COP15 Climate Talks: Seeing the Forest for the Trees

As the COP15 climate talks approach the final day, hopes remain in place that an agreement will be reached, although much of the news that is coming out of Copenhagen is not terribly heartening. Island nations most at risk due to changing sea level express frustration at insufficient action proposals, industrialized and developing nations continue to regard each other across a philosophical expanse, and protesters demanding firm action through conference disrupting measures have received a taste of pepper spray. President Obama remains intent on attending the event on the 18th, the COP's last day.

All is not grim, however; not by a long shot. As the New York Times has reported, significant progress has been achieved in a forest conservation and compensation framework that will account for the greenhouse gas mitigation provided by forests.

The framework is given the name Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD. What REDD would do is to allow for payments or credits for the carbon sequestration provided by maintenance and expansion of forests, and in some cases other natural systems such as peat bogs, that lock up carbon as plant life grows and thrives.

The construct holds appeal for rich and poor nations alike. Industrialized nations would have an opportunity to be credited with emissions reduction through carbon captured by forest growth, and poorer nations would have an opportunity to receive monetary payments. And we would all benefit from the hoped-for slowing if not reversal of a long-term pattern of forest loss and the critical ecological functions that have gone along with them.

Should a forestland-based carbon construct be hammered out and put into place, some increasingly sophisticated tools will be utilized to monitor and measure just how much carbon will be involved. In separate news, Nature reports on the increasing accuracy of satellite monitoring to gather good carbon measurement information from the world's forests.

The developing agreement has been described as among the most promising and potentially durable apparent achievements of the talks so far. World leaders, policy makers and scientists, however, are implored to roll up their sleeves and make the most of the remaining time at the talks. The Times quotes UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in speaking to the assembled participants on Tuesday in urgent terms: “We do not have another year to deliberate. Nature does not negotiate.”

Photo courtesy of FromDax, via Wikimedia Commons