Deforestation on the agenda at climate meeting?

Environmentalists urge policy-makers to include forestry issues at Bali talks.

Deforestation issues must be included in global talks on carbon-emissions control, experts say.

European companies seeking to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol are pumping billions of dollars into clean-energy projects in the developing world. But the protocol does not include funding initiatives to prevent deforestation, which is responsible for some 20% of global carbon emissions.

Eyeing an economic opportunity that could put money in the hands of those who preserve native forests rather than chop them down, tropical countries are now banding together to alter the rules after the Kyoto accord expires in 2012. The first step is to ensure that deforestation is on the agenda at Bali, Indonesia, where international negotiators will gather next week for the latest round of United Nations climate-change talks.

?All of the big countries [with tropical forests] have gotten together to tell the world that they support the same fundamental idea,? says Doug Boucher, who works on the issue for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental watchdog based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Boucher points out that Indonesia has become an international leader on the issue despite being virtually absent from the debate just six months ago. ?We may look back on this in a couple of years as having been a turning point,? he says.

The idea that deforestation must be addressed in any cohesive response to global warming is not new. Although reforestation projects were allowed during the Kyoto deliberations a decade ago, the question of halting deforestation was dropped, largely because of technical questions. How does one verify a decline in deforestation? And how can anyone be sure that the problem hasn't just moved elsewhere?

A decade after the Kyoto talks, advocates say the issue is ready to take the stage in Bali. Advances in aerial and satellite monitoring should help in answering the first question, and the tropical nations have developed various policy solutions to the second.

Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea led the Coalition for Rainforest Nations in a proposal to revive the question at the climate talks in Montreal in 2005. Recently, Indonesia has joined Brazil and other major countries in the 'Forestry 11' coalition, which includes 11 nations representing some 85% of the world's tropical forests, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The proposals vary, but all tend to focus on verified emissions reductions, as opposed to upfront payments on projects intended to achieve certain targets. The Coalition for Rainforest Nations, for instance, proposes that deforestation be tracked on a national level, with carbon credits being sold only after a decrease in national emissions in that sector had been verified.

Although these nations have not endorsed a single idea, Boucher says, they are united in their efforts to ensure that deforestation has a clear place on the agenda for post-Kyoto deliberations.

?Deforestation is front and centre,? says Steve Ruddell of Forecon, a consultancy based in New York that works on carbon markets and forestry issues. ?It's still not a done deal, by any means, but I think the time is right.?

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UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

Union of Concerned Scientists