Trees for treaties

I have been heartened by the recent G8 meeting in which the world's industrialised powers agreed on an objective ceiling of 2C temperature rise. Soon a new U.N. climate agreement is due to be signed in Copenhagen. But can we achieve such objectives without mutual consensus between all countries? The objective cannot be achieved without mutual consensus between rich and poor countries. Presently, developing countries feel that rich countries have already enjoyed two centuries of industrialisation, but they disagree with developing nations on how much of the burden they should carry under a new treaty.

There is, however, consensus on role of forests in tackling emission issues. We all know that forests and tree planting can help mitigate the effects of global warming by increasing carbon storage and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. More and more Northern and Southern governments, bilateral development agencies, multilateral development banks and big conservation NGOs are arguing that “countries” should be compensated for protecting the “carbon reservoirs” in standing forests. Some governments even propose that there should be economic incentives for developing countries to protect forests .Such incentives should come from a specialised international fund created from public money from donor countries. On the other hand, terms like “carbon finance” and “carbon forestry” are applying new definitions and discussions to the situation. Such practices are dismissed by few due to the notion that the value of forests can be reduced to the monetary value by the defaulters. For the native people the non-monetary cultural and spiritual values of their forest are of utmost importance and must be respected.

International community can help by developing faith and communicating with local communities, partnership between policy makers and grassroots communities, cooperation between developing and developed nations and awareness about larger loss in case of loss of forests can make all the difference to the existing situation for achieve larger goals. More trees for new treaties are indeed crucial.