Elsevier

Biomass and Bioenergy

Volume 16, Issue 3, March 1999, Pages 171-189
Biomass and Bioenergy

Forests and global warming mitigation in Brazil: opportunities in the Brazilian forest sector for responses to global warming under the “clean development mechanism”

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0961-9534(98)00071-3Get rights and content

Abstract

The Kyoto Protocol created global warming response opportunities through the clean development mechanism that allow countries like Brazil to receive investments from companies and governments wishing to offset their emissions of greenhouse gases. Brazil has a special place in strategies for combating global warming because its vast areas of tropical forest represent a potentially large source of emissions if deforested. A number of issues need to be settled to properly assign credit for carbon in the types of options presented by the Brazilian forest sector. These include definition of the units of carbon (permanent sequestration versus carbon-ton-years, the latter being most appropriate for forest options), the means of crediting forest reserve establishment, adoption of discounting or other time-preference weighting for carbon, definition of the accounting method (avoided emissions versus stock maintenance), and mechanisms to allow program contributions to be counted, rather than restricting consideration to free-standing projects. Silvicultural plantations offer opportunities for carbon benefits, but these depend heavily on the end use of the products. Plantations for charcoal have the greatest carbon benefits, but have high social impacts in the Brazilian context. Plantations also inherently compete with deforestation reduction options for funds. Forest management has been proposed as a global warming response option, but the assignment of any value to time makes this unattractive in terms of carbon benefits. However, reduced-impact logging can substantially reduce emissions over those from traditional logging practices. Slowing deforestation is the major opportunity offered by Brazil. Slowing deforestation will require understanding its causes and creating functional models capable of generating land-use change scenarios with and without different policy changes and other activities. Brazil already has a number of programs designed to slow deforestation, but the continued rapid loss of forest highlights the vast gulf that exists between the magnitude of the problem and the efforts to address it. The ups and downs of Brazil’s deforestation rate have so far had little to do with deliberate programs to control or influence the process. Achieving this control will require a major effort in which contributions from the private sector will be needed. Mechanisms are needed to make contributions to such programs eligible for carbon credit.

Section snippets

The Kyoto protocol and global warming response opportunities

The clean development mechanism (CDM) was included in the December 1997 Kyoto Protocol as a proposal from the government of Brazil to create a means whereby countries not accepting binding emissions limits could cooperate on a project-specific basis with countries that had agreed to limitations (Annex I countries) in reducing emissions. The CDM, defined in Article 12 of the protocol, calls for real, additional, and cost-effective reduction of net carbon emissions. The forest sector in Brazil

The place of Brazil in combating global warming

Brazil is not just any country in matters related to tropical deforestation. It is not just “one of the most important” countries: it is the most important country both from the standpoint of remaining tropical forest and from the standpoint of current annual deforestation rate (and therefore in terms of potential emissions both on a total and on an instantaneous basis). Brazil’s “legal Amazon” region, composed of all or part of nine states, covers 5 million km2, of which 4 million km2 was

Permanent sequestration versus carbon ton-years

Carbon accounting needs to be done on a carbon ton-year basis rather than on the basis of “permanent” sequestration if comparisons are to be made between forest reserve creation and policies to slow deforestation. Ton-year accounting is also needed for comparing avoided fossil fuel emissions with silvicultural plantations and other mitigation options in the forest sector. Under a ton-year system, credit would be given for the number of tons of carbon held out of the atmosphere each year.

Carbon benefits

So far, Brazilian proposals for forest-sector response options to combat global warming have centered on plantations. Best known is the 20 million ha FLORAM proposal prepared by a group led by the University of Sa ̃o Paulo’s Institute of Advanced Studies[17]. Although the carbon calculations in the proposal exaggerate benefits by using the biomass of the plantations at the maximum point in the cycle (the point of harvest), and by considering only the process of carbon fixation rather than the

Crediting forest management

A response option such as sustainable management of native forest for timber may seem reasonable, theoretically stocking carbon in long-lasting wood products made from tropical timber. However, even under the unrealistically optimistic assumption adopted here of perfect compliance with management plans, sustainable management does not constitute a global warming “response option” when compared to native forest.

In addition, proposals for sustainable management as a response option invariably

Understanding the causes of deforestation

A prerequisite to any program to slow deforestation is that the causes driving it must be understood. Our knowledge of deforestation processes is still imperfect; contributions to better understanding the process therefore represent a key area in which effort is needed in order to avoid forest loss and consequent greenhouse gas emissions. A tremendous spectrum of opinion exists as to who is to blame for deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia; however, these opinions vary equally widely in the

Role of the private sector

Creation of opportunities for workable private–public partnerships is to be the task of a special sector that is currently in the process of being created within the Secretariat of the legal Amazon in the Ministry of the Environment, Water Resources and the Legal Amazon (MMA) (see: http://www.sca.mma.gov.br). Non-governmental actors also serve as intermediaries in matching interested private sector parties with environmentally beneficial investment opportunities (for example, the Brazilian

Conclusions

Deforestation avoidance has the largest potential for combating global warming in the Brazilian forest sector. Efforts aimed at policy changes have the greatest potential effect in this area, but much depends on how carbon benefits are counted. While much remains to be done to make deforestation reduction into a global warming response option that can demonstrate “real” carbon benefits as expected by the clean development mechanism, it is imperative that the needed efforts be made to develop

Acknowledgements

Paper contributed to the Aspen Forum on Implementation of the Kyoto Accord, São Roque, São Paulo, Brazil 18–20 June 1998. Portions of this discussion have been updated from Fearnside2, 19. The National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq AI 350230/97–98) and the National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA PPI 5-3150) provided financial support. I thank S.V. Wilson and two anonymous reviewers for comments.

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