Carbon traders bet on California redwoods

By Peter Henderson
GARCIA RIVER FOREST, California (Reuters) - A stand of young redwoods, survivors in what was once a magnificent forest of towering giants, could play a small part of the battle to slow global warming -- and forms part of an emerging market.
The trees, which trap quantities of the carbon dioxide that is warming the planet, are sold as living carbon traps or "sinks" rather than cut for timber, a model that could go global. But the prospect of a worldwide market could also attract hustlers eager to make a quick buck without making a difference to the planet.
"It's easy to game it," said forest owner Chris Kelly of the developing forest carbon market. "We just have to figure out how to do it right."
Deforestation accounts for a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the earth so slowing its pace is a relatively cheap way to limit global warming. That's why preserving forests is a top agenda item of international climate change talks scheduled for December.
But devising a fair way to reward those who own and control forests for their true contribution to the atmosphere has proved difficult and complicated.
The United States, which has lagged in addressing global warming, leads the world in developing a market for forests that soak up carbon dioxide emissions. The Garcia forest presents a test case of how the system could work -- or fail.
"When we talk about deforestation, we've already done it here," said Louis Blumberg of the Nature Conservancy, which helped plan carbon sales at the Garcia project. Some 95 percent of old-growth redwoods are already gone in California, and the state must better manage what has grown back.
"We moved carbon out of the ground and the trees into the air. We need to hit the reset button," said Blumberg, who directs the environmental group's California Climate Change project.
With its towering redwoods and gurgling streams, the Garcia forest looks wild and healthy -- but it's a shadow of what it once was. Six-foot-(2-meter) wide stumps hint at its former grandeur a century or two ago.
Ninety percent of the wood it once held is already gone. If managed like most commercial forests, it would probably stay at roughly its current size. However, the non-profit owners have sharply reduced timber harvesting and are making some of their profits by selling carbon credits, so the forest may recover, at least partially.
Climate change can be slowed in two ways:
-- cutting emissions from industry, automobiles, airplanes and other tools of industrial society, or
-- soaking up more emissions once they are in the air.
For forest projects to succeed, the world must find a way to stop emerging economies like Brazil and Indonesia from cutting down tropical jungles. U.S.-based projects, which focus on growing bigger trees and holding more carbon, could help a little but cannot in themselves solve the problem.
But the U.S. plan could offer a direction and an example for others to follow.


Source: Reuters