The problem with trees...
I've been researching the concept (and use) of carbon offsets, and have been meaning to write something about it for some time. A recent exchange with the good folks at The Nation magazine gives the excuse.
When I started thinking about carbon offsets, I was very skeptical. For starters, whatever the offset, it doesn't do away with the fact of the initial greenhouse gas emissions. And then there are issues concerning the companies that sell carbon offsets, and others, like a Portland, Oregon Land Rover dealership, that use carbon offsets to "greenwash" their products. These are important issues, and I'll return to them soon.
But for now, I want to concentrate on the use of tree planting as a carbon offset. Like Joe Romm and (as we'll see momentarily) the David Suzuki Foundation, I'm against it..
I wrote The Nation a letter last month, taking them to task for using carbon offsets for their Nation Cruise that rely on tree planting. In response, Associate Publisher Peggy Randall sent me a letter from Barbara Vallarino of Ecologic, the not-for-profit firm that works through the details of the Nation Cruise offset program, including the tree planting operation. It reads:
Dear Mr. Bousquet,It is important to understand that land-use change, such as the conversion of standing forests to agricultural uses, accounted for 18% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2000 (Stern Review). This sector, thus, is a larger contributor to GHG emissions than the transportation sector and is the second largest after the power sector.
It follows that, in the fight to address climate change, it is of paramount importance to generate incentives so that standing forest and reforestation are an economically viable land-use alternative.
That said, we understand that forestry-based offsets (and carbon offsetting in general) have their critics and potential problems. Some scientists and pundits have suggested that reforestation and avoided deforestation are not effective responses to climate change. This, however, directly contradicts this year’s Nobel Laureate, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of the world’s leading 2000 scientists who indisputably recognize that addressing Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry ( LULUCF ) can be one of the most efficacious responses to climate change.
As an offset purchaser, we feel there are organizations out there, such as the one we partnered with to offer offsets for the cruise, that bring the highest standards to tree-based carbon sequestration.
EcoLogic has gained recognition as an international leader in the development of forestry-based carbon offset projects. More than a dozen project developers from countries that include China, India, Mexico, Costa Rica, Kzakistan, Tanzania and Kenya have benefited from its pioneering efforts in Honduras, where with its local partner, the Pico Bonito Foundation, is implementing Pico Bonito Forests a project whose carbon measuring methodology has been approved by the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism.
In addition, EcoLogic’s projects are located in Mexico and Central America. Scientists agree that tree planting in all zones may not yield the same carbon mitigation benefits. For example, tree planting programs in temperate zones may not offer the same climate mitigation impact than similar programs in the tropics. This is because trees in tropical forests hold about 50% more carbon per hectare than trees outside the tropics, and thus, the impact of tropical deforestation in particular has a more direct effect on emissions (Stern Review).
Investing in conservation and tree planting programs in tropical areas is crucial to sustaining the forest’s capacity to absorb global emissions. Tree planting programs, especially those using native species in rural tropical areas near old growth forests also expand habitats for rare and endangered species and protect water supplies of otherwise rapidly diminishing rivers and streams.
Sustainable tropical forestry and tree planting also create vital social and economic collateral benefits in this context as well. Specifically, the rural poor benefit from improved food production and increased levels of income through the boost in crop yields that result from integration of trees into agricultural practices and landscapes. Community forestry programs can be major contributors to the increase and sustainable management of the supply of tropical hardwoods like mahogany, cedar, and teak. Meeting the market’s insatiable demand for these highly-prized woods both enhances economic well-being for the rural poor by generating local employment and sustains the carbon reducing capability of tropical forests.
Community tree programs in the world’s poorest regions provide significant carbon reduction and improve social conditions in local communities, while allowing the world’s underserved to take a leadership role in addressing climate change and illustrating that we can all be part of the solution to global warming.
This letter includes all the usual justifications for tree planting as a carbon offset. In Randall's email, I was also directed to a web page on the Suzuki Foundation's web site. This page was a PowerPoint presentation by Ron Dembo, who is one of the gurus of the tree planting as a carbon offset movement (he started Zerofootprint, the not-for-profit corporation that plants trees in British Columbia as part of Air Canada's offset program).
In response to this letter, I called some contacts at the David Suzuki Foundation, and interviewed Paul Lingl, who runs the foundation's carbon offset program. My response was as follows (Vallarino's name was mistakenly omitted from my copy of the Ecologic letter, hence my reference to the "anomyous writer." The Nation gave me her name afterwards):
Peggy,sorry for the delay in getting back to you—I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight first.
Let me begin by assuring you that I’m not on some sort of anti-Nation rage. My partner and I subscribe to and enjoy the Nation immensely. And while the Nation cruise isn’t our cup of tea, I understand the need for fund raising.
Rather, my interests are in carbon offsetting, and in particular with the use of tree planting as a carbon offset. I’m currently writing a book that deals with some of these issues, so I’ve been examining them closely.
I had some responses as soon as I received your email and the unsigned letter from Ecologic, but I wanted to ask the folks at the David Suzuki Foundation what they thought, so I forwarded both to them (I’ve dealt with them on other matters recently).
Almost immediately I got a call from Paul Lingl, who runs the carbon offset program for the DSF. “We were a little taken aback by [the Ecologic letter],” he said. “It’s a misrepresentation of our position.”
Lingl said that the DSF did indeed sponsor a conference on deforestation, and that many people and organizations, including Ron Dembo, gave presentations at the conference. These presentations were then put on the DSF website.
“Thanks for bringing this to our attention,” he said. “We put the presentations on the website, but we by no means meant to suggest that we endorsed all the views in the presentations. It’s an oversight on our part, and we’ve taken that down. We’ll put it back up, but with a notice that not all the views reflect the views of the foundation.”
As of this morning, the Dembo presentation is not on the website.
I went on to discuss the carbon offset issue with Lingl, and he agreed with my position: tree planting can not be part of a responsible carbon offset for greenhouse gas emissions, and the DSF explicitly states as much. In fact, DSF will be publishing a detailed report in January addressing exactly these issues. In the meanwhile, though, Lingl went into some of the reasoning behind the DSF’s rejection of tree planting offsets.
The anonymous Ecologic writer addressed one concern with tree planting: that because of varying albedo effects at different latitudes, forestation of high latitudes does no good at all in terms of climate change. S/he then went on to say that Ecologic acknowledges this and therefore uses forestation projects in Mexico.
But Lingle listed seven other problems with tree planting, as follows:
Leaking—basically, tree cutting is a fungible industry. You might indeed be able to protect one area of forest from the chainsaw, but that doesn’t mean that the trees that would’ve been cut in that area aren’t being cut nearby instead. Unless there are national, or even trans-national, limits placed on cutting down forests, there’s no way that protecting this or that bit of forest results in any additional carbon sequestration. Methodology problems—trees grow at varying rates depending on species, location, rainfall, and a host of other issues. It’s therefore very difficult to say—as carbon offset programs implicitly do—that “X” amount of carbon is going to be sequestered in this or that piece of forest. Permanence—there is no way to know that the trees in a tree planting operation will survive to maturity. Any number of factors come into play here: the long-term viability of the organization that oversees the forest, its integrity, political and economic events decades into the future that may affect the protected forest, etc. “It’s a distraction,” said Lingl. “It doesn’t help us get away from the use of fossil fuels.” Good carbon offset programs (the “gold standard”) don’t just counteract greenhouse gas emissions, they counteract the use of fossil fuels. More on this below. “The whole idea that you can invest in trees is problematic. We’re seeing that as climate change accelerates, trees may not hold the carbon they once did. For example, recent study showed that higher temperatures lead to more forest fires, which increases CO2 emissions from forest.” There are a great number of similar climate change feedback loops—as temperatures rise, trees in the tropics don’t hold as much carbon, for example. Some of these actually start pushing the GHG equation the opposite direction: forests become the source of GHG emissions, rather than a carbon sink. “There’s not enough land available for replanting. We looked at one study from the UK, which found that to offset the UK’s CO2 emissions, you’d have to replant an area the size of Cornwall, every single year.” Time—“It takes a hundred years or so to reach maturity, and we have no idea what will happen over that time.” Moreover, the timelines for action on climate change are much shorter than the time it takes trees to mature: we need an 80-85 percent reduction in GHG emissions by 2050, just 43 years into the future, to avoid reaching the so-called “tipping point” of uncontrollable climate change. The bulk of carbon sequestration in trees happens in their mature stages, after action needs to happen. Those are the reasons that the DSF does not endorse or use tree planting as a carbon offset.
The organization does, however, use carbon offsets, of a variety known as “gold-standard carbon offsets.” They explain their strategy in great detail on their website, here: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/What_You_Can_Do/carbon_offsets.asp. Let me point you to the conclusion (with my emphasis):
“Because of the above concerns, an international standard for carbon offsets was developed to differentiate high quality offsets. Known as The Gold Standard, it ensures that key environmental criteria have been met by offset projects that carry its label. Significantly, only offsets from energy efficiency and renewable energy projects qualify for the Gold Standard, as these projects encourage a shift away from fossil fuel use and carry inherently low environmental risks. Tree planting projects are explicitly excluded by The Gold Standard.
"Gold Standard projects must meet very high additionality criteria to ensure that they contribute to the adoption of additional sustainable energy projects, rather than simply funding existing projects. The Gold Standard also includes social indicators to ensure the offset project contributes to sustainable development goals in the country where the project is based.”
The web page list a number of Gold Standard carbon offset vendors, and I’d highly recommend you use one of these responsible organizations for the Nation Cruise, rather than a very questionable tree-planting scheme that is, moreover, run by an organization that misrepresents the views of the DSF.
Again, I raise this issue in good faith: I want the best for The Nation, and I hope I’m helping you to develop the best environmental policies possible.
Very sincerely,
Tim Bousquet
In response, I received the following email back from Vallarino:
Though EcoLogic respectfully disagrees with your position, we certainly share your passion for the environment. Please know that we also share your respect for David Suzuki and his foundation. There are clearly no easy solutions to climate change, but we are part of a community of activists that are rigorously debating and implementing thoughtful, efficacious responses.
Make of it what you will.
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