The Back Forty

The expanding global carbon and ecosystem services markets continue to create new possibilities for conservation around the world.  Last week, an op-ed in The New York Times by Robert Semple, Jr., described the efforts of Guyana’s President, Bharrat Jagdeo, to promote global investments in avoided deforestation as a part of biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation strategies:

…as an economist by training, Mr. Jagdeo is a persuasive advocate for new ways of looking at the economic value of forests. Right now, he suggests, too many countries put no dollar value at all on their standing forests. So any payment they get from harvesting trees is seen as a clear profit. If forests are correctly valued — for the carbon they sequester and the damage they spare the planet — then there is far more to gain from leaving them in tact.

While the global carbon market bandwagon rolls along, new deals based on sequestered carbon through avoided deforestation continue to fall into place on the ground.  CarbonPositive reports on an agreement by the regional government of Papua, Indonesia, to set aside one million hectares of forest in order to create reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) carbon credits.  The project, brokered by an Australian company, New Forests, is based on the government of Papua rescinding the logging and agribusiness status of the land, and will sell its carbon credits on the voluntary market.  As with other recent emerging deals of this sort, it remains unclear at first glance exactly how revenue will be routed, how local communities will benefit from the deal, and whether or not the presumed market demand for the carbon credits will actually take shape.

Meanwhile, the World Bank and several partner organizations have established a new web site for the Communities, Conservation, and Markets project, which aims to collect and disseminate information on payments for environmental services and other community-based conservation market issues and opportunities.

The BBC has been running a special on-line and radio series all week on the challenge of integrating biodiversity conservation and economic development in the Amazon.  Today’s post on the BBC News web site examines these issues in Brazil’s Amazonas state, mentioning several emerging initiatives involving new financial and incentive-based mechanisms for conserving the region’s vast forests.

Payments for environmental services (PES) approaches to conservation, which five years ago were very much on the fringe of conservation practice save in a few local or national settings, are now firmly in the mainstream, at least in theory if not yet in practice. 

The journal Ecological Economics ran a special edition on PES in its May 1, 2008 issue. The issue includes 15 articles on PES, ranging from conceptual overviews to detailed case studies from Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, the United States, the EU, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

Meanwhile, earlier in the week Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon Finance released their 2008 State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets report, the second such annual report on the growing voluntary carbon market following last year’s compilation.  The report details the rapid growth of the voluntary carbon market over the past 12 months.  The volume of CO₂ emission reductions traded on the over-the-counter market nearly tripled from 14.3 million tons of CO₂ equivalent in 2006 to 42.1 MtCO₂e in 2007.  The value of this trade increased from $58.5 million to $285.4 million over the same period.  These figures reflect the fact that prices for carbon off-sets on the voluntary market continue to rise, with the volume-weighted price of credits increasing from $4.1 tCO₂e to $6.1 tCO₂e from 2006 to 2007.

The expansion of markets for carbon off-sets and related ecological services (e.g. water catchment) presents tremendous new opportunities for creating economic incentives for conservation from forests and grasslands around the world.  Of course, not everyone is confident that these market-based strategies will bring more benefits than costs.  Some indigenous rights groups in particular have recently been critical of existing carbon off-set projects set up under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. 

In terms of conservation outcomes, it is clear that carbon off-set projects can have either negative or positive impacts depending on how they are structured.  They can create incentives for conservation if they structure off-sets in terms of reducing deforestation or through re-foresting previously denuded landscapes, and if they are able to channel benefits to local communities who are, in many instances, the ultimate determinants of forest conditions.  By contrast, if off-setting carbon means clearing native vegetation and replacing it with exotic plantations or producing biofuel monocultures, the impact will clearly be negative.  The ultimate impact that the carbon markets have on conservation outcomes lies in the nuance of how off-set deals are structured and how the market captures bundled biodiversity, community, and carbon emission reduction values. 

The recovery of bison in North America is often described as a wildlife success story.  From the last remaining animals saved from the slaughter of the late nineteenth century, there are now about a half million animals spread across the continent.  Most of these animals, though, are semi-domesticated, with varying degrees of cattle genes as a result of past cross-breeding efforts.  Only a few free-ranging herds exist, such as those in Alberta’s Wood Buffalo National Park and in Yellowstone National Park.  Even in Yellowstone, however, the bison effectively are not allowed to leave the park due to fears about disease transmission between bison and livestock.

Coming back to the range?

While the bison is demographically abundant, the species remains mostly functionally extinct across its original range, which ran from Alaska to Sonora and Oregon to the Appalachians.  An essay in the April, 2008, edition of Conservation Biology, authored by 28 biologists, conservationists, and local landholders and Native American leaders, provides a bold and ambitious vision for restoring the bison to ecosystems across the continent.  The essay, titled ‘The Ecological Future of the North American Bison: Conceiving Long-term, Large-scale Conservation of Wildlife’, is an output of a collaborative process facilitated by the Wildlife Conservation Society.  Read the rest of this entry »