FWD: Tree farms won't halt climate change

[Barry Carter]

Dear Friends,

Here is the first of two articles that were just forwarded to the Ecological Economics forum.

Tree farms won't halt climate change

09:32 28 October 02
Fred Pearce, Valencia

The Kyoto Protocol to halt climate change is based on a scientific fallacy,
according to the first results of CarboEurope, a Europe-wide programme that
has pioneered research into the carbon budget.

The protocol says that countries can help meet their targets for cutting
emissions of greenhouse gases over the next decade by planting forests to
soak up carbon dioxide. But the soil in these "Kyoto forests" will actually
release more carbon than the growing trees absorb in the first 10 years, the
new research shows.

"Countries will be able to claim carbon credits for the forests. But that
won't reflect what is happening in the atmosphere," says Riccardo Valentini
of the University of Tuscia in Viterbo, Italy. He presented the CarboEurope
data last week in Valencia, Spain.

The project's revelations could embarrass governments now meeting in New
Delhi to discuss implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. Earlier in October,
Italy announced plans to achieve between 10 and 40 per cent of its emission
reductions target for 2012 through forest planting. But now its own
scientists are warning that these sinks might not work.


CO2 surge


The problem is soils. Forest soils and the organic matter buried in them
typically contain three to four times as much carbon as the vegetation
above. CarboEurope's researchers have discovered that when ground is cleared
for forest planting, rotting organic matter in the soil releases a surge of
CO2 into the air.

This release will exceed the CO2 absorbed by growing trees for at least the
first 10 years, they say. Only later will the uptake of carbon by the trees
begin to offset the losses from soils. In fact, says CarboEurope chairman
Han Dolman of the Free University Amsterdam, some new forests planted on
wet, peaty soils will never absorb as much carbon as they spit out.

The world's densest network of CO2 monitoring devices has revealed that
Europe's forests are absorbing up to 400 million tonnes a year, or 30 per
cent of the continent's emissions.

Researchers once assumed that most of this came from young forests, since
old forests were thought to be in equilibrium with the atmosphere - sucking
up as much gas as they spew out. But, says Valentini, old forests actually
accumulate more carbon than young plantations. This suggests that
conservation of old forests is a better policy for tackling global warming
than planting new ones.


Perverse incentive


But the Kyoto Protocol takes none of this into account. "Besides ignoring
soils, it has no measures to stop deforestation," says Valentini. Instead,
it seems to give countries a perverse incentive to chop down existing
natural forests and replace them with plantations.

"They will be able to claim carbon credits for the new planting, while in
reality releasing huge amounts of CO2 into the air," says Valentini. "There
is nothing in the protocol to stop this."

"If the politicians had known in 1997 what we know now, they would never
have agreed to its rules on carbon sinks - at least, I hope they wouldn't,"
says Dolman.


09:32 28 October 02


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We must either let the Law of Love rule us through and through or not at all. Love among ourselves based on hatred of others breaks down under the slightest pressure. The fact is such love is never real love. It is an armed peace. And so it will be in this great movement in the West against war. War will only be stopped when the conscience of mankind has become sufficiently elevated to recognize the undisputed supremacy of the Law of Love in all the walks of life. Some say this will never come to pass. I shall retain the faith till the end of my earthly existence that this shall come to pass . . .
--Mahatma Gandhi--