[discuss-dan] Action-Alert CLIMATE & FOREST TALKS RESUME, CALL TODAY & TUESDAY!]

["getmelissa@uswest.net" <getmelissa@uswest.net>]

To:  All Activists
From:  Aaron Rappaport, American Lands
Date:  December 6, 2000

CLIMATE AND FOREST TALKS RESUME, CALL TODAY & TUESDAY!

Full Call-In day again next Tuesday  12/12

This week has brought great news for efforts to curb climate change.  
Rushing to finalize some sort of climate agreement prior to the end of 
the Clinton Administration, today the U.S. and the E.U. will resume 
talks on how to use and credit forests for soaking up and storing 
atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), as well as other important aspects of 
implementing the Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change.  Disagreements over 
forests - greatly exacerbated by the preposterous initial U.S. demand to 
use "business-as-usual" forestry to account for up to half of its 
obligation to reduce CO2 emissions - caused the collapse and official 
"suspension" of the climate summit in The Hague just nine days ago.

The first phase of the new round of talks will occur this week in 
Ottawa.  If all goes well a ministerial level of talks will occur next 
week in Oslo, with the goal producing an actual written agreement.  Will 
the Europeans, angered by U.S. attempts to create a business as usual 
forestry "loophole" in the Treaty, refuse to allow even the protection 
and restoration of native forests to receive credit and financial 
encouragement as an emissions reduction?  Will the U.S. continue to hold 
out for credit for business as usual, rather than improved, forestry - 
thereby avoiding both real emissions reductions from cars and power 
plants and real increased protection for the world's forests?  With 
negotiations resuming tomorrow, these are immediate questions, and only 
immediate action can move the U.S. position and increase the likelihood 
that forest protection is in the final deal, while the business-as-usual 
forest loophole is not.

Activists' good work by phone and fax has been paying off.  We have 
already motivated the Administration to work for rules that contain no 
perverse incentives to log old growth.

Calls and faxes are needed immediately to the Administration to 
influence this week's first phase of talks.  Next Tuesday there will be 
a full-blown, open-the-floodgates, call-in day to move the ministerial 
round.  On both occasions, please call Frank Loy, the Undersecretary of 
State for Global Affairs, at 202/ 647-6240, or fax him at 202/ 647-0753. 
 Faxes on letterhead will carry extra weight.  Here are two principle 
points to move the U.S. position in the right direction:

1)  Forest rules under the climate change treaty should protect and 
restore native forests all over the world.
2)  Business-as-usual forestry isn't a valid emissions reduction and 
shouldn't receive any credit at all.

BACKGROUND - WHY BUSINESS-AS-USUAL FORESTRY IS A LOOPHOLE

The easiest way to understand what business-as-usual forestry is to 
consider what it's not.  It's not protecting more forests, particularly 
private ones, by reducing the amount of land we log every year.  That 
step would be a bona-fide emissions reduction because logging converts 
most of each felled tree's wood into carbon dioxide rather than wood 
products.  Since it would be a change in the way we do things, it's 
called "additional to business as usual".

Business as usual forestry (BAUF), by contrast, is continuing to manage 
forests exactly the same way we do now.  Overall, U.S. forests are 
absorbing CO2 because we have a lot of tree growth on abandoned farmland 
in the east.  This more than offsets our emissions from logging 
elsewhere.  While it does cause our emissions to be lower than if the 
U.S. contained no growing trees, BAUF can't make next year's emissions 
any lower than this year's, as we committed to doing in the Kyoto 
Treaty.  Business-as-usual forestry can only keep our emissions the 
same.

Or can it?  Due to loopholes left in the Treaty when it was negotiated, 
the door wasn't slammed on counting BAUF as an emissions reduction by 
ignoring its absorptions when calculating 1990 emissions but then using 
them, for accounting purposes, to decrease reported emissions in 2008 
and beyond!  This loophole is known as "gross-net forestry accounting".

The cure would be to credit only forestry that is clearly additional to 
business as usual as an offset to what we spew out of tailpipes and 
smokestacks.  The permanent protection of both primary and recovering 
native forests clearly qualifies.  The financial incentives that come 
with the credits could be a boon to protecting forests worldwide, 
particularly those on private lands or in countries without meaningful 
environmental laws.

For more information please contact:
Darcy Davis, American Lands, 503-978-0132, darcydavis@americanlands.org
Aaron Rappaport, American Lands, 202-547-9098, arappaport@mindspring.com
Steve Holmer
Campaign Coordinator
American Lands
726 7th Street SE
Washington, D.C. 20003
202/547-9105
202/547-9213 fax
mailto:wafcdc@americanlands.org
http://www.americanlands.org

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