Carbon Footprints

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald is running a story Carbon trading suggested saviour as forests vanish.

FELLING tropical forests often makes people poorer, hurts endangered species and emits greenhouse gases, so perhaps rich countries could pay to keep trees standing, the World Bank has said.

The global carbon markets, set up in response to the Kyoto Protocol and other carbon-limiting arrangements, could offer the way. The markets - where polluters pay for allowances that let them exceed their limits on carbon emissions - may be able to put a value on the carbon locked up in jungles and savannahs, said a report by the bank published on Monday.

When carbon is stored in trees and other plants it is not emitted as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which holds heat close to Earth and spurs global warming.

Farmers might clear half a hectare of prime rainforest to create a pasture worth $US300, in the process releasing 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air as the trees burn and rot, said Kenneth Chomitz, the lead author of the bank’s report.

Meanwhile, the European Carbon Exchange on Friday paid about $US15 a tonne to offset carbon dioxide emissions, Mr Chomitz said.

“That means that Europeans are paying about $US7500 or $US8000 to avert the emission of the same amount of carbon dioxide that the rancher is releasing,” he said. “In other words, the rancher is destroying a $US7500 asset to create one that is worth $US300.

When you buy carbon credits, in the form of NGACs, from Carbon Planet, you are directly funding the maintenance and further vegetation of forests on land that was previously cleared before 1990. Each forestry NGAC certifies the removal of a tonne of CO₂ from the air and the storage of that greenhouse gas for 100 years. Carbon credit schemes, in combination with genuine emissions reduction strategies, are the surest way of eliminating your contribution to global warming. — DS

Technorati Tags: carbon credits, emissions trading, forests, Kyoto Protocol, NGAC, emissions reduction, World Bank

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 at 7:30 am and is filed under The Carbon Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.