Rural development through carbon finance
- Frankfurt Peter Lang 2009
- 194 p.
In its recent Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculates that about 20 percent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. emissions result from land use change and primarily deforestation. At the same time, it is estimated that roughly one fourth of total emissions have been ab sorbed by terrestrial ecosystems through re-growth on cleared land, land man agement practices and fertilizing effects of carbon dioxide and elevated nitrogen deposition. Hence, forests are an integral part of the global carbon cycle and play an important role for the global climate, in addition to their significance for biodiversity and products that are crucial for local people as well as for society as a whole.
The international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Con vention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) just lately added authority to the cli mate-relevance of forest ecosystems by adopting the 'Bali Action Plan'. This framework addresses enhanced national and international action on mitigation of climate change, including the "consideration of policy approaches and positive incentives (...) to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries." It is clear that forests will play a more prominent role in the post-2012 climate re gime, which is highly desirable for a more holistic and concerted approach to tackle climate change in the post-Kyoto era.
But even before considering new mechanisms and approaches it is equally important to scrutinize the already existing portfolio of options under the Kyoto Protocol and to analyze if and how those mechanisms have met the expectations placed in them. To this end the study at hand delivers a valuable and timely con tribution to the international discussion. It embarks on the assessment of the so called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as a means to promote rural de velopment and to simultaneously contribute to climate protection. This twin ob jective is the rationale of the CDM, one of the flexible implementation instru ments of the Kyoto Protocol. The idea of the CDM is to meet the emission re duction commitments of industrialized countries under the strict condition of economic efficiency while promoting sustainable development in the non industrialized world. The study hypothesizes that CDM projects in the land use and forestry sector are an efficient instrument of climate change mitigation that contributes to rural development and poverty alleviation at the same time. The potential to do so is high since roughly two thirds of the world's poor live in ru ral areas, with agriculture and forestry being the major source of their subsis tence. Therefore, CDM operations in this sector are envisaged to yield a double dividend. However, the study also cautions that practical advice for project de velopment is very much needed in order to entirely explore the capability of the current CDM regulations for rural development.