The Natural Fix?

The technical potential for mitigating climate change through biological carbon manage- ment, both through storage and sequestration is large. How well that potential can be realised depends on having a suitable policy framework to enable it. This section consid- ers how ecosystem carbon is treated within existing climate policy and some of the op- portunities and challenges for increasing the role it can play. OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES ECOSYSTEM CARBON MANAGEMENT IN INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE POLICY International climate policy only partly addresses emissions from land use change and does little to support biosequestration activities. The development of a comprehensive policy framework under UNFCCC for addressing ecosystem carbon management would be a very significant advance.

The potential of ecosystem carbon management is recognised in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol through the LU- LUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) sector. Un- der the LULUCF, developed (Annex I) countries must report on carbon stock changes from afforestation, reforestation and deforestation (since 1990), and can also elect to report on the additional activities of forest management, cropland manage- ment, grazing land management, and revegetation (Robledo and Blaser 2008). Developing countries have no requirement or opportunity to account for emissions and sequestration ac- tivities in the land use sector. Although developed countries can gain credit for forestry projects in developing countries through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the rules are restrictive (Dutschke 2007; Schlamadinger et al. 2007) and at the time of writing only three CDM forestry projects had been accepted.

The current policy framework for the land use sector has sever- al shortcomings (Cowie et al. 2007; Schlamadinger et al. 2007; Hohne et al. 2007). One of these is the lack of involvement of de- veloping countries, as described above. Another concern is the in- complete coverage of carbon sources and sinks as Parties are only required to account for forestry activities. All other activities are voluntary and there is no option for wetland accounting (Schlama- dinger et al. 2007; Henschel et al. 2008). Other issues include the complex monitoring and reporting requirements, the require- ment to account for managed lands only, and the difficulties in factoring out anthropogenic from natural disturbances (Benndorf et al. 2007). Perhaps the biggest criticism is that emissions re- ductions from the land use sector were not taken into account in the formulation of targets for developed countries, but can still be used to meet them. This has led many to see LULUCF as an off- set mechanism, rather than one that achieves overall emissions reductions (Cowie et al. 2007; Schlamadinger et al. 2007).

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