By Karen Foerstel

The world’s forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. More than 37 million acres of forest — equal to the size of New York State — are destroyed each year.

Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of all the climate-changing carbon emissions released into the atmosphere each year — more than from all the planes, trains and automobiles on Earth.

“While the debate on stopping climate change has focused on curbing emissions from the world’s industry and transportation sectors, forest protection is one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools we have to reduce global carbon emissions,” according to Bill Stanley, science lead for the Conservancy’s Climate Change Program.

To that end, the Conservancy is helping lead the charge to develop the financial incentives and policy initiatives needed to protect forests and fight climate change.

Joining with international policy makers, private businesses and indigenous communities, the Conservancy is helping develop plans for a global carbon credit market and other financial mechanisms that will:

• allow countries to generate income from protecting their forests rather then destroying them;
• build the financial support developing countries need to lower their emissions and stop deforestation; and
• make sure healthy forests not only combat climate change, but also provide the food, water and economic resources local people rely upon for survival.

Coming Together to Stop Climate Change

The fight against climate change cannot be won without the full participation of the entire world — including developing countries.

“Currently, international policy, including the Kyoto Protocol, does not recognize the protection of forests as a source for carbon emission reductions,” said Stanley.

“While manufacturers in developed nations can win financial support for lowering their industrial carbon emissions, developing nations cannot receive credits for reducing heat-trapping gases from one of their biggest sources: deforestation.”

But The Conservancy is working with partners on the local, national and international level to take the bold action needed to change the economic forces that make deforestation one of the world’s leading causes of carbon emissions.

We support a system of financial incentives and carbon credit markets that would allow developing nations to:

• generate the funds needed to conserve forests, reduce emissions and protect biodiversity;
• improve local livelihoods; and
• join the international fight against climate change.

In the next few years, the developing world will produce more climate-changing emissions than all industrialized nations combined — with deforestation serving as the primary source of emissions in many of these countries.

In Indonesia, deforestation produces 80 percent of the country’s annual carbon emissions, placing it among the world’s top emitters alongside the United States and China.

“As these developing countries seek to gain economic footing by feeding the growing global demand for wood, biofuels and palm oil, they are finding they can make more money by cutting down their forests than from protecting them,” said Lex Hovani, forest carbon advisor for the Conservancy’s Indonesia Program. “The Nature Conservancy is working with local partners to reverse this trend.”

Leading the Fight Against Deforestation and Climate Change

For more than a decade, The Conservancy has been a global leader in forest carbon projects, working on the ground in six countries to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation.

The Conservancy’s Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project in Bolivia is the world’s first project scientifically verified by a third party to lower carbon emissions and fight climate change by protecting healthy forests. The project, the largest of its kind in the world, is expected to prevent the emission of 5.8 million tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over 30 years by avoiding logging and agricultural conversion of the land.

In Belize, the Conservancy’s Rio Bravo project is working with partners to conserve and sustainably manage more than 153,000 acres of biologically rich Maya forest. Along with stopping the emission of millions of tons of carbon dioxide over 40 years, the project will also help protect critical habitat for endangered black howler monkeys and jaguar.

And the Conservancy is now partnering with the Indonesian government and local communities to develop a massive forest carbon project on the island of Borneo that will conserve and sustainably manage 2.4 million acres of forest and reduce carbon emissions by some 5 million tons each year – the equivalent to removing 1 million cars from America’s highways. The project area is also home to one of the world’s largest populations of orangutans.

Along with its on-the-ground work, the Conservancy also has pledged $5 million to the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility to help create the tools and incentives developing countries need to protect their forests and combat climate change. The Nature Conservancy is the only non-governmental organization to invest in this partnership.

And Conservancy staff is sitting down with world leaders to ensure that the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol will provide the financial incentives needed to make forest conservation a powerful tool against climate change.

At the current rate of destruction, tropical forests in the developing world will virtually disappear within 100 years, making it nearly impossible to alter the path of climate change. Action must be taken now to protect these forests and the world they help support.

Karen Foerstel is senior marketing and media manager for The Nature Conservancy covering issues related to climate change.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Dan Quinn (waterfall in Noel Kempff Marcado National Park); Mark Godfrey/TNC (logs in East Kalimantan, Indonesia).