Spreadsheets are wonderful things. Rhett Butler has put together a really nice cost analysis comparing the value of tropical peat bogs to palm oil. In a nutshell, this chart shows how much money the owners of these peat bogs could make in the next thirty years, depending of course on the future prices of palm oil and carbon offset credits:
Take a look at the lower left-hand corner. Note that carbon credits put money in the landowners' hands from day one, while a new palm plantation puts them into debt for the first several years. This is a big advantage, because many people will take a short-term profit in lieu of potential future gains. My much maligned post suggesting that carbon credits might accelerate protection of forest property and the storage of carbon by motivating owners to put land into conservation easements would take advantage of the same instinct. Would I take a quarter million dollars now in the hope that I am helping to slow global warming, or hold out for the potential to make a million dollars in ten or twenty years?
And what would happen to the economy of Indonesia with hundreds of billions flowing into the economy? With millions freed from farm labor, will education levels climb and fertility rates drop? Will educated Indonesians with time to think begin to contribute answers to the world's problems? Carbon offsets to third-world countries can be viewed as a form of wealth sharing and poverty reduction, not to mention they will help preserve our life-giving biosphere. To date, attempts to reduce poverty and save our biodiversity have largely failed. Maybe it is time we tried something new (or maybe my personal ecofantasy of stopping the present extinction event has hopelessly biased my thinking).
Kerry-Boxer muddies handling of international offsets
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Ask Umbra on offsetting work trips
Comments
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naturescene Posted 12:24 pm
19 Jul 2007
I'm seeing the beginning of a huge market for ecological services...
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:38 pm
19 Jul 2007
When virtually all rainforest soils consist of peat.
And perhaps the most devistation and risk is in Brazil.
Not from Palm Oil, but from Soybeans.
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:40 pm
19 Jul 2007
Palm Oil atleast gets a lot more product from a much smaller footprint.
Also Soy creates significant quantities of N2O emmisions.
http://greyfalcon.net/n2o.png
http://greyfalcon.net/lcarough7.png
http://greyfalcon.net/forcing3.png
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tico89 Posted 2:02 pm
19 Jul 2007
One thing you said frightened me rather, even though I see your point:
Would I take a quarter million dollars now in the hope that I am helping to slow global warming, or hold out for the potential to make a million dollars in ten or twenty years?
Presumably you meant you would go for the first option. But isn't that the argument against most things, like recycling or getting rid of incandescents? That it costs more in the short-term?
If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:48 pm
19 Jul 2007
Land Area:
Indonesia
1,919,440 km²
Malaysia
329,847 km²
Amazon Rainforest
7,000,000 km²
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:52 am
20 Jul 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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mongabay Posted 3:01 am
20 Jul 2007
Because oil palm plantations are driving peat lands conversion in Indonesia, the purpose of the model was to show that there are other viable options when it comes to land use in Indonesia.
As the article states,
"Carbon finance is not limited to peatlands or Indonesia. Compensation for forest preservation is at least applicable to any tropical country where forest is being cleared, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions. With more than 13 million hectares of forest per year being cleared, releasing around 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the opportunity is tremendous. Indonesia alone lost 1.9 million hectares of forest per year between 2000 and 2005, but even a small country like the Solomon Islands could see immediate benefits under the establishment of a global framework on 'avoided deforestation.'"
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mongabay Posted 3:13 am
20 Jul 2007
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0508-amazon.html
Peat forests in Borneo can top 500 tons/ha; peatlands somewhat less.
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Whiskerfish Posted 8:36 pm
20 Jul 2007
When will this crap end? Eucalyptus sucks water and can become invasive. I wonder if they'll get carbon offset funding for making these green deserts?
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443 ...
Whiskerfish
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mongabay Posted 12:36 am
21 Jul 2007
There are also real concerns about land rights issue. If otherwise "low value" forest land -- at least as perceived by politicians and developers -- suddenly have value through carbon finance, it could be indigenous and rural populations who are evicted from their lands.
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Whiskerfish Posted 4:38 pm
21 Jul 2007
Greens have been asking for biofuels for a coupla decades now (as an alternative to evil fossil), and now that they've appeared we're frantically trying to backpedal.
We've also demonised the cutting of any native forest to such an extent that people now want to 'reforest' (I don't like calling the creation of green deserts reforestation) with exotic monoculture because chopping that down to sell won't look so bad.
What we should be asking for is restoration of diverse native forest, with selective logging of hard, high-value species out of this restored forest.
That'll give best biodiversity and carbon-sequestration buck.
In my view these exotic monocultures are not great carbon sequesterers. They're inherently holding less carbon than native forest (because fewer niches are filled), and because many of them are softwoods they're being turned into paper which all too easily rots and burns - sending carbon back into the atmosphere.
Hardwoods, on the other hand, are more likely to get turned into long-lived furniture and structural components of buildings etc. So if we're taking hardwoods out of a forest - carefully and sustainably - and that forest is then growing back to hold the carbon that we've just removed by logging, we're slowly adding to the stock of carbon sequestered over multi-hundred-year timespans, because the native hardwood we've just removed will hold carbon in its new form as family heirloom dinner table for a few generations.
It's very early in the morning here - have I made my point clearly enough?
Whiskerfish
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Billhook Posted 1:22 am
22 Jul 2007
On only one aspect would I differ with you -
being the silvicultural regime to maximize sustainable yields and so GW control.
Here in UK we have an ancient (pre-celtic) tradition of coppice & standards forestry (necessarily deciduous) that is still thriving.
In it, a minor fraction of trees are grown to maturity before being cut for lumber,
while the great majority are cut and regrown from the stump on a cycle averaging around 12 years.
(I.e. cut 1/12th of a given area each year).
Having a mature root ball, the coppice trees grow about 20% faster than new plantings would
i.e. give 20% more harvest per acre.
A tiny fraction may need replanting each harvest, but the strongest can endure for many centuries -
the oldest surviving in Britain were planted during the Roman Occupation.
And as my old ecology professor used to say;
"Coppice & Standards gives the highest biodiversity of any European ecosystem."
To my mind the young trees so harvested will at best go to a specific range of uses.
First, the twig, with its high concentration of trace elements, is trimmed off to rot down.
Second,the bark and wood is graded, with local post, pole and tanbark requirements being removed.
Third, the remainder is pyrolized, (kilned with minimal-oxygen) to produce charcoal, some potash, and woodgas.
The potash is returned to the coppice as a necessary trace element.
The charcoal can be milled for inclusion in Terra Preta farming,
while the Woodgas can be used for cooking or for village scale CHP,
or can be put through refinements to yield the excellent liquid fuel, Methanol.
(Max yield of about 1/3rd ton of petrol equivalent per ton of dry wood - half that if the charcoal is removed from the production line).
This spread of yields from a sustainable resource addresses a host of pressing issues,
ranging from food security, to verifyable carbon sequestration,
to IIIW liquid fuel supply, to reversing global deforestation sustainably,
to helping reverse the pernicious drift of rural peoples' to city slums.
Regards,
Bill
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:09 am
22 Jul 2007
The answer is to find ways to enforce the laws.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Billhook Posted 6:24 am
22 Jul 2007
I could well agree that "ways must be found to enforce the laws"
is a part of the answer,
but until those laws reflect a justice that includes the local inhabitants,
they'll remain problematic to enforce.
Once the community can become reliant on sustainable forestry,
on wood energy supply and on smallholding within in a forest landscape,
rogue loggers, and their corrupt helpers, are likely to get pretty short shrift.
The official acknowledgment of inalienable rights-&-duties of ownership of forest resources,
distributed equitably to village and family scales,
may well be a necessary step in establishing that sort of a steady-state or "just" economy.
So for me something nearer "the" answer might be :
"Ways must be found to codify internationally just laws reforming forest-land ownership
such that the entailed laws of sustainable usage are largely self-enforcing."
Moreover, the participation of external investors could bring valuable clout,
were local forest inhabitants' interests threatened by other enterprises,
and could also of course channel in new technologies, where appropriate,
particularly in terms of village scale wood-refinery equipment.
Yet foreign ownership has a poor reputation, to say the least,
so, to avoid resistance due to local mal-assumptions,
limiting that remote investment to "Leasehold Capital"
(meaning that remote shareholdings decline smoothly over an agreed period of years,
down to such residual goodwill as has been earned)
would affirm from the outset that such projects' success is a mutual interest and not a partisan one.
All of which is of course not easily achieved, but seems well worth working for.
The above was written a hundred feet below temperate rainforest in the Cambrian Mountains of Wales,
so I must declare an interest in the issue.
Regards,
Bill
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Jonas Posted 10:24 pm
20 Aug 2007
In palm oil, at least they gain a bit of money, and they're certain to get it as smallholders, because they are at the base of the production chain.
In avoided deforestation schemes, the money has to trickle down from the top to the base. Very unlikely that the money ever arrives at the right place.
In short, the graph is a bit flawed, because you'd have to add costs for good governance (this costs billions), for monitoring and measuring, for implementing mechanisms that ensure the poor actually get their money, etc... In practise, these costs could well cut the value of the scheme in half.
Moreover, the graph doesn't include the fact that soon it will be economical to turn the vast mass of biomass waste from palm plantations into cellulosic biofuels, easily doubling the value.
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