Indigenous Leaders Call Foul On Once-Revered Catholic Organization

22 December 2014 | Julio Surui couldn’t believe his eyes.

He and other members of the Paiter-Surui Parliament had worked hard to eject illegal loggers from their indigenous territory in the Amazon, and they’d mostly succeeded: all but a few of the loggers who once ran roughshod over their territory were gone, and as a result, the traditional hunting grounds had come back to life, while the children had begun to embrace their forgotten traditions even as they learned to navigate the outside world.

That doesn’t mean the logging threat was over. Far from it. Loggers had threatened to murder Julio and other members of the community who locked them out, and those threats gained credibility in September and November, when loggers and miners assassinated leaders of the Ash©ninka and Shuar people in Peru and Ecuador. Earlier, police had uncovered a plot to assassinate Almir Surui, the Paiter-Surui’s “chief of chiefs”, or Labiway Esaga, and federal authorities had placed him under 24-hour armed protection.

Disturbingly, some members of the Paiter-Surui were colluding with loggers, but their activities were concentrated around one entry point, known as “Line 14³, and Julio and the Parliament knew them well. They were the remnants of an old guard who had a long and complex relationship with loggers dating back to the 1980s. The current leadership saw their activities as a troubling but manageable nuisance, akin to the challenges that any government faces when dealing with, say, illegal dumping or building-code violations.

Yet when the young indigenous leader opened the latest copy of Porantim, the flagship publication of Brazil’s Missionary Council for Indigenous Peoples (Conselho Indigenista Missioní¡rio, “CIMI”), he saw the leader of the logging faction, Henrique Yabaday Surui, staring back at him.

The Disconnect

CIMI is a Catholic organization revered among many indigenes, but Henrique is known among his people as the main dissident selling illegal hardwood along Line 14. For Julio, it was a surreal experience in part because the photo was of Henrique in his heyday, when he was a charismatic leader whose collusion with loggers had the support of the community. In fact, the entire magazine was full of old images, often of long-dead Paiter-Surui an act considered an insult to their people.

 The Paiter-Surui Metareilí¡ Indigenous Association's response to Porantim's broadside on their efforts to combat deforestation
The Paiter-Surui Metareil¡ Indigenous Association’s response to Porantim’s broadside on their efforts to combat deforestation.

But what struck Julio the hardest were Henrique’s words (available in English here). They seemed to come from a dystopian parallel universe one where Henrique and his small contingent of loggers were defending indigenous traditions, and where the duly-elected Parliament didn’t exist.

Not only that, but the interview and in fact the entire magazine seemed contrived to torpedo the Surui Forest Carbon Project (SFCP), which taps carbon markets to save their forest. The SFCP uses a financing mechanism called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) to generate carbon offsets based on the carbon content of the trees that the project saves, and it’s what enabled them to eject the loggers.

Incensed, Julio did something unprecedented. He sat down at his computer and used his Facebook page to boldly and publicly call out a powerful organization revered by older indigenous people, but increasingly under fire from younger indigenes more interested in exercising their autonomy.

“I, Julio Surui, acting in my capacity as a representative of the Makor Parliamentary System of Governance of the Paiter-Surui people, hereby condemn Porantim, the newspaper of the Conselho Indigenista Mission¡rio(CIMI),” he began and he wasn’t alone.

CIMI: Ends and Means

We reached out to CIMI for comment, but they have not yet responded.

No one denies that the organization fought hard to secure demarcation of indigenous lands in the 1970s, and it continues to do good work today, but many indigenous leaders say it’s become paternalistic and heavy-handed in dealing with indigenes who don’t toe the party line.

That party line is laid out quite clearly in the closing pages of Porantim: “We need to regain the memory of humanity on our links with nature, expressed in Sumak Kawsay (Live Well),” it reads. “The environment, and the cultures living in harmony with it, should be the basis for human development and societies; not an item of the market economy.”* (Italics added.)

While many indigenous leaders, including Almir and Julio Surui, support CIMI’s efforts to protect uncontacted tribes, of which there are more than 60 still, the organization has a long history of locking horns with indigenous leaders whose vision differs from theirs.

“They see us as their little Indians, Almir once said. “They think they know better than we do how we should lead our lives, and they punish us when we don’t follow orders.

Even Ailton Krenak, the indigenous leader who was instrumental in getting indigenous rights enshrined in the Brazilian constitution, ran afoul of CIMI when he helped the Paiter-Surui launch their early efforts at sustainable agriculture in the late 1980s efforts that failed initially, but formed the basis of the community’s current sustainable development program. The payback came when he embarked on a fundraising tour of the United States with legendary Brazilian entertainer Milton Nascimento. CIMI accused him of pocketing the proceeds of that tour for himself accusations that later proved baseless.

Almir locked horns with CIMI throughout the 1990s, as he chose to cooperate with the World Bank rather than fight them, but the Paiter-Surui felt the full wrath of CIMI when Almir launched the REDD Project.

Almir and Henrique: The Rivalry That Defines a People

To understand the REDD Project, you have to understand the Paiter-Surui political constellation, which centers on their relationship with the forest. One pole of the constellation sees the forest as a source of timber, and the other sees it as a source of life, with most members scattered in between.


    • For a detailed examination of the history of logging in the Surui Territory, see “Almir Surui: Perseverance Under Pressure“.
    • Disclosure: The author is working with Chief Almir on his autobiography, and has interviewed him and scores of other members of the community, including those in Henrique’s camp, extensively. Efforts to speak with Henrique himself or with CIMI have been unsuccessful.

 


Henrique is a former Labiway Esaga who first won office in the 1980s on a platform that was decidedly pro-development: he wanted to chop the forest to meet the needs of his people. Almir emerged as Henrique’s primary rival in the 1990s, and advocated a platform of conservation.

The two men are as different tempermentally as they are philosophically. In his youth, Henrique was courageous and had a flair for the dramatic. Though an advocate of logging, he wasn’t afraid to pull arms on loggers who short-changed his people, and he engaged in bloody battles with them in the 1990s. He also spoke truth to power, and once pulled his bow and arrow on a Brazilian Senator named Antonio Carlos Magalhes only to be grabbed from behind by environmentalist and eventual presidential candidate Marina Silva. Almir is more deliberative, and tends to seek compromise over conflict.

To this day, the Paiter-Surui are roughly split into three schools of thought: Almir’s school is dead-set against chopping the forest, while Henrique’s school advocates logging. The middle school possibly the majority is akin to the global middle class: they don’t want to chop the trees, but they need to feed their families, and in the early days, Henrique’s logging activities seemed to meet that need. Over time, asAlmir found ways to make money for his people by protecting the forest, his star rose as Henrique’s set.

Almir’s efforts culminated with the REDD project, which propelled Almir into the positon of Labiway Esaga in 2010.

The REDD Project: Public and Private Goods

Money from the REDD initiative goes into a segregated account held by the Fundo Brasileiro Para a Biodiversidade (FUNBIO), and it’s used to pay for specific activities designed to jump-start a 50-Year “Life Plan” that grew out of Krenak’s early efforts to help the Surui revive traditional practices. The plan supports their traditional practices by creating an economy built on sustainable forest products like Brazil nuts and acai, as well as ecotourism and traditional handicrafts.

Early funding is key to implementing the plan, and if the Paiter-Surui are to earn all the offsets they hope to, they must keep illegal deforestation at a level 90% lower than what it was in the past. So, when the Paiter-Surui Parliament learned that Henrique had started letting loggers back into the territory, they confronted him. When Henrique refused to halt his activities, Almir invited local police to accompany him on a helicopter flight over Henrique’s village to see if they could help.

“The police saw the loggers,” Almir says. “But they told us it was an internal matter for us to sort out ourselves.”

The Interview

The internal matter became part of the national debate when CIMI interviewed Henrique, whose version of events differed considerably from that of most members of the community.

“We are now in the hands of the Federal Police, who threaten us for anything from taking trees for our own needs to hunting on our own land,” Henrique is quoted as saying a statement that had a germ of truth in it. After all, Almir had called the police, but they’d refused to act, and the only federal police who entered the territory were Almir’s bodyguards, who were assigned to protect him after loggers threatened his life.”

And as for restrictions on hunting?

“The Paiter-Surui 50-Year Plan never banned the use of the Earth, much less hunting, fishing, or the creation of new agricultural plots developed in a traditional and sustainable way,” wrote Almir on his Facebook page. “The only activities we oppose are the illegal extraction of timber at an unfair price or the leasing of the Earth to invaders for fishing and poaching activities long supported and authorized by Henrique Surui.”

Henrique went on to allege that members of the Surui had been told that REDD funding would flow directly into their accounts, but both Julio and Almir deny ever making such promises and, in fact, Almir’s 50-Year plan explicitly focused on the common good.

Julio’s Response

“I found it rather absurd to read the false accusations and slanderous statements against Almir Surui, his 50-Year Plan, (plano de gesto do territ³rio Sete de Setembro), and the Surui Forest Carbon Project,” wrote Julio. “The fact is that there are other interests behind these false accusations and affirmations, seeking to empower the illegal exploitation of timber and the natural resources of the Surui traditional lands.”

He then asked why CIMI would turn a blind eye to illegal logging while sabotaging a mechanism that was delivering tangible benefits.

“It is absurd that CIMI supports this act, committing a grave crime by causing division and intrigue among the Surui people,” he wrote. “Does the Church really support this? Why have they not protested the illegal exploitation of timber and the other illegal activities that are happening within the Surui Indigenous Lands?”

Other Responses

And he wasn’t the only one speaking up. The Metareil¡ Indigenous people’s Association, which speaks in one voice on behalf of the four clans of the Paiter-Surui and acts as project proponent for the REDD Project, formally denounced CIMI on their Facebook page as well.

“When a newspaper of the Missionary Council for Indigenous Peoples strikes an indigenous project with the serious accusations of misuse of money, purchase of leaders, federal police coercion, transfer of territory and preventing the exercise of traditional activities, it is necessary to react,” they wrote adding that they had filed a formal complaint with the Ethics Committee of the Federal Journalism Society (Sindicato dos Jornalistas do Distrito Federal).

“We know that CIMI has deep ideological divergence in relation to environmental compensation projects, and we are able to follow the debate on this subject, and even participate in it,” they continued. “However, we hoped that the members of that entity knew the difference between debating an environmental issue and conducting an outright smear campaign against the name and reputation of an entire indigenous people.”

Beyond the Paiter-Surui

Members of the neighboring Gavio and Arara took issue with CIMI’s broadside.

Both peoples are exploring the use of REDD to implement long-term life plans, and both are working with COICA (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin / Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Ind­genas de la Cuenca Amaz³nica), an umbrella organization of indigenous organizations across the Amazon, on something called “Indigenous REDD”, which also aims to harness carbon finance to support indigenous Life Plans, but may or may not tap markets. The discussions have been going on for several years, but Henrique’s comments portrayed the two peoples as na¯vely stumbling into a bad deal. Delson Gavio, head of the Padereehj Association, issued a formal condemnation of his own, also posted on Facebook.

“These are lies aimed at harming indigenous people and damaging projects that are running correctly and helping to protect indigenous lands from the advance of illegal logging and the destruction of the forest,” he wrote. “We reject the comments of Henrique Surui, which were published by CIMI, because neither he nor they have been on our land to discuss the projects we’re executing, much less done anything to address the problem of illegal logging on indigenous lands.”

He went on to attack “the disrespectful attitude of CIMI and Henrique Surui, which only serves to propagate lies, divide the indigenous people, facilitate the theft of wood, and enable colonial invasions in our lands. We do not allow anyone whether ‘white’ or indigenous to treat our people and institutions with disrespect.”

Almir Responds

Fearing that Henrique’s comments would drive a wedge between his people and their neighbors, Almir who had long asked his people to go easy on Henrique then took to Facebook as well to make it clear that Henrique did not speak for the majority of his people, and to detail Henrique’s record.

“Does he, by any chance, have another project or initiative better for the Paiter-Surui?” he asked. “As far as I know, Henrique Surui is the greatest destroyer of our forests and their rich biodiversity, because he has been involved for quite some time in the illegal sale of timber, and he works day-by-day to convince other people and families to join him in his illegal activities.”

But he also took CIMI to task, and accused them of manipulating Henrique, who has been working through some health issues at CIMI facilities.

“We will not let a single indigene, one who had been involved in the sale of illegal timber and manipulated by CIMI, disrupt our strategic plan or interfere with the strengthening of the autonomy of our people,” he wrote.

Other members of the community have called on Almir to file a complaint with the Vatican, where Pope Francis used his Christmas address to rail against the Curia for acting as “lords of the manor superior to everyone and everything.”

For acting, in other words, the way these indigenous leaders say CIMI has been behaving.

This Week In Biodiversity: Congress Enters The Sage-Grouse Battle

23 December 2014 | Greetings! This month, the sage-grouse wars raged on, with Congress – never one to pass on a fight – getting involved.The spending bill passed by the US Congress last week included the following provision:
Sage-Grouse Sec. 122. None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used by the Secretary of the Interior to write or issue pursuant to section 4 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1533) –

 

(1) A proposed rule for greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus)
(2) A proposed rule for the Columbia basin distinct population segment of greater sage-grouse;
(3) A final rule for the bi-state distinct population segment of greater sage-grouse; or
(4) A final rule for Gunnison sage-grouse (Centrocercus minimus) 
While mainstream conservationists balk at this Congressional rider, some say it gives the conservation community time to demonstrate that voluntary incentives can work, such as Habitat Exchanges in Colorado and Nevada.

 

Interior Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw told Ecosystem Marketplace that while they weren’t happy about the Congressional intrusion, the bill doesn’t stop the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) from continuing to collect data and conduct analysis around a final decision, nor does it have implications for local and state plans or partnerships.

 

So will it be conflict or collaboration? We’re starting to get whiplash. Counties in Oregon recently hammered out a new multi-county Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances with USFWS. Meanwhile the Nevada Association of Counties, miners, and ranchers are suing the federal government over the 2011 agreement USFWS made with conservation groups that blocked the agency from considering “warranted but not precluded” when deciding whether to list a number of candidate species, including the greater sage-grouse. And the Center for Biological Diversity is suing the USFWS for listing the Gunnison sage-grouse bird as ‘threatened’ versus ‘endangered’ based on voluntary conservation actions.

 

This month we also have a number of terrific Opinion pieces from Bobby Cochran (on why nature matters for human health), William Coleman (on the “Farmer Brown” problem – or how mitigation prices can help EPA fix its penalty fees), and Carlos Ferreira (on why we need to make the offsets case to consumers). We’d love to hear what you think.

 

Happy holidays – and see you in 2015!

—The Ecosystem Marketplace Team

If you have comments or would like to submit news stories, write to us at [email protected].

EM Exclusives

Budget Deal Leaves Sage Grouse In Limbo. Can Private Conservation Do The Trick?

The US government may have averted another shutdown with the passage of the Congressional spending bill last week. But a short paragraph nestled within the 1,603 page document was a provision to withhold funding for the Department of Interior to decide on the sage grouse’s endangered status.

 

Grouse habitats have declined significantly through the years, to the point where the Department of Interior (DOI) must decide whether or not to list the species as endangered by September 2015.

 

Over at the Interior Department, Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw had harsh words for the uninvited Congressional intrusion, but said that, in the long term, it will make little difference to the department’s conservation work regarding the sage grouse.

 

And while mainstream conservationists balk at this Congressional rider, some practitioners cautiously view this as an opportunity to change the impeding conflict over the sage-grouse.

– Keep reading at Ecosystem Marketplace.

When COPs Converge: The Biodiversity And Climate Link

Biodiversity and climate are intertwined in the physical realm though separate in the policy world. But during the ongoing climate COP in Lima, a diverse group of scientists and policymakers presented a declaration assessing current knowledge on connections between biodiversity vulnerabilities and climate change with the objective of increased integrated activity on the inter-linked issues.

 

“Biodiversity is affected by climate change and in turn affects the carbon balance of ecosystems,” says Holm Tiessen, the Executive Director of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), a research organization that spearheaded the creation of this declaration presented to COP 20 President, Manuel Pulgar Vidal. The declaration called for integrative research on biodiversity and climate change noting connections between the two issues.

– Learn more.

Opinion: Confirming What We Already Know: Human Health Is Linked To Nature

Chronic conditions kill, disable, and ruin the quality of life of millions of Americans. Indeed, more than one-third of U.S. adults are now obese, incurring $148 billion in medical costs annually and contributing to 18% of U.S. adult deaths in recent years. Our healthcare costs are the highest per capita in the world. And that amount keeps increasing.

 

But consider an alternative. Consider a forest trail. Consider a fresh breeze. Consider the robust body of evidence linking human health to nature.

 

On both the quantitative and qualitative levels, we increasingly understand how more time outdoors improves our well-being. And this is spurring health professionals across the country to recognize something our ancestors accepted as fact. To that end, 30 leading health officials, academics and nature-focused nonprofits have issued theWingspread Declaration on Health and Nature.

– Keep reading here.

Opinion: Solving The Farmer Brown Problem: How The Cost Of Mitigation Credits Can Help The EPA Reach Right Penalty Price

Last month, the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) announced its intention to levy penalties in the case of a California central valley almond farmer who seems to have knowingly bulldozed 33 acres of rare vernal pool habitat in an effort to expand his orchard operations.

 

My guess is that farmer Edward Brown is crying about the EPA action…all the way to the bank.

 

If we run the numbers according to current market prices for vernal pool credits, we can see that Farmer Brown has won the day. The EPA penalties will cost him $1.2 million in round numbers. If he had done as the Corps directed and bought 33 mitigation credits priced at $200-300,000 each, he would have spent $7-$10 million. By violating the law, destroying the habitat and subjecting himself to EPA justice, Brown has saved something like $7 million.

– Read it at Ecosystem Marketplace.

Opinion: Biodiversity Offsets As Corporate Responsibility: Opportunity Or Paradox?

A visit to the SpeciesBanking website confirms what specialists have known for some time: that the practice of offsetting impacts to biodiversity is widespread. And while national, regional and local practices vary widely, one point is clear: offsetting is an increasingly important mechanism for conservation as more and more companies use them to mitigate their biodiversity impacts.

 

However, few firms are choosing to offset as a way to manage their image and show consumers that they are environmentally-responsible companies. Biodiversity offsets has the potential to implement high quality conservation in the face of encroaching development. But, unless it’s under attack, the concept remains almost unheard of among consumers. This is a big problem, according to a researcher on the subject who says growth and regulatory support depends on public opinion. And this unawareness at the consumer level could be impacting the sector’s ability to expand.

– Read the opinion piece here.

Mitigation News

Voluntary Conservation Continues to Ruffle Feathers

At the bare minimum, farmers and ranchers in the US West hope that Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances (CCAAs) will exclude them from USFWS restrictions and regulations should the bird be listed under the Endangered Species Act. But contention over these measures, which allow landowners to perform land-use activities beneficial to a species in exchange for exclusion from future regulations, continues.

 

The Center for Biological Diversity is suing the USFWS for listing the Gunnison sage-grouse bird as ‘threatened’ versus ‘endangered’ based on voluntary conservation actions. Meanwhile environmental organizations argue the CCAAs perform only minimal conservation and aren’t sufficient in ensuring a viable healthy species population.

– Get the full story from the Capital Press.

Adjustments to Florida Mitigation Bank Causes a Big Stir

Disagreement surrounds the development of a parcel of land in Florida’s Volusia and Brevard counties. The Sierra Club is taking legal action against a regional water management agency that approved an investment company’s development agenda on an area deemed as part of a massive mitigation bank. The investment bank says their permit allows for them to remove acreage from the bank and that the removed part wasn’t an active area of the bank. Regardless, the Sierra Club says the development is harmful to the bank and the regional agency doesn’t have the authority to release conservation easements.

– Keep reading.

Environmental Funds Look to Play Ball with the Extractive Industry

At last month’s World Parks Congress, participants took a closer look at environmental funds specifically looking at how they could engage earlier and more often with extractive industries. The benefits of a stronger relationship between the two are sizable. Industries like mining and oil could channel some of their revenue into these funds to benefit wildlife in areas surrounding their operations. In turn, a closer relationship with the funds could also perhaps help these industries lessen their impact on local biodiversity.

– Read more at Forbes.

ICMM Passes their Biodiversity Midterms, But Get Some Homework

A new report prepared for the International Council for Mining and Metals (ICMM) found that ICMM members have greater focus and more specific commitments on biodiversity conservation than their non-ICMM peers. The Biodiversity Performance Review was commissioned by ICMM and the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It includes recommendations for further engagement including developing a business case for biodiversity offsets, working with NGOs to align definitions of high biodiversity value areas, and minimum requirements for risk and impact assessments.

– Learn more.
– Get a copy of the report.

Mitigation Roundup

 

Rethinking Deforestation and Water Connections

Surprising new research out of Australia found that deforestation doesn’t always have a negative impact on wetlands and in some cases, can result in an increase in biodiversity and water flow. Analyzing data from a pool of 245,000 global wetlands, report authors found that forests act like biological pumps and transport water into the atmosphere reducing the amount available for wetlands, rivers and groundwater. The authors say this study is a key tool when making decisions related to reforestation, wetlands and water quality.

&nndash; Learn more here.

A Good Report Card for Myanmar’s Nature Reserve

Myanmar’s Taninthayi Nature Reserve Project got a favorable review from the nation’s Forest Department and the environmental organization, Wildlife Conservation Society. The project, which engages private companies in funding the creation and management of a protected area, is a public-private partnership and unique to Myanmar. It helps companies manage their development impacts on biodiversity in sensitive ecosystems although the project doesn’t meet biodiversity offsetting standards. If proven successful, the model could spread and be used in other parts of the country.

– Learn more from the Biodiversity Consultancy.

I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think it Means

Market-based conservation is viewed as having great potential for alleviating big environmental challenges like deforestation but the diverseness of the term is creating such confusion, it’s stalling progress on the policy front. A study analyzing data related to market-based instruments (MBIs) found that many peer-reviewed articles on MBIs had little to do with actual markets. Several payments for ecosystem services projects act more like subsidies-with a government as a payment provider-than market mechanisms. Distinct definitions and stricter use of the term should result in greater clarity on the issue, but report authors note the difficulty in categorizing MBIs as many of them are multidimensional.

– Learn more at the CIFOR blog.

Thinking Green Means Managing Green

Recent studies have found simply labeling an area as protected doesn’t ensure a positive outcome. Proper management is required. Last month during the World Parks Congress, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) highlighted the importance of good governance by unveiling its Green List, a compilation of 23 of the world’s best managed protected areas that result in favorable ecosystems for biodiversity. The Green List and initiatives like it encourages the type of international cooperation that is necessary for achieving global biodiversity targets.

– Keep reading.

JOB LISTINGS

 

Program Manager

The Nature Conservancy – Washington DC, USA

The Program Manager directs and manages all aspects of key science-based programs that are essential to developing thought leadership in select TNC science staff, to building community between staff scientists and the broader science community, and to support scientific development and leadership within The Nature Conservancy on key conservation and conservation science issues. S/he serves as principal contact for these key programs and, through her/his program leadership, helps establish the Conservancy as a major scientific thought leadership organization.

 

The Program Manager defines priorities and long-term strategies for TNC’s science thought-leadership training and post-doctoral programs, with an eye to increasing the diversity of scientists in thought leadership positions. S/he creates a culture of innovation, adaptive learning, risk-taking and cohort supportiveness within these programs. S/he initiates and develops key partnerships with mentors and public and private organizations that spur participants within these programs and across the programs as a whole to maximum impact. S/he directs and manages the programs’ ongoing activities, specifically:

 

  • Developing curricula for early- and mid-career science staff that increases the rigor, impact and effectiveness of their scientific research, improves their communication skills, promotes their ability to lead conservation through new ideas to better practices and more effective partnerships, and raises their profile in the external science community.
  • Developing curricula for post-doctoral scholars that improves ability to conduct cutting-edge science that is useful for conservation, increases understanding of academic and NGO cultures, improves communication effectiveness in multiple media forms, and builds community among young conservation scientists and the broader conservation science and practice communities.
  • Coordinates communications trainings and curricula with The Conservancy’s Science Communications Department
  • Growing a network of university partners that establishes The Conservancy’s science staff and post-doctoral fellows as top notch colleagues, and improves opportunity creation for university partners to inform Conservancy practice on the ground
  • Organizing and running workshops and conferences for the key programs that provide opportunities for participants to build community with each other and to benefit from interactions with program mentors.
  • Bringing a fresh lens and inspiring creativity to all activities.
  • Creating and identifying opportunities to use the programs to create a more inclusive and diverse conservation community.

– Learn more here.

EVENTS

 

2015 National Mitigation & Ecosystem Banking Conference

The 2015 National Mitigation & Ecosystem Banking Conference, scheduled for May 5-8, 2015, in Orlando, Florida is the only national conference that brings together key players in this industry, and offers quality hands-on sessions and training as well as important regulatory updates. Proven to be “the” place to gain insights, explore new markets and learn from sessions, the 2015 Conference will continue its focus on educational content – both advanced and basic sessions as well as moderated exchanges and a variety of mini workshops that help to connect bankers, regulators, users and others involved in this industry. Pre and post- event workshops include Primer 101, Stream Banking, Long-Term Stewardship, Financing & Valuation and more. Hear perspectives from bankers, regulators and users, get updated on regulations, legislation and legal challenges, participate in field trips and benefit from the many opportunities to network! With a high attendance this past year, we anticipate a record attendance in Orlando and encourage you to make plans to submit to present, attend, even sponsor or exhibit! Orlando FL, USA. 5-8 May 2015.

– Learn more here.

California Regulators Bump Rice Offsets, Forestry Updates To 2015

23 December 2014 | The California Air Resources Board (ARB) delayed the potential adoption of a new rice cultivation protocol – the first crop-based methodology considered by the ARB – as well as proposed updates to the forestry protocol to 2015 amid controversy about the planned revisions.

The rice cultivation protocol promotes eligible practices that reduce methane emissions from rice cultivation, such as switching from wet seeding to dry seeding and early drainage in preparation for the harvest in California. The ARB projects potential offset supply under the new protocol in the range of 500,000 and 3,000,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas reductions through 2020 – the scheduled end date for California’s cap-and-trade program.

Board consideration of the rice cultivation protocol has been delayed several times due to questions raised by stakeholders about the environmental integrity of the offsets, namely the potentially destructive impact on the habitat of bird populations. But the updated protocol incorporated safeguards against negative impacts on migratory birds such as the exclusion of offsets from rice cultivation within the Butte Sink Wildlife Management Area – a critical habitat – and bans a particular project activity even though the practice could generate additional offset supply.

Robert Parkhurst, Director of Agriculture Greenhouse Gas Markets for the Environmental Defense Fund, praised several elements of the proposed protocol, including the ability of farmers to cooperate and aggregate their emissions reductions into a single project and the ability to perform risk-based and randomized verification since verification is typically responsible for 50% of the total project development cost.

“I think the protocol is in really good shape as it is,” he said.

The Rice is Still Simmering

In the days leading up to the hearing, several stakeholders urged the ARB not to proceed with the rice cultivation protocol without making substantial revisions. Leslie Durschinger, Founder and Managing Director of project developer Terra Global Capital, encouraged the ARB to include a stronger and clearer consolidation option. While the protocol was moving in the right direction in allowing consolidation of projects and related reports, the system as proposed did not support the level of consolidation necessary to make the rice protocol economically viable for growers to adopt, she said.

In March, the American Carbon Registry listed the first rice project, which aggregates rice growers over a 5,000-acre area in California’s Sutter, Colusa and Glenn Counties to reduce the equivalent of 6,700 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

The American Farmland Trust (AFT) identified issues related to the calculation of emission reductions of rice cultivation projects that could reduce the amount of reductions credited to the grower, perhaps unnecessarily, said James Daukas, Vice-President, Programs.

However, the evaluation and the eventual approval of the rice cultivation protocol is critical for future consideration of nutrient management, wetlands and grassland protocols that stakeholders would like the ARB to adopt to expand potential offset supply, Parkhurst said – a sentiment echoed by others.

“The rice protocol has set the stage for a lot of additional protocols from agriculture,” he said.

In the Land of the Midnight Sun

Stakeholders speaking at the board hearing expressed widespread support for the inclusion of forestry projects located in Alaska in California’s program. Currently, forestry projects providing offsets to California’s program are required to be based in the lower 48 US states.

The ARB did not allow Alaska-based projects when considering early- action methodologies and programs in 2011 because of the absence of data from the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program of the U.S. Forest Service. Now having access to such data, the ARB staff has proposed allowing Alaska-based forestry projects into the program. But more revisions must occur before the proposal becomes official such as revising the approach for establishing baselines for improved forest management projects on public lands.

Removing the ban on Alaska-based offset projects from the cap-and-trade program would give the native populations in the state an alternative to timber harvest and reward sustainable forest management, said Sheri Buretta, Chairman of the Board Chugach Alaska Corporation.

“Alaska forest carbon offset projects could generate millions of offsets while achieving social, environmental and economic benefits to our Alaska native populations,” she said. “The data was not available when the program first started and now it is.”

A Chilling Effect

Foresters and forest carbon project developers, however, objected to several proposed technical updates to the forestry protocol, including planned changes to standards for even-aged management of forest stocks.

The proposal would have a “chilling effect” on the participation of even-aged-managed forests because it would create a substantially larger and longer-term buffer that is inconsistent with the requirements of the California Forest Practice Act, argued Gary Rynearson, a professional Forester with Green Diamond Resource Company, which owns and manages forest lands in Washington and California.

“These excessive buffers go far beyond prescriptions recommended,” said Roger Williams, President of Blue Source, which has registered 44% of the forest carbon offsets issued by the ARB to date. “Our proposed solution is to maintain the existing protocol language. The existing language was carefully developed over a 5-year period by a diverse group of expert stakeholders and should not be abandoned.”

Buyers’ Liability Still a Thorny Issue

The buyers’ liability provisions were a major topic of conversation following the ARB’s decision to invoke the invalidation provisions featured in the state’s cap-and-trade program for the first time in November. The ARB invalidated 88,955 offsets for ozone-depleting substances, but limited the invalidation to one particular carbon offset project by developer EOS Climate generated at the Clean Harbors facility in Arkansas.

Thursday’s hearing marked the first time when stakeholders were able to voice their concerns about the final invalidation directly to board officials in a public hearing and they were not shy about raising their objections. A consistent theme revolved around the fact that the ARB invalidated the offsets for an alleged violation unrelated to the actual generation of the offsets, which represented real, quantified and verified emissions reductions by the ARB’s own admission, and the need for the ARB to provide specific guidance about the circumstances that would trigger a violation.

Adam Smith, ‎Program Manager of Climate and Air Policy at Southern California Edison, said the lack of clarity in the invalidation rules creates problems for developers, registries and entities regulated under the cap-and-trade program.

The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) recommended modifications to clarify that only activities in the offset project area could potentially trigger invalidation and that only a confirmed formal violation notice should trigger an invalidation investigation.

“It remains unclear what exactly constitutes a violation,” said Josh Strauss, Director of Forest Carbon Projects for project developer Blue Source, speaking on behalf of IETA. “IETA believes it is extremely important to ensure that violations unrelated to actual offset project activities are not grounds for invalidation.”

IETA also suggested a modification that specifies that only offsets generated during the period of an actual violation could be subject to invalidation rather than all offsets generated during the entire reporting period.

ARB board members appeared receptive on the need to offer guidance on the type of violations that would rise to the level of offset invalidation even as they acknowledged the difficulty in providing such guidance.

“I think that’s going to be a thorny issue, but it’s something that needs to be worked on,” said ARB board member Judy Mitchell.

“It’s not an easy job and it’s a slippery slope, but what’s going to be in front of Mr. (ARB Executive Officer Richard) Corey is a whole slew of possible invalidations,” said ARB board member Sandra Berg.

Indigenous Leaders Call Foul On Once-Revered Catholic Organization

22 December 2014 | Julio Surui couldn’t believe his eyes.

He and other members of the Paiter-Surui Parliament had worked hard to eject illegal loggers from their indigenous territory in the Amazon, and they’d mostly succeeded: all but a few of the loggers who once ran roughshod over their territory were gone, and as a result, the traditional hunting grounds had come back to life, while the children had begun to embrace their forgotten traditions even as they learned to navigate the outside world.

That doesn’t mean the logging threat was over. Far from it. Loggers had threatened to murder Julio and other members of the community who locked them out, and those threats gained credibility in September and November, when loggers and miners assassinated leaders of the Ashéninka and Shuar people in Peru and Ecuador. Earlier, police had uncovered a plot to assassinate Almir Surui, the Paiter-Surui’s “chief of chiefs”, or Labiway Esaga, and federal authorities had placed him under 24-hour armed protection.

Disturbingly, some members of the Paiter-Surui were colluding with loggers, but their activities were concentrated around one entry point, known as “Line 14″, and Julio and the Parliament knew them well. They were the remnants of an old guard who had a long and complex relationship with loggers dating back to the 1980s. The current leadership saw their activities as a troubling but manageable nuisance, akin to the challenges that any government faces when dealing with, say, illegal dumping or building-code violations.

Yet when the young indigenous leader opened the latest copy of Porantim, the flagship publication of Brazil’s Missionary Council for Indigenous Peoples (Conselho Indigenista Missionário, “CIMI”), he saw the leader of the logging faction, Henrique Yabaday Surui, staring back at him.

The Disconnect

CIMI is a Catholic organization revered among many indigenes, but Henrique is known among his people as the main dissident selling illegal hardwood along Line 14. For Julio, it was a surreal experience – in part because the photo was of Henrique in his heyday, when he was a charismatic leader whose collusion with loggers had the support of the community. In fact, the entire magazine was full of old images, often of long-dead Paiter-Surui – an act considered an insult to their people.

 The Paiter-Surui Metareilá Indigenous Association's response to Porantim's broadside on their efforts to combat deforestation
The Paiter-Surui Metareilá Indigenous Association’s response to Porantim’s broadside on their efforts to combat deforestation.

But what struck Julio the hardest were Henrique’s words (available in English here). They seemed to come from a dystopian parallel universe – one where Henrique and his small contingent of loggers were defending indigenous traditions, and where the duly-elected Parliament didn’t exist.

Not only that, but the interview – and in fact the entire magazine – seemed contrived to torpedo the Surui Forest Carbon Project (SFCP), which taps carbon markets to save their forest. The SFCP uses a financing mechanism called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) to generate carbon offsets based on the carbon content of the trees that the project saves, and it’s what enabled them to eject the loggers.

Incensed, Julio did something unprecedented. He sat down at his computer and used his Facebook pageto boldly and publicly call out a powerful organization revered by older indigenous people, but increasingly under fire from younger indigenes more interested in exercising their autonomy.

“I, Julio Surui, acting in my capacity as a representative of the Makor Parliamentary System of Governance of the Paiter-Surui people, hereby condemn Porantim, the newspaper of the Conselho Indigenista Missionário (CIMI),” he began – and he wasn’t alone.

CIMI: Ends and Means

We reached out to CIMI for comment, but they have not yet responded.

No one denies that the organization fought hard to secure demarcation of indigenous lands in the 1970s, and it continues to do good work today, but many indigenous leaders say it’s become paternalistic and heavy-handed in dealing with indigenes who don’t toe the party line.

That party line is laid out quite clearly in the closing pages of Porantim: “We need to regain the memory of humanity on our links with nature, expressed in Sumak Kawsay (Live Well),” it reads. “The environment, and the cultures living in harmony with it, should be the basis for human development and societies; not an item of the market economy.”* (Italics added.)

While many indigenous leaders, including Almir and Julio Surui, support CIMI’s efforts to protect uncontacted tribes, of which there are more than 60 still, the organization has a long history of locking horns with indigenous leaders whose vision differs from theirs.

“They see us as their little Indians,” Almir once said. “They think they know better than we do how we should lead our lives, and they punish us when we don’t follow orders.”

Even Ailton Krenak, the indigenous leader who was instrumental in getting indigenous rights enshrined in the Brazilian constitution, ran afoul of CIMI when he helped the Paiter-Surui launch their early efforts at sustainable agriculture in the late 1980s – efforts that failed initially, but formed the basis of the community’s current sustainable development program. The payback came when he embarked on a fundraising tour of the United States with legendary Brazilian entertainer Milton Nascimento. CIMI accused him of pocketing the proceeds of that tour for himself – accusations that later proved baseless.

Almir locked horns with CIMI throughout the 1990s, as he chose to cooperate with the World Bank rather than fight them, but the Paiter-Surui felt the full wrath of CIMI when Almir launched the REDD Project.

Almir and Henrique: The Rivalry That Defines a People

To understand the REDD Project, you have to understand the Paiter-Surui political constellation, which centers on their relationship with the forest. One pole of the constellation sees the forest as a source of timber, and the other sees it as a source of life, with most members scattered in between.


    • For a detailed examination of the history of logging in the Surui Territory, see “Almir Surui: Perseverance Under Pressure“.
    • Disclosure: The author is working with Chief Almir on his autobiography, and has interviewed him and scores of other members of the community, including those in Henrique’s camp, extensively. Efforts to speak with Henrique himself or with CIMI have been unsuccessful.

 


Henrique is a former Labiway Esaga who first won office in the 1980s on a platform that was decidedly pro-development: he wanted to chop the forest to meet the needs of his people. Almir emerged as Henrique’s primary rival in the 1990s, and advocated a platform of conservation.

The two men are as different tempermentally as they are philosophically. In his youth, Henrique was courageous and had a flair for the dramatic. Though an advocate of logging, he wasn’t afraid to pull arms on loggers who short-changed his people, and he engaged in bloody battles with them in the 1990s. He also spoke truth to power, and once pulled his bow and arrow on a Brazilian Senator named Antonio Carlos Magalhães – only to be grabbed from behind by environmentalist and eventual presidential candidate Marina Silva. Almir is more deliberative, and tends to seek compromise over conflict.

To this day, the Paiter-Surui are roughly split into three schools of thought: Almir’s school is dead-set against chopping the forest, while Henrique’s school advocates logging. The middle school – possibly the majority – is akin to the global middle class: they don’t want to chop the trees, but they need to feed their families, and in the early days, Henrique’s logging activities seemed to meet that need. Over time, as Almir found ways to make money for his people by protecting the forest, his star rose as Henrique’s set.

Almir’s efforts culminated with the REDD project, which propelled Almir into the positon of Labiway Esaga in 2010.

The REDD Project: Public and Private Goods

Money from the REDD initiative goes into a segregated account held by the Fundo Brasileiro Para a Biodiversidade (FUNBIO), and it’s used to pay for specific activities designed to jump-start a 50-Year “Life Plan” that grew out of Krenak’s early efforts to help the Surui revive traditional practices. The plan supports their traditional practices by creating an economy built on sustainable forest products like Brazil nuts and acai, as well as ecotourism and traditional handicrafts.

Early funding is key to implementing the plan, and if the Paiter-Surui are to earn all the offsets they hope to, they must keep illegal deforestation at a level 90% lower than what it was in the past. So, when the Paiter-Surui Parliament learned that Henrique had started letting loggers back into the territory, they confronted him. When Henrique refused to halt his activities, Almir invited local police to accompany him on a helicopter flight over Henrique’s village to see if they could help.

“The police saw the loggers,” Almir says. “But they told us it was an internal matter for us to sort out ourselves.”

The Interview

The internal matter became part of the national debate when CIMI interviewed Henrique, whose version of events differed considerably from that of most members of the community.

“We are now in the hands of the Federal Police, who threaten us for anything – from taking trees for our own needs to hunting on our own land,” Henrique is quoted as saying – a statement that had a germ of truth in it. After all, Almir had called the police, but they’d refused to act, and the only federal police who entered the territory were Almir’s bodyguards, who were assigned to protect him after loggers threatened his life.”

And as for restrictions on hunting?

“The Paiter-Surui 50-Year Plan never banned the use of the Earth, much less hunting, fishing, or the creation of new agricultural plots developed in a traditional and sustainable way,” wrote Almir on his Facebook page. “The only activities we oppose are the illegal extraction of timber at an unfair price or the leasing of the Earth to invaders for fishing and poaching – activities long supported and authorized by Henrique Surui.”

Henrique went on to allege that members of the Surui had been told that REDD funding would flow directly into their accounts, but both Julio and Almir deny ever making such promises – and, in fact, Almir’s 50-Year plan explicitly focused on the common good.

Julio’s Response

“I found it rather absurd to read the false accusations and slanderous statements against Almir Surui, his 50-Year Plan, (plano de gestão do território Sete de Setembro), and the Surui Forest Carbon Project,” wrote Julio. “The fact is that there are other interests behind these false accusations and affirmations, seeking to empower the illegal exploitation of timber and the natural resources of the Surui traditional lands.”

He then asked why CIMI would turn a blind eye to illegal logging while sabotaging a mechanism that was delivering tangible benefits.

“It is absurd that CIMI supports this act, committing a grave crime by causing division and intrigue among the Surui people,” he wrote. “Does the Church really support this? Why have they not protested the illegal exploitation of timber and the other illegal activities that are happening within the Surui Indigenous Lands?”

Other Responses

And he wasn’t the only one speaking up. The Metareilá Indigenous people’s Association, which speaks in one voice on behalf of the four clans of the Paiter-Surui and acts as project proponent for the REDD Project, formally denounced CIMI on their Facebook page as well.

“When a newspaper of the Missionary Council for Indigenous Peoples strikes an indigenous project with the serious accusations of misuse of money, purchase of leaders, federal police coercion, transfer of territory and preventing the exercise of traditional activities, it is necessary to react,” they wrote – adding that they had filed a formal complaint with the Ethics Committee of the Federal Journalism Society (Sindicato dos Jornalistas do Distrito Federal).

“We know that CIMI has deep ideological divergence in relation to environmental compensation projects, and we are able to follow the debate on this subject, and even participate in it,” they continued. “However, we hoped that the members of that entity knew the difference between debating an environmental issue and conducting an outright smear campaign against the name and reputation of an entire indigenous people.”

Beyond the Paiter-Surui

Members of the neighboring Gavião and Arara took issue with CIMI’s broadside.

Both peoples are exploring the use of REDD to implement long-term life plans, and both are working with COICA (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin / Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica), an umbrella organization of indigenous organizations across the Amazon, on something called “Indigenous REDD”, which also aims to harness carbon finance to support indigenous Life Plans, but may or may not tap markets. The discussions have been going on for several years, but Henrique’s comments portrayed the two peoples as naïvely stumbling into a bad deal. Delson Gavião, head of the Padereehj Association, issued a formal condemnation of his own, also posted on Facebook.

“These are lies aimed at harming indigenous people and damaging projects that are running correctly and helping to protect indigenous lands from the advance of illegal logging and the destruction of the forest,” he wrote. “We reject the comments of Henrique Surui, which were published by CIMI, because neither he nor they have been on our land to discuss the projects we’re executing, much less done anything to address the problem of illegal logging on indigenous lands.”

He went on to attack “the disrespectful attitude of CIMI and Henrique Surui, which only serves to propagate lies, divide the indigenous people, facilitate the theft of wood, and enable colonial invasions in our lands. We do not allow anyone – whether ‘white’ or indigenous – to treat our people and institutions with disrespect.”

Almir Responds

Fearing that Henrique’s comments would drive a wedge between his people and their neighbors, Almir – who had long asked his people to go easy on Henrique – then took to Facebook as well to make it clear that Henrique did not speak for the majority of his people, and todetail Henrique’s record.

“Does he, by any chance, have another project or initiative better for the Paiter-Surui?” he asked. “As far as I know, Henrique Surui is the greatest destroyer of our forests and their rich biodiversity, because he has been involved for quite some time in the illegal sale of timber, and he works day-by-day to convince other people and families to join him in his illegal activities.”

But he also took CIMI to task, and accused them of manipulating Henrique, who has been working through some health issues at CIMI facilities.

“We will not let a single indigene, one who had been involved in the sale of illegal timber and manipulated by CIMI, disrupt our strategic plan or interfere with the strengthening of the autonomy of our people,” he wrote.

Other members of the community have called on Almir to file a complaint with the Vatican, where Pope Francis used his Christmas address to rail against the Curia for acting as “lords of the manor – superior to everyone and everything.”

For acting, in other words, the way these indigenous leaders say CIMI has been behaving.

This Week In V-Carbon: The Lima Call For Climate Action

17 December 2014 | When it comes to the future of our climate, are you a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person? If you’re on the glass half full side, then you will find new reason to hope in the fact that the international climate talks in Lima, Peru concluded on Sunday with a basic agreement on what constitutes the national submissions expected to form the foundation of a new climate deal in Paris in 2015.

But if you fall in the glass half empty camp, then you’re probably disappointed that the 20th Conference of Parties (COP 20) talks ended with very few details about what these Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) due in March will actually look like. The 22 paragraphs in the Lima agreement provided precious few details about the INDCs beyond the fact that they will contain specific emission reduction targets and plans for achieving them. Whether the sum of these contributions will keep global temperature rise limited to 2 degrees Celsius – the agreed goal of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – remains to be seen.

“The information for the INDCs is key,” said Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the Peruvian Minister of Environment who served as President of COP 20. “The INDCs are key to having this balance between the bottom-up and the top-down process for Paris, and also because the INDCs are going to show us if there is a gap, what is the dimension of the gap.”

One of the COP 20 highlights for the optimists among us was the increasing momentum behind the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which surpassed the $10 billion mark and secured financial commitments from both developed and developing countries. Particularly noteworthy were financial pledges of $6 million apiece from host country Peru and Colombia, which demonstrated that these developing countries wanted to play a constructive role in supporting the GCF despite having very limited historic responsibility for escalating global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Now the race begins to assess and finance the first GCF projects and programs ahead of the Paris talks. Funding under the GCF will be split 50-50 toward adaptation and mitigation activities and REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) projects could find themselves on the GCF’s fast track.

“I would be more than delighted if some of the projects approved include forestry projects,” said Héla Cheikhrouhou, GCF’s Executive Director. But given the short time frame to Paris, she warned: “Don’t bring us concepts that will take years to develop.”

The pessimists among us may be disappointed by the lack of clear signals on future demand for offsets generated under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Negotiations on the CDM ended with the adoption of guidance calling for, among other things, consolidation of its rules and streamlining methodologies. The CDM and Joint Implementation (JI) programs are still in serious need of reform if they are to be included – in some form – in the Paris agreement, market experts said.

“But we’ve already done a helluva a lot of this work and it seems ridiculous to throw away the capacity we’ve built up, both within the UNFCCC itself, within host country governments, within the governments in the buyer countries and also with the private sector and start again afresh,” said Miles Austin, Executive Director of the Climate Markets and Investment Association. “Because if we don’t learn the lessons of the CDM and from JI, then we’re simply going to recreate history.”

Top story survey
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More news from the voluntary carbon marketplace is summarized below, so keep reading!

—The Editors

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V-Carbon News

VOLUNTARY CARBON

Early movers get the worm
The governments of Germany and Norway committed up to $65 million apiece to Colombia and Ecuador, expanding the REDD Early Movers Program (REM) to these two rainforest nations. The contributions will be distributed over three years, starting in 2015 through the end of 2017, as payments for verified emissions reductions. “The best contribution we can make as donors is to demonstrate that we are willing to pay for the results,” said Hege Araldsen, the Norwegian Ambassador to Ecuador, Chile and Peru. The announcement marks a significant expansion of the REM program, following the 2013 agreement between Germany and the state of Acre, Brazil.– Read more here
Ready to get results
Heru Prasetyo, head of Indonesia’s REDD+ Agency, said the country will be ready for results-based payments for reducing deforestation by the end of 2016. The first step was submitting reference levels on Indonesia’s historical deforestation to the UNFCCC – a task completed last week. The reference levels include both deforestation and degradation between 2000 and 2012 and projects that land-use change in Indonesia will result in 439 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year by 2020 under a business-as-usual scenario. Creating the reference level required pulling together disparate data from several sources across the country and getting different institutions to work together – a massive undertaking, according to the REDD+ Agency.– Read more here from EM
– Read more from Mongabay
Fake it till you make it
Twenty Brazilian companies participated in an emissions trading system (ETS) simulation using live corporate data, through a partnership between the Rio de Janeiro Green Stock Exchange and Empresas Pelo Clima, a Brazilian business group. The simulation included auctioning and bonds markets, assessment of company emission submissions, and fines for non-compliance. The idea is to stimulate conversation between companies and the government about how a carbon market in Brazil could potentially work, and to expose companies to ways to include carbon pricing in their business strategies, wrote Nicolette Bartlett of the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group.– Read more here
What’s the Vegas spread?
Will a future international climate agreement include compliance markets for forest carbon offsets? Investment firms such as London-based Permian Global, which is planning to invest $100 million in REDD projects in Latin America, are betting on it. The payments will be based on achieved emissions reductions. “Philanthropy will not be enough to preserve forests,” said Stephen Rumsey, chairman of Permian Global. But some delegates to COP 20 oppose forest-based offsets, arguing that countries would use them as an excuse to maintain higher emissions levels.– Read more here

COMPLIANCE CARBON

For what it’s worth
Three of China’s seven pilot carbon markets reached milestones recently. Beijing’s market surpassed the 100 million yuan (about $15 million USD) mark. Guangdong province announced that 600 million yuan ($97 million USD) in revenue generated from emissions permit auctions will be invested in a fund for pollution-cutting projects. And carbon prices in Shanghai reached a record high (36.9 yuan, or $5.98 USD per tonne) after 20 trading houses entered the market. Despite these developments, experts say the pilot markets are so far not driving the level of investment China will need to meet its 2020 target of slashing the carbon emissions associated with each unit of Gross Domestic Product to 40-45% below 2005 levels.– Read more on Beijing
– Read more on Guangdong 
– Read more on Shanghai
K-pop is music to climate policy
Starting in January, South Korea’s carbon trading market, the Korea Exchange (KRX), will be open for business. Five-hundred and twenty-five regulated companies will participate as the government aims to cut emissions 30% below business-as-usual levels over five years. Last week, South Korea’s environment ministry gave petrochemical, energy, steel and power generation companies an emissions quota of just under 16 billion Korean Allowance Units (KAUs), as opposed to the 20 billion KAUs requested by companies. Initially, the KRX will be open for trading for just two hours per day, but business hours may expand depending on market activity.– Read more here
Bet they will remember their first time
In their first joint auction on November 25, California and Quebec sold GHG allowances for $12.1/tCO2e each. Buyers purchased 23.1 million allowances that can be used immediately and an additional 10.8 million allowances that can be used starting in 2017. The two governments received 1.7 bids for every allowance that was on sale. Both California and Quebec are actively looking to recruit new US states and Canadian provinces to join their cap-and-trade system.– Read more here

CARBON FINANCE

A vanishing act
The world’s mangroves are being destroyed at three to five times the rate of tropical forests, exposing developing countries to sea level rise and flooding, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The agency’s analysis finds that this destruction comes at a staggering cost: $42 billion per year. In African nations such as Cameroon, Gabon, and Angola, replacing mangroves with seawalls would cost as much as $11,286 per hectare for the same coastal protection benefits, the study finds. Mangroves are also important, but quickly disappearing carbon stocks, according to a report by the Marine Ecosystems Services program of Forest Trends – and UNEP suggests they should be included more prominently in REDD+ discussions.– Read more here

STANDARDS & METHODOLOGY

Agriculture strikes Gold
The Gold Standard launched its agricultural program last week at a side event at COP 20. “Our secret agenda is to make sure that payments for carbon reduction actually become payments for sustainable development,” said Pieter van Midwoud, Director of Land Use and Forests. The certified emissions reductions program includes streamlined guidelines for smallholder farmers. The Gold Standard is working with partners Hivos, Solidaridad and the Cool Farm Alliance, and their announcement states that they aim to make their agricultural program “a strong weapon for corporates implementing zero-net deforestation commitments.”– Read more here

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

A quicker payoff
Previously, climate scientists have suggested that the effects of carbon dioxide emitted today may not be fully felt for several decades. But that may be a misconception, according to a recent study published in Environmental Research Letters. In fact, the “maximum warming effect” is felt after 10.1 years, researchers at the Carnegie Institute for Science found after analyzing several climate models. The benefits of reducing emissions will also be felt in that timeframe, meaning a quicker payoff for governments that enact carbon-cutting policies. “Our results show that people alive today are very likely to benefit from emissions avoided today and that these will not accrue solely to impact future generations,” said Katharine Ricke, the study’s lead author.– Read more here

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Based in Washington, D.C., the Associate will conduct policy-relevant research, analysis and writing on various aspects of international climate change policy, with a focus on climate equity issues. The position requires a minimum of 7-10 years of progressive professional work experience as well as a degree in environmental studies, international relations, or economics (master’s or PhD preferred). Strong analytical writing skills and international experience are essential; the position requires 20% international travel.– More information here
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Based in Washington, D.C., the Outreach Coordinator will develop and implement strategies that engage and influence the public, opinion leaders, decision makers, and elected officials at the local, state, and national levels on climate and energy campaigns. Candidates should have three to five years of experience in a similar position, preferably in a non-profit setting.– More information here
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ABOUT THE ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACEEcosystem Marketplace is a project of Forest Trends, a tax-exempt corporation under Section 501(c)3. This newsletter and other dimensions of our voluntary carbon markets program are funded by a series of international development agencies, philanthropic foundations, and private sector organizations. For more information on donating to Ecosystem Marketplace, please contact [email protected].

Countering Illegal And Unsustainable Activities With REDD+ In Panama

13 October 2014 | Between 1992 and 2008, nearly 900,000 hectares of Panama’s forest were deforested. The land was cleared for development or converted into pastureland.

But despite the increase in development and growth in the agricultural sector, almost half of Panama’s rural population live in poverty and rely on unsustainable practices for their livelihoods. They continue to burn patches of forest and plant crops.

On top of the threats of slash and burn farming and expanding development, climate change and illegal logging activities pose a risk to the forests. The threats are affecting forest health which in turn affects the services they provide, like clean water, to the local people. Many of the local people living in the forests are indigenous to the region and because of traditionally sustainable land practices, these groups have managed to preserve pieces of Panama’s forests. Majority of remaining forestland in the country lies within indigenous peoples’ territories. But the lack of clear and comprehensive land rights in Panama make enforcing laws and securing the forests’ protection difficult for indigenous tribes and acts as another risk.

While these threats are relentless, the UN-REDD programme insists REDD activities serves as a solution that could solve each challenge. Ultimately, it will provide alternative livelihoods that are sustainable empowering local communities to act as good land stewards. REDD also has the ability to generate revenue giving greater value to leaving trees standing.

“My advice is everyone involved in this project should take full advantage of this opportunity,” says Jose Angel Vargas, a local farmer.

“We must preserve the environment” says Samuel Pote, the president of a youth association in the region. “If we destroy a hectare of land for agriculture, then we must also plant trees.”

In the video below, the UN-REDD programme highlights the Panama Canal Authority’s program, which enables sustainable farming. REDD initiatives like reforestation and coffee planting have brought real change, one resident says.

“With all of these projects that have started up in our area such as planting coffee, we have been able to recover some of our sources of water that provide us with healthier and cleaner water.”

California May Void Some Carbon Offsets After Investigation

9 October, 2014 For the first time, California regulators plan to invoke the dreaded invalidation provisions featured in the state’s carbon offsets program.

The California Air Resources Board (ARB) the agency tasked with overseeing the state’s cap-and-trade program and its offset composition in May began reviewing offsets issued for ozone depleting substances (ODS) destruction events at the Clean Harbors Incineration Facility in El Dorado, Arkansas. These substances, which include foam blowing agents and refrigerants, are much more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of their global warming potential, so the ARB has adopted a process to count the greenhouse gas emissions reductions associated with destroying these materials in the United States and allow these reductions to be used for compliance in its program.

California’s cap-and-trade regulations include so-called buyers liability provisions that allow the regulators to invalidate offsets found to be faulty or fraudulent and require regulated entities to surrender replacement offsets for compliance. These controversial rules are often blamed for a lack of liquidity in the California offset market.

In a preliminary decision, the ARB ruled that the offsets generated by two ODS projects one developed by Environmental Credit Corp (ECC) and the other by EOS Climate should be invalidated because the Arkansas facility was out of compliance with its operating permit issued under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Of the 231,154 offsets the ARB is seeking to invalidate, 142,199 were generated by ECC’s offset project and 88,955 from the EOS Climate project. However, the ARBÃ’s preliminary decision cleared the vast majority of the 4.3 million compliance offsets being investigated.

ECC declined to comment, but EOS Climate officials say the Clean Harbors facility has been destroying ODS in full compliance with RCRA, the Clean Air Act and Montreal Protocol requirements for more than 20 years.

“At no point has the facility been the subject of any enforcement action related to ODS destruction, the company said in a statement. “EOS Climate believes that ARB’s determination is based on an incorrect interpretation and characterization of a number of fundamental facts and of ARB’s own regulations and guidance.

EOS Climate plans to ask the ARB to reverse its preliminary ruling before a final decision is made on invalidation. The preliminary decision starts the clock on a 10-day public comment period, followed by a 30-day internal review at ARB although the regulators can issue a final decision anytime in or after that 30-day period.

Once a final determination is made, the offsets not subject to invalidation will be returned to account holders after being removed in May when the investigation commenced, while the other offsets are marked for permanent invalidation.

The 1976 RCRA legislation gave the US Environmental Protection Agency the authority to control hazardous waste from “cradle-to-graveincluding generation, transportation, treatment, storage and disposal and established a framework for the management of non-hazardous solid wastes. ARB’s Executive Officer determined that the Clean Harbors Facility was not operating in accordance with its RCRA permit on February 2-3, 2012, meaning that offsets generated by destruction events taking place on those dates were subject to invalidation.

“It goes to show that ARB is very serious about their intention to invalidate offsets, said Julian Richardson, CEO of Parhelion Underwriting, a specialty insurer focusing on the climate finance sector that has developed a policy to cover the invalidation risk. “This is important for the long-term good of the offset mechanism, which needs to be robust in terms of environmental integrity for it to be credible.

Both projects were initially registered with the Climate Action Reserve (CAR), a voluntary carbon standard, before migrating to the ARB’s compliance program under its early action provisions.

“We’re pleased that ARB has reached this milestone point in the investigation and that the conclusion of this investigation is near, said CAR President Gary Gero. “I don’t think we can assess the real impact on demand until the final determination is issued, and with the final determination, we’re looking forward to seeing clear guidance on how to implement these provisions, which would more fully assist project developers and other market participants. This is certainly a precedent setting determination for the program.

Fixing Water By Fixing Land: What Works And What Doesn’t

9 October 2014 |Taking a watershed approach means strategically identifying and directing wetland and stream restoration and protection projects to best meet the needs of the watershed.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) labeled it the most effective framework to meet today’s water resource challenges. In 2008 the EPA and the Army Corp of Engineers (Corps) published the Final Compensatory Mitigation Rule, which required for the first time that the Corps use a watershed approach when making compensatory mitigation decisions.

Despite this general consensus, implementing a watershed approach remains challenging. “Using a watershed approach may mean a more significant up-front investment, but the conservation outcomes can be significant,” says Jessica Wilkinson, a Senior Policy Advisor on mitigation at the conservation organization The Nature Conservancy (TNC). “The watershed approach can direct both compensatory mitigation projects and voluntary, non-regulatory protection and restoration projects to the best sites leading to more significant, watershed-scale conservation outcomes.

A lot of money is spent every year on mitigation programs that deliver less than stellar results, Wilkinson says. According to a 2007 study from the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), nearly $4 billion is spent on land restoration and protection through mitigation annually. This money has obvious potential to contribute to conservation but perhaps lacks the guidance to do so effectively.

To help with this aspect of the problem, TNC and ELI recently published the Watershed Approach Handbook: Improving Outcomes and Increasing Benefits Associated with Wetland and Stream Restoration and Protection Projects. Through on-the-ground pilot projects sponsored by the two organizations, as well as EPA and the Corps, the handbook demonstrates how a watershed approach contributes to flood mitigation, better water quality and quantity and species habitat among other ecosystem services.

“We felt that through our respective expertise on policy and science, we could contribute to advancing a vision for the watershed approach that would help maximize the conservation outcomes of mitigation,” Wilkinson says. “So mitigation can contribute to larger landscape and watershed goals and get bigger better conservation bang for the buck.”

The intention of both organizations is to influence a shift in decision-making toward a landscape- or watershed-level and away from the project-by-project basis programs are currently operating under. It’s aimed at the parties involved in the planning process: mitigation bankers, state agencies, conservation organizations and members of the Interagency Review Teams that evaluate compensatory mitigation proposals.

Wilkinson notes the particular importance of the state-level actors. The managers of state wetland mitigation programs have been real innovators in this space, she says. ELI emphasized this point last year in another handbook that provides information on the range of tools being used at state and local levels countrywide. This new handbook, then, takes it one step further by providing guidance on how to apply these tools in a way that delivers high-value conservation.

“A watershed approach can maximize multiple benefits of mitigation and restoration,” Wilkinson says. “But in order for this to happen, state agencies and conservation organizations need to know about the opportunity and reach out to their partners at the Corps IRT agencies and provide them with information on the needs of watersheds and the most important places to which compensatory mitigation investments should be directed.”

Virginia’s Nutrient Trading Program Aims To Clean Up The Chesapeake Bay

16 December 2014 | In the US, there is an increasing number of programs that use a credit trading system to stem the flow of nutrient pollution flowing into waterways. The Pacific Northwest continues to assess possible approaches and in the Midwest, the Electric Power Research Institute is spearheading a program in the Ohio River Basin.

Now this market-based approach, called nutrient or water quality trading, has officially reached the Chesapeake Bay, a watershed so heavily polluted by nitrogen and phosphorous nutrients that President Barack Obama issued an executive order to restore water quality in the Bay in 2009.

Restoring water-quality is the intention of Virginia’s nutrient trading program. The initiative was recognized today by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) among other stakeholders. It was not only recognized for its potential to help the Chesapeake Bay but also for its ability to serve as a model for other watersheds dealing with similar problems.

“The Chesapeake Bay faces numerous challenges, and the Commonwealth of Virginia is responding with innovative thinking and collaboration across sectors,” said Mike Boots, who leads the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Not only do creative approaches like these provide new markets for private investors and generate new revenue for farmers, they also bolster the strength of our natural resources, improving their resilience to threats posed by a changing climate and other stressors.”

Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality initiated this innovative program Boots is referring to. It created a supply and demand market for land conservation projects that help to minimize water quality impacts in the Bay. The agency’s stormwater program requires that road project developers reduce the phosphorus runoff pollution their development causes. They are able to do this through purchasing phosphorous credits from state-certified credit banks. The credits project developers purchase is generated from farmers operating in the Bay watershed that have permanently reduced their nutrient pollution through more sustainable land practices.

It’s a cost-effective approach. Purchasing the credits cost Virginia’s Department of Transportation-the agency developing and, in turn, impacting water quality-is half the cost of traditional infrastructure like underground filters and detention ponds. Also, implementing the sustainable agricultural activities comes from private investors so the program relies less on public funds. And because farmers sell their nutrient reduction credits to credit banks, the program opens up a new revenue stream for them as well.

Aside from the monetary advantages, the Bay’s ecosystem benefits from a more natural approach. Overall land preservation that includes restoring wildlife habitat and stream buffers are positive byproducts of the trading approach.

“Virginia’s nutrient trading program is a strong example of how to create economic opportunity and new income for rural America while protecting and improving local waterways and the Chesapeake Bay,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “The program is a win for the environment and our economy and we encourage states to look at Virginia as a model and a resource as they adopt similar programs.”

Federal support for nutrient trading, and environmental markets as a whole, is likely to increase in the coming year. The USDA and the EPA have a web-based water quality trading roadmap tool in the works that’s slated to come out in early 2015. Also in 2015, the agencies will sponsor a national conference on trading with the intention to move forward with the approach.

This article includes portions of the EPA press release.

Successful Green Pledges Hinge On Procurement Agents And Consumers

1 October 2014 | Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme recently vowed to stop buying palm oil from companies that clear-cut forests a clear bid to reach consumers who reward green behavior with open wallets. Such “zero deforestation” pledges, will only have an impact if two things happen: first, the companies have to be able to prove they’re keeping their word; and second, consumers have to put their money where their mouths are.

Historically, the second part of the formula has proven elusive, as paper giant Domtar found when it went through the arduous process of becoming the first manufacturer to offer Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified paper products ten years ago. Today, Domtar’s FSC-certified products make up more than 20% of its total paper sales, and the company recently announced the sale of its five millionth ton of certified paper, but that paper doesn’t attract a higher price than its standard fare.

“FSC certification is celebrating its 20-year anniversary, and I’m very happy to say that Domtar has been a part of that from the beginning, said Paige Goff, the company’s Vice President of Sustainability and Business Communications. “When you think about five million tons, when stacked in pallets, it equals the height of over 12,000 Empire State (New York) buildings. It’s a great way to demonstrate the impact of FSC certification.

But that pile of pallets didn’t come cheap. Domtar had to hire additional staff to help meet FSC’s requirements and fulfill internal and external audits, which was not only a financial cost, but a huge time investment. Did it pay off?

“Maybe a few years back, you could get a price premium, says Goff. “But the price premium is not really there any longer.

She adds that Domtar’s early adoption gave it a competitive advantage in the early days, and the company benefited from positive recognition as a pioneer, which helped the company gain new clientele, but the fact is that the price premium is gone, and the question is why.

Goff says one reason is that the rest of the industry caught on, and now most companies offer at least some FSC-certified products. So, for those consumers who look at labels, there’s more competition. But a recent study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) found that green consumers are few and far between. Their research says that two-thirds to one-half of products that meet certification standards are actually sold on the open market as conventional, rather than being sold as certified, primarily due to oversupply and weak demand.

That’s because most supermarket shoppers aren’t looking at certification labels; they’re looking at price tags. And their decisions at the check-out counter are many steps removed from the executive suite.

Procurement Officers on the Front Lines

Who has primary responsibility for all those purchases of certified paper and other sustainable products? None other than thousands of number-crunching procurement officers charged with buying everything from toilet paper to produce to automobiles for large institutional clients such as businesses, local governments, and academic institutions. Procurement officers spend a whopping $10.1 trillion in goods and services each year, according to 2011 data from the United States Department of Commerce.

“Institutional purchasers, whose spending drives an estimated 50-65% of the economy, are uniquely positioned to send economic signals to advance a sustainable future, Jason Pearson, Executive Director of the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council(SPLC ), said at its annual meeting this summer.

This purchasing heft makes procurement officers incredibly important allies to suppliers of certified products such as Domtar. However it is not always easy for procurement officers to balance their institution’s needs and budgets while also contracting the most socially and environmentally responsible products. Even when their institution’s leadership is committed to sustainability, that message often does not trickle down to their direct managers, meaning that procurement officers still face pressure to deliver cost savings rather than reward businesses that manage natural resources more sustainably, pay fair wages, or minimize pollution.

Procurement officers must also navigate the often-confusing “ecolabel jungle when making purchasing decisions. Ecolabels such as FSC aim to help by offering a seal of approval for certain products, which ideally would secure additional sales and higher price premiums. But there are a staggering 448 ecolabels to sort through, according to the
Ecolabel Index
, some of which overlap or differ in subtle ways, and others that are not independently verified as having any environmental benefits.

SPLC to the Rescue (Sort of)

The SPLC was launched to help procurement officers better understand and reduce the social and environmental impacts of their purchasing. The council develops guidance to help procurement officers understand areas of their purchasing with the highest impacts, prioritize actions to reduce these impacts, benchmark their progress compared to their peers, and receive recognition for advancement.

At its annual meeting, the organization released a set of broad principles that it hopes will help the purchasing community use its immense buying power to advance sustainability. One of the principles, for example, encourages members to use “credible standards that meaningfully address relevant environmental, social, and economic impacts. The broad principles will be followed with more specific guidance on improving performance in the highest categories of institutional spending, such as electricity, transportation, and wood and fibers use. But as of now, the principles do not specifically entreat purchasers to pay premiums for sustainable products.

Domtar was a founding member of the SPLC. The company uses the forum to share experiences with other suppliers, and to hear directly from procurement officers about the challenges they face to sustainable purchasing.

“One of the things I like about the SPLC is that there are a lot of educational components Goff said. “I really felt like it would be beneficial to Domtar to have a seat at the table, to educate on what is viable and doable in our industry.

So what will it take for Domtar to get to 10 million tons of certified paper? Paige Goff sees a bottleneck of certified pulp in a market hungry for more FSC products, primarily from small landholders of 500 to 1,000 acres.

“We have a struggle to get small landholders to understand the FSC certification and why it is good for them. Why would they want to incur the logistical procedures and monetary costs?she asked. “FSC and businesses need to do more education and bring them together to become certified. It will not be successful without collaboration.

Climate Talks Continue Into Sunday As Negotiators Attempt Circumcision Without Amputation

UPDATE: 13 December 2014 | 11:17 GMT-5 | A new text is reportedly circulating among the negotiating groups, but the plenary scheduled for 11pm has been postponed until after midnight.

13 December 2014 | LIMA | Peru | 1:42pm GMT-5 | Negotiators meeting under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) here were unable to reach consensus on a stripped-down negotiating text that emerged early Saturday morning as least-developed countries objected to the removal of loss-and-damage provisions. COP President Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, however, says he will have a compromise text to present to the high-level negotiators meeting this evening as the 20th Conference of the Parties (COP 20) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) convenes.



The new text emerged after intense one-on-one lobbying by negotiators from Singapore and Norway, acting at Pulgar-Vidal’s behest, and it eliminated the laundry list of items to be found in INDCs.

It also made no mention of land-use issues or loss-and-damage.

The Environmental Integrity Group and European Union acknowledged the text’s shortcomings but argued to send it up to the higher-level negotiatiors. Tuvalu negotiator Ian Fry, however, set the tone for opponents by rejecting any text that doesn’t deal with loss-and-damage and saying the text needed “surgery”. Venezuela, speaking on behalf of the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries, reiterated that, but Singapore countered by saying that we can’t all have everything.



“If each of us submits just one item on a wish list, we will inflate this document beyond recognition,” said Singapore Environment Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, before offering what may be the most disturbing metaphor of the talks.

“Before embarking on any surgery, the most important question is whether it is necessary, and you have to ask, ‘What are the potential complications?'” he said. “If you are submitting for circumcision, be careful it doesn’t become an amputation because the surgeon used too big a knife and took too much flesh.”

New Zealand conceded there are “dead rats that need to be swallowed”, but also said “no sides have been ignored.”

With no consensus, the text was sent back to Pulgar-Vidal shortly before 1:30pm. He then announced that he will begin working with negotiating blocks individually starting at 2:30pm for a series of ten-minute meetings that will end around 5:30pm, and he promised to emerge with a new text to present to the COP this evening.

Budget Deal Leaves Sage Grouse In Limbo. Can Private Conservation Do The Trick?

12 December 2014 | It’s a short paragraph – only 88 words in total.

But these few words, nestled within a 1,603 page document, have laid bare the divisive politics behind conservation measures and big money. The $1.1 trillion spending bill, which just passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate, has included a small provision about the sage grouse.

The sage grouse, a bird similar to pheasants, presents enormous challenges to conservation as the species’ range meanders through eleven Western states and cuts across various public property and lucrative oil and gas lands.

While petroleum companies spend big bucks lobbying in D.C., the sage grouse has much more limited resources at its disposal. But there was one enormously powerful tool in its back feathers: the Endangered Species Act. Grouse habitats have declined significantly through the years, to the point where the Department of Interior (DOI) must decide whether or not to list the species as endangered by September 2015.

This threat of the Endangered Species Act effectively clipped the wings of oil and gas ambitions, which has prompted the deferral of more than 8 million acres of sales of potential oil and gas leases on sage grouse land.

All that has changed with the passage of the Congressional spending bill a few hours ago. The bill includes a provision to withhold funding for the Department of Interior to decide on the sage grouse’s endangered status.


Sage-GrouseSec. 122. None of the funds made available by this or any other Act may be used by the Secretary of the Interior to write or issue pursuant to section 4 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1533) –

  • (1) A proposed rule for greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus)
  • (2) A proposed rule for the Columbia basin distinct population segment of greater sage-grouse;
  • (3) A final rule for the bi-state distinct population segment of greater sage-grouse; or
  • (4) A final rule for Gunnison sage-grouse (Centrocercus minimus)

The End or Opportunity?

While mainstream conservationists balk at this Congressional rider, payments for environmental services practitioners cautiously view this as an opportunity to change the impeding conflict over the sage grouse.

“The fact that Congress intervened in this speaks to the need for conservation programs that engage landowners and communities as a solution for endangered species – rather than causing enough consternation that lawmakers intervene,” Says Jeremy Sokulsky, CEO of the performance-driven conservation company Environmental Incentives.

His company currently pilots two programs to save the birds. In Colorado, Environmental Incentives has teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund to create the Colorado Habitat Exchange, which focuses on preserving sage grouse habitats through land management incentives to ranchers. Nearby Nevada has a similar pilot at the state level, which will similarly create quantified conservation outcomes (credits) and impacts from human activities (debits) to encourage overall conservation benefits.

Though the threat of an Endangered Species listing helped motivate locals to participate, the pilots are already up and running. Now, what they really need is more time to monitor project outputs. In this sense, the delay can be an opportunity to quantify the project’s benefits and impacts.

This could give payment conservation projects more leverage in the later Department of Interior decision. While FWS has experience with mitigation and conservation banking measures behind Environmental Incentives’ work, the Department of Interior does not: and it is ultimately up to the latter to decide on the fate of the sage grouse. “They [DOI] need to see it work before it can be given full or significant weight in the listing decision,” Sokulsky said.

Still Steps on Federal Toes

Over at the Interior Department, Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw had harsh words for the uninvited Congressional intrusion, but said that, in the long term, it will make little difference to the department’s conservation work regarding the sage grouse.

With regard to the potential listing, the funding bill does not stop FWS from continuing to collect data and conduct analysis around a final decision, nor does it have implications for local and state plans or partnerships.

Ultimately, Kershaw said that, “the Interior Department remains optimistic that conservation measures can be implemented to avoid the need to list the Greater sage-grouse, and the rider will not stop the unprecedented collaboration happening across 11 Western states.”

Which means there’s yet hope for the chicken-sized bird – and for incentivized conservation.

Avoided Deforestation Could Land On Green Climate Fund’s Fast Track

12 December 2014 | LIMA |Peru | It was a heavy lift to get countries to pledge the $10 billion seen as a crucial source of early financing for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) by the end of this year’s Conference of Parties (COP 20) in Lima, Peru. Now comes the even harder part: the race to commit some of that funding to projects that will prove the GCF works ahead of the climate talks in Paris in 2015.

The GCF was established during COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico to support projects, programs, policies and other actions that contribute to low-carbon and climate-resilient development in developing countries. Funding under the GCF will be split 50-50 toward adaptation and mitigation activities, including REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) projects.

The GCF is designated as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Funding for the GCF materialized very slowly, but UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres challenged countries to provide initial funding of $10 billion by this year’s COP. Countries finally met that challenge this week with a flurry of commitments, including new pledges from Peru, Colombia and Austria that increased total committed funding to nearly $10.2 billion.

“That capitalization does send a strong signal,” said Mary Robinson, UN Secretary-General Special Envoy for Climate Change. “This capitalization, though, is just a start. Most people understand that this is still a long way short of what will be needed.”

Developed countries have committed to provide $100 billion per year by 2020 to support climate initiatives in developing countries.

“The Green Climate Fund looks likely to transform the landscape of climate finance,” said Heru Prasetyo, head of Indonesia’s REDD+ Agency. “It is vital that we start discussing how we can most effectively use this new institution to leverage its transformative potential as much and as rapidly as possible.”

Getting up to Speed

The pressure is on the GCF to quickly launch its operations now that it has received this $10 billion in pledged financing, namely by assessing and securing board approval for projects ahead of COP 21 in Paris next December.

Countries are concerned about the speed at which projects will navigate the GCF process, acknowledged Héla Cheikhrouhou, GCF’s Executive Director.

“If GCF is not moving as fast as private commercial banks, then people will say ‘how come–this is something that’s so urgent, so important, yet so slow’,” Prasetyo said.

Small island countries are particularly concerned that the GCF application process may be cumbersome and that they might be bypassed by the GCF as they have been by other funding mechanisms because they are classified as middle-income countries.

There needs to be a way to fast track and build capacity so that these countries are not left behind, said Tony de Brum, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, who advocated a theme of “less process, more access” for the GCF.

The GCF will have to accomplish in nine months what it would normally take three years to do, such as accredit entities, complete portfolio details and assess proposals, Cheikhrouhou observed.

“Our task together is going to Paris with some sample of projects already approved by the board,” she said.

Developing countries can submit funding proposals to the GCF through National Designated Authorities (NDAs), with 70 countries already nominating an NDA or a focal point to oversee such submissions.

“We’re looking for countries to put forward their best, highest-performing institutions,” she said.

REDD+ in the Fast Lane?

REDD+ projects could be among those fast tracked ahead of the Paris talks as forest management and land use have been defined as a key area of focus and funding by the GCF.

“I would be more than delighted if some of the projects approved include forestry projects,” Cheikhrouhou said. But given the short time frame to Paris, she warned: “Don’t bring us concepts that will take years to develop.”

Norway sees the GCF as an important channel for financing REDD+ projects, said Henrik Harboe, Deputy Director of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Co-Chair of the GCF Board.

“Now is the time for countries to come forward with good proposals for REDD projects and programs,” he said. The GCF board adopted a specific model and measurement framework for REDD+ results-based payments in October, which was of “great significance” in the view of Indonesia’s national REDD+ agency, Prasetyo said.

The GCF could help Indonesia’s interim financing mechanism called Financing REDD+ in Indonesia (FREDDI) become a useful and effective fund, he said.

“The government of Indonesia looks forward to building a strong relationship with the Green Climate Fund,” Prasetyo said.

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects could also be funded under the mitigation component according to the GCF rules, but assurance is needed that the projects meet the GCF’s investment criteria and results-based management framework, Cheikhrouhou said.

The GCF is looking for trend-setting projects that have significant climate impacts and contribute to a paradigm shift in terms of the country’s international pledges under the UNFCCC process and its economic capacity to implement mitigation activities on a national level. CDM project developers will have to evaluate their projects to see if they fit the GCF’s criteria, she said.

Private Sector’s Entry Into the Race

The key feature of the GCF is the private sector facility, which will allow direct and indirect funding for private-sector activities, because it is the only way to mobilize funds at the necessary scale, Harboe said.

“Ten billion US dollars is a very impressive figure, but it is a very small compared to the needs for finance in developing countries,” he said.

The advantage of the GCF is that it can work with the private sector in ways that other funds cannot because it can provide project and program financing through a variety of mechanisms, including grants, loans and equity, Cheikhrouhou said. The fund is also ready and willing to take on risks that other facilities cannot, which can help engage the private sector.

“We are ready to hit the ground running and we think we will have to run very fast and will only be able to do that as fast as partners are running with us,” Cheikhrouhou said.

This Week In Biodiversity: A Pre-Listed Species Credit Policy Stirs Debate

This article was originally published in the Mitigation Mail newsletter. Click here to read the original.

 

22 August 2014 | This month, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a new draft policy on building a crediting system that would protect threatened wildlife that hasn’t yet been listed as endangered. The policy, which is part of the Service’s Candidate Conservation program, seeks to incentivize landowners into early conservation.


“The adage
‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ is appropriate here,” says the FWS’ Chief of Public Affairs, Gavin Shire. “This policy is one more tool that can be used in conjunction with the others to help prevent species decline.” Under the proposal, any landowning entity individuals, companies, government agencies, etc. can earn credits by practicing conservation that benefits an unlisted species.

But while early conservation isn’t disputed as a sure way to preserve a species, is some skepticism out there regarding voluntary measures. We cover the debate here. A public comment period on the draft policy is open until September 20, 2014.

In other news this month, environmentalists are not happy about evidence that a mining company successfully haggled down its mitigation costs by one-fourth, and Canada takes a crack at accounting for its natural capital values.

We also have two pieces on results-based finance: one looking back at the evolution of efforts to link payment to performance, and a blog post that considers how to refocus Farm Bill conservation subsidies on outcomes.

Happy reading,

The Ecosystem Marketplace Team

 

If you have comments or would like to submit news stories, write to us at [email protected].


EM Exclusives

Should landowners earn biodiversity offsets for conserving a species’ habitat before it becomes endangered?

A new draft policy issued by the US Fish and Wildlife Service grants credits to all types of landowners for practicing conservation for wildlife not yet listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The credits generated can be redeemed or traded only after the species becomes listed, which is already leading certain parties to question the effectiveness of the conservation being practiced.

Get coverage from Ecosystem Marketplace.

 

Results-based finance: breakthrough or backslide?

Everyone loves “results-based finance at least in the abstract because everyone likes to get what they paid for. Quantifying those results and packaging them for buyers, however, has proven elusive once you get beyond payments for ecosystem services. Here, Ecosystem Marketplace takes a look back on the evolution of results-based finance.

Read more.

 

Wrestling with orangutans: the genesis of the Rimba-Raya REDD Project

In 2007, businessman Todd Lemons had a hunch that anthropologist Birute Galdikas could help him rewrite the rules of conservation finance and save the Seruyan Forest. He followed that hunch to Borneo, where the two embarked on a five-year ordeal that would take them from the swamps of Kalimantan to the pinnacles of Indonesian society.

Read the latest in our series on palm oil versus the peatland forest.

 

Crossroads in climate negotiations when adaptation and mitigation meet in Bonn and Lima

While the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change hasn’t yet considered identifying linkages between adaptation and mitigation, several Parties agreed over its importance at last month’s climate conference in Bonn. The topic is likely to come up again during upcoming sessions in Bonn and at COP20 in Lima.

Learn more.

Mitigation News

Expansion of saltwater mitigation bank leaves opponents with bitter taste

The controversial salt marsh mitigation bank in the Savannah River Basin in South Carolina may double in size. The bank would be 840 acres in all, with 350 of those acres converted from freshwater wetlands to salt marshes. The area is adjacent to a wildlife refuge and initially caused a stir because freshwater wetlands, which act as vital habitat for birds and other wildlife, are becoming increasingly rare whereas salt marshes aren’t. Conservation groups filed a lawsuit against the bank’s construction but the case was dismissed because salt was already found within the area.


Meanwhile, S.C.’s Department of Natural Resources is claiming the Army Corp of Engineers’ alterations to a pipe allowed saltwater to infiltrate freshwater areas within the Savannah River Basin. The Corp’s Savannah District argues this isn’t true, and that it was authorized to carry out urgent work that protected property from being flooded.

Get the full story on the bank expansion.
Read about the debate between the SC DNR and the Corps.

 

Critics allege Australian mining co. ‘bargained down’ its offset requirements

Australian government officials are on the defensive after documents surfaced revealing that a mining company was able to bargain down its biodiversity compensation obligations. Initially, the Labor government required that GVK Hancock secure AUD$800,000 (USD$744,000) in biodiversity offsets to mitigate for impacts from a proposed coal terminal. But after GVK Hancock came back with a counter-offer of $375,000, the two settled on $600,000. “The offsets package is meant to be a measure of last resort if it’s not possible to avoid damage. The quantum of that should be determined by the environmental impact, you shouldn’t be able to haggle the amount down,” Greenpeace campaigner Adam Walter tells the Guardian. A Department of the Environment spokeswoman says that the opportunity to comment on offset requirements is standard procedure.

“Consistent with…legal requirements, Hancock was provided with the opportunity to comment on the proposed decision, conditions, and financial contribution before a final decision,” she said.

Read more from the Guardian.

 

World wakes up to wetland values

After discovering that wetlands act as buffers against flooding and hurricanes as well as act as huge carbon sinks, there is a newfound urgency to repair and maintain the world’s wetlands. Communities around the globe are looking for restoration techniques and ways to stem the ongoing loss. And several communities are delivering on innovative projects. In the Delaware Bay, for instance, a local non-profit is building a “living shoreline” with oyster shells and marine limestone which will protect the Bay’s marshes from erosion.

Read more at Yale 360.

 

Natcap accounting arrives in Canada, courtesy of Ducks Unlimited

Accounting for natural capital just got easier in Canada. The conservation organization Ducks Unlimited Canada published a report last month that measures the monetary and well-being value of the nation’s natural lands. The study is the first of its kind in Canada that establishes protocols for valuing natural assets like wetlands. The study also shows NGOs, governments and companies how to incorporate natural capital into their balance sheets.

Read more here.

 

Mit banking roundup

It’s been a busy month in the mitigation and conservation banking world. Here’s our roundup of news blasts:

In Minnesota, the St. Louis County Board approved the Sax-Zim land exchange, removing another hurdle for Ecosystem Investment Partner’s 21,000+ acre venture – which will be the largest private wetland mitigation bank in the United States.

Mitigation Solutions USA released a second round of American Burying Beetle credits from its Muddy Boggy Conservation Bank in Oklahoma, and plans to add another 579 acres to the bank.

American Timberlands Company of Pawleys Island got approval for its 1,304-acre Carter Stilley Wetland and Stream Mitigation Bank serving South Carolina’s Horry and Georgetown Counties.

Westervelt Ecological Services’ 160-acre Colusa Basin Mitigation Bank in California issued its first set of Giant Garter snake credits.

The Doonan Creek Environmental Reserve received an AUD$970,000 (USD$902,000) offset payment from a federally funded highway project that will provide 9.3ha of new koala habitat.

Sheboygan County, WI is buying the 322-acre Amsterdam Dunes property to develop its own wetland mitigation bank.

 

BLM’s Greater Sage-Grouse conservation plan receives failing grade in Wyoming

Conservation for the declining Western bird, the Greater Sage-Grouse, can now be graded. A scorecard developed by six conservation organizations is rating greater sage-grouse conservation efforts across 60 million acres of public land based on specific scientific recommendations. Organizations involved in its creation include WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity. So far, the scorecard has failed the Bureau of Land Management’s field office in Lander, Wyoming, saying its sage-grouse conservation plan didn’t meet 24 management recommendations.

Learn more about the scorecard.

 

Efforts made to keep Gunnison Sage-Grouse off the Endangered Species list

Closely related to another candidate for Endangered Species listing, the Greater Sage-Grouse, the Gunnison Sage-Grouse is also rare and up for a possible listing this November. In the meantime, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is updating various conservation plans into one range-wide plan. The range-wide plan is intended to iron out inconsistencies in protecting the bird’s existing habitat and hopefully avoid a listing status.

The Durango Herald has the story.

 

Louisiana farmers lend their fields to migrating water birds

Louisiana farmers are proving themselves good neighbors. The Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative that was put into place after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has become popular among the locals. The initiative is meant to keep birds from settling in oiled areas by creating additional acres of water bird habitat by keeping water on cultivated fields longer. Research supports the program finding migrating birds did use the additional habitat on the agricultural lands. And because of its popularity, its creator the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service has allocated $300,000 to continue the program.

Learn more.

 

New South Wales ecosystem services, biodiversity regulations in question

A review of Australia’s New South Wales’ environmental legislation is finally happening. A review panel will be addressing inadequacies in several of the state’s laws including the Native Vegetation Act 2003, Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 and the Nature Conservation and Trust Act 2001. Among several areas of interest, the panel will be looking at ecosystem services and biodiversity protection requirements the landowners must finance themselves.

Learn more.

 

A new Farm Bill focus on conservation outcomes raises new challenges

The 2014 Farm Bill gives the US Department of Agriculture authority to integrate (on a limited, experimental basis) performance-based metrics for wildlife and habitat outcomes, which would reward landowners for outcomes rather than implementing practices. That could mean better return on public investment. But a shift toward an outcomes-based approach also requires careful choice of indicators, and risks placing too much responsibility on the landowner. A new blog post up at the Pinchot Institute for Conservation website considers how to actually “get what we pay for.”

Read the post here.

 

Live chat on natcap accounting searches for solutions to encourage investors

How can private sector investment in natural capital be scaled up? The Guardian newspaper asked that question during a live chat with several experts in the fields of ecosystem services and finance. The responses covered a lot of ground on the subject, but experts focused on the significance of recognizing natural capital as a valuable concept to invest in and the necessary tools and mechanisms needed to scale up investments.

Read the chat transcript at the Guardian.

 

Finding the value in restoration for coastal communities

While there is strong evidence that natural infrastructure protects coastal communities from extreme weather, evaluating the economic benefits of ecological restoration projects at the local level remains difficult. But new studies that identify the hefty financial increase in storm damage costs from wetlands loss (one acre of wetland lost results in a $13,360 jump in flood damages), as well as specific data on investments in restoration, might help change that.

Read more at The Nature Conservancy’s Cool Green Science blog.


EVENTS

16th Annual BIOECON Conference: Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Sustainability

The BIOECON Partners are pleased to announce the Sixteenth Annual International BIOECON conference on the theme of “Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Sustainability”. The conference will be held once again on the premises of Kings College Cambridge, England. The conference will be of interest to both researchers and policy makers working on issues broadly in the area of biodiversity, ecosystem services, sustainable development and natural capital, in both developed and developing countries. 21-23 September 2014. Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Learn more here.

 

Biodiversity and Food Security From Trade-offs to Synergies

This conference is the third in a series, organized by the French CNRS Institut Ecologie et Environnement (InEE) and the German Leibniz Association (WGL). The conference is based on invited keynotes and contributed posters for any of the topics relevant to the conference theme. Keynote speakers are now confirmed, including Professor José Sarukhí¡n, UNAM, México, and Professor Jacqueline McGlade, UNEP, Nairobi. Biodiversity at all levels, including the diversity of genes, species and ecosystems, is lost at alarming rates. Critical factors for these trends are habitat destruction, global warming and the uncontrolled spread of alien species. Pollution, nitrogen deposition and shifts in precipitation further affect biodiversity. Food security faces significant challenges due to population growth, poverty, globalization, climate change and other factors. Supplying healthy food to all citizens is crucial for global development – to reach it, not only food production but also equitable access to food for all people must be improved substantially. Biodiversity loss and global food security are hence two major challenges of our time. Linking biodiversity and food security issues from a research perspective, and seeking synergies between them is likely to generate multiple benefits for social, ecological and economic development. 29-31 October 2014. Aix-en-Provence, France.

Learn more here.

 

ACES 2014 Conference: Linking Science, Practice, and Decision Making

ACES: A Community on Ecosystem Services represents a dynamic and growing assembly of professionals, researchers, and policy makers involved with ecosystem services. The ACES 2014 Conference brings together this community in partnership with Ecosystem Markets and the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP), providing an open forum to share experiences, methods, and tools, for assessing and incorporating ecosystem services into public and private decisions. The focus of the conference is to link science, practice, and sustainable decision making by bringing together the ecosystem services community from around the United States and the globe. ACES 2014 will bring together leaders in government, NGOs, academia, Native American communities, and the private sector to advance the use of ecosystem services science and practice in conservation, restoration, resource management, and development decisions. We hope you will make plans to join more than 500 ecosystem service stakeholders in this collaborative discussion to advance use of an ecosystem services framework for natural resource management and policy. 8-11 December 2014. Washington DC, USA.

Learn more here.


JOBS

Ecosystem Services Specialist

The Willamette Partnership – Portland OR, USA

The Willamette Partnership works to increase the pace, expand the scope, and improve the effectiveness of conservation. We believe that measuring, tracking, and communicating the results of conservation investments can spark an exciting leap in conservation outcomes. Our success depends on working with partners with roots in place and community, and on our ability to connect good ideas, good people, and good solutions.

The Partnership is seeking to expand our team of policy and technical specialists that conduct research, analysis, and writing to support the ongoing work of the Willamette Partnership. Our specialists collaborate with project managers in developing the policy, science, and tools necessary to build and operate ecosystem markets and conservation incentive programs for water and biodiversity.

This position is expected to contribute to new and ongoing projects that may include:

  • Developing a set of national best practices for water quality trading;
  • Designing policy and technical tools for quantifying, tracking, and communicating changes in water quality and habitat; and
  • Operation of existing environmental markets.

Learn more here.

 

Sustainable Fisheries Initiative Program Assistant

Wild Salmon Center – Portland OR, USA

The Program Assistant is a nonexempt full-time regular position, eligible for organizational benefits. S/he is responsible for providing Russian-language program support for WSC’s Sustainable Fisheries Initiative (SFI). This program is using innovative market-based approaches to support salmon conservation and sustainable fisheries in the Russian Far East and across the Pacific Rim.

The ideal candidate will be independent and resourceful and will have real world experience working or living in Russia. Understanding the challenges and opportunities of working in the Russian Federation is a key to success in this position. The candidate should also have the ability to multitask, and have strong project management and Russian language skills. A background in international fisheries issues such as experience working as a fisheries observer or within the seafood industry and market incentives such as third party certification will be considered a valuable plus.

Learn more here.

Click here to view this article in its original format.

This Week In Forest Carbon News…

Thirteen governors from rainforest states signed the Rio Branco Declaration, a commitment to cut deforestation 80% by 2020, if funding for avoided deforestation (REDD) materializes. Brazil, the country receiving the most performance-based payments from climate funder Norway, has successfully prevented the clearing of 6.2 million hectares of forest between 2007 and 2013, but many other countries are on the edge of deforesting… or not.

This article was originally posted in the Forest Carbon newsletter. Click here to read the original.

 

21 August 2014 | Forget presidents, kings and queens – governors may be the ones leading the fight to reduce deforestation, state by state. At last week’s Governors’ Climate and Forests (GCF) Task Force meeting in Acre, Brazil, 13 of them penned the Rio Branco Declaration, named after the Amazonian city they met in. Their commitment? To cut deforestation rates in their jurisdictions 80% by 2020 – a move that would prevent four billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions (tCO2e) from entering the atmosphere.

But they can’t do it for free. Deforestation, after all, is largely about economics, and lucrative oilseed crops – mainly palm oil in Indonesia and soybeans in Brazil – are driving deforestation in key rainforest countries. GCF states say that they can slow forest clearing and degradation if performance-based funding for reducing deforestation (REDD) is available, whether through carbon markets or other performance-based payment mechanisms.

So far, this financing has been hard to come by, though many developed nations have promised it. The Rio Branco Declaration explains that the six Brazilian GCF member states have already reduced deforestation 70% between 2006 and 2012, avoiding three billion tCO2e of emissions, but that GCF jurisdictions have seen little of the $7.3 billion pledged for REDD+ by donor governments since 2009.

“Humanity is in grave danger over the destruction of the Amazonia – the climate regulator of the planet,” Edwin Vasquez, the leader of the Huitoto People of Peru and Coordinator General of COICA (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin), said at the meeting. “The 5,000 indigenous communities continue to protect the forests and preserve our cultures and the world, as we have done for thousands of years. We are the proprietors of 210 million hectares, covering 25% of the Amazon, which calls for an urgent proposal—’Indigenous Amazonia for Humanity,’ a $210 million project addressing the fact that climate funds have not reached our communities.”

The GCF is a collaboration of 22 states and provinces from Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Spain and the United States. On the buy-side, the US state of California is considering the inclusion of REDD offsets in its cap-and-trade program, which would be the first significant compliance market demand for offsets from avoided deforestation.

“Without action to reduce emissions from the deforestation of tropical forests, we are missing one of the keys to mitigating climate change,” said California Air Resources Board (ARB) Chairman Mary Nichols. “We think the sector-based offset crediting approach being evaluated for jurisdiction-wide programs, like the one in Acre, is the next frontier for California’s carbon offset program.”

Here at Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace, we’re tracking these developments closely – and putting out a last call to forest project developers to respond to our survey informing the State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2014 report. The survey is available in English HERE and in Spanish AQUí. Questions? Email us.

More news from the forest carbon marketplace is summarized below, so keep reading!

—The Ecosystem Marketplace Team

 

If you have comments or would like to submit news stories, write to us at [email protected].


News

INTERNATIONAL POLICY

Top marks for Brazil

Brazil has successfully avoided deforestation of 6.2 million hectares between 2007 and 2013, averting three billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and generating large results-based payments from Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative. Brazil has received by far the most funding under the initiative with 44% of the $1.7 billion in total funds disbursed. Indonesia has only received 2% to date, but Norway’s development agency has pledged up to $1 billion to prevent deforestation in that country. However, there is concern that the upcoming presidential leadership change in Indonesia and weaknesses in its legal basis for REDD+ could derail those efforts. The agency has established bilateral partnerships with five other REDD+ countries: Ethiopia, Guyana, Mexico, Tanzania and Vietnam.

NATIONAL STRATEGY AND CAPACITY

An inconvenient truth

What is the actual rate of deforestation in Indonesia? It’s a tough question to answer, say Agus Sari, deputy chair of the country’s REDD+ Management Agency, and Nirartha Samadhi, deputy chair of the Presidential Working Unit for the Supervision and Management of Development. Indonesia’s Forestry Ministry issued a decree that sets the country’s forest emission level at 0.816 billion tons, meaning actual emissions below that reference level constitute a reduction. The ministry estimated Indonesia’s deforestation rate at 628,000 hectares annually, but an independent study pegged it at about 850,000 hectares in 2012. The government is moving forward with plans to clear 14 million hectares of degraded forest between 2010 and 2020, despite a commitment to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.


Ghana thinking strategically

A study in three districts in Ghana aimed to identify REDD+ strategies that reverse agriculture’s adverse effects on forests and trees as part of the work being done to ensure that REDD+ becomes a key component of the country’s climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy. “Ghana’s REDD+ readiness process is nearing completion and a REDD+ package that would outline Ghana’s strategy and framework for safeguards, among others, would be completed by 2015,” said Samuel Afari Dartey, Chief Executive of Ghana’s Forestry Commission.

Building a forest foundation

South Korea’s Forest Service (KFS) is also working to incorporate REDD+ into its national strategy amid expectations that the country will have GHG emissions reduction requirements as part of a new international climate agreement. The country has a target to voluntarily reduce carbon emissions 30% by 2020. The KFS is developing a customized REDD+ model that features close bonds with local residents, the application of advanced information technology, and its experience overcoming post-war deforestation in the 1960s. “A successful REDD project not only involves the reduction of greenhouse gas but also considers the livelihood of local residents,” a KFS official said.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

For the birds

The Audubon Society has sold half of the 450,000 offsets from its Beidler Forest project in South Carolina to companies in California’s cap-and-trade program. The 5,200-acre forest conservation project is registered through Blue Source and the offsets are selling at a minimum of $8/tCO2e. The Audubon Society receives 80% of the proceeds and directs the funds towards an endowment that will support the forest in perpetuity. Jeff Cole, the vice president of portfolio development for Blue Source, expects additional offsets to be generated in the future as the forest grows.


Making new friends

Wildlife Works’ Kasigau REDD+ forestry project is having a positive impact in the local community, not just in terms of stopping unchecked deforestation, but also providing a new source of income for impoverished residents and improving the habitat for elephants, lions, cheetahs, zebras and other native animals. “We were losing everything, but thanks to the project we have learnt even how to live with the wild animals,” said Mercy Joshua, a mother of four. “These days, we don’t cut down trees… they are our friends”. Buyers of the voluntary carbon offsets generated by the project include Microsoft, Barclays Bank and Kenya Airways, which have invested $3.5 million each since the project started.

SUSTAINABLE COMMODITIES 

Back to school

Seven palm oil giants are jointly funding a year-long study to define what constitutes a High Carbon Stock (HCS) forest since many of these companies have agreed not to cut down these trees. The HCS has been a subject of debate among palm oil corporations, green groups and forest experts. The study underpins the Sustainable Palm Oil Manifesto, which sets criteria for sustainable palm oil production, including barring conversion of forests and peatlands for plantations, as well as creating traceable palm oil supply chains. But environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network have sharply criticized supposed loopholes in the manifesto.

The right kind of palm oil policy

U.S. food giant ConAgra has adopted a new policy that will bar palm oil produced from new plantations established on HCS lands and require suppliers to have no-burn policies and respect the right of communities to give or withhold their Free, Prior and Informed Consent to new development. The policy change comes after Green Century Capital Management and the New York State Comptroller’s Office filed a shareholder resolution alleging the company purchased so-called GreenPalm credits from other sources growing palm oil sustainably, rather than preventing deforestation in its own supply chain. Investors say they are becoming more sensitive about palm oil deforestation, scaling back development plans to only clear degraded forests and setting aside some lands for conservation.

FINANCE & ECONOMICS

Give the EU some credit

The European Union (EU) has declared its commitment to reduce tropical deforestation 50% by 2020 – but what’s its game plan? A recent paper by ClimateFocus and The Nature Conservancy looks at opportunities for the EU to mobilize REDD+ finance in the short to medium term. The authors identify two of the most promising options as being REDD+ Compensation Credits and voluntary sustainable supply chain initiatives. A structurally weak and economically depressed EU has stymied funding streams, but the authors offer some hope: “As European policy makers begin to realize that the current system is not providing the levels of funding that are needed, attention is beginning to shift to new and innovative funding streams,” they write.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Bamboo beat

Only in operation since June, Global Forest Watch-Fires (GFW-Fires) is already making some peoples’ jobs easier. GFW-Fires is an online platform that combines high-resolution satellite imagery, real-time fire alerts and land-use and concession maps to monitor and respond to fires. The system allows Indonesia’s REDD agency to warn communities in Indonesia of dangerous fires and also to track potentially illegal activity such as slash-and-burn agriculture. “Just imagine a village resident who beat bamboo tubes to warn others about an ongoing fire,” said agency head Heru Prasetyo. “This system works just like a giant bamboo tube that alerts officials and agencies responsible for handling fires on a massive scale.”

HUMAN DIMENSION

Trouble Down Under

In western Australia, sheep farmer Peter Yench holds a permit to clear his properties of trees, which would open up more land for grazing. But he has agreed to keep almost 7,000 hectares of forest standing for 100 years in exchange for revenue through the government’s Carbon Farming Initiative. However, the recent repeal of Australia’s carbon price has left farmers such as Yench in limbo, and 140,000 hectares of semi-arid woodlands may be up for clearing if the 154 accredited carbon farming projects in Australia cannot find an income stream.

STANDARDS AND METHODOLOGY

VCS sees REDD in Golden State

The Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) is ready to move into California’s regulated market in a major way. The leading voluntary carbon markets standard has now been authorized by the state’s ARB to pre-screen coal mine methane and other types of offset projects for California’s carbon trading program. In addition to evaluating currently eligible projects, the VCS has set a specific goal of helping California welcome REDD+ projects into the program. According to the related job posting, VCS sees California potentially as their first step towards involvement in other compliance markets throughout North America and worldwide.

PUBLICATIONS

Recipe for success?

Secure tenure, stakeholder engagement, clear monitoring frameworks and methods to ensure permanence are among the key “enabling conditions” for successful payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs, according to a new United Nations (UN) report. The report explores forest services through 14 detailed case studies and provides guidance on PES programs, suggesting that a “code of conduct” should be established for valuation, engagement and compliance. It was jointly produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the UN Environment Programme.

Bigger, safer, stronger

With much of the pledged financing for REDD coming from bilateral donors, these funders are beginning to move from a “do no harm” approach to proactively promoting positive social and environmental outcomes. In its recently released report, ClimateFocus looks at how the REDD safeguards adopted at the Cancun climate negotioations are currently being used, and how safeguard compliance may need to rely more heavily on country systems as REDD moves from the project scale to the jurisdictional scale. The paper calls for a strong Feedback and Grievance Redress Mechanism to catch major violations and for certain indicators for example, displacement without compensation and high-value biodiversity loss to be prioritized in safeguard monitoring.

JOBS

Director of North America Compliance Markets – Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)

Based in San Francisco, California, the Director of North American Compliance Markets will ensure that VCS plays a prominent role in the success of California’s cap-and-trade program, and other emerging programs. The position will include engaging the California ARB and the broad community of stakeholders in the development of new offset protocols and how to incorporate sector-based offsets such as REDD+.

Read more about the position here

Senior Program Officer, Training and Learning Network – The Center for People and Forests (RECOFTC)

Based in Bangkok, Thailand, the Senior Program Officer will manage RECOFTC’s capacity development activities, including customized courses and study tours for community forestry. The successful candidate will have at least 10 years of experience in participatory training in community forestry or natural resource management. Fluency in one or more languages from RECOFTC focal countries – Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam – is preferred.

Read more about the position here

Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative Assistant – Union of Concerned Scientists

Based in Washington, D.C., the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative Assistant will develop a more comprehensive understanding of the drivers of deforestation, policies to mitigate deforestation, and the importance of reducing deforestation rates as a climate change solution. The ideal candidate will have strong research and organizational skills, be attentive to detail, and be able to prioritize many tasks and communicate with diverse audiences. This is a one-year, paid, benefits-eligible internship position.

Read more about the position here

Executive Director – Non-Timber Forest Products Exchange Programme for South and Southeast Asia (NTFP-EP)

Based in Manila, Philippines, the Executive Director will lead NTFP-EP, a collaborative, regional network of grassroots NGOs and peoples’ organizations that seeks to build the capacity of forest-based communities in the conservation and trade of non-timber forest products. The successful candidate will have at least 10 years of experience in development work and at least five years of experience in organizational and program management.

Read more about the position here

Manager, East & Southern Africa – Rainforest Alliance

Based in Nairobi, Kenya, the Manager for East & Southern Africa will be responsible for the successful implementation of Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture projects, managing and implementing partnerships and maintaining relationships with important stakeholders and partners. The successful candidate will have 7-10 years of experience in the tea and/or coffee sector and farmer training, as well as experience with certification/verification issues and systems. The position requires travel to Kenya and other countries in Eastern and Southern Africa up to 40% of the time.

Read more about the position here

Senior Science Writer and Producer – Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Based in Bogor, Indonesia, the Senior Science Writer and Producer will work across a range of mediums and topics to turn out compelling, innovative and high-quality communications materials designed to help translate CIFOR’s high-caliber research into meaningful, real-world impact. The ideal candidate will have a strong editorial background, be an excellent writer, and have a rich, varied body of work that demonstrates the ability to think across multimedia platforms.

 Read more about the position here

ABOUT THE FOREST CARBON PORTAL

The Forest Carbon Portal provides relevant daily news, a bi-weekly news brief, feature articles, a calendar of events, a searchable member directory, a jobs board, a library of tools and resources. The Portal also includes the Forest Carbon Project Inventory, an international database of projects including those in the pipeline. Projects are described with consistent ‘nutrition labels’ and allow viewers to contact project developers.

ABOUT THE ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACE

Ecosystem Marketplace is a project of Forest Trends, a tax-exempt corporation under Section 501(c)3. This newsletter and other dimensions of our voluntary carbon markets program are funded by a series of international development agencies, philanthropic foundations, and private sector organizations. For more information on donating to Ecosystem Marketplace, please contact [email protected].

 


Additional resources

Should Landowners Earn Biodiversity Offsets For Conserving Species Habitat Before It Becomes Endangered?

 

19 August 2014 | It usually costs less to prevent a disease than it does to treat one, and it also costs less to manage forests in a way that prevents high-intensity wildfires than it does to fight those fires after they erupt.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is following this same line of thought into conservation by proposing a policy on building a crediting system that would protect threatened wildlife. The draft policy, which is part of the Service’s Candidate Conservation program, seeks to incentivize landowners into early conservation.

“The adage ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ is appropriate here,” says the FWS’ Chief of Public Affairs, Gavin Shire. “This policy is one more tool that can be used in conjunction with the others to help prevent species decline.”

How it works

Under the proposal, any landowning entity individuals, companies, government agencies, etc. can earn credits by practicing conservation that benefits an unlisted species. The conservation includes larger actions such as habitat creation and restoration, but also includes actions like planting trees, forgoing timber harvest, and removing invasive species. If the animal that benefits from those actions is later listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), those credits can be redeemed and used as mitigation to avoid practicing further conservation for the species.

The credits generated can also be sold to a third party-another entity requiring conservation actions for a listed species.

For example, a landowner, under no legal obligation, plants trees that provide a nesting habitat for a warbler species. The conservation actions are assessed, and the landowner receives credits based on its benefit to the warbler. If that species becomes an endangered or threatened species under the ESA in the future, and the landowner would like to develop an area of warbler habitat, he/she can redeem the credits and practice those actions without additional conservation. However, the value of the conservation must be greater than the negative activity being offset. If this isn’t the case, then additional conservation would need to be carried out. A requirement of the policy is delivering a net conservation benefit to the species.

Other requirements are fairly evident. First, it must be voluntary. The entity can’t be under any legal obligation to carry out the conservation. And the conservation must benefit unlisted wildlife.

Any at-risk species qualifies under the proposal. But because credits can only be redeemed after a species is listed under the ESA, it’s most likely landowners will conserve candidate species, which are those already under review to receive an official ESA listing. The risk of them being listed is higher.

Cost-effective Approach?

The FWS doesn’t have the exact numbers on how much more cost-effective it is to conserve a species voluntarily, but Shire says it’s only a question of how much and not if.

“Bringing a species back from the brink of extinction is always going to cost more than conserving populations before they get to that desperate status,” he says.

Ultimately, healthier ecosystems for wildlife mean a more sustainable flow of ecosystem services for people. And restoring ecosystems for people is expensive, Shire says, so everyone benefits from proactive conservation actions.

But while early conservation isn’t disputed as a sure way to preserve a species, Wayne White of the National Mitigation Banking Association, an organization meant to influence policy on behalf of the mitigation and conservation banking industry, is skeptical of voluntary measures.

For one, White questions the rigor of voluntary conservation standards and if those actions can act as offsets for detrimental impacts. The concept is designed to prevent species listing but, because it’s voluntary, the conservation is at a lower standard and then less likely to enhance the animals’ numbers, White says. A well-known example is the lesser prairie chicken, whose population continued to decline despite voluntary actions. The bird was listed as threatened under the ESA this year.

Then there is the cost of voluntary conservation. And again, because the standards are lower, White says, the cost is lower. Voluntary actions don’t have to ensure long-term preservation for a species and therefore can appear less expensive than conservation banking, which conserves at a high level and manages land for wildlife conservation in perpetuity. White argues this draft policy will undermine private sector investment in conservation banks.

“What we’re not seeing is the true cost of mitigation,” White says. “There is no certainty the voluntary conservation actions are going to be there long-term.”

Administration

White’s take on the draft policy is most likely one of many that will be streaming in over the next month. The proposal is published in the Federal Register and open to public comments until September 22.

As for administration, that will fall to individual states should they decide to adopt the policy. The FWS’ role is largely one of assistance and overseer. The states will take on primary tracking and implementation responsibilities and then report this information to the Service annually. This way, the states can ensure their conservation efforts will be recognized by the FWS should the species be listed eventually.

The FWS is also clear on how the draft policy would operate in coordination with the agency’s other ongoing voluntary initiatives. While some prelisting conservation measures may qualify under different programs, it can’t be treated under more than one. The intended outcomes of these different initiatives are different, the document notes. Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances (CCAAs), for instance, are meant to represent a property owners’ entire obligation to conserving a species. The draft policy, on the other hand, is allowing a conservation action to act as mitigation. It doesn’t guarantee further conservation won’t be needed.

CCAAS are also only for non-federal landowners whereas the draft policy is for every type of property owner.

Governors In Rainforest Nations Continue To Step Up On Deforestation. Will The Rest Of The World Follow?

 

12 August 2014 | RIO BRANCO, Brazil | Indonesia’s largest cash crop is palm oil. In Brazil, it’s soybeans. Those two crops are driving deforestation in both countries, yet governors from oilseed-dependent states in both countries have vowed to slash deforestation if funding for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) materializes.

Thirteen of them on Monday launched the Rio Branco Declaration, which is a clear commitment to reduce deforestation in their states by 80% between now and 2020. That commitment, however, is contingent on developed countries delivering on their own promises to step up funding both market-based and non-market-based to engineer a shift to sustainable land-use practices built in part on support for indigenous agriculture.

The declaration was signed at the 8th Annual Meeting of the Governors’ Climate & Forests (GCF) Task Force here. The GCF is a collaboration among 22 states and provinces from Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Spain, and the United States. Three additional Mexican states Tabasco, Quintana Roo and Jalisco are expected to join this week. Governors from other GCF member states say they will also sign the declaration.

“GCF members come from different provinces and countries, but we have a common goal to protect forests and build sustainable environments for improved livelihoods for all both now and into the future, said Governor A. Teras Narang of the Indonesian state of Central Kalimantan. “That future is now.

The REDD Factor

Narang’s country, Indonesia, is attempting to halt deforestation by shifting palm-oil development from forested lands to degraded lands a daunting task akin to moving the farms of the US Midwest to the plains of Texas. It amounts to the largest voluntary land-swap in history, and the government aims to use REDD finance to achieve it, while also engaging the demand side of the equation by working with companies willing to re-engineer their supply chains to avoid deforestation.

“Only standing forests are capable of removing greenhouse gases such as CO2 from our atmosphere, helping to reduce global warming, said Governor Dr. Cornelis MH, a signatory to the declaration and Governor of the Indonesian state of West Kalimantan. “Performance-based incentives or assistance from donor countries to support REDD+ programs and low emissions development will not only rehabilitate forests but support livelihoods among forest-dependent communities€both small-holder farmers and indigenous communities.

 Indigenous leaders, conservationists, and private-sector actors meet on the sidelines of the GCF meeting in Brazil

Indigenous leaders, conservationists, and private-sector actors meet on the sidelines of the GCF meeting in Brazil.

Edwin Vasquez is the leader of one of those communities, the Huitoto People of Peru, and as Coordinator General of COICA (Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indí­genas de la Cuenca Amazí³nica, Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin), he represents nearly 400 other indigenous communities across the entire Amazon Basin.

“Humanity is in grave danger over the destruction of the Amazonia the climate regulator of the planet, he said. “The 5,000 indigenous communities continue to protect the forests and preserve our cultures and the world, as we have done for thousands of years. We are the proprietors of 210 million hectares, covering 25% of the Amazon, which calls for an urgent proposal Indigenous Amazonia for Humanity, a $210 million project addressing the fact that climate funds have not reached our communities.

The Declaration

The declaration aims to put the GCF on the world stage, and it invites the international community and partner organizations to work with the GCF to develop clear and transparent mechanisms for securing and delivering performance-based benefits to forest-dependent communities, smallholders, and indigenous peoples.

“For the last 6 years the GCF has been the source of incredible innovation that is now ready for the world stage, said Dan Nepstad, Executive Director of Earth Innovation Institute. “If the GCF states and provinces decide in Rio Branco to reduce 80% of deforestation by 2020, this means 4 billion tons of avoided CO2 emissions on top of the 3 billion tons of emissions already avoided.

Now, he says, it’s up to the rest of us to step up.

“For the 2020 commitment to become real, the GCF will need the support of companies, donors and investors, and a strong commitment to channel benefits to forest-based communities, said Nepstad. “All of the pieces are coming together for this to happen in the coming months.

California Key

On the buy-side, the US state of California is considering the inclusion of REDD offsets in its cap-and-trade program. The state played a leadership role in the early days of the GCF, and it remains a key driver.

“Without action to reduce emissions from the deforestation of tropical forests, we are missing one of the keys to mitigating climate change, said California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols. “We think the sector-based offset crediting approach being evaluated for jurisdiction-wide programs, like the one in Acre, is the next frontier for California’s carbon offset program.

 

Additional resources

VCS Sees REDD In California Carbon

 

8 August 2014 The Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) aims to play a major role in California’s cap-and-trade program now that the California Air Resources Board (ARB) has decided to allow the VCS to help administer parts of its compliance offset program. But the VCS has its sights set higher: aiming to help California welcome REDD+ (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) projects into the program.

The ARB the US state agency charged with overseeing the program has designated the VCS as an offset project registry (OPR), which allows it to facilitate the listing, reporting and verification of offset projects developed using the ARB’s compliance protocols and help those offsets transition into the cap-and-trade program. With the OPR designation, the VCS can pre-screen carbon projects, including offsets developed under the recently approved coal mine methane (CMM) protocol, on the ARB’s behalf. The VCS joins the American Carbon Registry and the Climate Action Reserve as OPRs.

“The California system is on the cutting edge of figuring out how to tackle climate change, said David Antonioli, Chief Executive Officer of the VCS. “We feel it’s time to be part of the game and part of the solution.

In April, the ARB added a mine methane capture project type based in part on two VCS methodologies originally developed in the voluntary carbon market  to its roster of eligible offset protocols. ARB staffers have previously estimated that the protocol could produce a potential domestic offset supply of 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in emissions reductions. The new protocol will provide “a fairly large chunk of offsets to the California program and the VCS has a few CMM projects that could convert their verified carbon units to ARB-approved offsets, Antonioli said.

The VCS is hosting a webinar on September 9 to lay out its OPR pricing structure, but the organization has decided to waive all enrollment fees for project operators that want to start a VCS California account for the rest of 2014. It will also be hiring a Director of North American Compliance Markets based in Northern California.

“We want to play a real role in this market, Antonioli said.

VCS seeing REDD

But VCS officials have high hopes for the potential inclusion of international REDD offsets in the California program using the VCS jurisdictional and nested REDD+ (JNR) approach, which features the first framework for accounting and crediting REDD+ programs implemented at either the national or subnational (state) level. The framework also establishes a pathway for existing and new subnational jurisdictional activities and projects to be integrated or “nested within broader jurisdictional REDD+ programs.

The VCS believes its jurisdictional approach is in line with the recommendations of the REDD Offsets Working (ROW) Group. In July 2013, the ROW recommended the acceptance of only jurisdictional REDD+ offsets and ARB staffers have pledged to consider including sector-based REDD offsets into the state’s cap-and-trade program.

The Brazilian state of Acre with which California and the Mexican state of Chiapas have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been the first jurisdiction to pilot the JNR framework and is “really quite close to becoming the first jurisdiction-wide program to deliver compliance-grade REDD+ offsets, Antonioli said.

Meanwhile, officials in California and Mexico in late July signed a MOU and formally agreed to work together on a range of actions to address climate change, including pricing carbon pollution. The most obvious area of cooperation would be for California to recognize REDD offsets generated by projects located in Mexico in its program, he said.

“I think there are great opportunities for making things happen across the border, Antonioli said.

The VCS is also hoping that the ARB will allow Alaska-based forestry projects into its compliance program, Antonioli said. In a July board meeting, ARB staffers said they were planning to propose an update to the ARB’s forestry protocol in late 2014 to allow these projects into the program.

The VCS has registered and issued offsets to the Afognak Forest Carbon Project, an improved forest management project that covers more than 3,300 hectares located on the North coast of Afognak Island, Alaska. The project has a lifetime of 30 years and is expected to sequester 1.56 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over the 2006-2036 timeframe, according to the verification assessment completed by the Rainforest Alliance.

California Wildfires Kill More Than Trees, And That May Help Us Prevent Them In The Future

 

5 August 2014 | The Hetch Hetchy watershed is 160 miles from the San Francisco Bay area, but the people of the Bay rely on this granite-surrounded water supply as their drinking source.

Located in the Yosemite National Park, the Hetch Hetchy is situated along the Tuolumne River in California’s Sierra Nevada and acts as a reservoir collecting the mountain range’s melting snow. Its water travels to San Francisco through miles of pipelines and tunnels called the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System, which supplies over 2 million people in four counties with water.

Last year, the now-infamous Rim Fire burned 250,000 acres of Sierra Nevada forestland from August 17, 2013 to October 24. But something stunning happened when it moved out of Stanislaus National Forest and into Yosemite: its intensity was immediately waned. That helped save the Hetch Hetchy and San Francisco’s water supply, but the fires still cost the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) $55 million in infrastructure costs.

These damages and the fact that the fire came so close to threatening its water got the SFPUC thinking about natural losses. They wondered what the real costs of the fire were in terms of muddied water, lost pollination, dirty air, and a general loss of quality in the region and how high could those costs could go if the winds went against them.

To answer that question, they hired Earth Economics (EE), a nonprofit specializing in the economic valuation of ecosystem services to look at the cost of the Rim Fire itself not just in terms of infrastructure, but in terms of ecosystem services.

The result is The Economic Impact of the Rim Fire 2013, which EE hammered out even as the fires still burned. By incorporating the loss of ecosystem services into the equation, it showed that damage from the Rim Fire itself had been dramatically undervalued from an initial infrastructure assessment of less than $50 million to anywhere from $100 million to $736 million once ecosystem services were factored in. Governor Jerry Brown used that assessment to qualify for federal disaster aid after the state was initially turned down by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), and it shined a light on the economic return that good forest management brings.

“We believe this to be the first time environmental values have been included in an application for a major disaster declaration,” says Rowan Schmidt, a project leader at EE and report author.

EE arrived at its figures in part using the Benefit Transfer Methodology, which uses local values and past valuation studies on similar or the same services, along with satellite data. The report estimated monetary values on 10 ecosystem services on eight different land types impacted by the fire. The services valued include air quality, carbon sequestration, pollination, water regulation and biodiversity.

 EE table on Rim Fire damage

Old Fire in a New Climate

Fires aren’t always bad. In fact, they’re an important component of forest ecology, EE’s report says, because they restore natural species and the ash nourishes new growth. But climatic changes that cause higher temperatures for longer coupled with an increase in human-caused fires means the wildfire season lasts longer and burns hotter than ever before.

“California’s wildfire season never ended,” says Kim Carr, a sustainability specialist at Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a state agency designed to support preservation of the region.

On average, there are now seven times as many wildfires over 10,000 acres every year, according to the report.

There is another element practitioners in the field say heavily contributed to the Rim Fire’s intensity, and it’s one that EE’s report can now help correct. Pre-1970s, a no-burn policy in the Forest Service that suppressed all fires led to an increase in fuel loads (flammable material like underbrush). Forests became overgrown and dense, increasing their vulnerability to high intensity wildfires. And even though policy has been gradually changing since then, the buildup makes controlled burning and other techniques difficult to manage.

“When fires hit the landscape now, it does a lot of damage because it burns too hot,” Carr says.

What the West’s forests need, Carr says, are fuel thinning treatments that mechanically remove a forest’s fuel, but those cost money about $68 million in the nearby Mokelumne watershed, according to a cost-benefit analysis carried out there. That analysis, however, conservatively estimates the benefits generated from fuel treatment at $126 million.

Such treatment makes it safe to re-introduce fire that will burn at a lesser intensity. The less intense fires will continue to remove understory and increase its overall health.

“More fuel treatment is needed on a larger amount of acres,” says Carr.

“We can’t keep throwing money at suppression; we want to get to a point where we’re not just suppressing fires but proactively managing and restoring forest.

The Natural Buffer

The fire burned below Hetch Hetchy so its water wasn’t under as much of a threat had the fire started closer to the reservoir. Also, there is less vegetation to burn around Hetch Hetchy compared to other areas. The huge granite structures surrounding the water acted as a buffer against the fire as well. However, both Carr and Manager of SFPUC’s Natural Resources and Land Management Division, Tim Ramirez, say the overall greater health of Yosemite’s forests contributed to the reduced damage reiterating Carr’s contention that good forest management pays off over the long run.

“The National Park Service doesn’t fight fires,” says Ramirez. “And as a consequence, the Rim Fire in Hetch Hetchy wasn’t catastrophic.”

And that, say scientists from the non-profit organization, Point Blue Conservation Science, is why the Rim Fire ran out of steam upon moving out of Stanislaus and into Yosemite’s forests.

Water Comes from the Forests

As of right now, San Francisco’s water supply doesn’t need to be filtered. It’s treated but the high quality nature of the source allows exemption from the Environmental Protection Agency’s filter regulations.

But the huge threat of wildfires means this unique source of water-and others throughout the western US-are at risk. The Sierra Nevada Conservancy and other organizations are looking at potential investors in the needed fuel reduction treatments that will lower the risk of wildfire and initiate healthier forests.

One group of investors they’re targeting is water utilities. Raising peoples’ monthly utility bill by just a dollar or so, Carr says, could fund fuel treatments on a large scale.

As of right now, there isn’t any policy in development for this scenario to play out in the Sierra Nevada, but initiatives like it are happening elsewhere. In Arkansas, for instance, the utility that services Little Rock implemented a “Watershed Protection Fee,” which funds acquisition and conservation of land near Lake Maumelle-Little Rock’s drinking water source. It also funds environmental regulation and water quality monitoring activities.

Another example operating similarly is in North Carolina’s capital, Raleigh. A monthly watershed protection fee of about 45 cents is added on to ratepayer’s bills. The funds are used to purchase land near the water source and conserve it.

And there are many more cases. The Forest to Faucet Partnership between the utility, Denver Water, and the US Forest Service uses additional fees to practice forest treatment and watershed protection. It’s a well-known initiative that other municipalities are looking closely at. Wildfire risk was a prime reason Denver Water thought it smart to invest in a watershed protection project that enhances forest health.

And with the Rim Fire’s heavy economic and natural losses fresh in everyone’s mind and also the knowledge that the fire came within a hair of contaminating a huge water supply, the communities of San Francisco and perhaps all of California might look at programs such as Denver’s with a new-found interest.

Stunning High-Resolution Map reveals Secrets Of Peru’s Forests

A colorful map of Peru’s landscape has been drawn from research assessing the nation’s aboveground carbon stock. The map portrays carbon density with different colors allowing viewers to see the diversity of Peru’s land in a whole new way and also see the value in preserving its ecosystems.

This article was originally published on mongabay.com. Click here to read the original.

 

4 August 2014 | Peru’s landmass has just been mapped like never before, revealing important insights about the country’s forests that could help it unlock the value healthy and productive ecosystems afford humanity.

The research — involving scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University, Wake Forest University, and Peru’s Ministry of Environment (Minam) — assessed the aboveground carbon stock of all vegetation types across the country using a combination of data from satellites and Carnegie’s advanced laser-based carbon detection system, ground-truthed with data from field studies.

The resulting map is a stunning kaleidoscope of color, ranging from deep red in carbon-dense forests of the Amazon to the cold dark blue of areas devoid of vegetation like heavy gold mining areas and Andean peaks.

 The new map reports all of Peru's ecosystems.

The new map reports all of Peru’s ecosystems.

 

But beyond its visual appeal, the map provides critical information at a one-hectare scale relevant for policymakers and scientists. The study found that vegetation in Peru stores some 6.9 billion metric tons of aboveground biomass, or roughly equivalent to nearly twice the combined annual carbon emissions of the U.S. and China, and documented ecosystem gradients that underpin the country’s rich biodiversity. For example, it found that the lowlands of southern Peru harbor significantly less carbon compared with other rainforest areas due to extensive areas of bamboo. Terra firme forests store more than twice as much carbon as active floodplain forests.

 The report compares the carbon storage of different vegetation types

The report compares the carbon storage of different vegetation types.

The research tied vegetation data to administrative units and protected areas, including national parks and communal reserves. It found that Loreto contains more than half the country’s total aboveground carbon stock, while Peru’s protected areas store a combined 26 percent of its carbon. That means nearly three-quarter’s of Peru’s carbon is found outside protected areas, underscoring the importance of maintaining those carbon stocks, according to the authors.

“The international community wants to use a combination of carbon sequestration and emissions reductions to combat climate change,” said Carnegie’s Greg Asner, the study’s lead author, in a statement. “Our cost-effective approach allows us to accurately map the carbon in this incredibly diverse country for the first time. It opens Períº’s door to carbon sequestration agreements and is an enormous boon to conservation and monitoring efforts over vast areas for the long term.”

 Carbon maps for four regions in Peru

Carbon maps for four regions in Peru.

The findings could also help place a value on Peru’s conservation efforts, added co-author Miles Silman of Wake Forest University.

“Now every person in private enterprise and decision makers in regional, local, and national government has an estimate of carbon content for every place in Períº. It should ignite the imaginations of ecologists and earth scientists, and provide a road map for decision makers,” Silman said. “The report also adds another exclamation point to the value of protected areas. If you choose carbon as your currency, parks in Amazonian Períº are the banks, and the bigger the area, the closer it gets to being Fort Knox.”

The carbon mapping process
The carbon mapping process. The report says the map can be used to measure deforestation and degradation using free Landsat imagery and forest cover monitoring software like as CLASlite, which was also developed by Carnegie. New field plot data can also be added to the map as it becomes available.

 

CITATION: Gregory P. Asner et al (2014). The High-Resolution Carbon Geography of Períº. A Collaborative Report of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory and the Ministry of Environment of Períº. July 2014.

 

Rhett Butler is the founder, president and head writer for Mongabay.com.

Does Brazilian Deforestation Drive Drought In The United States?

 

28 July 2014 | Severe drought conditions in the US state of California have led state officials to impose criminal penalties for water wasters. The drought could also help make the case that California should allow projects aimed at curbing tropical deforestation into the state’s carbon trading system.

California’s State Water Resources Control Board approved an emergency regulation to force water agencies, their customers and state residents to increase water conservation in urban settings by reducing outdoor water uses such as washing down driveways and watering landscapes or face possible fines of up to $500 a day. What brought on this surge in water regulation? The fact that California residents are using more water than last year with urban water use in May up 1% over the monthly average for the previous three years despite two drought emergency declarations by Governor Jerry Brown and his January plea for residents to voluntarily reduce their water use by 20%.

What may seem like a local problem could have its roots in the tropical deforestation that has occurred in Brazil and other countries. Researchers found that total deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could reduce rainfall in the Pacific Northwest by 20% and cause a 50% reduction in the Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial source of water for California, according to a major scientific study published in the Journal of Climate last year.

Although it is difficult to quantify whether specific weather patterns such as the current drought are directly tied to deforestation, data trends indicate that deforestation has a direct impact on rainfall in California, according to Rajinder Sahota, Chief of the Climate Change Program Evaluation Branch of the California Air Resources Board (ARB), who spoke at an ARB board hearing on Thursday. But it remains difficult to convince residents of any possible connection, especially when they dealt with mudslides and floods in the state last year, she said.

“People tend to latch on to the most recent events as an indication of what’s going on, Sahota said.

The role of tropical deforestation and the possible connection to California’s drought arose in the context of an update that ARB staff was providing regarding its planned consideration of sector-based offsets, specifically from projects that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). ARB’s legal counsel Jason Gray discussed the multiple co-benefits of REDD projects, including protection against decreased precipitation from forest loss, which could be of interest given the current drought situation.

Keep reading on the Forest Carbon Portal (for free).

Wrestling With Orangutans: The Genesis Of The Rimba-Raya REDD Project

This article is the fourth in a series. You can also view the previous installment here.

 

24 July 2014 | As a former collegiate wrestler,  Todd Lemons knew the look of an eager athlete ready to grapple, and  these orangutans had that look in spades.

He encountered them in the forest behind Orangutan Foundation International‘s (OFI) orphanage in Pangkalan Bun, on the island of Borneo. All were  adolescents who had witnessed the murder of one or both of their parents, and all of them owed their lives to the woman escorting him: OFI founder Birute Galdikas.

Instinctively, Lemons crouched to engage the first one to step forward. They waddled around in circles, each looking for an opening in the other’s defense. Finally, the orangutan lunged; Lemons intercepted; others loped into the fray. Soon, at the age of 40, Lemons was engulfed in a gaggle of rowdy red apes, all of them rolling and wrestling and – yes – laughing.

“It was at once the most amazing experience of my life and one of the most heart-wrenching,” he says. “Amazing because they’re better than us in many ways: They’re generous and intelligent, but they’re also naí¯ve, and they have an amazing sense of humor.” Heart-wrenching, he adds, because they don’t belong in an orphanage.

 Todd Lemons and an orphaned infant

Todd Lemons and an orphaned infant.

Emotional Engagement

Lemons had flown from Hong Kong to Borneo just hours earlier, and that first spontaneous encounter with orangutans provided what he calls “an early point-of-no-return” – his first emotional engagement with the orangs of the hutan – the “people of the forest” in the languages of both Indonesia and Malaysia. It also provided Galdikas with an opportunity to learn a bit about this hyperactive businessman who’d called her just a week earlier with a crazy plan to save the forest and had now shown up on her doorstep unannounced.

“I realized then that Todd loves the orangutans,” says Galdikas. “He still gets down and wrestles with them and rolls around like they do – it’s the most wonderful thing.”

Lemons would return to the orphanage scores of times in the coming years – sometimes alone, and sometimes with his Indonesian partner, Rusmin Widjajam, or with his American partner, Jim Procanik. Often they’d come for business, but just as often they’d come for respite from the David and Goliath struggle they found themselves enmeshed in as they struggled to save the forest.

“In my darkest hours throughout our epic five-year battle, I went back to the care center many times to strengthen my resolve,” says Lemons.

Muddling Through It

Impressed by the way Lemons connected with the orangutans, Galdikas asked him to accompany her on a boat ride to Camp Leakey, the rescue facility she built in the early 1970s with the support of her mentor, primatologist Louis Leakey. Lemons soon found himself teetering along underwater balance beams that served as a sort of jungle boardwalk in the dry season – which this wasn’t.

“I was surprised at the grace with which Birute navigated the slippery, unseen boards knee-deep,” he says. “I kept slipping off and spent half my time up to my chest in swamp water.” It was, he says, a visceral re-connection with the elements he’d always sought as a child but only found intermittently as an adult.

“I got my start in the Amazon, but I’d spent the past five years of my life manufacturing widgets in China,” he says. “Now I was back in the forest with a meaningful purpose, with wild-born orangutans, and with a world-renowned scientist who had made the cover of National Geographic twice.”

It was, he thought, a life his grandfather would approve of.

How the World Works

He and Galdikas spent the evening at Camp Leaky under a solitary solar-powered light bulb – in a setting that Lemons describes as “epic”.

 The Trimates: Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, and Birute Galdikas..

The Trimates: Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, and Birute Galdikas.

“Up to then, I had looked at this from an academic and economic viewpoint,” he says. “Now, it was taking on profound philosophical tones. I began to feel like I could really make a difference in the world that my kids would inherit.”

Galdikas, however, still wasn’t sold. She’d hosted more than her share of wide-eyed idealists and overconfident businessmen over the years, and very few of them ended up doing anything of value for the orangutans. With the Seruyan Forest disappearing just over the horizon, she needed someone who not only wanted to make a difference but had both the smarts to get it done and the fortitude to see it through.

“I could feel Todd’s sincerity, but I still thought he was naí¯ve,” says Galdikas. “Nobody who’s not a native-born person will ever understand a new country completely.”

Lemons begs to differ. In his mind, Galdikas is more Indonesian than anything, even though she grew up in Canada. “She sometimes calls me ‘Mr. Todd’ – the way Indonesians call someone ‘Pak’ so-and-so,” he says. “She loves this country the way certain immigrants to the United States love their adopted home.”

She lectured Lemons on the value that Indonesians place on politeness, hierarchy and rules; and she warned him that the brashness that gets you to the top in California would come across as oafish on Kalimantan, the Indonesian word for Borneo. Lemons told Galdikas about his career in forestry, and how he’d navigated the cultures of Latin America and China. He said he was tired of the rat-race and was looking forward to working with conservationists and other “civilized” folk.

Her response took him aback.

“She read me the riot act,” says Lemons. “She told me that compared to doing business in China, doing conservation in Indonesia was a snake pit.”

Galdikas told him not to idealize the world of conservation. “There are some wonderful people in this field – some of the best I’ve ever met,” she says. “But I told him that when you start dealing with some of the big conservation groups, the fundraising tail is wagging the conservation dog.”

What’s more, she added, those dogs only see one pie of funding. “They’re all fighting over that pie behind the scenes,” she says.

Lemons countered that REDD would change all that because it would make the pie bigger.

A New Conservation Paradigm

REDD, he said, was part of a whole new economic paradigm built on the premise that our economy depends on our ecology, and that good land stewardship delivers a higher economic value than palm oil does. While some blamed market mechanisms for all the world’s ills, Lemons saw markets as a powerful but amoral tool that sometimes needed direction. REDD, he said, directed the power of the market into conservation.

“I loved what he was saying, but I wasn’t convinced it would work,” she says. “I knew there’d be opposition from people who don’t like markets, and so did he, but I also knew that a lot of the traditional conservationists would see him as treading on their turf.” As an anthropologist, she told Lemons, she’d learned a few things about turf wars, and she warned him it wouldn’t be pretty.

“It was an amazing lecture, about NGO culture and business culture and about Indonesian culture and North American culture,” says Lemons. “She was married to a Dyak chief, and as an anthropologist who straddles two cultures, she really understands the cosmology of the Indonesian people and how that cultural and historical worldview shapes the way they behave.”

 BirutÄ— Galdikas, Siswei, and Todd Lemons share a rambutan lunch.

BirutÄ— Galdikas, Siswei, and Todd Lemons share a rambutan lunch.

As a Canadian, she also understood where Lemons was coming from, and she pointed out how his own cultural and historical worldview conditioned him to seek consistency, while Javanese cosmology embraced paradox.

“She gave me amazing advice early on that I didn’t even understand at the time,” he says. “But it rang clear and true as I found myself immersed in a very complex and foreign culture.”

Still, it was the ideological differences between the business world and the nonprofit world that he found most challenging – differences that he says he should have seen by the way REDD had evolved.

Chasms and Camaraderie

Long before there was REDD and its efforts to pay for the protection of trees based on their carbon content, there was the timber trade, which paid for forests based on their “merchantable” wood content. In order to pay for that merchantable wood, they had to measure it, and they became incredibly adept at doing so. After all, millions of dollars were at stake on every transaction, and they wanted to get it right. Lemons came from that world, and when he heard of REDD, he assumed the powers-that-be would just adopt the calculus of timber to save the forest rather than destroy it. He was wrong.

Galdikas, meanwhile, was beginning to think Lemons might actually be able to get the job done – not because of anything he said, but because of something he did.

“As we sat around barefoot on the floor with the Camp Leakey staff, Todd immediately picked up on the cultural taboo of exposing the bottom of ones feet to the other guests,” says Galdikas. “Also, they have a custom that when somebody in the group gets up, they kind of hunch over so as not to tower over the other guests.”

Like the ubiquitous Western handshake, the Indonesian hunch is a modern custom with traditional roots: the Dyaks of Indonesia always kept their heads lower than that of the king’s, and today it’s just good manners. Galdikas says that Lemons picked up on that right away, too. “That’s when I realized he might have a chance at navigating the complexities of Indonesian society,” she says.

But Lemons had questions of his own.

The Peat Bog Wild Card

His questions weren’t about Galdikas – after all, she was a public figure, and he’d researched her thoroughly – but he’d been spooked by those scraggly trees that dominated the landscape. “I came from a forestry background, and I knew those trees didn’t hold enough carbon to cover the cost of measuring them,” he says.

He had a list of criteria that would have to be met if this thing was going to work commercially: the forest would have to be in danger (check). It would have to be home to an endangered species (check). It would have to contain massive amounts of carbon (question mark).

Lemons knew that Kalimantan’s carbon was locked in peat bogs, because those bogs made headlines around the world when the El Nií±o draught lit them up  in 1997 and 2003. On satellite images, those bogs looked like smoke bombs, and scientists estimated they pumped 200 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere  in 1997 alone. That translates into 734 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the air, or the equivalent of 180 million extra cars on the road.

“I know there are peat forests on Kalimantan,” Lemons told Galdikas. “But where are they?”

“We’ve been knee-deep in one all day,” she laughed. “Well, I’ve been knee-deep; you’ve been neck-deep – but it’s the same forest, just on the other side of the park.”

And that, says Lemons, is when it all finally fell into place. “Somehow, I had stumbled into a peat swamp forest that provided a critical buffer zone to a national park, home to one of maybe four remaining forests with high-density relic populations of wild orangutans,” he says. “My potential partner was a conservation rock star, and if there was ever a forest that met the definition of being under ‘imminent threat’, this was it.”

This forest, he told her, had environmental value, and REDD made it possible to convert that to economic value. Economically, he said, it wasn’t worth more alive than dead, but it was worth enough alive that they could use REDD to save it.

“We’ve been trying to save the Seruyan for seven years, and I’m out of options,” she said. “They’ve given it to palm oil, and in five years, it will be gone. If the entire eastern border goes to palm oil, they’ll deforest half the national park. They’ve already illegally deforested 2,000 hectares of the northern quadrant.”

She paused.

“OK,” she said. “Let’s do it. If you can save this forest, you’ll make a believer out of me.”

Next Installment: Birute visits the Minister of Forestry while Todd dives into the calculus of REDD.

 

This Week In V-Carbon News…

This article was originally posted in the V-Carbon newsletter. Click here to read the original.

 

25 July 2014 | Is New Zealand next? Australia disappointed carbon market advocates last week when its national legislature voted to scrap the country’s carbon tax and planned emissions trading system (ETS). The AU$23 carbon tax incentivized significant pre-compliance offset purchases in 2012. Ecosystem Marketplace’s State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2013 report accounted for five million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in offset transactions that did not see a repeat in this year’s report. Australia’s offset market will likely be replaced with an “Emissions Reduction Fund,” which would serve as a reverse auction for the government to buy from competing sellers.

Having already opted out of the Kyoto Protocol’s second phase, New Zealand is contemplating going the way of its Oceania neighbor and abolishing its ETS. The future of the NZ market rests with a general election in September. If the ruling National Party retains the power to form a government, then no change to the system is expected. The speculation has pressured prices on the NZ ETS over the last month.

However, there is life after Kyoto as Japan’s J-Credit System shows. The system combines the two prior offset standards: the Japan Domestic Clean Development Mechanism program that offered local certification of businesses’ emissions reductions, and Japan’s Verified Emissions Reduction System, which verified domestic project offsets. Ecosystem Marketplace’s Kelley Hamrick spoke with Noriko Hase from the Overseas Environmental Cooperation Center about the improvements made by streamlining the two programs into one all-inclusive standard in 2013 and the potential effect on demand for voluntary offsets in the country.

These and other stories from the voluntary carbon marketplace are summarized below, so keep reading!

For the fifth year running, Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace is collecting data about forest carbon projects around the world to include in our State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2014 report. This is the only market-wide, freely available research tracking performance-based payments for emissions reductions in forests, and we rely on a global survey to ensure that our data is representative.

Help us spread the word!

Our survey for forest carbon project developers is available in English HERE and in Spanish HERE.

Every year, Ecosystem Marketplace relies wholly on offset market participants to financially support the State of research. In return, sponsors ($7.5k+) and supporters ($3k) benefit from the report’s growing exposure, early insight into our findings, and opportunities to engage directly with Ecosystem Marketplace in report-related outreach and events. Interested organizations should contact Molly Peters-Stanley.

The Editors

For comments or questions, please email: [email protected]


V-Carbon News

Voluntary Carbon

Offsets for everyone
The United Nations (UN) Climate Change Secretariat recently launched a campaign to allow everyone to purchase certified emission reductions (CERs) to increase demand for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) offsets. The secretariat’s staff and their families are the first eligible to offset their personal greenhouse gas emissions with CERs, via a fund that provides dedicated financing to projects building climate resilience in 40 countries. Local governments and other individuals will be allowed to participate in the future. CERs are produced by projects in developing countries registered under the UN’s CDM offset program, which has struggled with declining demand and low pricing in recent years. Read more here

 

Like a rock
Chevrolet will purchase 100,000 tonnes of carbon offsets generated by voluntarily implementing nitrous oxide abatement technologies at a CF Industries Holdings nitrogen manufacturing facility in Mississippi. The Terra Yazoo City #9 project is listed with the Climate Action Reserve under its Nitric Acid Production Project Protocol and the deal was brokered by ClimeCo. Chevrolet will retire the offsets as part of its Carbon Reduction Initiative, which features a goal of reducing eight million tCO2e. CF Industries will donate the net proceeds of $600,000 to the National FFA Foundation to support excellence in farmer education and fertilizer best management practices. Read more here

 

Bambi would be proud
The Walt Disney Company struck a deal with the Bethlehem Authority to buy forest carbon offsets from a nearly 20,000-acre project in Pennsylvania. The 4-year deal will bring in $140,000 to $170,000 annually, which the Bethlehem Authority will use to improve its aging water system and protect the forested watershed of Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. The project is developed by Blue Source under a Verified Carbon Standard methodology and registered with Markit. It will generate just under 25,000 tCO2e in annual estimated emission reductions. Disney is one of the largest purchasers of offsets in the voluntary carbon markets, retiring 457,882 tCO2e in 2013 and 433,677 tCO2e in 2012, according to company data.
 Read more here

 

Dialing down emissions
The Mobile World Congress 2014 has been certified carbon neutral by the Spanish Association for Standardisation and Certification, AENOR. The annual conference in Barcelona, Spain offset approximately 165,000 tCO2e with the assistance of project developer Factor CO2. Conference organizer GSMA purchased CDM offsets from the Dongliuxi Erji Hydropower project in the Hubei province of China, bundled wind power projects in the Indian state of Rajasthan, and the Olkaria II Geothermal Expansion Project in Kenya. Read the press release
More from AENOR

 

The final score
Sixteen companies donated 545,500 CERs in response to Brazil’s “Low Carbon World Cup Initiative”. The Brazilian government offered publicity in official documents in exchange for CERs based in Brazil. The program’s goal was to offset the 1.4 million tCO2e associated with the event’s stadium construction, local transportation, and fossil fuel electricity consumption. The top donor was Tractebel Energia a division of French utility GDF Suez with 105,000 CERs, followed by chemical manufacturer Solvay Rhodia with 100,000 CERs. Read more here

 

Scaling the mountains
The Appalachian Mountain Club has sold over 100,000 offsets from its Katahdin Iron Works conservation property in Maine to The Climate Trust, which is using the offsets to fulfill its obligations under an initiative to address carbon emissions from fossil fuel plants in Massachusetts. The offsets were verified under the Climate Action Reserves Forest Project Protocol. Proceeds from the sale will benefit projects such as the Maine Woods Initiative, a strategy for land conservation in the 100-Mile Wilderness region. The strategy addresses regional ecological and economic needs through outdoor recreation, resource protection, sustainable forestry, and community partnerships. Read the press release

 

Compliance Carbon

Going above and beyond
The Norwegian Carbon Procurement Facility (NorCaP) has closed its first call for proposals and is expected to purchase 21 million CERs at an above-market average value of nearly $3.1 each. The principal objective of NorCaP is to prevent the reversal of emission reduction activities by obtaining offsets from projects whose survival or continued emission reductions depend on a higher carbon price than achievable under current market conditions. The offsets will be purchased from 13 different projects and used to help meet the country’s obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. A second call for proposals is anticipated in September 2014. Read more here

 

Out of Africa
Vitol, Bunge and Shell Trading have purchased over 3.5 million CERs from African carbon offsets developer Ecosur Afrique. The companies will buy around 510,000 CERs annually for at least the next seven years, with closing prices determined at the time of delivery to the final customers. The offsets will be sourced from five clean energy projects: four in Burundi and one in Uganda. Read more here

 

Backed by the Crown
The British High Commission in South Africa awarded Johannesburg-based Promethium Carbon a grant to help prepare local companies for the country’s forthcoming carbon tax, which is expected to start at $11.2/tCO2e in 2016. The program includes the option to utilize offsets for compliance with the tax and Promethium will use the grant to start a pilot trading market for carbon offsets on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange next year. Promethium estimates the initial prices for South African offsets in the range of $7.5-$9.4 per tonne. The value of the grant was not disclosed. Read more here

 

Give me just a little more time
South Korean Ministries will move to delay the country’s ETS scheduled to start in January 2015. Officials will take an unspecified time to recalculate the “business as usual levels to ease pressure on industry. The ETS has been opposed by business groups such as the Federation of Korean Industries. The matter now goes before the National Assembly where the likelihood of passing revised legislation is uncertain. Read more here

 

Science & Technology

Don’t let the carbon escape
Construction has started on the first commercial-scale post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the United States. The Petra Nova CCS and enhanced oil recovery project is being developed via a partnership between NRG Energy, JX Nippon and the Department of Energy, which contributed $167 million. The project is located at a NRG Energy coal-fired power plant in Texas and aims to capture 1.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually. The CO2 will be pumped through an 80-mile pipeline to the West Ranch Oil Field and injected into the ground to boost oil production and store the power plant’s carbon. Read more here

Featured Jobs

Climate Policy Associate – The Climate Reality Project
Based in Washington, DC, the Climate Policy Associate will be responsible for tracking, analyzing and evaluating international and US climate policy and politics for the Science and Solutions Team. Ideal candidates will have a master’s degree plus two to three years of work experience in climate policy, with a particular emphasis on international climate policy and familiarity with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process. Read more here

 

Climate and Air Legislative Affairs Manager – Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)
Based in Washington, DC, the Climate and Air Legislative Affairs Manager will serve as point person in identifying, developing, and overseeing execution of legislative strategies to advance EDF’s climate and air priorities. Successful candidates should have an advanced degree and at least seven years of policy experience, including experience working with senior Congressional and Administration officials, and coalitions of national-level interest groups and associations. Read more here

 

REDD+ Team Leader – Österreichische Bundesforste
Based in Pakse, Laos, the REDD+ Team Leader will be responsible for implementation of a REDD+ project in Xe Pian National Protected Area and its buffer zone. Preferred candidates will have an advanced degree in forestry with a minimum of five years of relevant work experience. Ideal language skills include English, German and Lao.Read more here

 

Practice Area Team Leader, Climate Change Adaptation – Engility
Based in Alexandria, Virginia, the Climate Change Adaptation Team Leader will head the organization’s business development and ongoing US Agency for International Development (USAID) programs in climate change adaptation, resilience, urban infrastructure, and environmental services. Ideal candidates will have a master’s degree in an area relating to climate change, urban development, or environmental issues with 10 years of relevant experience. Previous USAID experience is required.Read more here

 

Senior Advisor Climate Adaptation & Disaster Risk Reduction – Deltares
Based in Delft, Netherlands, the Senior Advisor will conduct international research studies and implement projects on the adaptation of water management to climate change, flood risk management and disaster risk reduction. Successful candidates will have an advanced degree in hydrology, civil engineering, physical geography, or similar field of study with 10 years of international experience in water management. Fluency in English is required and knowledge of French, Spanish or Portuguese is preferred.Read more here

ABOUT THE ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACEEcosystem Marketplace is a project of Forest Trends, a tax-exempt corporation under Section 501(c)3. This newsletter and other dimensions of our voluntary carbon markets program are funded by a series of international development agencies, philanthropic foundations, and private sector organizations. For more information on donating to Ecosystem Marketplace, please contact [email protected].

 


US Fish And Wildlife To Unveil Proposed Crediting System For Non-Listed Species On Tuesday

 

21 July 2014 | During the annual National Mitigation and Ecosystem Banking Conference in May, Larry Bright of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) mentioned the Service was in the midst of putting together a voluntary crediting system for non-listed species.

Tomorrow, a draft of this policy will be published in the Federal Register.

Under the proposed policy, landowners generate credits for practicing conservation activities that benefit declining wildlife or at-risk species. The credits can then be sold or traded to a third party or, if the species is later listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the credits can be used to offset actions that negatively impact the species.

The proposal covers all at-risk species and not just the formal candidates up for a possible ESA listing. The primary requisite in receiving credit is performing conservation that generates a net gain for the species and outweighs the harmful activity the credit is offsetting. Also, the species can’t be listed at the time the conservation work is done in order to receive credit.

This new policy would largely play out at the state level. The voluntary conservation will operate in coordination with the states’ conservation framework and existing wildlife plans. States will handle the implementation and monitoring of the activities. The Service would assist states as needed in developing conservation plans, and in tracking implementation and maintenance of voluntary actions, the FWS said in a statement.

The Service has other voluntary conservation programs meant to proactively conserve species. This new policy is somewhat different. For one, it doesn’t guarantee exemption from later conservation requirements, which another of the Service’s voluntary conservation tools- Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances (CCAAs)-does. This new proposed policy is also available to any landowning entity-private individuals, corporations, federal agencies, tribes and states whereas CCAAs are available only to non-federal owners.

Incentivizing early conservation action will help protect at-risk species before nearing the point of endangerment, the FWS said in its press release.

 

Biodiversity Backers Continue Push For Convergence In June

New guidance from the Center for Biological Diversity aims to integrate biodiversity safeguards into sustainability standards while a study finds REDD+ isn’t delivering the positive outcome for wildlife as originally thought. Also, Ecosystem Marketplace continues to unfold its series on saving Indonesia’s forests and orangutan habitat from palm oil development.  

This article was originally posted in the Mit Mail newsletter. Click here to read the original.

21 July 2014 | When world-renowned primatologist Biruté Galdikas learned that palm oil company PT Best was about to destroy Borneo’s Seruyan Forest, she began frantically trying to raise money for her organization, the Orangutan Foundation International, in efforts to stop the slaughter of orangutans in the forest. One day, her phone rang.  

“I remember it clearly,” she says. “This man says he’s calling from Shanghai, China, and he won’t stop talking, won’t let me get a word in edgewise, and then he asks me – and I’ll never forget this – he asks me if there’s a forest that needs to be saved.”

 

The man’s name was Todd Lemons, a serial entrepreneur from the United States who’d grown up listening to his grandfather’s tales of his adventures in the Amazon and reading National Geographic. It was on the magazine’s October, 1975 cover that he first encountered Galdikas.

 

“He started going on and on about how trees capture carbon and people would pay us to save the trees to stop global warming, and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, a carbon cowboy.'”

 

Still, something kept her on the phone. Maybe it was his knowledge of forestry. Or maybe it was just curiosity on her part. Whatever it was, when they hung up, she’d pegged him as sincere and knowlegeable about the timber trade – but naí¯ve about the rest of the world.

 

He called again about a week later, this time from his home in Hong Kong, and caught her on her way to Los Angeles International Airport.

 

“I was in a hurry,” Galdikas says. “So I told him that if he was serious, he’d have to come and visit me in in Pangkalan Bun.”

 

About a week after that, she heard a knock on her door. It was Lemons.

 

 

In this month’s Mitigation Mail, we highlight a new special reporting series from Ecosystem Marketplace that takes us deep into Indonesia’s forests, where biodiversity advocates, carbon financiers, and sustainable commodity certification developers are joining forces to save the country’s forests from clearing for palm oil.

 

It’s a signal of eco-markets’ maturation that cross-cutting stories like these are becoming more common. More than ever before, conservationists and entrepreneurs have a range of financing strategies and tools at their disposal to protect important places – consider how the Bethlehem Authority that manages the forested watershed of Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains recently struck a deal with Disney to sell forest carbon offsets from a 20,000-acre project. The authority estimates that the sale of offsets will bring in $140,000 to $170,000 annually, which it will use to improve the aging water system and protect the forest.


Of course, work needs to be done to make sure that all the benefits promised are actually being captured. An article this month from Mongabay finds that REDD+ projects aren’t delivering expected wildlife conservation outcomes. A step in the right direction is the CBD’s new guidance on integrating biodiversity safeguards into sustainability standards and certifications, discussed below.


It’s also been an…interesting month in the US wetland and conservation banking space – check out our Mitigation Roundup below for stories on a lawsuit over a South Carolina bank’s plan to convert freshwater wetlands to salt marsh, a proposal to sidestep mitigation requirements by raising and releasing lesser prairie chickens in Kansas, and the uncertain fate of blueberry general permits in Michigan.


Finally, if you enjoy your monthly MitMail, help us keep the lights on: consider making a small donation. As a not-for-profit organization, it’s our mission to provide top-notch, freely available information on environmental markets and conservation finance, and we rely on our supporters to be able to do so. Just $150 gets you a place of honor on our sidebar for a year. Click here to donate.

—The Ecosystem Marketplace Team

If you have comments or would like to submit news stories, write to us at [email protected].


EM Exclusives

Examples, dialogue, and clearer policy need in biodiversity offsetting

In early June, 280 individuals from 32 countries met in London at the To No Net Loss of Biodiversity and Beyond conference to discuss how to ensure that development is planned to achieve no net loss or preferably a net gain in biodiversity. They explored international experience and policy on no net loss and a net gain of biodiversity, and everyone was searching for practical solutions to reconcile development with environmental protection and social fairness.

 

“There is a real genuine interest in the topic of no net loss of biodiversity now,” says BBOP Director, Kerry ten Kate. “People want to discuss it and share ideas and hear different perspectives from around the world.” Many useful lessons were shared throughout the two days and recommendations sprang from every session. However, a number of cross-cutting, key issues emerged as major themes – including strengthening protections, clarifying policy, and considering offsets only within the context of a mitigation hierarchy.

Keep reading.

How a primatologist, an industrialist, and an ecosystem entrepreneur took on big palm oil and won

When world-renowned primatologist Biruté Galdikas learned that palm oil company PT Best was about to destroy Borneo’s Seruyan Forest, she thought all was lost. Then she met ecosystem entrepreneur Todd Lemons and industrialist Rusmin Widjajam. Here’s how they blended cutting-edge finance and old-fashioned moxie to outmaneuver Big Palm Oil and save the forest.


We all use palm oil every day, and nearly half the world’s supply comes from Indonesia – with devastating results for the country’s forests, wildlife, and the global climate. Fixing it is no easy matter.

Keep reading.


Mitigation News

Comment period extended for proposed rule clarifying CWA jurisdiction

Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it’s extending the public comment period on a proposed rule clarifying jurisdiction over waters of the United States, until October 21, 2014. The proposed rule, developed by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, aims to provide a consistent definition of the scope of waters protected under the Clean Water Act, after years of muddled interpretation and ad-hoc decision-making. The EPA says the extension is in response to the volume of comments already received and signs that the rule is not being interpreted as intended. “There’s a lot of concern among agricultural interests in their states and what the industry has read into it,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters. “We need some time to get out there and, if need be, write the rule in a way so the intent is understood.”

Read the public notice.
Learn more about the proposed rule.

Study finds unequal balance between carbon stocks and species richness

While the primary objective of the market mechanism REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) is to reduce carbon emissions coming from forest loss, preserving vital habitat for wildlife was thought to be a valuable byproduct. However a new study found that forests rich in carbon that are being conserved through REDD+ don’t necessarily contain the same richness in wildlife. The mechanism may even propel species toward extinction. Research for the study took place in Antioquia, Colombia where researchers found deforestation activities simply moved from the fuller forests to the more sparse areas where a higher number of endemic species live. The study does note the overall success of REDD+ in reducing emissions and deforestation, but encourages a more comprehensive approach when selecting areas for protection.

Mongabay has coverage.

Mitigation roundup

Here’s what happened in the US mitigation world this month:

 

The first conservation bank in Santa Barbara County just opened its doors, with the 853-acre property offering credits for the threatened California tiger salamander.

 

In Colorado, the Summit Board of County Commissioners has asked the Army Corps of Engineers to exclude it from the proposed service area for a new wetland bank, citing elevation differences that would make inclusion inappropriate.

 

The US EPA says that a general permit for blueberry farming in regulated wetlands in Michigan violates section 404 of the Clean Water Act – meaning that mitigation requirements could come into play.

 

Biologists are raising eyebrows at Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s recent proposal that the state begin raising and releasing lesser prairie chickens – an idea first floated by energy companies looking for a way to avoid high mitigation fees for impacts to LPC habitat.

 

A lawsuit against a mitigation banker over his plans to convert rare freshwater wetlands in South Carolina to salt marsh habitat in order to sell bank credits has been dismissed, on the grounds that saltwater had already infiltrated the area.

 

A Diversion Authority in Cass County North Dakota has sticker stock from the $587,180 needed for mitigation of a ring dike projects – working out to $34,000 an acre.

 

CBD releases guidance on biodiversity safeguards for standards & certs

In June the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) released guidance on improving biodiversity and ecosystem services safeguards in voluntary standards and certifications. The document, part of CBD’s Technical Series, was written in collaboration with the UN Environment Program’s World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC). It aims to introduce standard-setting organizations to key concepts like the mitigation hierarchy or a ‘landscape approach’, and outline best practice for safeguards.

Learn more and get a copy of the guidance.

Australia deliberates over land offsets

A recent review of Australia’s offsetting policy has led the Senate’s environmental committee to recommend offsets only be used as a ‘last resort.’ Industries, such as mining, use offsets when damage to natural lands from development can’t be avoided. Advocates argue the mechanism acts as an integral method to preserve valuable land. But the Gladstone Bund Review questioned the management of offsets and if regulators had the capacity to ensure they’re being done properly. The government will review the committee’s report and decide what further action to take.

Read more from the Gladstone Observer.

EIP takes on big project restoring Louisiana wetlands with mitigation banking

Louisiana has lost an area of wetlands equivalent to the size of Delaware in the last 80 years. And while all wetlands provide valuable services, Louisiana’s coastal areas protect against the powerful hurricanes that pass through year after year, making restoring these marshes crucial to the state’s economy and prosperity. The private equity firm Ecosystem Investment Partners (EIP) aims to deliver some much-needed restoration work and generate a profit while doing it. So far, the company has purchased over 16,000 acres of swampland along Louisiana’s coast to develop mitigation bank credits. Mitigation banking is a commonly-used method for offsetting development impacts – but normally on a much smaller scale. EIP’s project is on a whole new level in terms of scope and of ambition.

The New York Times has the story.

New protocol will act as natcap accounting guide for businesses

A new development from the Natural Capital Coalition (NCC), a platform promoting natural capital accounting, will add to the resources available to help the private sector shift away from ‘business as usual’ scenarios and towards sustainable development. The NCC is establishing the Natural Capital Protocol (NCP). The Protocol will be developed by two consortia made up of academics, businesses, financial institutions and NGOs – one led by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the other by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).


The WBCSD will work to create one framework that includes the many methodologies existing today on the impacts and dependencies companies have on and with nature. The IUCN consortium will translate the Protocol into sector-specific guides – one for apparel and another for food and beverage. In addition, the IUCN will lead pilot testing of the Protocol among businesses.

Read a press release.

Asking more of offsets in Madagascar

Research recently published in the Journal of Environmental Management suggests that Rio Tinto’s offset methodology for mining impacts in Madagascar could be strengthened. In particular, additionality of the offset may have been weak in places: “In Madagascar, Rio Tinto did not take into account the fact that the potential deforestation its offsetting project aimed to avoid was partly inflicted by the company itself, through road-building, arrival of migrant workers, and other factors,” writes the study’s author Malika Virah-Sawmy in a summary article.

 

Virah-Sawmy does not suggest that there is no place for offsets in conservation planning, but rather that scientific basis and transparency need to keep improving. Additionality and leakage in particular are “poorly dealt with in existing biodiversity offset projects – and as a result, they are much less effective than they could be.”

Read more at Phys.org.

Better biodiversity conservation more costly – but needed, study says

Four years ago, the Center for Biological Diversity laid out new goals to prevent biodiversity loss that envisioned expanding the area of land protected in order to halt the extinction of species. But these new objectives are expensive and achieving them is proving difficult. A study released in the journal PLOS Biology found many protected areas are conserving land with little economic value and failing to protect the biodiversity on more valuable ground.

 

“Our study shows that existing protected areas are performing very poorly in terms of protecting the world’s most threatened species,” said Dr. Oscar Venter, lead author of the study. “This is concerning, as protected areas are meant to act as strongholds for vulnerable species, which clearly they are not.” And while Venter concedes making improvements to biodiversity conservation is expensive, he also says that small increases in cost can have a large impact on preservation.

Learn more.

Delivering environmental context for businesses with natural capital and ecosystem services

In order for businesses to properly measure their natural risks and prospects, Sissel Wage of BSR, the nonprofit based on business sustainability, says natural capital, ecosystem services and green development must continue to move into actual practice. Each can drive investments towards the natural infrastructure the private sector depends on to conduct business. And environmental measures without these functioning parts can lead to misguided actions and unintended consequences.

Read more at The Guardian.

Florida panther payments would give endangered species a little breathing room

A program proposed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service would compensate Florida landowners for protecting panther habitat. The endangered Florida panther is not particularly popular with ranchers and landowners, but wildlife officials hope that incentives will do the trick. The program would pay landowners around $22 an acre to maintain habitats. “It’s really about buying us some time,” Kevin Godsea, manager for the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge tells The Guardian. “We are never going to be able to purchase all the land that we are going to need to recover the species.”

 

Get the full story.

How does media coverage of climate change affect biodiversity?

The topic of climate change gets the majority of media attention when it comes to environmental issues. But researchers at the University of Kent are urging that a growing public interest in climate should be used to leverage more support and action towards other important areas like biodiversity conservation. Kent released a study attempting to determine if climate change coverage has deflected attention away from biodiversity. Essentially, the study found biodiversity coverage -and funding from organizations like the World Bank – has remained consistent, while reporting and funding on climate change has accelerated.

 

 

Learn more.

EVENTS

 

Conference on Ecological and Ecosystem Restoration

CEER is a Collaborative Effort of the leaders of the National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration (NCER) and the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER). It will bring together ecological and ecosystem restoration scientists and practitioners to address challenges and share information about restoration projects, programs, and research from across North America. Across the continent, centuries of unsustainable activities have damaged the aquatic, marine, and terrestrial environments that underpin our economies and societies and give rise to a diversity of wildlife and plants. This conference supports SER and NCER efforts to reverse environmental degradation by renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats for the benefit of humans and nature. CEER is an interdisciplinary conference and brings together scientists, engineers, policy makers, restoration planners, partners, NGO’s and stakeholders from across the country actively involved in ecological and ecosystem restoration. 28 July – 1 August 2014. New Orleans, LA.

Learn more here.

16th Annual BIOECON Conference: Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Sustainability

The BIOECON Partners are pleased to announce the Sixteenth Annual International BIOECON conference on the theme of “Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Sustainability”. The conference will be held once again on the premises of Kings College Cambridge, England on the 22nd -23rd September 2014. The conference will be of interest to both researchers and policy makers working on issues broadly in the area of biodiversity, ecosystem services, sustainable development and natural capital, in both developed and developing countries. 21-23 September 2014. Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Learn more here.

ACES 2014 Conference: Linking Science, Practice, and Decision Making

ACES: A Community on Ecosystem Services represents a dynamic and growing assembly of professionals, researchers, and policy makers involved with ecosystem services. The ACES 2014 Conference brings together this community in partnership with Ecosystem Markets and the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP), providing an open forum to share experiences, methods, and tools, for assessing and incorporating ecosystem services into public and private decisions. The focus of the conference is to link science, practice, and sustainable decision making by bringing together the ecosystem services community from around the United States and the globe. ACES 2014 will bring together leaders in government, NGOs, academia, Native American communities, and the private sector to advance the use of ecosystem services science and practice in conservation, restoration, resource management, and development decisions. We hope you will make plans to join more than 500 ecosystem service stakeholders in this collaborative discussion to advance use of an ecosystem services framework for natural resource management and policy. 8-11 December 2014. Washington DC, USA.

Learn more here.

JOBS

 

Senior Manager, Climate and Biodiversity Finance Policy

Conservation International – Arlington VA, USA

The Sr. Manager for Climate and Biodiversity Finance Policy will work as part of the International Policy team and will be responsible for leading cross-institutional dialogue to develop and implement CI strategy to achieve climate and biodiversity financing policy outcomes. S/he will track all relevant financing negotiations, new and emerging financial mechanisms and funds to inform strategy, and convey relevant information back to CI staff engaged in these issues. The Sr. Manager will also be charged with developing partnerships and coalitions with like-minded organizations to develop and promote joint policy positions, provide policy advice to decision makers and support and collaborate with CI Field Programs to engage their governments on financing issues through the production of high-level policy briefs, presentations, tools and engagement in relevant on-the-ground initiatives. In addition, the Sr. Manager will lead the Biodiversity Policy team, which is responsible for developing CI’s institutional strategy, priorities and positions on the CBD, IPBES and related international fora. S/he will support regional and national programs in engaging their governments to influence these forums and achieve policy objectives.

Learn more here.

Communications Manager, Ecosystems

Environmental Defense Fund – Various locations, United States

EDF is seeking a Communications Manager to develop and implement communications plans and media outreach strategies that further the goals of the Ecosystems Program, particularly in the area of agricultural sustainability.This position requires an understanding of and keen interest in conservation and agricultural issues. Reporting directly to the program’s Communications Director, the Communications Manager will write, edit and produce a range of communications materials while securing positive media coverage of the program’s work in top-tier, regional and ag trade outlets.

Learn more here.

Sustainable Fisheries Initiative Program Assistant

—The Ecosystem Marketplace Team

If you have comments or would like to submit news stories, write to us at [email protected].

EM Exclusives

Examples, dialogue, and clearer policy need in biodiversity offsetting

In early June, 280 individuals from 32 countries met in London at the To No Net Loss of Biodiversity and Beyond conference to discuss how to ensure that development is planned to achieve no net loss or preferably a net gain in biodiversity. They explored international experience and policy on no net loss and a net gain of biodiversity, and everyone was searching for practical solutions to reconcile development with environmental protection and social fairness.

 

“There is a real genuine interest in the topic of no net loss of biodiversity now,” says BBOP Director, Kerry ten Kate. “People want to discuss it and share ideas and hear different perspectives from around the world.” Many useful lessons were shared throughout the two days and recommendations sprang from every session. However, a number of cross-cutting, key issues emerged as major themes – including strengthening protections, clarifying policy, and considering offsets only within the context of a mitigation hierarchy.

Keep reading.

How a primatologist, an industrialist, and an ecosystem entrepreneur took on big palm oil and won

When world-renowned primatologist Biruté Galdikas learned that palm oil company PT Best was about to destroy Borneo’s Seruyan Forest, she thought all was lost. Then she met ecosystem entrepreneur Todd Lemons and industrialist Rusmin Widjajam. Here’s how they blended cutting-edge finance and old-fashioned moxie to outmaneuver Big Palm Oil and save the forest.


We all use palm oil every day, and nearly half the world’s supply comes from Indonesia – with devastating results for the country’s forests, wildlife, and the global climate. Fixing it is no easy matter.

Keep reading.


Mitigation News

Comment period extended for proposed rule clarifying CWA jurisdiction

Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it’s extending the public comment period on a proposed rule clarifying jurisdiction over waters of the United States, until October 21, 2014. The proposed rule, developed by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, aims to provide a consistent definition of the scope of waters protected under the Clean Water Act, after years of muddled interpretation and ad-hoc decision-making. The EPA says the extension is in response to the volume of comments already received and signs that the rule is not being interpreted as intended. “There’s a lot of concern among agricultural interests in their states and what the industry has read into it,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy told reporters. “We need some time to get out there and, if need be, write the rule in a way so the intent is understood.”

Read the public notice.
Learn more about the proposed rule.

Study finds unequal balance between carbon stocks and species richness

While the primary objective of the market mechanism REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) is to reduce carbon emissions coming from forest loss, preserving vital habitat for wildlife was thought to be a valuable byproduct. However a new study found that forests rich in carbon that are being conserved through REDD+ don’t necessarily contain the same richness in wildlife. The mechanism may even propel species toward extinction. Research for the study took place in Antioquia, Colombia where researchers found deforestation activities simply moved from the fuller forests to the more sparse areas where a higher number of endemic species live. The study does note the overall success of REDD+ in reducing emissions and deforestation, but encourages a more comprehensive approach when selectin

Additional resources

Busy Week For UN REDD Programme Policy Board And Forest Carbon Partnership Facility As Jurisdictional Efforts Ramp Up

This article was originally published in the Forest Carbon newsletter. Click here to read the original.

 

16 July 2014 | Ecosystem Marketplace’s third installment of our Palm Oil vs The Peatland Forest series is now live. In it, we meet Todd Lemons, an ‘ecosystem entrepreneur’ who, as a 20-something, found himself in the Bolivian rainforest sourcing hardwoods for major American furniture dealers. After finding beautiful pieces of mahogany in the scrap pile, Lemons implemented a “cut-to-size” program that required less wood for more furniture and developed an obsession with using sensible economics to address environmental challenges.

Years later, in 2007, he found himself in Borneo driving through a patchwork of palm-oil plantations and second-growth native forests on his way to Tanjung Puting National Park, a massive lowland peat swamp that has been amassing carbon for 10,000 years. Lemons didn’t know it at the time, but the trip was the first step in developing the Rimba Raya REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of forests) project that would hold off the encroaching palm oil developers and prevent the annual release of more than 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

“We know now that peatland has about eight times as much carbon per hectare as a typical rainforest of the Amazon,” says Heru Prasetyo, the head of Indonesia’s REDD Task Force. “Back in 2007, no one really knew.”

As Steve Zwick reports, though, REDD didn’t create an “incentive” to save the forests. A typical palm-oil plantation generates $1,000 per hectare in pure profit – more than twenty-fold the income that could be generated from the sale of offsets. So REDD will not sway those responding to purely economic incentives, but it does create a financing mechanism that may make it possible for people who want to save forests to do so. The Rimba Raya project has sold five million tonnes of offsets since 2010 and verified another five million tonnes of emissions reductions, more than four million of which remain unsold.

The full series of stories will be available here.

And for the fifth year running, Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace is collecting data about forest carbon projects around the world to include in our State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2014 report. This is the only market-wide, freely available research tracking performance-based payments for emissions reductions in forests, and we rely on a global survey to ensure that our data is representative.

Help us spread the word!

Our survey for forest carbon project developers is available in English HERE (http://survey.ecosystemmarketplace.com/forestcarbon2014/) and in Spanish HERE http://survey.ecosystemmarketplace.com/es_forestcarbon2014/)

Responding to the survey is also the best way to get your project information updated on the Forest Carbon Portal, a hub of information for potential investors, researchers, and other market participants. We’re building a community there, and if you haven’t already, we’d love for you to join us. Once you do, your profile will appear in our Member Directory, and you will be able to post projects, jobs, and events on the Portal.

What else? Do you want to be able to message other members? Start discussions? Announce new project developments? Well, that’s up to you. Send us a note and let us know what you’d like the Forest Carbon Portal membership community to be/do, and we’ll try to make it happen.

—The Ecosystem Marketplace Team

 

If you have comments or would like to submit news stories, write to us at [email protected].


News

INTERNATIONAL POLICY

Chile, Vietnam forests get the nod

The World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) Carbon Fund accepted Chile and Vietnam into its pipeline last month, allocating up to $650,000 for each country to develop a full proposal for implementing national REDD+. The Republic of the Congo and Peru also presented Program Idea Notes; the Republic of the Congo’s was provisionally accepted while Peru was asked to make deeper revisions. Cambodia, Colombia, Guatemala, Indonesia and Madagascar also presented early ideas for national REDD+ programs, and the FCPF offered feedback, from clarifying land concessions in Cambodia to explaining how current REDD+ projects will fit into a nested national program in Guatemala.

NATIONAL STRATEGY AND CAPACITY

Dazed and confused

Laos would have started selling carbon offsets last year, but its REDD readiness process has been stalled because “officials from state agencies in charge of the work do not understand what they were supposed to do,” said Khamphay Manivong, the country’s deputy director general of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s Forest Department. Laos has plans to protect 9.5 million hectares of forests and restore forest cover to 65% of the country by 2015. The FCPF has committed up to $3.6 million to Laos’ program.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

O little watershed of Bethlehem

The Bethlehem Authority that manages the forested watershed of Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains recently struck a deal with Disney, which will purchase forest carbon offsets from a 20,000-acre project. The four-year contract with the entertainment giant will replace a previous agreement with automaker Chevrolet. The authority estimates that the sale of offsets will bring in $140,000 to $170,000 annually, which it will use to improve the aging water system and protect the forest. For Disney – long a lover of forestry projects as this Ecosystem Marketplace story noted – buying offsets from this project helps the company meet its environmental goals such as reducing its greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2013 (a goal it achieved).

FINANCE AND ECONOMICS

REDD scores another goal

The 20 members of the United Nations (UN) REDD Programme Policy Board last week approved $35.5 million in readiness funding, including allocations to the national programs of Argentina, Cote d’Ivoire and Mongolia in the amounts of $3.8 million, $3.2 million, and $4.0 million, respectively. Argentina’s program will address soy production as one of the major drivers of deforestation, Cote d’Ivoire’s will consider land competition for the cocoa, timber and rubber industries, and Mongolia’s is the first funded national REDD program for boreal forest. Meanwhile, the UN’s Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice met and discussed the importance of the non-carbon benefits of REDD, but punted on deciding how (and whether) to incentivize those benefits.

HUMAN DIMENSION

Ebola caused by deforestation?

An ongoing Ebola outbreak, which as of July 1 has claimed 467 lives in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, may be linked to deforestation, scientists say. As habitat is destroyed, chimpanzees, gorillas and bats that may carry the disease have more frequent contact with humans. “The increase in Ebola outbreaks since 1994 is frequently associated with drastic changes in forest ecosystems in tropical Africa,” according to a 2012 study in the Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research. Other researchers, however, reject the neat “outbreak narrative,” claiming there are additional factors at play.

A picture’s worth a thousand trees

Photographer and Brazilian native Rodrigo Baleia spent a dozen years flying 218,000 miles back and forth across the Amazon rainforest, photographing its destruction at the hands of cattle ranchers, loggers and developers. “I live this torment,” he says, “because I’m not sure if my work was good or strong enough to make an effective change in people’s lives.” He also observes that “the deforestation areas are smaller than they used to be.” His photographs can be viewed in The Wall Street Journal.

Colombia: Post-conflict, post-deforestation?

Aureliano Cí³rdoba, a leader of an Afro-Colombian community living along the Tolo River, fled to Panama during the Colombian civil war and returned in 2001 to find that cattle ranching posed a continuing threat to his village’s forests – its only source of fresh water. Three years ago, his community decided not to log its 32,000 acres of rainforest, and began working with Brodie Ferguson, now founder of carbon project developer Anthrotect, to draft a proposal for a REDD project. Last year, the community sold 70,000 carbon offsets at about $9 per tonne (tCO2e) – more than twice the $4.2/tCO2e average price for REDD offsets, according to Ecosystem Marketplace’s State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2014 report. Colombian oil services firm Independence bought 20,000 offsets from the project.

PUBLICATIONS

The 54-million-tonne loophole

Forest degradation in the Amazon may be releasing 54 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year – up to 40% of the emissions from deforestation, according to a study published in Global Change Biology. The impacts of degradation, including selective timber extraction, burning and fragmentation are difficult to detect using satellite data alone, so the study paired satellite imagery with field study.

Japan breaking the rules of the forests

Japan, the fourth largest consumer of wood products globally, is unfortunately getting much of its supply from illegally sourced timber. San Xia Economic and Trade Company, one of the largest importers of illicitly cut Russian pine and ash, is selling 90% of its finished products to Japan, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). “Importing cheap illegal wood from eastern Russia is a tragic crime of convenience that directly undercuts Japanese business trying to play by the rules,” said Kate Horner, Director of Forest Campaigns at EIA.

REDD could fly high

Emissions from aviation are expected to quadruple by 2050, and technology improvement and efficiency gains won’t compensate for the increasing number of flights. If offsets are used to ‘cap’ net emissions from the aviation industry, demand could reach hundreds of millions of tonnes in 2030, according to a recent analysis by climate and energy consultant Adam Whitmore. REDD offsets are potentially positioned to fill this level of volume. The International Civil Aviation Organization last year agreed to look at using market-based mechanisms to cap net international aviation emissions at 2020 levels.

JOBS

Sector Leader REDD+ – SNV Netherlands Development Organization

Based in Vientiane, Laos, the Sector Leader REDD+ will be responsible for steering SNV’s REDD+ programs in Laos, working in close collaboration with the management team and other sector leaders. The position requires five years of relevant experience in program or project management, strong knowledge and experience in REDD+ approaches and concepts, and experience in forestry inventory and land use planning in Southeast Asia. Knowledge of Geographical Information Systems and an entrepreneurial attitude are desirable.

Read more about the position here

Communication Consultant – The Forests Dialogue

Based in New Haven, Connecticut, the Communication Consultant will develop and execute communications strategies in alignment with The Forests Dialogue’s strategic plan and goal of reducing conflict among stakeholders over the use and protection of vital forest resources. The position requires building clear and consistent programmatic messaging, drafting press releases and media advisories, and engaging key audiences on social media. The consultant is expected to travel internationally regularly and will work an average of 20 hours per week.

Read more about the position here

UN-REDD MRV Forestry Officer for the Congo Basin Region – Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Based in Nairobi, Kenya, the Forestry Officer will provide technical and policy expertise to support the implementation of the FAO’s Strategic Objectives in the Congo Basin. The position requires helping countries to access UN-REDD support and providing guidance on monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) frameworks. The ideal candidate will have an advanced degree, seven years of relevant experience in the field of forest resources monitoring and assessment or forest management, and working knowledge of English and French (with some knowledge of Spanish).

Read more about the position here

Research Assistant, Carbon Monitoring, Land Use and Social Forestry – Woods Hole Research Center

Based in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the Research Assistant will work with Project Equateur, a pilot REDD+ project in Equateur Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The position requires working on community-level REDD+ carbon monitoring and land use planning research, development, and capacity building activities, and spending lengthy periods in Mbandaka, Equateur Province. The successful candidate with have an advanced degree, at least two years of international work experience in forestry, and excellent command of written and spoken French.

Read more about the position here

Illegal Logging Lawyer – ClientEarth

Based in London, United Kingdom, the Illegal Logging Lawyer will work on strengthening the implementation and enforcement of the European Union (EU) Timber Regulation, which seeks to prevent illegally logged timber from entering the EU market. The position is for a lawyer with outstanding legal, analytical and strategic skills and will require building and maintaining relationships with key partners in the EU and internationally, as well as representing ClientEarth’s work to external audiences.

Read more about the position here

See more jobs on the Forest Carbon Portal jobs page

ABOUT THE FOREST CARBON PORTAL

The Forest Carbon Portal provides relevant daily news, a bi-weekly news brief, feature articles, a calendar of events, a searchable member directory, a jobs board, a library of tools and resources. The Portal also includes the Forest Carbon Project Inventory, an international database of projects including those in the pipeline. Projects are described with consistent ‘nutrition labels’ and allow viewers to contact project developers.

ABOUT THE ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACE

Ecosystem Marketplace is a project of Forest Trends, a tax-exempt corporation under Section 501(c)3. This newsletter and other dimensions of our voluntary carbon markets program are funded by a series of international development agencies, philanthropic foundations, and private sector organizations. For more information on donating to Ecosystem Marketplace, please contact [email protected].

 


Click here to read this article in its original format.

Examples, Dialogue And Clearer Policy Needed In Biodiversity Offsetting

 

15 July 2014 | On the third and fourth of June, 280 individuals from 32 countries met in London at the To No Net Loss of Biodiversity and Beyond conference to discuss how to ensure that development is planned to achieve no net loss or preferably a net gain in biodiversity. They explored international experience and policy on no net loss and a net gain of biodiversity, and everyone was searching for practical solutions to reconcile development with environmental protection and social fairness.

Hosted by Forest Trends, the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme (BBOP), the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) at ZSL, the representatives came from companies in the extractive, energy, infrastructure, agriculture, forestry and retail sectors, from governments and intergovernmental organizations, from financial institutions, NGOs, civil society, universities, research organizations and from consultancies and small businesses.

“There is a real genuine interest in the topic of no net loss of biodiversity now,” says BBOP Director, Kerry ten Kate. “People want to discuss it and share ideas and hear different perspectives from around the world.”

Many useful lessons were shared throughout the two days and recommendations sprang from every session. However, a number of cross-cutting, key issues emerged as major themes from the two days’ discussions, as summarized below:

  • Strengthen protection: Activities, policies and frameworks to mitigate impacts on biodiversity, including those related to biodiversity offsets, must strengthen and not weaken biodiversity protection. Improving the application of the mitigation hierarchy and working towards no net loss and a net gain of biodiversity is intended to ensure greater rigour and a better outcome for conservation than under current systems, and not to undermine them.
  • Clear policy: For NNL/NG to become a realistic prospect in a country, clear and unambiguous policy requirements that establishes high standards are needed.  Many participants doubted whether voluntary systems are enough to encourage a big enough proportion of developers to plan for no net loss, nor landowners to invest in conservation activities as offsets. All participants accepted that government has a critical role to play, levelling the playing field, reducing uncertainties for business, ensuring good outcomes for people, and keeping standards high.
  • Biodiversity offsets in context: There is general recognition that biodiversity offsetting can be challenging and controversial, but that when offsets are used, they must be discussed and included within the broader mitigation framework, and not raised as an isolated issue.
  • High standards: In any impact mitigation programme (including biodiversity offsets), in order to enable good outcomes for biodiversity and people, it is critical to apply the mitigation hierarchy consistently according to high standards, such as those reflected in the BBOP Standard and IFC Performance Standard 6. In the course of negotiations with governments and companies over the design of a mitigation programme, emphasis should be placed first on discussions related to avoidance, minimization and on-site restoration. Flexibility in the approaches taken to achieve no net loss was encouraged, but clarity on the biodiversity outcome was felt to be important. Standards need to strike a balance between being too prescriptive to be practicable and being too flexible to be credible or to offer assurance of outcomes.
  • Landscape level planning: Assessing proposed project development and mitigation of impacts in the context of spatial plans undertaken at a landscape or national scale is important to support sound land use decision-making. For instance, it informs where development should or should not take place. No net loss planning should be integrated within broader planning and policy frameworks. Where possible, guidelines to identify “no-go” zones and areas of high biodiversity value suitable for conservation efforts through offsets should be identified as a matter of policy and not relegated to case-by-case decisions.
  • Capacity building and training:   There is a shortage of people with the right expertise to understand and to undertake the assessments and planning needed for no net loss, and to interpret and use the results.   This is an important limitation and needs to be corrected by training of staff from government agencies, companies, consultancies and civil society and research organisations. Certification of trained individuals would help build confidence that professionals are using high standards.
  • Examples: More examples of best practice with successful approaches and outcomes are needed to build confidence in the concepts of no net loss, net gain and the quality of mitigation measures, including biodiversity offsets. Examples that are independently verified against agreed international standards would be the most convincing.
  • Monitoring, verification and enforcement: These are vital for the quality and integrity of mitigation measures including offsets, and have often been neglected in the past.
  • More dialogue: International, multi-stakeholder discussion involving people with very different opinions about the merits of mitigation measures and biodiversity offsets is needed in order to reach and promote wide societal agreement on the necessary standards for mitigation measures and associated land-use planning. Even those with apparently opposing positions were able to move a little closer through an exchange of ideas during the conference and such dialogue should be continued.

The final conference report is available here and provides a summary of discussions at the conference.

 

Videos of the Event

Highlights of the To No Net Loss of Biodiversity and Beyond’ conference

Official Welcome and Opening Plenary

Reflections and Experiences with No Net Loss

Plenary Debate Opportunity or Peril

Session 2 Establishing a NNL System – Design

Session 3B Net Loss and Net Gain on the Ground

Session 5 Establishing a NNL System – Implementation

Session 6B – No Net Loss and Net Gain on the Ground

Day 2 Opening Plenary – Keynote by Gabon M. of Environment

Government Roundtable

Business Roundtable

Session 7 Safeguards and Tools

Session 9 – Implementation Mechanisms

Session 10 Learning from Global Standards

Session 12 – Challenges for impact assessment practitioners

Sessions 13, 14 and Concluding Remarks and Next Steps

This Week In Forest Carbon News…

This article was originally posted in the Forest Carbon newsletter. Click here to read the original.

 

7 July 2014 | William Shakespeare famously wrote that all the world’s a stage. Well in the carbon world, that stage is shared by the public and private sectors, Ecosystem Marketplace’s State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2014 report observed. EM experts and carbon market participants pondered that interaction, along with other findings from the report, during a presentation in Washington, DC last week.

Overall volume in the voluntary carbon market declined 26% as a large number of tonnes transitioned into California’s regulated market, but was boosted by a major public sector transaction in which German development Bank KfW agreed to pay the Brazilian state of Acre for its performance in mitigating forest carbon emissions, said Ecosystem Marketplace Director Molly Peters-Stanley.

Despite the challenges in the voluntary carbon market, the participants saw a silver lining in the strong momentum in favor of projects with co-benefits beyond emissions reductions. Forestry and land use projects – many of which fit this mold – took home a 45% market share, according to the report.

“The good thing for people like us is that competition is also causing the value and the quality of the offsets to go up,” said Hans Wegner, Chief Sustainability Officer at the National Geographic Society. “For me, it’s really, really important – because credibility is so important to us as an organization – that we have everything verified, that we’ve purchased offsets of high value that are accounted for.”

National Geographic purchases carbon offsets from a reforestation project in Panama and avoided deforestation (REDD) projects in Brazil and Tanzania to cover emissions from discrete aspects of its operations, from natural gas use in its buildings to business travel. Since only 4% of the Society’s emissions are within its direct control, Wegner works with suppliers to offset their ‘Scope 3’ or indirect supply chain emissions. He hopes that these relationships may expand the concept of offsetting beyond National Geographic’s doors.

Spanish soccer club Getafe is taking a slightly different approach to engagement. Last week, it announced a five-year commitment with offset supplier ALLCOT Group to neutralize its emissions, including those from the team’s travel, which has been calculated to be about 20,000 kilometers per season. (Getafe is still in the process of calculating the club’s total footprint.) The club is considering three possible forest carbon projects developed under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), but is allowing its fans to have the final say. On a voting page, fans can decide whether they want Getafe to invest in the Cikel REDD project in Brazil, the Madre de Dios REDD project in Peru, or the RMDLT Portel Para REDD project in Brazil. Almost 800 fans have cast their vote in just the first week.

“The projects are all very similar – in the three cases we talk about reforestation works – and this is an idea that appealed to the club, especially to our president, since the moment we heard about them,” said David Torres, Sport Project Leader at Getafe. “Letting our fans vote for what project they want to proceed is also really important for us as a club, as we think without their support we would never get very far.”

Here at Ecosystem Marketplace, we’re turning our sights to continued data collection for the State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2014 report. This year’s report will consist of some exciting features, including:

  • • A closer look at the co-benefits of forest carbon projects, from employment to endangered species protection
  • • New information on forestry’s role in emerging compliance carbon markets, including finance flowing to jurisdictional nested REDD
  • • Emerging trends in buyer motivations and activities, from internal carbon pricing to customer engagement with offset programs

However, our data is only as good as you make it! If you have yet to respond to the forest carbon survey, please sign up here (o para espaí±ol, aquí­) or email Allie at [email protected] to set up an account. Please note that all transaction data is kept completely confidential and only presented in aggregate. Other project information may be made visible on the Forest Carbon Portal at your request.

We look forward to hearing from you!

More news from the forest carbon marketplace is summarized below, so keep reading!

—The Ecosystem Marketplace Team

 

If you have comments or would like to submit news stories, write to us at [email protected].


News

INTERNATIONAL POLICY

The power of resolve

The Board of the Consumer Goods Forum, a network of CEOs and senior management from about 400 companies representing combined sales of 2.5 trillion euros (US$3.4 trillion), in June issued a resolution pledging to mobilize its members’ resources to help achieve zero net deforestation by 2020. This would be accomplished via individual company initiatives and collaborative efforts with governments and non-governmental organizations, including specific, cost-effective plans for sourcing commodities such as palm oil, beef and paper in a sustainable fashion. The board also resolved to work with other stakeholders to create funding mechanisms to incentivize and assist countries in conserving their forests.

NATIONAL STRATEGY AND CAPACITY

Lucky number 7?

China launched its seventh and final planned pilot carbon market last month in the city of Chongqing along the Yangtze River. The municipal government issued a total of 125 million permits for free to cover the emissions of 242 companies in 2013, though the volume of permits will shrink by 4% per year. At the launch, 16 deals covering 145,000 tonnes were announced, with all permits priced at 30 to 31.5 yuan ($4.83 to $5.07) per tonne. Forestry offsets are expected to be eligible in Chongqing, but the city may target emissions from the forestry sector in the future, according to a paper published earlier this year called Overview of Climate Change Policies and Development of Emissions Trading in China.

Logging off

Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda pledged to work together and with international police organization INTERPOL and the United Nations to prevent illegal logging and facilitate the sustainable management of forests to reduce emissions in East Africa. The three countries are not only contending with illegal logging within their borders, but are also used as transit countries for timber illegally logged in other countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The global economic costs of illegal logging are staggering: an estimated $30-100 billion is lost through illegal logging every year. In contrast, well-managed forests support the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people, while ecosystem services from tropical forests alone are estimated to be worth an average $6,120 per hectare each year.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

Repeat visitors

DelAgua Health is harnessing carbon finance to distribute clean cookstoves and water purification devices to 100,000 households in western Rwanda in 2014. In an interview with Ecosystem Marketplace, Matt Spannagle, DelAgua’s Climate Partnerships Manager, spoke about why the carbon finance model makes sense for their programme of activities. “To maximize revenue [from carbon offset sales], we need to be able to demonstrate that people are using the cookstoves and filters, and therefore reducing their fuelwood use,” he said. “If you demonstrate that, then that implies going back to households again and again to make sure people are using them, and that [human contact] is what is delivering the high uptake rates.”

Just can’t wait to be king

Forest carbon project developer Wildlife Works plans to expand its REDD project in Kenya fivefold, to cover one million hectares. The currently 200,000-hectare Kasigua Corridor has generated 1.2 million metric tonnes of carbon offsets worth $3.5 million to $7 million annually, with revenues flowing to 110,000 residents as well as investors. The project also employs 350 people and protects an important migration zone for elephants, cheetahs and lions. Wildlife Works’ goal is to protect five million hectares of forest globally. Ecosystem Marketplace found that REDD projects generated a record 22.6 million offsets last year, up from 8.6 million tonnes in 2012.

A tough sell

When, back in 2010, the founders of California-based project developer Anthrotect launched a REDD+ project in the post-civil war Choco-Darien region of Colombia, they thought that selling carbon offsets would be the easy part. But since January 2013, the project has sold just 80,000 tCO2e of the total 2.8 million tCO2e it is projected to generate over its 30-year lifetime. After engaging in months of negotiations with individual buyers, Anthrotect co-founder Brodie Ferguson found that selling offsets required much more than making a phone call. He’ll need to be persistent to find buyers for his current inventory. “I’m confident sales will continue to come in and improve. I’m also confident things can’t get much worse,” Ferguson said.

FINANCE AND ECONOMICS

$5 billion goes a long way

Indonesia needs about $5 billion in international aid to hit its target of reducing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by as much as 41%. The $1 billion already committed by Norway is not enough to conserve the country’s forests and peatlands, said Heru Prasetyo, head of Indonesia’s new REDD+ Management Agency. And Norway’s funding could disappear if Indonesia does not have a system in place for measuring its GHGs by 2016. “To assure successful REDD+ programs, we can’t limit ourselves to the sole support from the Norwegian government,” he said. “We need to be open for new investors.” Average prices for REDD offsets fell to about $4.2 per tonne last year, the story noted, citing Ecosystem Marketplace’s State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2014 report.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

One man’s trash…

… is another man’s treasure. San Francisco startup Rainforest Connection is repurposing discarded smartphones as deforestation watchdogs. The solar-powered devices are programmed to pick up sounds such as chainsaws or alarmed animals that might indicate trees being cut. Then, a text message can be sent to local authorities. The technology has been tested in the Kalaweit Gibbon Sanctuary in Indonesia, where the devices detected illegal chainsaw noises within one day. The company launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in hopes of raising $100,000 by July 29. They’re about a third of the way there.

Double take

Indonesia’s deforestation rate is twice the rate previously reported by the country’s government, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change. The researchers used satellite data to determine that more than two million acres of primary forest were cleared in 2012, while Indonesia reported to the United Nations that the annual deforestation rate between 2009 and 2011 was one million acres annually. Indonesia has now earned the infamous title of World’s No. 1 Deforester, replacing Brazil.

HUMAN DIMENSION

All is not lost

When primatologist Biruté Galdikas learned palm oil company PT Best was about to destroy Borneo’s Seruyan Forest, she thought all was lost. Ecosystem Marketplace recounts the story of how she teamed up with ecosystem entrepreneur Todd Lemons and industrialist Rusmin Widjajam to outmaneuver big palm oil and save the forest. PT Best had claimed the entire Seruyan Forest – a massive natural filtration system that regulates water flows and provides non-timber forest products such as honey, wax and wild rubber to hundreds of villagers. It also acts as a protective buffer to a quarter-million hectares of peat forest in the Tanjung Puting National Park which, if destroyed, could release hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

STANDARDS AND METHODOLOGY

Keep off the grass

VCS last week released an update to its Avoided Conversion of Grasslands and Shrublands methodology which it hopes will expand opportunities to use carbon finance to conserve these ecosystems, which cover roughly 25% of the Earth’s land surface. Wildlife Works developed the methodology and piloted it at its Taita Hills project in Kenya. “One of the reasons why there are some land units in the area that were not part of the REDD project was because they did not meet the forest definition,” Mike Korchinsky of Wildlife Works told Ecosystem Marketplace. “This new methodology allows us to capture the value of protecting savannah ecosystems.”

PUBLICATIONS

Back to fundamentals

The socioeconomic benefits of forests are not adequately addressed by countries, despite their potential to contribute to poverty reduction, rural development and greener economies, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) State of the World’s Forests report. Eva Mueller, director of the FAO’s forestry division, said forests are fundamental to human well-being because trees provide a direct source of food, fuel and income. Wood energy, for example, is often the only accessible and affordable fuel in developing countries such as Tanzania, where wood fuel accounts for about 90% of total energy consumption. But policies barely discuss how to improve wood energy production, make it more sustainable and reduce the burden on women and children who do most of the collecting.

Let’s slow things down

The pace of deforestation is down by 19%, from 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s to 13 million hectares per year in the 2000s, according to new research by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Deforestation Success Stories examined what programs and policies are working, and finds that REDD+ funding “has proved to be money well spent” in Guyana, Brazil, Kenya, Madagascar and Costa Rica. The authors note that payment for ecosystem services programs in Mexico, Vietnam and Costa Rica “have been beneficial for the forests despite not having worked out in the way that economists and policymakers designed them.”

Hardly a dry REDD forest

Dry forests comprise just less than half of tropical forests and support some of the world’s poorest people, according to a recent report by the Center for International Forestry Research. However, research to date on carbon stocks has focused mainly on humid forests, and estimating the carbon content of dry forests is different because of a dissimilar above/below ground carbon ratio. Further research on this topic will be important if more REDD projects begin to focus on dry forests.

JOBS

Consultants, Vietnam Forests and Deltas Program – Winrock International
Based in Vietnam, the consultants will evaluate the three-year implementation of the Payments for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) policy in Vietnam. The international consultant should have a master’s degree and at least 10 years of experience implementing and evaluating PFES. The national consultant position requires a master’s degree and five years of experience. Fluency in English is required.
Writer/Editor, Forest News – Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Based in Bogor, Indonesia, the Writer/Editor for Forest News (blog.cifor.org) will write articles, edit articles by other writers, help to manage editorial workflow and assist in coverage or major conferences and events. The ideal candidate will have an advanced degree in journalism or science, at least five years’ experience writing and editing professionally, demonstrated experience with scientific research papers and working with scientists and a strong understanding of the uses of visual media and social media.
Coordinator for Coastal Blue Carbon – Restore America’s Estuaries
Based in Arlington, Virginia, the Coordinator for Coastal Blue Carbon will support Restore America’s Estuaries national initiative that seeks to increase public and private investment in coastal habitat restoration and conservation. The position requires excellent organizational skills and attention to detail, a friendly and professional attitude, one to three years’ professional experience, and a relevant graduate degree.
Senior Natural Resources Economist – Rights and Resources Institute
Based in Washington, DC, the Senior Natural Resources Economist will lead the design and implementation of a work program that entails conducting original high-quality analysis of forest and natural resource sector business and development models in the world’s developing and forested countries. The successful candidate will have an advanced degree in natural resource economics, with a particular focus on the forest sector and at least 12-15 years of relevant professional experience, including extensive operational experience in developing countries.
Communications Manager, Forest Program – Rainforest Action Network
Based in San Francisco, California, the Communications Manager will help shape the communications strategy for Rainforest Action Network’s forest program, which has succeeded in pushing leading global companies including Disney, Mars, Kellogg and General Mills to pass policies that eliminate deforestation. The position requires three years’ prior experience as a media liaison or journalist and two-plus years’ experience with online promotion, a proven ability to build relationships with reporters, good framing and messaging skills and a passion for Rainforest Action Network’s mission.
Senior Associate, Forest Certification – Rainforest Alliance
Based in Northfield, Minnesota, the Senior Associate for Forest Certification will provide essential leadership in management and growth of Rainforest Alliance’s U.S. forest management portfolio. The position involves developing and implementing a strategic business plan. The successful candidate will have a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (advanced degree a plus), five to seven years of work experience, knowledge of the forest products industry and forest management regimes in the US, and strong interpersonal and communications skills.
Policy Coordinator, Forest Campaign – Environmental Investigation Agency
Based in Washington, DC, the Policy Coordinator will work in close collaboration with the Director of Forest Campaigns and the forest team to develop and implement strategies that halt illegal logging and improve forest governance. The successful candidate will have experience in advocacy and campaigns at the national or international level and a strong interest in natural resource management, economic justice and/or human writes. The position requires frequent travel. Knowledge of the Lacey Act, FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade) and the EU Timber Regulation as well as video production and editing skills are a plus.

ABOUT THE FOREST CARBON PORTAL

The Forest Carbon Portal provides relevant daily news, a bi-weekly news brief, feature articles, a calendar of events, a searchable member directory, a jobs board, a library of tools and resources. The Portal also includes the Forest Carbon Project Inventory, an international database of projects including those in the pipeline. Projects are described with consistent ‘nutrition labels’ and allow viewers to contact project developers.

ABOUT THE ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACE

Ecosystem Marketplace is a project of Forest Trends, a tax-exempt corporation under Section 501(c)3. This newsletter and other dimensions of our voluntary carbon markets program are funded by a series of international development agencies, philanthropic foundations, and private sector organizations. For more information on donating to Ecosystem Marketplace, please contact [email protected].

 


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Todd Lemons: Ecosystem Entrepreneur

Third in a series.

7 July 2014 | Todd Lemons spent 15 years working in sustainable forestry before he ever set foot on Borneo, and he thought he knew what a healthy forest looked like. So when he passed through a patchwork of palm-oil plantations and second-growth native forests on his way to Tanjung Puting National Park, his heart sank.

“Quite frankly, compared to sustainably-logged [secondary] forests I had gotten used to in the Amazon Basin, this one looked scraggly,” he says – and scraggly could ruin everything, because his plan to save the Seruyan Forest hinged on it being full of carbon, which to him meant plump, tall or both. If the Seruyan itself looked anything like the forest he was driving through, he thought, this whole trip is for naught.

 Todd Lemons and an orphaned infant

Todd Lemons and an orphaned infant

The year was 2007, and the world still seemed intent on forging a global solution to climate change by the end of 2009. The global economic crisis hadn’t yet pushed climate change off the front pages, and major media outlets had “discovered” that deforestation generated at least 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions – and possibly more. For Lemons, there was something else happening, too: his daughter had gone off to 1st grade, and his son had just started kindergarten.

“Your mindset changes when your kids reach that age,” he says. “Your focus shifts from worrying about their immediate survival to worrying about their future in a visceral way, and I didn’t like the world I was seeing in their future.”

It was the latest epiphany in a life of many twists and turns that began with romantic notions of the Amazon Rainforest, fed by Lemons’ grandfather’s tales of his own adventures in Guyana and nourished on a steady diet of National Geographic magazine. It was in National Geographic that he first learned of the woman he was on his way to meet: Birute Galdikas, who had been rescuing orphaned orangutans on the island since the early 1970s.

Lemons graduated from college a few years after reading about Galdikas, and then in the early 1980s he followed in his grandfather’s footsteps – first to Guyana, then to Chile and eventually to Brazil and Bolivia, where he got a job sourcing hardwoods for major American furniture dealers.

“It all started off great, and it was very exciting for a young twenty-something-year-old,” he says. “But then I had to go and look at was happening behind the scenes – at the sawmills.”

 Todd Lemons walks through a freshly-destroyed patch of forest

Todd Lemons walks through a freshly-destroyed patch of forest.

He likens the experience to that of a committed meat-eater who wanders into an unregulated slaughterhouse.

“At that moment, it’s no longer as simple as just a piece of steak or a simple wooden coffee table,” he says. “There’s a cost and a consequence behind your consumption that we have to face.”

He became incensed – not just at the environmental destruction, but at the pointlessness of it all.

“The primary mandate from the customer was to buy the widest, longest piece of mahogany you can find, because then we can be lazy [when it comes to forming the wood on-site],” he says. “So here I am sourcing this, and I’m looking at scrap piles bigger than the piles we’re shipping, and that’s putting an unnecessary burden on the environment, because a lot of this is going into a chair leg that’s no more than a foot and a half long.”

He implemented a “cut-to-size” program, which involved whittling the trees into smaller pieces designed to fit specific units of furniture before shipping the wood. As a result, he slashed the volume of trees that were destroyed but increased the volume of semi-finished products – and developed a lifelong obsession with finding economically viable solutions to environmental challenges.

Taking a Pass on Forest Carbon

In 2003, Lemons found himself managing a million-acre plantation forest in China as the world was gearing up for the 2005 implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, in which nearly 40 developed countries agreed to slash greenhouse gas emissions, and to help developing countries do the same. The Protocol, he learned, made it possible for companies that emit greenhouse gasses to reduce their carbon footprints by purchasing carbon offsets that reduce emissions elsewhere. It also made it possible for companies to generate carbon offsets by planting new trees (“afforestation”) or reestablishing lost forest (“reforestation”). His bosses asked him to find out if they could use carbon offsets to finance the expansion of their plantation.

“I looked into it, but economically, it would have been like a slow drip,” he says. “The money they could earn from carbon was just a rounding error compared to the money they were making by harvesting the forest.”

Plus, he adds, it just didn’t feel right.

 Birute Galdikas, Siswei, and Todd Lemons share a meal.

Birute Galdikas, Siswei and Todd Lemons share a meal.

“Morally, it was like a double dip,” he says. “We were going to plant the plantation forest anyway, and it didn’t seem right to get a credit for something that we’re already going to do.”

That, he later learned was a concept known as additionality: carbon markets don’t pay for business as usual. To earn carbon offsets, a developer has to prove that the finance for carbon reduction makes the reduction possible. For Lemons, “additionality” meant that even if the payments were higher, his company wouldn’t have qualified.

“I told my bosses that carbon credits weren’t worth their time, but the idea kept nagging me,” he says. “I loved the idea of a market mechanism that would pay for conservation, but I didn’t think of a plantation as conservation.”

Then he learned of a practice called avoided deforestation, which grew out of new thinking in the late 1980s among innovative organizations like Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and Brazilian NGO SPVS. The idea was to generate carbon offsets by saving endangered rainforest rather than by planting new trees.

“That resonated with me,” he says. “If you could earn money by protecting a virgin forest – that’s cool.”

It might have been cool with him, but it wasn’t cool with some of the more traditional environmental groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. As the Kyoto Protocol took shape in the 1990s, they made sure avoided deforestation wasn’t part of it.

Simply REDD

But avoided deforestation didn’t die. Companies continued to use it voluntarily to offset their emissions, and rainforest nations continued to push for its inclusion in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). By the time Lemons came to Borneo in 2007, Papua New Guinea had managed to get avoided deforestation back on the UN agenda, but now it was called REDD, for “Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation.”

The concept was deceptively simple: find a patch of forest that’s about to be destroyed, measure the carbon content of that forest, save the forest, and earn credit for the carbon that you keep locked in trees.

In practice, it was much more complicated than that. First, you had to prove that the forest you were saving really was endangered. Then you had to prove that your actions saved it, and finally you had to prove that the forest you saved didn’t result in another patch of forest being destroyed elsewhere.

The Seruyan Forest he was traveling to was definitely endangered: palm oil company PT Best had a concession to develop it, and the company had already developed 10,000 hectares. He hoped that Birute Galdikas could help him identify a way to save it.

The bigger challenge was to make it work financially, but the biggest challenges of all came from two sources. One, as expected, was PT Best, which would use its economic and political muscle to try to block the project any way it could. The other chalenge came from a source he hadn’t anticipated: old-school environmentalists who seemed to hate REDD almost as much as PT Best did.

A Labor of Love

On the economic front, Lemons found that-despite all the talk to the contrary, REDD wasn’t a lucrative endeavor, and it probably never would be – especially compared to Palm Oil.

At the time, most of the REDD research was focused on the Amazon, so he used the well-researched Brazilian forests as a model. He knew that a forest there held an average of about 200 metric tonnes of carbon per hectare. That translates into 200 tonnes of carbon dioxide kept out of the air over the 30-year lifespan of a forest-carbon project. At $7 per tonne of carbon dioxide, that’s $46 per hectare per year – and that’s just income. He had no idea what it would cost to measure, monitor, and protect the forest, which meant he couldn’t even begin to calculate the profit.

The calculus on palm oil plantations was, by comparison, incredibly straightforward: a typical plantation generated $1,000 per hectare per year in pure profit once it was up and running, and if the original forest had enough timber, the palm-oil plantation might even turn a profit on the conversion.

While the prices of carbon offsets and palm oil both fluctuated, carbon prices weren’t going to increase twenty-fold, and it was clear that it would be more lucrative to destroy a forest than to save it – a fact lost on many of the organizations involved in the REDD debate.

REDD Misunderstood

Proponents tended to talk of REDD as an “incentive” to save forests, while critics talked of it as some diabolical scheme hatched by the remnants of Enron to commoditize forests. Proponents, in other words, talked of a green utopia, while opponents talked of “carbon cowboys” and “land grabs.” Both sides were wrong.

REDD didn’t create an incentive to save forests, because anyone who responded to purely economic incentives would opt for palm oil. What REDD did create was a financing mechanism that might make it possible for people who wanted to save the forest to do so.

“It will always be easier to chop a forest than to manage it,” says Brazilian indigenous leader Almir Surui, who also incurred pushback from old-school environmental groups when he developed the first indigenous-led REDD project. “That’s what no one seems to get: REDD is hard work, and it’s not something you do if all you want to do is make money.”

To make matters worse, the land-grab that REDD opponents worried about had already happened, but the grabbers weren’t “carbon cowboys.” They were palm-oil developers like PT Best, which was in the process of devouring the Seruyan Forest. The grabbers in turn sold their palm oil to companies like Bunge, Cargill, and Unilever, who put it into foods that the rest of us bought and ate.

“In the end, we’re all complicit, because we all eat this stuff,” says Lemons, munching a granola bar that he purchased at Whole Foods on a recent trip to the United States. “The only difference between you and I and most people out there is that we got to know firsthand where it comes from.”

One Tool Among Many

To stifle climate change, he says, we have to change global buying patterns, but REDD is more of a supply-side solution, analogous to the cut-to-order procedures he implemented in Latin America. It’s one tool in a very big box that includes organizations like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which aims to promote sustainable sourcing of palm oil, and even old-school environmentalists to put pressure on those companies that need some prodding.

Lemons says those tools all fit together: by putting a price on degradation, he says, REDD will eventually help consumers understand the true cost of their purchases. On a more immediate level in the short term, REDD can be used to leverage more efficient land-use practices among producers – by shifting production from forested lands to degraded lands, for example, as the Indonesian government advocates.

There’s something else, too, and for Lemons, it was critical: REDD, he says, unites economy and ecology by turning conservation into a business, while old-school environmentalists embraced a false dichotomy between growth and conservation.

“REDD is part of a global paradigm shift that traditional environmentalism is missing,” he says. “Opposition-based environmentalism has its place, and so does philanthropy, but neither can hold a candle to what the global economy can achieve. We just have to get that economy properly aligned.”

But for REDD to work as a business, Lemons would have to show that the returns – while nowhere near as lucrative as a ravenous sector like palm oil – were still worth pursuing. Then he’d have to attract investors, and the only way that would work was if the forests stored enough carbon to make the returns worthwhile.

As Lemons looked out at the scraggly trees zipping past his car window on his way to Seruyan Forest, he knew there wasn’t enough carbon in them to fund a kindergarten – let alone take on a palm-oil company looking at a $150-million-per-year business. He also knew that any hope lay not in the trees, but in the soil.

The Power of Peat

That’s because the Tanjung Puting National Park is a massive lowland swamp with trees in it, and those trees have been dropping leaves into water for 10,000 years. Those leaves have coalesced into a half-decayed loam of organic matter up to ten meters deep.

 Birute Galdikas with two orphaned orangutans.

Birute Galdikas with two orphaned orangutans.

Environmentally, the park and the Seruyan Forest that PT Best was converting to a palm-oil plantation are massive bins of carbon that extend to the mangroves along the Java Sea. As companies like PT Best destroyed the forest to make way for their plantations, they were releasing hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That’s what made Indonesia the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, behind the United States and China. It’s why Lemons needed to save the Seruyan Forest.

But for that to work, he had to know how much carbon was in those peat swamps and how much would be released if PT Best continued destroying them. That was a question no one had answered because no one had written the calculus for it.

“We now know that peatland has about eight times as much carbon per hectare as a typical rainforest of the Amazon,” says Heru Prasetyo, the head of Indonesia’s REDD Task Force. “Back in 2007, no one really knew.”

Lemons certainly didn’t know that as he climbed out of the taxi at Galdikas’ orangutan care center, but he sensed that she could somehow help him find the answers. Unfortunately, he’d neglected to tell her that he was coming.

Next Week: Wrestling with orangutans: The genesis of the Rimba-Raya REDD project.

 

This Week In Water: Yorkshire Water Accounts for NatCap Impacts

This article was originally published in the Water Log newsletter. Click here to read the original.

 

2 July 2014 | Greetings! Earlier this month, the same week that US President Barack Obama unveiled a national climate action plan that opens the door to cap-and-trade in the power sector, Peru’s National Congress passed the country’s ground-breaking Payments for Ecosystem Services Law (Ley de Mecanismos de Retribucií³n por Servicios Ecosistémicos). The law passed with 83 votes in favor and none against, with no abstentions, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Environment (MINAM).

The law sets out a framework for compensation for ecosystem services (like clean water or carbon storage) between land stewards and beneficiaries, including civil society, businesses, and municipal governments. Contracts will still be voluntary agreements between these parties, which means the government’s role is limited, according to those familiar with the law. It boils down to ecosystem services management and providing regulatory certainty for contracts – though the government will also help to identify payers and administer the compensation process.

“It’s a voluntary agreement between private parties with a private contract, but the state often owns the natural resources at the center of the contract,” explains Jose Luis Capella, Director of the Forestry Program in the Peruvian Society of Environmental Law (SPDA).

Examples of ecosystem services contracts in Peru are plentiful, like a project to restore degraded lands in the Rumiyacu-Mishquiyacu micro-watersheds, located among the jungles of Peru’s San Martin region. Residents in the city of Moyobamba agreed to finance sustainable land management through a monthly payment on their water bill. The Watershed Services Incubator, a collaborative initiative between Forest Trends (publisher of Ecosystem Marketplace) and MINAM, among other institutions, is a larger-scale effort to provide a capacity-building platform for developing water projects based on a payments for ecosystem services (PES) model.

Ultimately, Peru’s law aims to coordinate all of these activities by providing a simplified framework for PES to increase the mechanism’s use. It’s based on a simple idea that isn’t particularly innovative: those who help maintain and improve ecosystem services establish an agreement with those who are voluntarily willing to compensate for those services.

Other big stories this month: Yorkshire Water becomes the first water company to develop an environmental profit & loss statement reflecting its impacts on natural capital. India’s Sanjay Ghandi National Park is now part of Mumbai’s “natural infrastructure” system with the announcement of watershed management plans for the park to protect city drinking water supplies. And the latest installment in our series on the water-energy-food nexus offers a background look at what the concept, and why it’s so important to put nature in the nexus.

Very best,

— The Ecosystem Marketplace Team

For questions or comments, please contact [email protected]


EM Headlines

GENERAL

Peruvian Congress passes historic ecosystem services law

Six years in the making, Peru’s new Ecosystem Services Law passed this month, providing a comprehensive legal framework for the sticky issue of payments for ecosystem services. It is one of the most advanced pieces of legislation of its type, but had been stuck in committee for five years. Peru’s National Congress passed the country’s ground-breaking Payments for Ecosystem Services Law (Ley de Mecanismos de Retribucií³n por Servicios Ecosistémicos) with 83 votes in favor and none against, with no abstentions, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Environment.

The law provides a legal framework to support a diverse range of ecosystem services – including greenhouse gas emissions reductions, biodiversity conservation and the preservation of natural beauty. Investments in watershed services (IWS), an already popular water management method in the country, have also been incorporated into the proposal.

There are two parties involved in the compensation process that the law lays out. The first are land stewards – farmers, indigenous peoples, landowners and individuals involved in ecotourism, who act as the receivers of ecosystem services. The other group – mostly civil society, businesses and municipalities – are the payers. They compensate the land stewards to practice sustainable land-use. These sustainable practices ensure businesses and cities will have the ecosystem services, like clean water and air, that they need to survive and thrive.

The government will be responsible for identifying the payers and also for administering the compensation process.

Read more at Ecosystem Marketplace.

 

The water-energy-food nexus: Interlinked solutions for interlinked challenges

Ecosystem Marketplace is launching a series of stories leading up to the State of Watershed Payments 2014 report release date that looks at global challenges related to the nexus and the various approaches businesses, government and the world as a whole are taking to address this issue.

In the latest article in the series, we take a look at how our demands for energy, food and water all drive each other, and how we can prevent them from driving in the wrong direction. We examine cases from India to California to sketch out what, exactly, the “nexus challenge” is, and how we can meet it. (Hint: it involves putting nature in the nexus.)

Get background on the nexus here.

 

DelAgua: Delivering Emissions Reductions, Clean Water, And Hot Beans

DelAgua Health is in the business of emissions avoidance as well as emissions reduction. It’s a tricky but vital distinction. In addition to cutting climate-warming emissions that are already occurring, the UK-based company is focused on preventing emissions that never have to occur in the first place – especially from the 3 billion people in the world who cook food using traditional cookstoves or open fires, and the 884 million who still do not have access to safe drinking water.

Carbon finance through the sale of offsets is central to DelAgua’s business model. Its programme of activities under the United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) combines the distribution of two household devices – clean cookstoves and water filters – to Rwandan families and has been piloted in 2,000 homes so far. In addition to reducing the need for fuelwood to boil water and cook food, therefore alleviating pressure on forests, the water filters almost instantaneously reduce water-borne illnesses while the lower-smoke cookstoves relieve respiratory ailments over time.

Matt Spannagle, DelAgua’s Climate Partnerships Manager, spoke with Ecosystem Marketplace (EM) ahead of the release of EM’s full State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2014 report about the motivation behind the double registration, some unexpected benefits of clean cookstoves, and why carbon offset sales makes more sense than other potential finance streams.

Read more at Ecosystem Marketplace.

 

Barack Obama And The Rationale For Ecosystem Service Markets

US President Barack Obama continued to roll out his Climate Action Plan last week by addressing the League of Conservation Voters. In the address, he mocked climate-science deniers, touted renewable energy, and warned environmentalists against ignoring the potential costs of reducing emissions. He also defended the Clean Water Act – an act that succeeds by addressing concerns about economics cost head-on.


A set of mechanisms in the Clean Water Act let land developers disrupt environmentally significant swamps (or “wetlands”) that filter water and regulate floods. That’s right. This great success works in part because it lets bad things happen. But there’s a catch: this degradation can only happen under very limited circumstances and only after a rigorous permitting process. More importantly, it can only happen if the developer compensates by either restoring, creating, or in some cases preserving an endangered wetland area of equal or greater environmental value than what is lost. This ingenious mechanism, which dates back to the 1970s, has led to the creation of wetland mitigation banks, private conservation efforts that proactively restore degraded wetlands – and on typically larger, more contiguous sites that deliver more ecosystem services than the isolated patches of degraded swamp that are destroyed.


This is one of the great unsung successes of the 1970s environmental boom, and it succeeds because it doesn’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Something similar is happening under the Endangered Species Act, which allows for development on habitat under very limited circumstances and only if habitat of equal or greater value is restored, created, or preserved. These things work, and they work so well that the European Union is incorporating similar mechanisms into its environmental strategy.

Read the opinion piece at Huffington Post.

 

In The News

POLICY UPDATES

Mumbai-area national park to be managed for watershed values

A watershed management plan is in the works for India’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park, with an eye to stabilizing flows and boosting water retention capacity in the park. The park, an important source of water for the city of Mumbai, will see new soil, water and habitat conservation work underway over the next eighteen months. It signals a more ‘soft-path’ approach to water security. “We used to construct artificial water holes inside the park whenever there was a scarcity. Now, we will manage the natural watersheds in an organised manner and give priority to natural water springs. This will help the wildlife, vegetation and help Mumbaikars’ water needs,” said Vikas Gupta, chief conservator of the park.

The Indian Express has the story.

 

China looks to avoid water scarce fate with new projects

China will be short 200 million cubic meters per year by the end of the next decade if the nation continues on the trajectory it’s currently on, according to the think tank 2030 World Resources Group. This alarming fact is likely a driving force behind the federal government’s approval of 170 new water projects that are meant to expand irrigation, reduce water usage in agriculture and speed up construction of its south-north water transfer infrastructure. The projects will be implemented over the next six years and, if successful, will reduce demand by 26 billion cubic meters of water (m3) and increase supply by 80 billion m3.


As of right now, China’s water challenges are staggering. Decades of rapid economic development with little regard for the environment has diminished China’s water resources. The government has said 70 percent of its groundwater is polluted. And recently, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the country’s glaciers has shrunk fifteen percent in the last 30 years. This will impact river’s water flow and further cut water supplies. “Not executing this plan is really not an option,” says Debra Tan of the Hong-Kong based non-profit, China Water Risk.

Read more from Reuters.

 

What the US West can learn from Australia’s water troubles

When farmers don’t get the water they need, everybody suffers. This statement was made painfully clear for Australians as they struggled through a horrific drought that lasted over ten years and wreaked havoc on the nation’s economy and environment. River flows throughout Australia’s food basket, the Murray-Darling Basin, were only 40 to 60 percent of average. And over-allocation of the basin’s water rights meant that during these dry times, many farmers weren’t distributed any water.


The situation, which might sound familiar to people who’ve been living in the US West lately, led Australia to develop a water extraction cap policy called the Basin Plan, which recognizes the need to reduce water use by one third and leave 60 percent of water in the river. As most of water consumed goes toward irrigated agriculture, the government has provided funding for installing efficient farming techniques like drip irrigation. To date, nearly 70 percent of the targeted reductions in water use have been achieved, leading some to believe Australia’s strategy could be a model in the US and other water scarce regions.

Learn more from National Geographic NewsWatch.

 

Can nexus thinking deliver an energy, food and water secure future?

The interconnections between the water, energy and food sectors make up what’s known as the ‘nexus.’ Nexus approaches, which seek innovative and holistic methods to solve global interlinked challenges impacting each sector, are on the rise among NGOs and business leaders. But can the nexus become more than just a buzzword and actually help deliver solutions? Two academics from the environmental space ask this question and have found substantial momentum for nexus thinking. The severity of the resource scarcity situation is a key driver: it has never been more dire and is forcing society to accept interlinked resource challenges and reject business as usual as unsustainable. And evidence of this new thinking is seen among some large corporations. Big oil and gas companies are discussing the “resource trilemma” while brewing giant SABMiller is attempting to make decisions using a resource nexus lens.

Read more at The Guardian.

 

GLOBAL MARKETS

UK water company takes first steps toward natcap accounting

Contrary to the way they’re often treated in traditional economic thinking, natural resources are not infinite, and businesses take a big risk in not using or accounting for them accordingly. Companies report that resource-related supply chain disruption and price volatility are already happening. A new reportfrom CIMA, EY, the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the Natural Capital Coalition highlights how these risks are largely ignored in corporate boardrooms.


However, one UK water utility, Yorkshire Water, is making efforts to integrate sustainability into its business strategy and is billing itself as the first water company to do so. Working with the environmental consulting firm, Trucost, Yorkshire Water has implemented an environmental profit and loss (EP&L) account. While the EP&L isn’t perfect and plenty of challenges still remain, it’s a start to integrating natural capital into Yorkshire Water’s balance sheets and has the potential to encourage other companies to follow. Simon Barnes, Yorkshire Water’s program director, says, “There are all sorts of reasons why you don’t do it – it’s not quite the right time, we don’t have the right data – but if you keep waiting you will never make a change.”

Keep reading at The Guardian.

 

PES in Vietnam daunted by inefficient and illegal activities

Like China and Costa Rica before it, Vietnam is attempting to implement a national policy of payments for ecosystem services (PES) to protect the nation’s watersheds and forests from illegal deforestation. The Payments for Forest Environmental Services program requires hydropower companies and other organizations reliant on ecosystem services, like tourism operators and water companies, to pay rural and mainly poor communities to practice conservation.


The program is meant to support economic development in poor areas while protecting Vietnam’s forests but its success is uncertain. For one, little environmental monitoring takes place to measure if the conservation practices are having an effect on water quality or forest health. And because of Vietnam’s power distribution monopoly, collecting money from several hydropower operations is proving difficult. Then there are the lucrative illegal activities, like logging and planting coffee trees in state forests, that lure farmers out of participating in the program. But the program is very much in its early days (having launched nationally in 2011) and the challenges Vietnam is facing are much like those faced in other countries testing national PES strategies.

The New York Times has coverage.

 

In the midst of ‘replenishment’ success, Coca-Cola closure order in India calls back bad memories

A Coca-Cola bottling plant in northern India was ordered closed earlier this month after local farmers complained to Uttar Pradesh authorities that the plant was depleting groundwater levels. But shortly thereafter, India’s National Green Tribunal overturned the local ruling, allowing the plant to reopen. The closure action echoed a similar incident ten years earlier, when the Kerala government withdrew consent for a Coca-Cola plant over similar allegations.


The Coca-Cola Company, which called claims about its Uttar Pradesh water usage “misleading and false,” in recent years has invested heavily in efforts to reduce water use and replenish an amount equivalent to its use through funding efficiency, watershed development, and ecological restoration projects. On June 5th, the day before the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board ordered the plant closure, Coca-Cola announced that it had replenished 68 percent of water used in finished beverages globally in 2013 and is on track to reach its goal of 100 percent replenishment by 2020. In India, Coca-Cola estimates that it has already surpassed that target, having reached 130% replenishment relative to its operations in the country.

Read about the initial closure in the Financial Times.
Get coverage of the National Green Tribunal decision from BeverageDaily.

 

Setting the bounds for public-private partnerships on water

At the CEO Water Mandate’s thirteenth working conference in Lima in May, the group along with WWF released a very interesting discussion paper exploring the potential of business-government cooperation for water governance, Shared Water Challenges and Interests: The Case for Private Sector Engagement in Water Policy and Management. Lest readers be wary of business involvement in management of a public good, the brief offers case examples of successful public-private collaboration for sustainable management – whether through improving efficiencies, financing infrastructure, or moving sustainable practice forward. It also recognizes the limits of the approach, acknowledging critics’ worries about policy capture and greenwashing. Still, the authors say, “Current conditions actually offer a much greater incentive for companies to align their water-related policies and practices with the public interest than in the past,” and it would be a mistake for the public to pass on that opportunity.

Get background from IISD.
Download the discussion paper (pdf).
Read a summary of the meeting (pdf).

 

CISL report offers four collaborative financing scenarios for UK catchment management

A report launched by the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership in June takes on a similar question – what exactly should public-private collaboration on sustainable water management look like? – from a different angle. Researchers developed four models, each representing a different spread of cross-sectoral financing, governance and ownership. The models were used to examine how co-investment in catchment management might deliver resilience to water scarcity in the UK, and develop business cases for each sector participating.


No clear winners emerged – each model has its own benefits and implementation challenges – but the report’s authors say they hope it will help decision-makers consider future paths. “I believe that the Sink or Swim work places business in an excellent position to navigate the collective action that is required to address water resource management across sectors and alongside government,” CISL programme manager Dr Gemma Cranston said in a press release. “This innovative thinking has laid the groundwork for multi-sector plans and approaches to be implemented.”

Read a press release.
Read the report (pdf direct download).

 

June PENNVEST nutrient auction posts lower prices, slightly higher forward volumes from last year

In Pennsylvania, a June 11 auction saw certified nutrient credits for the 2014-2015 compliance years drop a bit in price though with a slight uptick in forward sales compared to last year. PENNVEST – the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority – holds regular auctions for nitrogen and phosphorus credits for water quality trading markets in the Susquehanna and Potomac River basins. This month, a total of 23,000 credits for the 2014 compliance year went for $2.01-$2.27 (with prices falling in a second round of bidding), and 10,000 credits for 2015 within the same range. At a forward auction in June 2013, 9,000 credits for the 2014 year were sold for $2.78-$2.96, and a total of 37,000 2013 ‘spot’ credits for $2.15-$2.67. All trades in the recent auction were for the Susquehanna Basin. Depending on whom you ask, lower credit prices aren’t necessarily a bad thing: it suggests that dischargers in the state are meeting their pollution control requirements at a lower cost. Trades and a credit registry are hosted on the Markit platform. The next forward auction is scheduled for September 10th.

Read a press release.
View the PA Credit Trading page on Markit.

 

“Rare” marketing campaigns help move investments in watershed services forward

Successful reciprocal water agreements in Latin America continue to gain traction as Rare, the international conservation organization, initiates a slew of projects in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Mexico. Water users incentivize farmers to practice conservation with actions, supplying them with barbed wire to keep cattle out of streams or providing them with the training to grow more sustainable crops and conserve critical habitat. Those activities keep upstream areas healthy and help regulate freshwater flows to downstream areas. Rare is using its “Pride” marketing campaign model to encourage local populations to be proud of their natural resources and protect them by practicing good stewardship.

National Geographic NewsWatch has coverage.

 

EVENTS

Reciprocal Agreements for Water School

Fundacií³n Natura Bolivia with the support of various donors has established a School for Reciprocal Agreements for Water (Acuerdos Recí­procos por Agua, or ARA). The school seeks to inspire leaders in the region through training and education, working with mayors, municipal government, leaders of indigenous organizations, farmers and producer associations, NGOs, and other stakeholders. The School teaches how to implement ARA schemes in various contexts, with the goal of scaling up the ARA model in Bolivia and Latin America and through ARAs ensure the conservation of water and biodiversity-rich ecosystems. This intensive six-day course reviews in detail the establishment of ARAs. Each course has twenty places open will run in August and again in October of this year. All trainings are held in Spanish. The first course will be held in the cities of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Vallegrande, Bolivia 11 to August 16, 2014.

Learn more here (in Spanish).

 

World Water Week 2014: Energy and Water

World Water Week is hosted and organised by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) and takes place in Stockholm. The World Water Week has been the annual focal point for the globe’s water issues since 1991. Every year, SIWI provides a platform for over 200 collaborating organisations to convene events at the World Water Week. In addition, individuals from around the globe present their findings at the scientific workshops. Early Bird discount rate is available till 30 June. 31 August – 5 September 2014. Stockholm, Sweden.

Learn more here.

 

Ecosystem Services Partnership Conference 2014

The emphasis of this Seventh international ESP conference will be on the use of the ecosystem services concept at the local level, focusing on Latin America with a special emphasis on Costa Rica. Scientists representing several EU-funded projects will present their results on Community Based Ecosystem Management. Don’t miss your chance to interact and exchange ideas with the rapidly growing network of ESP members, practitioners, educators, policy-makers, researchers, and many others from all continents. Be part of special sessions and working-groups producing outcomes ranging from journal articles, white papers, book chapters, grant proposals, database structures, websites, and much more. The deadline for the submission of abstracts for posters is June 15th and July 6th. 8-12 September 2014. San Jose, Costa Rica.

Learn more here.

 

One Water Leadership (OWL) Summit

Early Bird Registration for this year’s One Water Leadership (OWL) Summit is open with reduced rates! Join the 5th annual event September 15 – 17, in Kansas City. Invited keynotes include: President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson and U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. Spotlight Communities will drive the national conversation on water as the centerpiece for urban sustainability, developing green infrastructure and resource recovery. 15-17 September 2014. Kansas City MO, USA.

Learn more here.

 

16th Annual BIOECON Conference

The BIOECON Partners are pleased to announce the Sixteenth Annual International BIOECON conference on the theme of “Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Sustainability”. The conference will be of interest to both researchers and policy makers working on issues broadly in the area of biodiversity, ecosystem services, sustainable development and natural capital, in both developed and developing countries. The conference takes a broad interest in the area of resource management, development and conservation, including but not limited to: the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in economic development, plant genetic resources and food security issues, deforestation and development, fisheries and institutional adaptation, development and conservation, wildlife conservation, and international trade and regulation. The conference will have sessions on economic development, growth and biodiversity conservation, as well as on institutions and institutional change pertaining to the management of living resources. 21-23 September 2014. Cambridge, UK.

Learn more here.

 

World Green Infrastructure Congress

The Congress will present the latest technological developments, green industry awards, iconic best practice projects, research data, professional training workshops, Living Art competition and new areas of applications in the field of green infrastructure. It will serve as a surface + space where international urban greenery thought leaders from various disciplines may come together with architects, landscape architects, landscaper contractors, environmentalists, horticulturists, nursery growers and policymakers and stakeholders to examine the present and future trends of this growing sector. 7-10 October 2014. Sydney, Australia.

Learn more here.

 

ACES 2014 Conference: Linking Science, Practice, and Decision Making

ACES: A Community on Ecosystem Services represents a dynamic and growing assembly of professionals, researchers, and policy makers involved with ecosystem services. The ACES 2014 Conference brings together this community in partnership with Ecosystem Markets and the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP), providing an open forum to share experiences, methods, and tools, for assessing and incorporating ecosystem services into public and private decisions. The focus of the conference is to link science, practice, and sustainable decision making by bringing together the ecosystem services community from around the United States and the globe. ACES 2014 will bring together leaders in government, NGOs, academia, Native American communities, and the private sector to advance the use of ecosystem services science and practice in conservation, restoration, resource management, and development decisions. We hope you will make plans to join more than 500 ecosystem service stakeholders in this collaborative discussion to advance use of an ecosystem services framework for natural resource management and policy. Abstract submission deadline is July 11th. 8-11 December 2014. Washington DC, USA.

Learn more here.

CONTRIBUTING TO ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACE

Ecosystem Marketplace is a project of Forest Trends a tax-exempt corporation under Section 501(c)(3).The non-profit evaluator Charity Navigator has given Forest Trends its highest rating (4 out of 4 stars) recognizing excellence in our financial management and organizational efficiency.

 


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