Nature can be the biggest ally in our fight against climate change, that?s the simple idea behind the UN programme for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD). Between 2000-07, natural sinks across land and oceans have removed 54% of all CO2 emitted from human activities. But, not only has increased warmth been lessening the oceans? ability to absorb CO2, deforestation is now responsible for 20% of global warming. As arresting deforestation appears easier to accomplish than shuttering coal plants or junking cars, ratification of REDD looks likely at Copenhagen. What India is urging, however, is that attention to afforestation match that being given to deforestation.
In this, India is challenging entrenched offset positions where the global South has mostly been rewarded for protecting existing forests. Indonesia?trailing only China and the US in its carbon emissions, largely on account of deforestation?has already issued REDD regulations. In 2009, Brazil has promised the smallest deforestation rate of the past 21 years. Last year, it announced a plan to slash Amazon deforestation in half over 10 years. This will avoid the release of 4.8 billion tonnes of CO2?the same as what natural land and ocean sinks around the world have absorbed per year between 2000-07. Countries will expect compensation for such initiatives, especially as they cost large commercial operations.
But India is not batting for afforestation alone. It has got the Red Dragon in its corner. If India claims to have added one million hectares of forest cover a year, China claims four million. Our forests capture 11% of carbon emissions, as compared to their 6%. China has also documented a growing shrubland carbon sink. This is akin to developments in African tropical forests, where trees appear to be holding more carbon now than they did 40 years ago. Sometimes called the fertiliser effect of anthropogenic change, it?s a hopeful but yet-to-be-fully-understood sign that tropical forests are evolving to do more to mitigate global warming. This becomes pertinent as an instance of how unpredictable is the future behaviour of carbon sinks. More unpredictability logically leads to investment in more varied options, and this too makes India? case stronger.
Take how fast the conversation in the US has changed. It wasn?t that long ago that it was believed that the country?s carbon sink was enough to balance the carbon its factories emitted by burning fossil fuels. Terrestrial ecosystems still sequester a much healthier percentage of emissions than those in Europe or China. But, even as forest fires rage on in California, new studies are claiming that climate change will cause 50% more area burned every year by wildfires by 2055. Given that US forests account for up to 40% of its carbon sequestration, what this means is that more and more of the country will see carbon sinks turning into carbon bombs. Even as fires increase worldwide and now contribute about a third as much atmospheric carbon as burning fossil fuels, the US neighbour on the North is battling a pine beetle infestation effecting a similar turnaround. As Canada?s forests succumb to the pest, they die and release toxins instead of absorbing them. Once more, what this means is that as much protection as intact primary forests demand, the world will increasingly recognise the need to invest in afforestation, again strengthening India?s hand.
Returns already estimated look good, with an investment of $45 billion in protected areas alone securing nature-based services worth $5 trillion a year. This month also saw what?s being called the biggest ever forest sink sale. A New Zealand forester sold credits for around $22 a tonne. A recent report from India?s Union ministry of forests and environment claims that India can get Rs 6,000 crore every year from its carbon sink; that?s assuming the value of just $7 per tonne of CO2. The New Zealand sale suggests that possible monies could get even bigger.
Even before the world has taken stock of the Indian agenda, backyard skeptics are complaining that environment minister Jairam Ramesh talks faster than he can walk, that newer trees don?t absorb carbon quite as well as mature ones. Sure, India is short of high-density forests. But this may be a case of catching the goat the wrong way around.
Replanted woodlands aren?t as strong a carbon reservoir as matured trees, but what if one is thinking long term? Then, as time consuming as it is, doesn?t one have to start with planting a few trees? And Ramesh seems to have a realistic agenda. Recognising demographic constraints, all he is pitting for is a qualitatively improved forest cover: ?The objective of India’s forest policy is to ensure in the next ten years that all our forest cover is high density or medium density.?
?renuka.bisht@expressindia.com
