Water-quality trading can reduce river pollution

EurekAlert via Duke University: Allowing polluters to buy, sell or trade water-quality credits could significantly reduce pollution in river basins and estuaries faster and at lower cost than requiring the facilities to meet compliance costs on their own, a new Duke University-led study finds.

The scale and type of the trading programs, though critical, may matter less than just getting them started. "Our analysis shows that water-quality trading of any kind can s
ignificantly lower the costs of achieving Clean Water Act goals," said Martin W. Doyle, professor of river science and policy at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

"All other things being equal, regulators should allow trading to occur at the river basin scale as an appropriate first step. Larger spatial scales may be needed later if abatement costs increase," said Doyle, who also serves as director of the water policy program at Duke's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

The new study was published this month in the journal Water Resources Research. It comes at a time when regulators are debating the optimal scales and types of trading programs to reduce water pollution in some of the nation's largest and most troubled watershed systems, including the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which spans 64,000 square miles in parts of six states.

In water-quality trading programs, facilities facing higher pollution control costs are allowed to meet their regulatory obligations by purchasing pollution reduction credits from other polluters in their trading market. The end result -- improved water quality -- is the same, but the time and money needed to achieve it is less.

New programs are often delayed because regulators want to get as many things right up front as they can. Concerns include how big or small a trading market should be, whether it should include interstate trading, and whether it should be based on one-for-one trades or trading ratios....

Putting a price on nature would be disastrous

Nick Dearden in the "povertymatters" blog at the Guardian (UK): As UN climate negotiations rumbled on in Warsaw, big business came together with conservation groups in Edinburgh last week at the inaugural World Forum on Natural Capital to put a price on nature.

The idea goes back to the Rio+20 conference in 2012, when a group of investors drafted the natural capital declaration. It argues that if we price everything nature gives us (wildlife, plants, forests, waterways, pollination, you name it), companies would think twice before destroying them.

Like advocates of the market for more than 200 years, the drafter of the declaration cannot abide the idea of "the commons" – commonly held resources whose reproduction and use is not subject to the laws of finance. The English enclosures, starting around the 15th century, and the Scottish clearances, from the 18th century, turned most common land in our country into private property, generating the profits that fed the Industrial Revolution.

In its quest for new markets today, finance is again intent on privatising the "global commons". The first step, as is clearly expressed in the natural capital declaration, is to start thinking of the environment as if it were capital, and to price it accordingly.

Surely few of the conservation groups gathered in Edinburgh last week would welcome the wholesale selling-off of nature. But either through desperation at the scale of the environmental crisis, or in ignorance of the political implications of the project, many are going along with this first step of putting a price on nature.

As one delegate told me: "We're just trying to value nature better." Ironically, it took an investment professional to point out the dangers that seemed to have escaped so many NGOs. "Be very careful," he warned. "Once you put a price on nature in order to protect something, you will find someone will pay that price in order to destroy it."...

An 1889 estate map for Moorooka Park, Brisbane. This was created for a land auction showing a plan of allotments to be sold on the 2nd March, 1889 by W.J. Hooker, Auctioneers, Brisbane

Rich countries must end obsession with private climate finance

A press release from Oxfam: Rich countries’ obsession with private finance means millions of poor and vulnerable people could be left to face increasingly extreme and erratic climate alone warned Oxfam today as ministers from around the globe meet in Warsaw to discuss how they deliver on their climate finance commitments.

Rich countries promised to deliver $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries reduce their emissions and adapt to a changing climate. However two US-hosted Ministerial Meetings and pre-COP finance discussions during 2013 have focused almost exclusively on the role of private finance in meeting this target.

The invitation for Ministers to attend today’s meeting also highlighted the need for participants to come prepared to present ideas on how to mobilize funds from the private sector. Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International said: “Private finance is not a panacea. It has a role to play, particularly on projects aimed at reducing emissions, but it will not reach the most vulnerable people in the poorest countries who need help to survive in the face of increasingly extreme and erratic weather.”

“Rich country governments must stop using the private sector to side step their own climate finance promises and seize this opportunity to sort out the public funding mess. Murky accounting and a lack of transparency mean the world’s poorest countries have no idea what money will be available and when. The uncertainty makes it impossible for them to take action to protect their populations.

“Rich countries must make it clear what new money they are putting on the table now and how they will deliver the $100 billion a year they promised by 2020. Kicking this issue down the road again could spell disaster for poor communities who need help to adapt to a changing climate and lead to a breakdown in trust that will bury hopes for agreement on a global climate deal in 2015.”...

OECD-FAO expect slower global agricultural production growth

A press release from the OECD: Global agricultural production is expected to grow 1.5% a year on average over the coming decade, compared with annual growth of 2.1% between 2003 and 2012, according to a new report published by the OECD and FAO today.

Limited expansion of agricultural land, rising production costs, growing resource constraints and increasing environmental pressures are the main factors behind the trend. But the report argues that farm commodity supply should keep pace with global demand.

The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2013-2022 expects prices to remain above historical averages over the medium term for both crop and livestock products due to a combination of slower production growth and stronger demand, including for biofuels,

The report says agriculture has been turned into an increasingly market-driven sector, as opposed to policy-driven as it was in the past, thus offering developing countries important investment opportunities and economic benefits, given their growing food demand, potential for production expansion and comparative advantages in many global markets.

However, production shortfalls, price volatility and trade disruption remain a threat to global food security. The OECD/FAO Outlook warns: “As long as food stocks in major producing and consuming countries remain low, the risk of price volatility is amplified. A wide-spread drought such as the one experienced in 2012, on top of low food stocks, could raise world prices by 15-40 percent.”

China, with one-fifth of the world’s population, high income growth and a rapidly expanding agri-food sector, will have a major influence on world markets, and is the special focus of the report. China is projected to remain self-sufficient in the main food crops, although output is anticipated to slow in the next decade due to land, water and rural labour constraints....

View from Bukowica hill, Nowotaniec, farmland, parish and main market, Lipiec. Poland, shot by Marek Silarski, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The escalating cost of forest conservation

AlphaGalileo via the National University of Singapore: In the face of unprecedented deforestation and biodiversity loss, policy makers are increasingly using financial incentives to encourage conservation. However, a research team led by the National University of Singapore (NUS) revealed that in the long run, conservation incentives may struggle to compete with future agricultural yields.

...Incentives are being levereged in dozens of tropical developing countries to conserve forests, to protect biodiversity and reduce carbon emissions from deforestation. This incentive-based approach is comparatively inexpensive, as low agricultural yields and widespread poverty often mean that relatively small incentives can motivate many landholders to protect their land for conservation.

As a result, this approach has become a leading climate change mitigation strategy adopted by the United Nations as policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. In a bid to assess the future viability of these types of conservation programmes, the team, comprising researchers from NUS, ETH Zurich and University of Cambridge, developed a framework and model that looked at the strategy’s effectiveness in the context of intensified farming practices.

...However, the researchers highlight how those higher yields and incomes will also increase financial incentives for farmers to clear more forest for agriculture. As a result, financial incentives to encourage farmers to protect forests and not expand agriculture would need to escalate as well. They expect farmers who were once willing to protect forests for a comparative pittance could, in a matter of years, demand more for their conservation actions. Small-scale farmers might also be displaced by larger commercial ventures as farming becomes more lucrative, and as profits increase with growing global demand for agricultural products.

After taking these factors into account, the researchers found that while the current costs of forest conservation in many countries are very low, future changes in agricultural practices could radically increase the cost of conservation...

A pile of illegally logged rosewood in Madagascar, shot by Erik Patel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Modern food supply technology 'key to affordable food'

Joel D. Adriano in SciDev.net: The modernisation of farm-to-market supply chains is important for increasing farmers' income, alleviating poverty, cutting food waste and improving the affordability of food staples, according to the authors of a book. The Quiet Revolution in Staple Food Value Chains: Enter the Dragon, the Elephant, and the Tiger is a joint project by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that was launched last month.

The book examines the movement of rice and potatoes from the farm to the consumer — known as the 'value chain' — in three Asian countries: Bangladesh, China and India. Rice and potato are food staples in Asia.

Thomas Reardon, a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University, United States, and one of the book's authors, says that the study also has lessons for South-East Asian and Pacific island states.

He says that all three countries have found ways to modernise the value chains of these staple crops. He adds that the changes had been introduced at the grassroots and brought about mainly by mobile phones, the use of improved crop varieties and technological changes related to rice milling and potato storage.

Reardon says the rapid rise of modern cold storage facilities for potatoes, which enable them to be supplied out of season, had led to more stable prices and higher incomes for farmers.... 

Paying farmers to protect forest watersheds in Vietnam & China: The long-term prognosis

Maya Thatcher in Forest News, a blog by the Center for International Forestry Research: As China and Vietnam move toward decentralised, market-based economies, they will need to improve the cost-effectiveness of ambitious programmes offering cash rewards to farmers who help protect forests, watersheds and other vulnerable ecosystems, a new study by the Center for International Forestry Research suggests.

Local communities, whose participation at the moment is generally mandatory, will also need to have a greater say in how they manage the land. “The key is to find a way to make these Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes sustainable in the long run,” said Vijay Kolinjivadi, lead author of the report looking at the governments’ driving role in the projects and what impact that has. “As currently designed, these schemes may eventually require external funding, from international donors or non-governmental organisations,” he said. “Local stakeholders need to understand the long-term benefits of ecological stewardship.”

Policymakers across the globe worry about how the food, water and shelter needs of seven billion people may be irreparably damaging our planet. The clearing of tropical forests, intensified farming production and industrial-scaled ranching have resulted in soil erosion, deterioration of water resources and a general loss of biodiversity. China and Vietnam, which have both experienced unprecedented economic growth in recent decades, are offering incentives to those who adopt land use practices that benefit society as a whole.

But these programmes, aimed at protecting forests and promoting watershed conservation, have cost tens of billions of dollars. And because they are carried out on state-controlled land, farmers have little choice but to take part and have little or no sense of ownership.

Kolinjivadi hopes district chiefs, farmer councils, and other local institutions will eventually play a larger, more significant role. “We have a unique opportunity here,” said Kolinjivadi, who sees the role of the government eventually shifting from primary driver to facilitator, promoting direct, fair negotiations between contracting parties....

A forest wetlands in Tịnh Biên and An Gaing, Vietnam, shot by Thuydaonguyen, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Laissez-faire failing world’s dwindling water resources

Stephen Leahy in IPS: Growing water shortages in many countries are a major threat to global security and development and should be a top priority at the U.N. Security Council, a panel of experts said in a new report.

However, that report ignores the biggest threat to water security: neoliberal policies of the free market economic system laying waste to the natural world and turning water into a commodity, activists counter.

China and India will not have enough fresh water to meet their needs before 2030, according to the “Global Water Crisis” report released this week. Well before that time, water shortages will increase conflicts and worsen instability in sub-Saharan Africa, West Asia and North Africa, it warned. “Using water the way we have in the past simply will not sustain humanity in future,” said Chrétien, a co-chair of the InterAction Council (IAC), a group of 40 prominent former government leaders.

The IAC, the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and Canada’s Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation convened a conference of water experts in 2011 whose deliberations ultimately resulted in the report: “The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security Issue”.

With about one billion more mouths to feed worldwide by 2025, global agriculture alone will require additional water equivalent to the annual flow of 20 Niles or 100 Colorado Rivers every year, the report found. Meanwhile, greater competition between the energy sector and other water users for already limited freshwater resources in many regions will impact future energy development, with significant potential impacts on energy reliability and security....

Kvinnefossen is a 120m high waterfall on road Rv55 in Leikanger municipality 2km east of Hella, Norway, shot by Sogning, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Mozambique's agricultural fortunes rest on a choice between Obama and Annan

Joseph Hanlon in the povertymatters blog at the Guardian (UK): Mozambique is a development paradox. Rural poverty is increasing despite high growth rates and billions of dollars in aid. Now the country has been targeted by two contrasting models of agricultural development. The Barack Obama model was backed by the G8 in Washington in May, while the Kofi Annan model was proposed by the Africa Progress Panel (APP). Which works better for the poor?

The APP, which is chaired by Annan and counts a former IMF head and a former US Treasury secretary among its members, is heavyweight and conservative. It says one of the biggest dangers in Africa is the growing inequality between rich and poor, which is creating a threat of social instability. In sub-Saharan Africa, the APP argues, "the pattern of trickle-down growth is leaving too many people in poverty". The panel warns that Mozambique is one of Africa's more unequal countries, pointing out that – despite having huge agricultural potential – the republic is a net importer of staple foods.

The APP report calls for "fundamental change" in both donor and African government policies. "Raising the productivity of smallholder farmers is critical," it says. "Smallholder agriculture must be placed at the centre of a green revolution in Africa." This will require more government action and more support for small farmers. Let's call this the Annan model.

The second agricultural model for Mozambique was agreed in Washington in May, when G8 leaders adopted a new alliance for food security and nutrition proposed by President Obama and USAid. The idea is to use giant agribusiness to end hunger in Mozambique and five other countries. The first project in Mozambique will be to support Cargill, the giant grain trader and largest private company in the world, to take 40,000 hectares of farmland. US officials say this will include some smallholder contract farming, which means Cargill will not make enough profit from the investment, so the giant transnational grain trader must be subsidised from G8 aid. Let's call this the Obama model.

The two models are incompatible. The APP report points specifically to the very large land concessions in Mozambique, and warns that "for Africans, the benefits of large-scale land acquisitions are questionable"....

Farmers in Mozambique, shot by Alan Meier, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

No risk of flood, but forced to insure

Jeffrey Meitrodt in the Star-Tribune (Minnesota): Thousands of homeowners in Minnesota and across the country are being pressured to buy flood insurance by their mortgage lenders, despite evidence showing that many of these homes are well outside danger zones. Though the federal government's new flood maps are more accurate than ever, state and local officials say lenders and their agents are making obvious mistakes in their interpretation of flood risk.

Chisago County officials said they have intervened this year on behalf of 20 property owners who were wrongly classified as living in high-risk zones where flood insurance would be mandatory. Officials in Stearns and Washington counties also have taken steps to correct the record for dozens of homeowners who face minimal, if any, risk of flooding. "We're seeing too many problems," said Ceil Strauss, Minnesota's floodplain coordinator.

In many cases, lenders are giving homeowners just 45 days to buy flood insurance or threatening to obtain it for them, often at exorbitant prices. Some homeowners have been told their premiums could run as high as $6,400 a year.

Authorities expect the problem to get worse. Over the next two years, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will introduce new flood maps in more than two dozen counties in Minnesota, including Hennepin, the state's most populous. The maps will trigger more flood-risk reviews by mortgage lenders.

Often, lenders receive commissions for the new flood policies they impose on borrowers. Fees can amount to as much as 20 percent of the annual premium. In New York, officials are exploring whether to ban lenders from charging commissions on the forced placement of property insurance, calling such payments a "perverse incentive."....

Norman County, MN, March 29, 2009 --Flooded farms and rural communities in Norman County adjacent to the Red River of the North. Andrea Booher/FEMA

Scientists develop new carbon accounting method to reduce farmers' use of nitrogen fertilizer

Terra Daily via SPX: ... In 2011, corn was planted on more than 92 million acres in the U.S., helping the nation continue its trend as the world's largest exporter of the crop. Corn is a nitrogen-loving plant. To achieve desired production levels, most U.S. farmers apply synthetic nitrogen fertilizer to their fields every year.

Once nitrogen fertilizer hits the ground, however, it's hard to contain and is easily lost to groundwater, rivers, oceans and the atmosphere. "That's not good for the crops, the farmers or the environment," says Phil Robertson, a scientist at Michigan State University and principal investigator at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Kellogg Biological Station (KBS) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site. KBS is one of 26 such NSF LTER sites across the United States and around the globe in ecosystems from forests to coral reefs.

...Robertson and colleagues are working on a way to help make the time and expense of efforts to mitigate fertilizer loss worthwhile. They're putting the finishing touches on a program that would pay farmers to apply less nitrogen fertilizer in a way that doesn't jeopardize yields. The program, called the nitrous oxide greenhouse gas reduction methodology, is being conducted in partnership with the Electric Power Research Institute.

"This project is a great example of how long-term, fundamental research can contribute practical solutions to important environmental problems of concern in the U.S.--and ultimately around the world," says Matt Kane, an NSF program director for LTER...
"Improving the efficiency of nitrogen use for field crop agriculture holds great promise for helping mitigate climate change," Robertson says.

The nitrous oxide greenhouse gas reduction methodology, which is a way for farmers to participate in existing and emerging carbon markets, recently was approved by the American Carbon Registry and is in its final stages of validation by the Verified Carbon Standard--two carbon market standards that operate worldwide....

An EPA photo of a corn field, circa 1872

Memo to Rio+20: 'green economy' doesn't mean monetising nature

Hannah Griffiths in the PovertyMatters blog at the Guardian (UK): ...As the Rio+20 anniversary conference approaches, a battle rages over the definition of another term: "green economy". "A green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication" is a key conference theme. It sounds good, but what does it mean?

According to one of the official preparatory documents...: "Several delegations proposed the valuing of ecosystem services and internalising of environmental externalities as key elements of a green economy, as well as green accounting (pdf); while some delegations cautioned against further marketisation of nature's services."

The jargon masks some diametrically opposing views. On one side, many northern governments are saying we trash the natural world because we don't value it properly. So far, so good. But they go on to confuse "value" with "price", which is where it all starts to break down. They argue that to conserve or protect the resources and functions we need from nature, we need to ascribe a financial value to them and bring them into the market. Then we will pay the proper price for nature and stop destroying it.

...A market-based approach to dealing with natural resources is not an entirely new concept. The idea behind the UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation programme (Redd), for example, is that if the carbon stored in forests is valued and quantified, forests will be seen as more valuable standing than they would be cut down.

But by allowing companies to "offset" their logging by planting tree plantations, Redd has opened the door to the legal destruction of rainforests. It has also led to the confiscation of land from people who often do not have formal ownership deeds to the land they have used in common for generations. For example, in Uganda more than 22,000 people were evicted from their land, allegedly at gunpoint, to allow the New Forests Company, a UK firm, to plant trees to earn carbon credits....

Deforestation in the Usambara Mountains in Lushoto District, Tanga Region, Tanzania. Shot by Mohsin S. Karmali, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

A private sector approach to climate change risk

A press release from DLA Piper via insurancenews.net: DLA Piper in cooperation with Sydney based corporate advisory firm, Future Ready and Queensland based specialist risk management firm, Climate Planning, are developing a guide for company directors facing decision making about Climate Change. Titled Climate in the Boardroom, the project is funded by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) based at Griffith University.

According to Mark Baker-Jones, Special Counsel at DLA Piper, "Business leaders need to be aware of the constraints and controls imposed by regulatory measures intended to deal with the effects of sea level rise, storm tide inundation and erosion, many of which are complex."

"To date, there has been very little good practical guidance available for decision makers and this is affecting corporate decision making both in Australia and globally. Business leaders are simply finding it too difficult to sift through the rhetoric to access the truly useful information they need to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements," he said.

Future Ready's Director of Adaptability, Gareth Johnston, said "Recent flooding and extreme weather events both nationally and internationally demonstrate that climate impacts will affect the bottom line of most sectors. We are bringing together business leaders and climate change impact specialists to explore barriers and enablers for effective adaptation."...

A 2010 flood in Ames, Iowa, a photo from FEMA

Carbon ‘like Titanic’ sinking on EU permit glut

Ewa Krukowska in Bloomberg: The plunge in European Union carbon permits is putting prices on course for their longest-ever decline and shows no sign of ending as member states wrangle over curbing a glut in the market.

EU allowances for December fell 5.2 percent this year, extending a streak of quarterly losses stretching back to March 2011. Prices may drop a further 50 percent and lawmakers will probably fail to cut supply in the world’s largest emissions market through a so-called set-aside process, according to UBS AG. For First Climate AG, an asset manager that advises the European Investment Bank’s carbon funds, emissions are unlikely to recover in the next quarter.

“Unless EU governments come up with a surprise decision to strongly support the set-aside or ambitious mid-term emission- reduction targets, I don’t see prices moving up much over the coming months,” Tuomas Rautanen, head of regulatory affairs and consulting at First Climate in Zurich, said by e-mail.

A surplus of permits and the inability of European nations to agree how to tackle the glut in the $120 billion market sent prices to an all-time low this year. Verified emissions data due on April 2 may show 2011 discharges from more than 12,000 factories and power plants in the region’s trading system fell short of the number of issued-and-sold permits for a third year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance...

Managing private and public adaptation to climate change

EurekAlert: New research has found that individuals and the private sector have an important role to play in the provision of public policies to help society adapt to the impacts of climate change. Writing in the journal Global Environmental Change, Dr Emma Tompkins and Hallie Eakin from the University of Southampton, say that public investments alone cannot reduce our vulnerability to climate change.

Their research shows evidence of individuals, households, firms and corporations are deliberately supporting the wider public to adapt to climate change by incurring the social costs of the adaptation themselves. This apparently altruistic behaviour is both surprising, and of interest to governments who (given the current financial conditions) may have to rely on private actors (individuals, households, firms and corporations) to enable widespread adaptation to climate change. Adaptations are the processes and actions that enable people to cope better with increasingly challenging weather and climatic conditions – they can play an important role in improving society's climate resilience.

More specifically, Tompkins and Eakin's research found that to generate these public benefits a range of institutional mechanisms are required. This special case of adaptation has been neglected in climate policy so far.

Dr Emma Tompkins, a Reader in Environment and Development at the University of Southampton, says: "Adaptation to climate change is already occurring, it is being delivered by public and private actors, yet there has been little analysis of this underexplored area, where individuals and private sector groups provide support for public adaptations but see no benefit from the adaptations themselves.

"Actions by individuals and the private sector will undoubtedly be critical in facilitating public adaptation to climate change. For example, homeowners' decisions to have grassy gardens instead of paved decks can have wider adaptation benefits by enhancing drainage and reducing the risk of urban floods. However, scaling up such activities requires institutional mechanisms such as social contracts, modified sustainability reporting, or new forms of payments and charges for adaptation service provision. "

Nothing says adaptation like a 16th century woodcut of a wyvern eating its tail...

Forest carbon offers up hard lessons

A new publication highlighted in Carbon Positive: Two decades of attempts to restore and preserve forests to help combat climate change have seen the slow rise of a “forest carbon” sector that is vast in opportunity, but not for the faint-hearted. That’s according to a report, “Investing in forest carbon: Lessons from the first 20 years” by research organisations the Katoomba Group, Ecosystem Marketplace and Forest Trends.

The report draws on the findings and feedback gleaned in this group’s annual State of the Forest Carbon Markets surveys in recent years. It identifies the lessons for project developers learned the hard way in a difficult, emerging industry over 20 years. Many of the opportunities in forest carbon lie in developing countries, with all the governance, institutional and infrastructure challenges they pose.

Top of the list is that although the rules are often unclear, it is vital for project developers to know them as best they can. What are the national rules applying to carbon projects in the country of operation, and are there clear lines of authority? Who owns the carbon stored and the financial credit asset over it —the landowner, the government, or another entity?

…The importance of credible methodologies to underpin projects is also vital, made all the more difficult in the past because their availability has been badly lacking. “The key is that clarity, stability, and enforceability of legal issues are fundamental components of investor and project developer confidence in potential forest carbon projects and host countries,” the report says.

Lesson two is get used to complexity and time-consuming processes; dealing with all the parties involved, communities, landowners, local and national authorities, is a minefield. Significant expertise is needed to resolve the numerous technical issues arise in the assessment, design, monitoring, and verification of forest carbon
projects.

Lesson three is be conservative in all estimates of carbon, benefits, time, and cost. Project development is time- and cost-intensive and many projects have had higher costs, required more time, and generated less carbon than originally anticipated.

…The report authors say the sense they get from participants is that forest carbon won’t see significant expansion in the next three years unless the sector is becomes part of a regulatory system, as opposed to the voluntary market which has driven it over the past three years...

With REDD, could financial markets become species' extinction risk?

Mongabay: The emergence of a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism for protecting forests could introduce new risks for biodiversity by linking conservation finance to exotic financial derivatives, warn researchers writing in the journal Conservation Letters.

Jacob Phelps, Edward L. Webb, and Lian P. Koh argue that REDD could effectively link the fate of some species to the short-term whims of the carbon market. Conservation projects funded primarily by REDD are most at risk of being undermined by declining in carbon prices or changing investor preference. The authors add that the short-term nature of REDD—which is seen as a stop gap measure of at most 30 years—may fail deliver benefits over the time-scale need to safeguard biodiversity.

"Conservation initiatives generally require long-term, stable sources of funding," they write. "Given the scale of REDD+ projects and financing, and the high expectations in some quarters that REDD+ will reform conservation finance and protect imperiled biodiversity, current and future projects tied to REDD+ financing might be exposed to significant risks."…

A hoatzin in flight in the Amazon rainforest, shot by Warren H, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license