This newletter contains four short articles discussing the potential for financing carbon sequestration services. The articles particularly focus on this issue in the context of the Kyoto protocol and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
Below are the titles of the four articles and some of the key points made by their authors:
Access to finance for community forest management under the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol:
- in spite of a lot of limitations, there is scope for the financing of certain types of forestry projects in tropical regions;
- because of the initial belief that CDM would be a big money spinner, many foresters placed their hopes for major support to forestry in that line;
- in the long run however, the ‘adverse effects' and ‘adaptation' articles of the climate treaties provide better opportunities as far as forestry is concerned.
CDM and sustainable land reform in the Brazilian Amazon:
- as part of the Kyoto Protocol, the CDM provides that appropriate land uses and particularly reforestation and afforestation may enable temporary storage of terrestrial carbon, helping global society buy time to reduce fossil fuel combustion;
- a project underway in northwest Mato Grosso, Brazil seeks to demonstrate that Amazon colonists can both store carbon and achieve stable and sustainable settlement.
The social meaning of carbon markets: institutional capacity building for a green market in Costa Rica:
- carbon markets must be turned into ‘green markets' in order to constitute a tool for local sustainable development;
- the implementation of the bilateral treaty between Norway and Costa Rica signed in 1997 is an example of a successful green market.
Carbon sequestration of tropical forest: materialising an intangible benefit:
- over the past decade, the applicability of the monetary valuation techniques has been evaluated through the estimation of direct use values of the forest (timber, traditional medicines and food products) and of indirect use and non-use values;
- the results of such evaluations indicate the advantage of a conservation scenario of the forest over a timber production scenario.
