Donate Now Jeffrey Barbee,for The Pulitzer Center
Copenhagen, Denmark
The Conference of the Parties, called COP15 because it's the 15th one, will discuss many things. I am interested in how carbon trading can influence the revival and preservation of Africa's hardwood forests. Carbon Trading has a lot of negative connotations. Some environmentalists slate it as a way to "sell" the air. But more and more there is growing realization that only through monetizing Climate Change by making polluters pay, will there be a change in behavior.
Carbon trading can make it more profitable to be clean and conservation minded, and since the bottom line is what it's all about in our cash economy, then incentives and penalties are the only way to go about it.
There is chance that this infant economy may become the way that forests in particular can be valued so that they are worth more standing and living than cut into furniture and firewood. I am traveling to Copenhagen to present a 26 minute documentary about how forests in Africa can uplift economies and the poorest of the poor by being valued for the carbon that they inhale.
The Kyoto Protocol outlines the rules for carbon trading using a system called the Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM. CDM is the bible of carbon trading, but does not make much allowance for forests that actually remove the carbon from the air. The numbers say everything. Only 3% of all CDM certified carbon credits come from Africa, and out of hundreds of applications, only one forestry project in all of Africa has CDM certified carbon credits to sell.
African forests can be part of the solution to Global Warming. Africans and project developers in Africa are eager and prepared to enter the Carbon Trade, and use it to create sustainable forestry projects. Already their carbon has entered the voluntary markets, and buyers have responded positively, but it's not enough. What they need is the chance to get a full, fair price for the carbon they take out of the cycle, certified by the CDM, and available to compulsory buyers who pay a premium.
This December their voices are being taken to the Copenhagen Conference of the Parties, in hopes that the world's decision makers will hear them and take their experience to heart.
Forests can create and modify the weather, they secure water in ground and they remove carbon from the atmosphere. Forests are our stockade against run-away climate change. Where they have been removed, they need to be replaced like our lives depend on it, because they do.
I will be writing both here and on my own web-blog, where you can follow this road to Copenhagen and watch the videos, slide shows and hear explanations offered by many of the project developers throughout Africa who contributed to this project.
This week in Copenhagen the world has a chance, -a slim one, but a chance, to do something positive. I will be reporting on how the talks are going, what the city is like (dark and cold at the moment), and the buzz on the ground.
Here is the Documentary, fresh from the edit:
Check out Jeffrey's personal blog here.
This story was reported for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting as part of the Copenhagen News Collaborative, a cooperative project of several independent news organizations. Check out the feed here from Mother Jones.