Forests: The Best Short-Term Option

B y   R e n é   C a s t r o

"Ninety-two percent of the carbon absorbed by expanding Costa Rica's protected areas and forestry activities would cost less than 50 dollars a ton."

SAN JOSE - It has been estimated that reducing global warming could represent approximately two percent of the world's combined gross domestic product (GDP). Given that figure, it is urgent to seek options for cutting costs, and numerous studies suggest there is a way to achieve this: using forests to absorb carbon.

As we know, deforestation - one of the hot issues in the global environmental panorama - means greater amounts of carbon in the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming. If this activity is reduced and natural forests are preserved or tree planting is increased, more carbon is captured and emissions are curbed.

According to the existing literature, reducing emissions by the energy sectors of industrialised countries would cost more than 100 dollars per ton of carbon. In contrast, the cost of absorbing carbon utilising the forests of the United States would cost between 10 and 100 dollars a ton, depending on the magnitude of the forestry projects and the rising costs of land.

But what about the costs in tropical countries? Could the world's forests represent a less expensive option for reducing the emissions of industrialised countries? And how would carbon trading impact the nations of the developing South?

Carbon trading could turn into a buyers' market in which the industrialised world is left with most of the potential savings. Or it could establish itself as an instrument to transfer financial resources from countries of the North to those of the South - and, thus, become one of the first successful cases in the globalisation of the world economy.

In a Costa Rican study of the country's Wildlife Conservation Areas (ACVs), we tried to show how the inclusion of forestry options in tropical countries would even further reduce the cost of mitigating global warming, while at the same time promoting forest preservation and sustainable development in rural areas.

Originating in the early 1970s, Costa Rica's system of ACVs covered 15 percent of the national territory by 1999. Today, in order to take advantage of the opportunities of the carbon market proposed in the Kyoto Protocol, this area is being extended to cover as much as 25 percent of the country.

In our study, outlined in the book ''Environmental Services of the Forests: The Case of Climate Change,'' we found that 92 percent of the carbon absorbed by the proposed expansion of ACVs would cost less than 50 dollars per ton.

We calculated the quantity of carbon produced by 260,000 hectares of tropical forest in Costa Rica. For the sake of comparison with other countries and regions, we estimated the total quantity of carbon produced, in several different projects and at varying prices. The results underscore the importance of trade in order to save resources and curtail climate change.

In the projects and studies analysed, if the price were set at 10 dollars per ton, the ACVs of Costa Rica, and the state of Wisconsin and the Mississippi delta - both in the United States - would be in a position to sell 15, nine and eight percent, respectively, of their annual production in tons of carbon.

Projections indicate that upon raising the price, each one of the sellers would be able to offer one percentage point more carbon, and in most cases the Costa Rican projects would cost less than the US options. If just the benefits derived from absorbing carbon are taken into account - leaving aside other environmental services such as protecting biodiversity and preserving fragile ecosystems - greater areas of forests could be designated for conservation.

For example, with prices of 50 to 100 dollars per ton, the Costa Rican protected areas La Amistad, Barbilla and Palo Verde could be expanded even more than ecologists have proposed. And at a price of around 100 dollars, consolidating and broadening such protected areas to cover 25 percent of the national territory would apparently be a viable objective.

Further, if carbon absorption were compensated, some landowners in Costa Rica could replace their crops with forestry activities. However, it is unlikely that forest projects would substitute the more profitable export crops like coffee, bananas and pineapples. But they could replace some traditional sectors - livestock or rice production, for example - that require large areas of land.

The numbers calculated for Costa Rica can be applied to the other countries participating in the network of protected areas known as the Meso-American Biological Corridor, which is to cover eight million hectares in Central America and two million in southern Mexico. The project is based on the idea that the seven countries involved share between 60 and 80 percent of the same species, which would have a greater chance at survival in large protected areas that are interconnected.

We believe the world carbon market could offer developing countries and organisations dedicated to ecological conservation a tool to finance greater protection for ecologically fragile areas, and to improve the economic and political situation in many rural areas.

The carbon market would provide a totally new source of income and would increase the profitability of some existing activities, thus slowing the migration of rural residents to the cities. And at the political level, which is fundamental, it could also foment interest among rural communities in global conventions and negotiations. .


* The author is a former Costa Rican minister of the Environment and Energy. The complete study can be found at www.CDMcentral.com.

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