What’s carbon trading?

Parties with commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, the industrialized countries with greenhouse gas emission limitations, have accepted targets for limiting or reducing emissions. These targets are expressed as levels of allowed emissions or ‘assigned amounts’ over the 2008-2012 commitment periods. Emissions trading, as set out in Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol, allows countries that have emission units to spare – emissions permitted them but not ‘used’ – to sell this excess capacity to countries that are over their targets. Thus, a new commodity was created in the form of emission reductions or removals. Since carbon dioxide is the principle greenhouse gas, people speak simply of trading in carbon. Carbon is now tracked and traded like any other commodity. This is known as the carbon market.

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Money from carbon

One can earn money by felling trees and selling them, but also can earn money by not cutting down trees. In regards of this, people are rewarded for sequestering carbon through community based forest management.

It sounds somewhere unbelievable, but people are growing money from carbon. Saving of forest saves carbon and can earn money. Some community forests in Nepal are earning a huge sum of money by sequestering carbon.

To save carbon in forests, the watershed areas are starting to opt for alternative sources of energy.  The users of different community forests have started to make bio-gas, reformed cooking stoves made of iron. As firewood is the main source of energy, switching to alternative energy sources has reduced people’s dependence upon forest resources.  They have also started tree plantation in bare community and private lands. There are many more project running out there to assist this sector.

Deforestation often occurs in developing countries like Nepal because of poverty and political instability. The acting projects are trying to address those issues. Payments are being allocated to the communities mainly being based on four criteria – quantity of forest carbon saved above the baseline, number of households of indigenous people and Dalits(minors), the ratio of men and women and number of poor households within the project’s area. All the money are not allocated on the carbon quantity only because the size of population, per hectare forest in different areas and population composition in each area is different from the other. And allocating money on the basis of those four criteria is done to maintain the equity.

Nepal does not have any policy regarding the implementation of carbon trading. If the country opts for carbon trading, then there is a huge possibility of making more money by saving forests.

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Forest sinks carbon at large

Forests sink carbon at large. The density of the forest has helped maintain regional levels in the face of deforestation, research from US and Europe says.

Increased density in Europe and North America significantly raised carbon storage in trees despite little or more expansion of forest area, a report of the University of Helsinki, Finland.

The more density in South American Nations helped maintain regional carbon level in the face of deforestation, reports the journal Public Library of Science.

The researchers conclude that managing forests for timber growth and density offers a way to increase stored carbon, even with little or no expansion of forest area.

According to Rautiainen, in 2004 emissions and removals of carbon dioxide from land use, land-use change and forestry comprised about one fifth of total emissions. The great role of density means that not only conservation of forest area but also managing denser, healthier forests can mitigate carbon emission.

Remote sensing by satellite of the world’s forest area brings access to remote places and a uniform method, says co-author Paul E. Waggoner, Connecticut’s Agricultural Experiment Station. However, to speak of carbon, we must look beyond measurements of area and apply forestry methods traditionally used to measure timber volumes.

Ultimately, forests are like cities – they can grow both by spreading and by becoming denser.

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