VER greenwash, REDD hogwash
REDD: an over complicated method for calculating emission reductions, lacking in all transparency
CERs are Certified Emission Reductions and are issued by the United Nations for projects that generate clean energy or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in other ways such as fuel swap from coal to gas, or that sequester carbon dioxide through tree planting in developing countries.
CERs are currently the only relatively long-term and relatively reliable financing mechanism for mildly improved energy systems and for tree planting under any of the UN environment Conventions - neither biodiversity nor desertification have a financing mechanism.
As the United States of America is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol under which CERs are legally created and traded, various voluntary emission reduction (VERs) schemes have come up mainly in the USA. VERs are a stranger creature than CERs all together and are also known as “offsets”. They are, first and foremost, not embedded in any international legal treaty.
They allow polluters to continue polluting but ask them to finance either: a) clean energy - with the idea of somehow helping someone else avoid emissions because the person or legal entity itself for some reason cannot; or b) forestry - as a means of “sequestering” or “soaking up” pollution, say from a flight or from continued profligate use of coal based power, viz. the behaviour of the USA’s citizens across the board.
The best known VER scheme is the Voluntary Carbon Standard. Like most VER schemes its methodologies folllow the Kyoto Protocol methodologies evolved for CERs under the Clean Development Mechanism. But they also not embedded in any legal framework – for example – if a CDM project started producing certified emission reductions six months after it started generating renewable energy, then the VCS people will come along and say – “oh can we buy the first six months generation at a knock down price ? Anyway you cannot sell them in the CDM” – and so on.
VERs are purely voluntary there is no way of measuring their significance in the larger scheme of things. For example, there is no way of knowing whether the VERs are contributing to the country within which a voluntary buyer of VERs is located moving along a self-imposed GHG emission reduction trajectory – is the VER creating a “license to pollute” or is it contributing to greater awareness of the need to reduce emissions?
Is the polluter exercising voluntary restraint as well as financing “offsets” or is he using offsets as a license to
continue doing what he is doing but with some “greenwash” attached?
As a non-signatory to the Kyoto Protocol the USA successfully influenced many Annex 1 countries to encourage their multinationals to engage in voluntary GHG reduction actions of various kinds and water down the legally binding provisions under the Kyoto Protocol. Thus VER schemes exist mainly in the USA, but they also are around in Europe and other Annex 1 countries.
VERs are sometimes also judged in terms of whether or not they improve on the CDM. The Gold Standard and the Climate Community and Biodiversity (CCB) are standards that can be added on to CDM projects to prove their sustainability over and above what the UNFCCC CDM Executive Board demands. But they can both also be registered without the CDM so they are compromised and just lend legitimacy to entire the VER scam.
All the other voluntary type arrangements are alternatives to the CDM as described above. But all VER schemes use methods of calculation similar to the CDM. S like with everything in the world the USA wiats or concerned citizens to do the hard work and then free rides (remeber the FAOs seed bank - ex situ conservation of millions of plant species sold off to Monsanto in 1983) .
The VER standards in circulation include Gold Standard, Community and Biodiversity Standards (CCBS), Voluntary Carbon Standard 2007 (VCS 2007), VER+ (Tuev Sued), Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), Voluntary Offset Standard (VOS), Climate, and Plan Vivo. Illegal VER projects designed to undermine the UNFCCC are proliferating and claiming “issuance” and “registration” in these elusive registries.
Added to this there are now experimental REDD projects. These are doubly disgusting because so far there is no forestry conservation allowed under the CDM – only afforestation and reforestation, and even these are limping along and the prices are very low. G77 and China have been arguing for 20 years that we would be willing to include forest conservation in carbon trading provided there were legally binding emission reduction targets in Annex 1 countries.
______________________________________
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) is a totally disgustingly complicated calculation method lacking all transparency at the moment
_______________________________________
But the USA did not sign Kyoto, and it never happened. Now suddenly after the Copenhagen fiasco instead of working hard to get governments to stop polluting , to STOP BUILDING NEW COAL FIRED POWER PLANTS IN ANNEX 1 COUNTRIES – and so on.
These sad consultant types cannot bear to be out of a job and so they just find illegal paymasters willing to create “voluntary” projects --- but where are the reductions in Annex 1 countries which these reductions in developing countries are being counted towards? This is the problem.
The ETS is bad enough -- corruption is always there -- but at least there is a legal framework-- in the USA there is NONE! REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) is a totally disgustingly complicated calculation method lacking all transparency at the moment.
If we thought HFCC emission reductions were criminal this is just as bad because noone got a clue how to count them except NASA with their trillion dollar satellites. And even if they did they are still outside a legally binding target in Annex 1 countries (at least HFCC reductions are in Kyoto AND are being phased out), - the worst is that the biggest oligopolies are coming and pretend to offset their emissions by entering into contracts with Forest Department – check out Posco and Arcelor Mittals legitimate CDM projects and multiply by hundred to know how bad unregulated REDD is.
All this is taking place just at a time in India, for example, when we got the Forest Rights Act passed and can now hand over 70 million hectares of forest land to forest dwellers and tribals. This will transform Indian class relations but we may not get there in time if all this global money floods in to destroy our forest by enterng into deals with the forest department mafia. There are thus many and multi-layered and intricate reasons why these deals are enormously damaging.
Current Climate Issues
Comments