slimming. Eating fewer burgers or cutting down our emissions will not do the job. Any threshold of CO₂ emissions, however low, is a form of environmental vandalism and adds to the already existing problem.

The high concentration of greenhouse gases is already retaining an excess of heat in our planet and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future (see our article on global warming).

Even if the UK's Climate Change Bill delivers the target of 80% emission cuts by 2050 and the world joins in with the successor of Kyoto (to be decided in Copenhagen next year) delivering the same level of cuts as the UK (which is very unlikely and over-optimistic), then all we will be able to say is that we have vandalised the environment much less than we would otherwise have done, but the problem of global warming in 2050 will still be much worse than it is now in any event, because during 4 decades of emission cuts there will be emissions nonetheless.

The crux of the matter is that to reverse the problem we must have negative net emissions. This means that our target must be to go beyond zero emissions, beyond decarbonisation and being simply carbon neutral, we must look into capturing carbon from the atmosphere on quite a gargantuan scale.

The world has lost most of its forests in the last century. Redressing the balance involves a reforestation process on a vast and fast scale, in order to dramatically increase the Earth's ability to capture carbon from the atmosphere. The UN's working group on Climate Change has suggested financial compensations to tropical countries who halt deforestation and illegal logging. This is encouraging but not strong enough. Deforestation must stop immediately and we ought to be putting all our financial resources on a very ambitious and long-term reforestation effort.

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Send an email to customer@carbonica.org and write the promotional code CT42 in the subject. Leave the message body empty.

We will write back within 24 hours confirming your free tree will be planted. One tree is equivalent to a carbon offset of 1 tonne of CO₂. 

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Send an email to customer@carbonica.org and write the promotional code VT50 in the subject. In the message body write the email address of the recipient of your gift, and a message to them (optional).

You will receive an email confirmation that your free tree will be planted for your friend, and your friend will receive an email with your message and a confirmation of their free tree gift.

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Only one tree per person. Promotional carbon offsets are not for resale and are subject to availability.

The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and its successor will be determined next year in Copenhagen. There is every sign that Copenhagen 2009 will not be ambitious enough to tackle climate change.

The UN is convening under the Framework Convention on Climate Change next month in Poland to discuss an action plan, following the "Bali action plan" for a framework of cooperation and mitigation that will pave the way to the Copenhagen treaty.

In preparation for this meeting, a UN working group has published a document that puts together the submissions of different countries, their expectations and wish-lists of what the future agreement should be like. The document is not very encouraging reading. As everything with the UN, a gigantic slow-moving organization, whose policies have a decades-lag of where we ought to be to see to the current needs, the document is a toned-down and unambitious action plan that is the outcome of putting together many conflicting interests.

The document suggests a "level of stabilization" of 2^oC for the global temperature increase, and states that we should make sure that temperature rises do not exceed 2.4^oC. This is amusing. We hope the UN knows that we do not have any control over temperature rises, not least because we cannot even predict them with entire certainty. We have in principle control over the level of greenhouse gas emissions, but not over how our atmosphere will react to this and the temperature increase that will follow.

Furthermore, emission cuts will diminish the rate of warming of our planet, but the temperatures will continue increasing over time for as long as the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere (currently 430 ppm) remains high. Therefore the concept of any "level of stabilization" makes no scientific sense until the concentration of CO₂ returns to a sustainable level. In order to achieve that, we need to go beyond emission cuts and deep into the territory of carbon capture.

The document also discusses that the concentration of CO₂ should be kept below 450 ppm for as long as possible. However it is entirely possible that even within the current projected emission cuts, we will reach this level in about 10-20 years, at any rate much before 2050.

Norway makes the encouraging suggestion of offering financial help to tropical countries who commit themselves to halt deforestation. The importance of this is enormous. The document also makes the important point that rainforest restoration as a form of carbon capture is to be encouraged. We very much believe that it ought to be a key ingredient of the future agreement.  

This is the latest video from The Prince’s Rainforest Project, called Vanishing Species, created to draw attention to the fact that over a million species will be endangered within 40 years, due to deforestation.

It is a powerful video clip and definitely worth seeing. Add it to your site and spread the word.

For more info on The Prince's Rainforest Project, visit  www.princesrainforestsproject.org/

New research demonstrates the key role of rainforest restoration to offset carbon emissions. In a research article published in the journal Environmental Research Letters,  a group of researchers found that forest restoration in the tropics is most efficient to combat climate change because carbon capture assists the water cycle, creating cloud feedbacks and decreasing the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

We have always believed in the beneficial impact of our rainforests in fighting global warming, and it is nice to come across research articles endorsing this view. The full article can be read here: http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/-search=59298093.1/1748-9326/3/4/044006/erl8_4_044006.pdf?request-id=c66ad5b9-243f-47f2-b72a-854c7674e6f8 (in PDF format).

The authors emphasize the importance of scientifically assessing the geographical location, specimens of trees and habitat prior to planting, to ensure that the ecosystem will be efficient as a carbon sink.

Without a scientific assessment, tree planting can result in unexpected side effects. For example in temperate climates such as Western Europe and North America, and more specifically in snow covered land, trees can contribute to the darkening of the landscape and increase sunlight retention, increasing regional warming. It is important to assess these factors to manage the forest as a carbon sink and to combat global warming, not to contribute to it.

For this reason Carbonica only supports reforestation and afforestation (conversion of open land into forest) in the tropics (specifically Central America), where the scientific case to consider these as efficient carbon capture and global cooling mechanisms is strong and well documented.

CARBONICA - PROTECTING THE WORLD'S RAINFORESTS 

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