Carbonising Forest Landscape

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1 Introduction

Mitigating global climate change and achievingsustainable livelihoods for the rural poor are bothkey international concerns. Carbon sinks, whereforests and vegetation are used to absorb carbondioxidefrom the atmosphere and store it as carbon,offer one potential route to link these. Increasedforest and tree cover can bring major social,economic and environmental benefits to rural areas,as well as reducing net emissions ofcarbon dioxide.Yet sinks are also contentious, strongly opposed especially by major environmental non-

governmental organisations (NGOs) as bothineffective in mitigation, distracting from its realchallenges and as promoting styles of largeplantation forestry that carbonise landscapes inways that work against the interests ofthe poor.

How does this debate look ifwe start from theperspective ofrural peoples own uses, values andpriorities around trees and forest landscapes?Longstanding work and experience around socialaspects of forestry reveal the multiple roles oftreesand forests in rural livelihoods, key dynamics in

peopleforest relations and a rangeofpre-conditionsand issues which shape whether forestryinterventions are genuinely pro-poor. In line witha recent review by Smith and Scherr (2002), it issuggested in this article that ifsuch insights shapethe selection and design ofsink interventions, thenthey have the potential to bring huge benefits torural people and their basic land, water and biomassresources, using new sources ofcarbon finance toimprove rural livelihoods, climate change mitigationand resilience to the impacts of global warming.

But do the formal mechanisms available to

promote carbon sinks primarily the Clean

Development Mechanism (CDM) of the KyotoProtocol encourage such positive interactionsbetween climate change andlivelihoods? This articlereflects on what the CDM as currently designed cando, what it cannot do and where it fails completely.Although the limitations are severe, we suggest thatthey donot providegrounds for abandoning carbonsinks and their potential poverty links. Rather thereis scope both for re-writing key aspects ofthe CDM of particular pertinence just now, as its rulesgoverning small-scale projects for poor people and

communities are being drawn up in time for the10th Conference of the Parties (COP 10) inDecember 2004 and for a more realistic look atthe circumstances in which the carbon route toenhancing forest livelihoods, among many otherpossibilities, is really appropriate.

2 Debating carbon sinksDeforestation and unsustainable agriculturalpractices are a significant part ofthe global warmingproblem, contributing about 20 per cent ofcurrent

greenhouse gas emissions.At the same time, forestryand agriculture could be part ofthe solution in thepotential they offer for large carbon sinks.Appropriate land use, land-use change andforestry(LULUCF) activities can both reduce greenhousegas emissions from land systems by protecting andconserving carbon in existing vegetation and soilsand take up and store additional carbon from theatmosphere. Furthermore, carbon sinks can alsofacilitate adaptation as well as mitigation.As theWorld Bank puts it: Carbon finance represents a

new financing source for revegetating drylands,

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providing alternative sources of energy and makingdrought-prone areas more resilient to climatechange (World Bank 2004).

In this respect, the potential synergies withpoverty reduction andlivelihoods are several-fold.Carbon sinks can contribute to land-use and land

management changes that improve income fromsoils and vegetation and that enhance the resilienceand adaptability of agro-ecosystems to climatechange, helping counter associated developmentproblems linked to water and health. Moreover,sink projects can generate income through thepayments made for carbon sequestered orconserved, enabling poor people to participate inand gain from emerging carbon markets (WorldBank 2004).

Carbon sinks are a topic of tense debate,

however. Against these positive arguments,international environmental NGOs such asGreenpeace, Friends ofthe Earth, theWorldWideFund for Nature and the influential Europeanumbrella organisation Climate Action Network(CAN) Europe, raise a range of deep objections tosinks as a mitigation strategy. First, they argue thatsinks divert attention from the really major shiftsthat need to be made to mitigate climate change,including lifestyle and economic changes amongthe rich and in the North and the development of

low-carbon energy systems based on efficiency andrenewables. Under the CDM, they argue, sinksmerely offset continued pollution and so put nopressure on the Annex 1 (rich) country pollutersto change their practices. Objectors also argue thatsinks are not permanent removers ofcarbon fromthe atmosphere:

plants capture carbon only for as long as theysurvive. Once carbon is in the biosphere it willinevitably find its way one day into the

atmosphere and enhance global warming.As amatter ofsimple science therefore, a c arbon sinkis not equivalent to an emission cut [fromburning fossil fuels]. (CAN Europe et al. 2003)

While there are certainly somegrounds for thesearguments, it can be countered that carbon sinksare not meant to be a replacement for othermitigation strategies, but a key complement to themand a vital way of buying time to effect the hugetask ofcreating a global low-carbon energy system.

In other words, both are needed.

A secondcore objection to forests as carbon sinks,ofcentral relevance to our concerns, is that theyencourage precisely the typeofforestry developmentwhich works against poverty reduction: large,commercial monoculture plantations, which willdrive out local people and bring a range ofassociated

forms ofsocial and environmental devastation,such as biodiversity loss (see, e.g. CAN Europe etal. 2003). Several examples ofsuch large-scale carbonsinks projects have become icons in this criticalliterature. For example:

In Brazil, Plantar S.A. has already begunexpanding its vast eucalyptus tree plantationsby another 23,000ha. Local small peasantcommunities have been opposed to theexpansion ofPlantars eucalyptus tree plantations

for many years. They have witnessed their landsslowly but surely dry up as new plantationsencroach, followed by a slow process ofseeingtheir wells drying out and their lands desiccatedto a point where it does not support a meagresubsistence livelihood anymore. (Kill 2003)

Drawing on such examples, the European UnionForest Watch organisation, FERN, called on EUgovernments at COP 9 (December 2003) to boycottcarbon credits originating from sinks projects:

If governments buy into these fake carboncredits, indigenous peoples and communitieswill be hit twice by climate change. First, theyare likely to bear the brunt ofthe impacts causedby global warming and second the CDM willfinance environmentally damaging treeplantations the green deserts whichcommunities have been struggling against fordecades. (FERN 2004)

While there are risks that carbon finance couldmake way for industrial forestry barons to overridelocal interests, using such extreme examples tomake the case for banning sinks altogether maybe throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Itmeans abandoning the many beneficial possibilitieswhich carbon sinks offer to link climate changemitigation with livelihood improvements.Furthermore, this type of project, like all CDMprojects, is subject to confirmation by host countrygovernments that it contribute to sustainable

development.

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In this vein, middle ground discussions haveemerged, which consider the social aspects ofcarbonsink forestry and seek to specify the conditionsunder which win-win scenarios, bringing benefitsto rural livelihoods, are likely (e.g. Smith and Scherr2002; Bass et al. 2000). These discussions can be

helpfully informed by the mass ofresearch andexperience on interactions between people, landand trees, more generally, which has emergedoverthe last few decades.

3 Livelihoods, landscapes andtreesThe multiple roles that trees play in rural livelihoodsand in sustaining the resources or forms of naturalcapital that underpin them, are now thoroughlydocumented from localities around the world. In

highly diverse ways, trees and forest areas providevital subsistence products, ranging from foods suchas fruit, leaves, nuts or wild game, to medicinalproducts and materials for construction, tools andhousehold goods. Timber and non-timber forestproducts are often sold for cash income, with certainproducts providing key income flows to those wholack access to other sources of financial capital:whether the dependence of landless and tribalgroups people on leafand fodder sales in ruralGujarat (e.g. Shah and Shah 1995), or ofwomen

in partsofWestAfrica on non-timber forest productsas sources of independent income (e.g. Falconer1990). In some areas trees play key roles in reducingvulnerability, with tree-based foods and incomesproviding vital buffers to seasonal shortages andcontingencies caused by sudden life events (e.g.Chambers and Leach 1989).

Many rural people value trees in sustainingenvironmental services, contributing to shade,wind- and fire-breaks, to the productivity ofsoilsand water sources and to the safeguarding of genetic

resources. In semi-arid regions, especially, particulartrees are valued for their roles in increasing soilproductivity and land sustainability throughnutrient recycling and by providing mulch andshade for crops, thus complementing agriculturalproduction.

The particular roles and values of trees varyenormously according to context social, economic,ecological as do the ways in which trees andvegetation are used and managed. Somecommunities living in or near large forest areas,

including many of the so-called indigenous

peoples of Latin America and South-East Asia,have developed sophisticated ways of living withand enriching diverse forest ecologies to sustainlivelihoods based to a large extent onforest productextraction (e.g. Poffenberger 1996). Other livelihoodsystems in humid and drier forest areas involve the

conversion of forest land for farming. Farmersmanage and sometimes enrich secondary forestfallows with valued species both to sustain soilproductivity and to maintain flows ofuseful foodproducts, building poles and so on. In such areas,or in drier savannahs, rural people frequently createconcentrations of valued trees around theirhomesteads or settlements (e.g.Arnold and Dewees1997). These range from trees planted along fieldboundaries or as intercrops, to the agro-forestryhome gardens described for parts ofAsia, to the

peri-village forest islands ofWestAfricas forest-savannah transition zone, where villagers have usedlivestock, fire and soil management techniques toencourage the formation of dense vegetation toprovide protection and shade for people and treecrops and a range of food and medicinal products(Fairhead and Leach 1996).

Across this huge diversity of local conditions,several general points emerge. First, it is clear thatfor rural people, trees and forest vegetation are partof multiple livelihoods and are incorporated within

multi-use landscapes (Leach and Mearns 1988).Second, management extends beyond any simpledichotomy between preservingnatural forest andplanting new trees. Third, patterns of interactionare often highly dynamic, as people adapt toecological uncertainties from climate change tothe unpredictable ecosystem dynamics increasinglyappreciated within new ecology and to rapidshifts in market, demographic or social conditionswhich may make particular products, services orvalues desirable. They frequently involve social

negotiations and conflicts between people withdifferent resource values, livelihood priorities orrights ofaccess; between men and women, long-term residents and more recent immigrants, or richerand poorer groups. Actual patterns of landscapechange thus depend partly on the outcomes ofsuchnegotiations, as mediated by local institutions andbroader policy frameworks. Present practices maybuildon the legacies of past adaptations, indynamicforest landscapes (Leach 2001).

Taken together with an appreciation ofthese

forest-livelihood dynamics, the experiences with

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costs of getting a CDM project qualified, as well ashelping to meet the high establishment costs formany types ofsmall-scaleforestry. There are manyexamples in theforestry sector more broadly, whichcould provide models for such bundling, rangingfrom village-level cooperatives and alliances between

individual growers such as the tree-growerscooperative societies fostered by Anand in India,to federations ofcommunity forestry groups suchas those supported by the European Union inGuinea.

Second, COP 9, held in Milan in December2003, agreed that fast track approval proceduresshould apply to sinks projects which are (a) small(under 8,000 tonnes ofcarbon fixed per year) and(b) run by poor communities or individuals. Thismove may do away with the need for cooperative

and other bundling approaches, although this willnot be clear until the proposed simplified modalitiesand procedures are defined at COP 10, plannedfor December 2004.

The need to prove additionality of net carbonsequestered places major constraints. With manydeveloping country land use andforestry activities,a baseline is virtually impossible to construct,because data are often lacking, because prevalentassumptions about original vegetation are oftenquestionable and disputed (Leach and Mearns

1996) and because forestry activities do nottransform static states, but form part of ongoing,highly dynamic processes of landscape change. Inother situations, farmers ongoing fallow enrichmentand tree planting may be manipulating dynamicecological processes over overlapping timescalesthat make baseline projections not onlyunconstructable, but irrelevant. If many ofthemostlivelihood- and carbon-positive interactionsbetween people, land and trees are to be eligiblefor CDM support, then the additionality rule needs

to be reconsidered and rendered more sensitive tosuch dynamics.

Another major constraint is that the CDMapparently excludes policies.Article 12 ofthe KyotoProtocol defines the CDM only in terms ofprojects, even though it has often beenchangesin broader policy and legal frameworks that havehad the most significant effects in enablingsuccessful forest livelihood activities and whichcould have far greater effects in the future than anynumber ofsmall projects. This restriction in the

CDM thus suggests many missed opportunities.

Strictly speaking, the CDM rules do not seem toprevent the setting-up ofa project to help a countryimplement new or changed policies, but there havebeennoexamples ofthese so far and it is likely thatsuch schemes would fail other CDM tests, especiallymeasurement and verification of the resulting

carbon sequestration.Last but not least, the global potential ofCDM-sinks is constrained by the ruling that contributionsfrom forestry CDM activities cannot exceed 1 percent of Annex I country 1990 greenhouse gasemissions. This is only some 56 per cent ofthegreenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction thatAnnex 1 countries need to achieve in the firstcommitment period (200812). There is thus norisk, as some fear, that the developing world willbe covered by vast areas ofthe rich worlds pollution-

avoiding Kyoto Forests.

6 Funding forest livelihoodsthrough carbon?Given the current limitations ofthe CDM, it is worthasking what other climate-related funding sourcesmight be available to promote positive interactionsbetweenland, trees and livelihoods.At present, thestrongest potential appears to lie in two funds setup by theWorld Bank specifically designed to helpsmall-scale projects get through the hoops ofthe

CDM: the BioCarbon Fund and the CommunityDevelopment Carbon Fund. Both are modelled onthe Banks existing Prototype Carbon Fund, themajor funder so far of industrial forestry carbonsinks, in that private investors in the fund receivepro rata credits from projects associated with thefunds. The BioCarbon Fund, with its first projectsdue in early 2004, is explicitly aimed at directingcarbon finance to poverty reduction, livelihood-related environmental benefits and sustainabledevelopment. It invites applications not just for

small-scale afforestation and agroforestry activities,but importantly, also for deforestation-reducingactivities, from forest protection within multi-uselandscapes to bush fire reduction. Funds such asthese thus cut themselves off from the strict rulesofthe CDM and are able to fund activities that aresocially andenvironmentally beneficial, but whichdo not meet the CDMs strict criteria. However, suchfunds are small at present: theWorld Bank estimatesthat the BioCarbon Fund will generate emissioncredits equalling around 4 million tonnes Carbon

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200812, less than the carbon sequestrationcomponent of one single project involving industrialtreeplantations the controversial Brazilian Plantarproject which claims 4.3 million tonnes. Moreover,ifthey are not grants but standardWorld Bank loans,then the projects would have somehow to generate

revenue to repay theloan, inviting the problematicforms of indebtedness for which this type ofBankproject has been criticised more generally, across arange ofsectors.

In theory, it would be possible to develop stillmore lenient ways in which smallforestry activitiescould access carbon funds, brokered throughdifferent institutional arrangements. Indeed, it islikely that the coming years will see a proliferationofschemes, involving diverse donor agencies, NGOsand publicprivate partnerships.While ifsensitively

drawn and with sufficient participation built in,these may well serve to increase the range of optionsopen to poor people to enhance their livelihoodsthrough accessing emergent carbon markets, somecaution or realism is also in order.

First, as experience in the forestry sector asindeed in other development arenas wouldconfirm, market-based mechanisms rarely worksmoothly in the interests ofthe poor or at leastnot without strong, appropriate forms of marketgovernance and regulation. Many forestry and land

use activities depend, for their success andlivelihoodbenefits, on people having rights to resources andto shape landscapes as they seefit. It would be worthbringing aspects ofthe wider debateindevelopmentover rights-based versus market-based approaches

into the climate change arena and debating morebroadly on what alternative strategies might existfor linking livelihood improvements to climatechange mitigation.

Second, it is important to recognise that muchbeneficial land use and forestry activity is already

proceeding in the absence of major internationalfinance, either with local investments and financing,or as spontaneous parts of farmers ongoinglivelihood strategies. Support to the rights,capabilities and autonomy ofrural land users toshape andenrich their landscapes may require less,not more, in the way of external intervention,monitoring and imposed management plans,although it may benefit from supportive policyframeworks that allow these capabilities toflourish.

In short, it would be misguided to abandon

carbon sinks altogether, on the grounds that theydetract from real climate change mitigation andhave, in famous cases, hurt the poor. On thecontrary, many opportunities exist to developcarbon sinks that also benefit rural livelihoods, bybuilding on and enhancing the many interests andstrategies that rural people already have for livingand working with land and trees. Taking up theseopportunities will require some innovative(re)thinking both to overhaul those CDM rules thatcurrently militate against pro-poor forestry and to

devise new means for rural people to access carbonfinance; but in parallel, some realistic debate isneeded about the contexts in which such financingmechanisms are really the best way forward.

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