Source: Bloomberg
Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Sergio Tembe said his “blood boils” every time he sees a truck laden with logs stolen from his Indian tribe’s land in the jungle of northern Brazil.
“We need to do something, otherwise there will be nothing left,” said the tribal leader, 43, as he drove his black pickup along a dirt track. About 30 percent of the rainforest in the reservation has been destroyed, he said.
Deep in the Amazon, the Tembe Tenetehara Indians are figuring out how to get paid for protecting their native lands. They may use an arrangement known as REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, which is being negotiated today at the global climate talks in Copenhagen.
Companies such as London-based oil producer BP Plc and American Electric Power Co. of Columbus, Ohio, have invested in REDD projects in Costa Rica and Bolivia. Because trees absorb carbon dioxide, investors in preservation projects can be rewarded with credits for the greenhouse emissions they avoid.
Credits have been sold to airline travelers and utilities wanting to offset their emissions in a voluntary market valued at less than $1 billion a year.
That may swell to as much as $33 billion a year by 2020 if REDD becomes part of a new United Nations climate-preservation agreement, according to a study by Johan Eliasch, the U.K.’s special representative on deforestation.
The REDD plan, which could spur more industrial polluters to buy the “offsets,” is being debated at climate talks and may receive an initial endorsement as early as today, Papua New Guinea special envoy Kevin Conrad said in an interview.
Negotiators were planning on working through the night and if no progress is made, ministers will take up the talks next week, said Roman Czebiniak, who follows the negotiations for the environmental group Greenpeace.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman
REDD proponents include Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association, whose 169 members include units of New York banks Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
Morgan Stanley spokesman Mark Lake declined to comment on whether the bank supports a REDD proposal. Michael DuVally at Goldman Sachs also declined to comment.
Preserving the Tembe’s jungle, southeast of the Amazon River, may generate as much as $3 million a year for the tribe of 1,184 people, said Juscelino Bessa, 48, head of Brazil’s Indian Protection Agency, or Funai, in the northern state of Para. The Tembe live by hunting, collecting nuts and growing manioc and other vegetables.
Logging on the reservation is illegal though many members of the community collaborate with loggers in exchange for bribes, Bessa said.
U.S. Legislation
The tribe’s plan hinges REDD being in a UN-sponsored treaty and U.S. legislation to cap greenhouse gases, said Ronald Shiflett, 56, president of C-Trade Comercializadora de Carbono Ltda., a Rio de Janeiro consultant hired by the Tembe to design the project.
Existing climate policies don’t recognize REDD as an emission-reduction mechanism. Burning or cutting trees and undergrowth accounts for about 17 percent of worldwide emissions, according to the UN.
Brazil, with one-third of the world’s tropical forest area, pledged last month to reduce its own emissions for 2020 by 36.1 percent to 38.9 percent from current projections. Slowing Amazon deforestation would generate about half that gain, Environment Minister Carlos Minc said.
The Tembe want to protect their 279,000 hectares (690,000 acres) of jungle from loggers, ranchers and miners. The Indians plan to set up revenue-generating activities such as the processing and sale of acai, an Amazonian berry, and get training to patrol the jungle and chase off loggers, said Valdeci Tembe, 43, another tribal leader.
Greenpeace says a REDD mechanism would allow countries and companies to “greenwash” their pollution, said Paulo Adario, 59, the organization’s Amazon campaign coordinator in Brazil.
‘Permission to Pollute’
“REDD can’t be used as a permission to pollute,” said Adario. Operators of coal-fired power plants, airlines, shipping companies and other polluters may have no incentive to invest in new, more efficient motors and equipment and cut emissions if they can buy forestry credits instead, Greenpeace says.
REDD projects don’t provide scientifically quantifiable emissions reductions and may be based on questionable carbon monitoring and reporting by developing nations, the group says.
A Greenpeace study shows the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project in the Bolivian jungle isn’t significantly reducing emissions.
The Nature Conservancy, which helped set up the project, says it avoided more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions that would have been caused by logging and deforestation between 1997 and 2005. After 30 years, the project is expected to avoid the release of 5.8 million tons of carbon emissions, the Arlington, Virginia-based organization says on its Web site.
Harrison Ford
Conservation International, which is also based in Arlington and whose board includes actor Harrison Ford, says climate change can’t be solved without a profit-driven market.
Sergio Tembe said his forest needs such a market.
“Last month we were able to get the police in here to arrest 30 people who were cutting down our castanheiras,” he said, referring to the Brazil nut tree. “We don’t always have that kind of help.”