Forestry Projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism: One Response to the Threat of Global Climate Change
Semester
The international community has largely agreed that climate change is real and that there is sufficient knowledge upon which to base immediate action. In response to this threat, international governments adopted the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. This treaty established legally binding restrictions on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2010. A series of market-based “flexible mechanisms” were established to reduce the costs of complying with the Protocol. One of these, the Clean Development Mechanism, allows developed countries to fund projects in developing countries that elad to reductions of greenhouse gases in the host country. Forestry projects are allowed under the CDM, taking advantage of trees’ absorption of CO2 through photosynthesis. Such projects are controversial because of the difficulty of measuring the amount of carbon that trees sequester and because of concerns that such projects will not lead to sustainable development, one of the key criteria of the CDM. To address these concerns a number of baseline methodologies have been proposed to take into account the uncertainties surrounding the CDM. It will be necessary to observe the effects of individual projects before the success of the CDM can be evaluated.