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Offsets, Climate Change & Wilderness

A recent review of the UK’s strategy to reduce carbon emissions in a blog by George Monbiot in the Guardian used back of the envelope calculations to show that the UK’s emissions reductions plan relied heavily on offsets in poor countries to reach its targets, with the very perverse result that under the UK plan, poor countries would in fact be expected to reduce their domestic emissions more than the UK. This would of course be an absurd outcome, even if the UK were paying for those emissions reductions, and in any case unacceptable to developing nations around the world.

This is not to say that offsets are entirely a bad thing, or should be taken off the table. The fact remains that we need to make deep cuts in emissions quickly and one way to make deep cuts quickly and in a cost effective manner is to use offsets, including protecting large wilderness areas in the tropics. However, the point is how, or more precisely when offsets are used: they should only be available to developed countries after those countries have achieved deep reductions in domestic emissions. In other words, if a country successfully reduces its carbon emissions below an aggressive initial target, making offsets and trade-able permits available to help it reduce emissions even further would seem to be an acceptable approach. But offsets should not be the starting point.

So what does that mean for wilderness protection? Reducing and eventually eliminating the roughly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions that come from tropical forests is still an urgent priority, but it will be necessary for the global community to find some additional financial mechanisms beyond market mechanisms to make this happen, at least in the short term. Fortunately, there are a number of options for filling the funding gap.

One option is to use a “hybrid” mechanism, i.e. auction revenues from cap and trade systems to pay for wilderness protection – an approach several countries have already taken or plan to take (Germany and the US for example), and one which could produce billions of dollars. Another is to use a fund-based system, increasing bilateral and multilateral development assistance. This would certainly help, and is especially important for the institution and capacity building necessary to protect tropical forests. But traditional overseas development assistance is unlikely to provide funding at the necessary scale. Another is a proposal to use taxes on international aviation and maritime industries, which also has good potential, but which of course will be fiercely opposed by those industries.

It’s not yet clear exactly what the mix will be. But there is no question that there are ways to make funding available. We absolutely need to act quickly, and wilderness protection must be part of the solution – we can’t avoid dangerous temperature increases unless we protect wilderness. But the need to act quickly should never be used as an excuse to make developing countries bear the brunt of emissions reductions.

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