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CONSERVATION CORNER
(For the week of October 15, 2007)
Part 1: Carbon Sequestration
by James L. Cummins

This is the first of a two-part series on carbon sequestration.

The issue of climate change, of which carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas (GHG) and a major contributor, will be addressed in a variety of ways. Both domestic and international efforts are underway to develop, through regulatory mandate and incentives, market mechanisms that will promote the reduction of GHG in the upper atmosphere. Regulatory mandates are key to driving the development of these markets and will require legal principles and practices to assure compliance in quantifying these GHG reductions and offsets. These are currently being debated in a number of state legislatures as well as the U.S. Congress. There is a strong need for developing national policy that supports clearly-defined rules under which carbon sequestration offset projects can be registered, traded or marketed. Currently, the eligibility rules are somewhat elusive and exist within the four primary registries: the National Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Chicago Climate Exchange, the California Climate Action Registry and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast United States. Led by the California Climate Action Registry, some 31 states have committed to the development of a Climate Registry to develop common protocols for use in all aspects of climate change.

The project eligibility rules for each of these initiatives currently developed are very different and, therefore, create unnecessary costs and barriers that limit investment in carbon offset projects as a viable mitigation technique for climate change. Consensus is needed from the agricultural, forestry, environmental, finance/trading, energy and policy sectors to develop such a needed policy for the state, regional, national and international levels. It is imperative that uniform national GHG accounting protocols be developed that employ simple, streamlined accounting and reporting requirements, and are based on internationally recognized methodologies.

As a Board member of the Binational Softwood Lumber Council, before the end of the year, we will bring together policy makers and leaders from a broad array of forest/forest products, environmental, finance/trading, energy and policy leaders to examine the role of forests and forest products in the climate change debate and the barriers that exist to carbon trading. Forests and forest products represent one of the greatest opportunities to affect climate change through the natural sequestration process. This process can be enhanced if proper policies and procedures are established which encourage sound forest management, or hindered if not done in a strategic and consistent manner. Attendees will focus on promoting the development of consistent protocols for measuring, accounting, certifying and monitoring all aspects of forest carbon sequestration. These basic elements will need to be in place to assure that carbon markets are cost-effective, consistent, reliable and fair.

This column will be continued next week.