Verden ser til, mens Californien overvejer kontroversiel plan for at redde tropiske skove

Røg stiger stadig fra Amazonas, mens brande ulmer i verdens største regnskov. Brandene udløste en bølge af global forargelse over tabet af dyrebare træer. Men Californien siger, at de har en plan for at holde tropiske skove stående.

Denne uge, statslige embedsmænd vil overveje et forslag om at beskytte disse skove ved at styre milliarder af dollars til lande som Brasilien. Pengene ville finansiere regeringens bestræbelser på at bekæmpe skovrydning og fremme bæredygtige industrier, der ikke involverer fældning og afbrænding af træer. Og det ville komme fra virksomheder, der kompenserer for deres egne emissioner ved at købe CO2-kreditter gennem markeder som Californiens cap-and-trade-program.

Bevarelse af tropiske regnskove er afgørende for at bekæmpe klimaændringer – rundt om i verden, omkring en tredjedel af de drivhusgasser, der frigives hvert år, kommer fra rydning af skove. Og bagmændene siger, at denne plan er den bedste måde at kanalisere hårdt tiltrængte penge til den afgørende opgave.

Andre er enige om det presserende behov for at standse skovrydning, men de siger, at Californiens plan er en farlig misforstået måde at gøre det på. Efter deres opfattelse det ville simpelthen give forurenere mulighed for at blive ved med at forurene uden at gøre noget ved de sande årsager til skovtab:stigende efterspørgsel efter produkter som oksekød, soja og palmeolie.

Spørgsmålet har splittet videnskabsmænd, miljøgrupper og oprindelige ledere, der siger Tropical Forest Standard, eller TFS, har forgreninger langt ud over Golden State. Californien er førende inden for klimaændringer, og godkendelse af TFS kunne inspirere andre stater, lande og virksomheder til at anvende en lignende tilgang.

"Dette er et kritisk øjeblik, " sagde økolog Christina McCain, der står i spidsen for Miljøforsvarsfondens klimainitiativer i Latinamerika. "Verden ser på."

TFS ville ikke være det første forsøg på at finansiere skovbeskyttelse gennem kulstofkompensation. Adskillige internationale programmer har brugt dem som en måde at bevare og genoprette skove og samtidig sænke omkostningerne ved at reducere emissioner i rige lande og finansiere bæredygtig udvikling i fattigere.

Nogle af disse projekter lykkedes, men andre blev aldrig til noget, efterlader skæbnen for det kulstof, de lovede at lagre i limbo. Mange betød også katastrofe for folk, der bor i skoven.

Oprindelige grupper blev ofre for skruppelløse "kulstof-cowboys", der brugte tvivlsomme metoder til at sikre rettighederne til indfødt land - og dets potentielt lukrative kulstof. Folk blev smidt ud af deres territorier af regeringer, der var ivrige efter at iværksætte bevaringsprojekter uden lokal indblanding.

Under alle omstændigheder, programmerne tiltrak aldrig penge nok til at nå deres tilsigtede omfang, sagde Louis Verchot fra Center for International Forestry Research, som har studeret tidligere tiltag.

"Det var ikke, hvad man ville kalde et virkeligt muliggørende miljø, sagde han. Det er der, tingene sidder fast lige nu.

Kan Tropical Forest Standard gøre det bedre?

Det mener dens bagmænd bestemt. De har brugt det sidste årti på at prøve at lære af tidligere fejl.

TFS opstiller kriterier for certificeringsstat, provins- eller nationale regeringer, der ønsker at sælge skovforskydninger, der ikke efterlader plads til kulstofcowboys. Deltagende regeringer skal forpligte sig til at reducere skovrydning, og de vil kun modtage kredit for den skov, de sparer ud over deres basislinjemål.

Planer skal offentliggøres, og fremskridt skal overvåges nøje og uafhængigt verificeres.

"Der vil være et væld af øjne på det, " sagde Jason Gray, lederen af ​​Californiens cap-and-trade-program.

Regeringer skal også bevise, at lokale interessenter – især oprindelige grupper – har indflydelse på programmet og kan drage fordel af det. den brasilianske stat Acre, som har brugt år på at udvikle partnerskaber med stammer, nævnes ofte som model.

"Oprindelige folk er meget velinformerede og parate til ikke at lade deres rettigheder blive krænket, " sagde Francisca Oliviera de Lima, et medlem af Shawadawa People, der arbejder på Acres statsdrevne Climate Change Institute. "Vi går ind for dette Californiske program."

TFS forsøger at løse andre problemer, såsom lækage, som opstår, når man undertrykker skovrydning ét sted, blot skubber den et andet sted hen. Det ville være svært at slippe af sted med i en tilstand, der er en del af programmet, sagde Steve Schwartzman, seniordirektør for tropisk skovpolitik hos EDF, en førende tilhænger af TFS.

Ud over, TFS påbyder, at deltagende stater og provinser ponyer ekstra kreditter som forsikring, i tilfælde af brande eller andre naturkatastrofer ved et uheld frigiver kulstof, der blev opbevaret til offset.

Med disse sikkerhedsforanstaltninger på plads, tilhængere hævder, at TFS endelig kunne tillade rigtige penge at flyde mod at bekæmpe skovrydning. I dag, mindre end 1,5 % af midlerne til at bekæmpe klimaændringer går til skovbeskyttelse, ifølge en ny analyse fra en koalition af videnskabelige organisationer og miljøgrupper.

Det har skabt frustration i lande som Brasilien, where the government had reduced deforestation by upping enforcement of protected areas but where low levels of investment have failed to create new economic opportunities for farmers, loggers and miners who obeyed the rules, said Dan Nepstad, executive director of the Earth Innovation Institute.

With the TFS, offset money could fund things such as community centers, fish ponds for aquaculture and government programs to support sustainable farming practices.

For Californien, the reward is the chance to drive greenhouse gas reductions far beyond what the state could accomplish at home, Nepstad said:"The TFS lays out the framework for magnifying that tenfold."

Critics of the TFS object to almost everything about it, starting with the very idea of offsets.

"It's what we call soft climate science denial, " said Gary Hughes, California policy monitor for the nonprofit Biofuelwatch. "If you are allowing fossil fuel emissions to continue, it's not doing anything about climate."

He and other opponents say California's cap-and-trade program already relies too heavily on offsets—polluters can use them to cancel up to 8% of their emissions in the state—and argue that the TFS would take things even further in the wrong direction.

Chief among their concerns is the legitimacy of tropical forest credits.

Barbara Haya, who studies offset programs at the University of California, Berkeley, worries that leakage will still be a problem, since activities shut out of a participating state can still shift to other states or countries.

It's also hard to ensure that the program will dole out credit only for carbon savings that wouldn't have happened anyway. Haya examined two decades' worth of data and found that a quarter of potential partners would have been able to generate offsets under the TFS's rules due to declining deforestation rates, even though their progress clearly wasn't due to the program (it didn't yet exist).

Then there's the fear that, despite the TFS's insurance provision, the carbon that was supposed to offset a polluter's emissions will end up in the atmosphere eventually, either in a bad fire season or after a change in political leadership reverses a country's deforestation policies, as happened recently in Brazil.

Others contend that the TFS is based on flawed economic reasoning. Indtil nu, the price of carbon offsets on exchange markets is just too low to compete against the forces of global commerce, which make land more valuable than trees, said Tracey Osborne, a geographer at the University of Arizona.

And while advocates for indigenous communities applaud the TFS's social safeguards, some of them say it will be nearly impossible to ensure they are being honored from afar.

Governments in many tropical countries have a long history of corruption, said Alberto Saldamando, an advisor to the Indigenous Environmental Network. He worries the TFS will only heighten the incentive to coerce or threaten indigenous groups to participate in programs that don't always serve their interests.

"Carbon, instead of being a poison, is a value, and that perspective leads to all kinds of abuses, " han sagde.

Opponents raised all these issues last fall, when California's Air Resources Board first met to consider the standard. It opted to delay a vote and asked legislators to gather input from both sides.

If the board endorses the standard when it meets Thursday, it won't mean that credits generated under the TFS will be used in the state's market right away; governments that want to participate would first have to qualify, and then CARB would have to decide whether to accept tropical offsets, Gray said. The motivation to propose the standard now is "to set a very high bar" for forest offset programs in general, han sagde.

Regardless of whether California ever uses the TFS in its own cap-and-trade program, CARB's approval would be a powerful endorsement of forest offsets and a setback for efforts to zero out greenhouse gas emissions, opponents said.

Critics would rather see the state focus on other strategies for preserving forests, such as empowering indigenous groups to protect their lands and pressuring companies to rid their supply chains of goods associated with deforestation. (California lawmakers are considering a bill that would require government contractors to do so.)

Haya and more than 100 other researchers laid out their objections to the TFS and submitted them to CARB. Sidste måned, Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, released his own letter imploring the board to reject it.

But supporters are speaking up, også.

I juni, four Assembly members encouraged CARB to approve the standard as long as it commits to "vigorous and proactive monitoring" of any government that uses it. More than 100 scientists also penned an open letter endorsing the TFS.

Even though forest offsets carry risks, that doesn't mean they should be abandoned, said Verchot, one of the letter's signatories.

"I'm not saying that it's easy to do this. But it's also not impossible, " he said. "And the risks of not doing this, Jeg tror, are greater."

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