WORLD BANK TO FINANCE FOREST PROTECTION

Global carbon market, 2005: $10 billion. Global carbon market, 2006: $30 billion. When will the US get with this global program of doing well by doing good? A program like this may not stop deforestation but it’s a step in the right direction.

World Bank fund to pay for protecting forests
Lesley Wroughton, October 12, 2007 (Reuters)

WHO
The World Bank (Joelle Chassard, manager, World Bank carbon finance unit)

Interrupting deforestation can have a significant effect on climate change. (click to enlarge)

WHAT
The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) would finance the protection and replanting of tropical forests. Its most important provision is financing the prevention of deforestation. The World Bank will establish an initial fund of $300 million for the project.

WHEN
- Announced October 11 to be considered by participants at UN climate change talks in December which will set Kyoto Phase 3 Protocols for after 2012.

WHERE
- The FCPF has attracted attention from more than a dozen countries including Indonesia, Brazil and several in the Congo River basin of Africa (Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guyana, Suriname).
- The December UN talks will be in Bali, Indonesia.

WHY
- Deforestation causes 20% of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, more than all world transport.
- The Kyoto Protocols provide credits as a way of financing Reforestation but offer no way to reward Deforestation.
- Without such rewards, poor countries cannot afford to turn down opportunities to profit from deforestation, especially when the prospect of earning from reforesting lies beyond. But much is lost when new growth only eventually replaces old growth tropical forests.
- FCPF includes mechanisms to research and assess deforestation projects because there is much concern that rewards for deforestation can be more easily abused than reforestation credits. Countries might threaten to deforest only to earn rewards or might claim rewards for forests that would have been protected anyway. And it is hard to assess the value of the emissions prevented by a forest that is not cut down.

It can also have a favorable economic impact in developing nations. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
Chassard: "A lot will depend on what the global agreement will be, but we think potentially this could yield a lot of money…It will involve a lot of work on the ground with countries to establish both a physical and institutional infrastructure to demonstrate that they actually avoid deforestation…Countries will have to demonstrate that physically they have reduced the rate of deforestation…Countries will need to have the means to ensure they are managing the rate of deforestation throughout the country. You don't want to preserve forests in one part of the country when another region is being cut significantly…"