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Carbon accounting methodologies

Trading in carbon credits from afforestation and reforestation is foreshadowed by the Kyoto Protocol. Human-induced sinks can compensate for human-induced emissions, but given ongoing combustion of fossil fuels, there needs to be an ongoing contribution from sinks. Because forests are sinks only when they are expanding in area or carbon density, and because there is a limit to the quantity of growing stock per unit area, afforestation must be continuous. Given a limited global area of plantable land, this cannot continue in perpetuity. Forest sinks are a popular topic in the current decade because they are seen as being a relatively low-cost first step to reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions. Before trading in carbon sinks can eventuate, however, numerous technical difficulties have to be resolved, including the acceptance of a standard method of carbon accounting. The concept of “tonne-years”, whereby the quantity of carbon sequestered is multiplied by the time it is out of atmospheric circulation, appears to be gaining credence in international fora. This concept is flawed and threatens to undermine the “stocks” based accounting approach that is built into Article 3.3 of the Kyoto Protocol. A preferable approach is to accept that afforestation is merely the reverse of deforestation, and is a one-off movement of carbon from the atmosphere to the earth’s surface. Carbon credits could be a one-off payment made to a land owner who undertakes to increase the long-term carbon density of a piece of land. No further transactions would be required unless the land owner makes land use/cover decisions which will change the long-term carbon density again. An efficient audit system could be implemented to verify the continued existence of the stated land cover. Active trading in carbon credits would lead to an increase in the forested area of the world. While this might saturate the world with wood, and thereby reduce timber prices, it may also presage the way to an global economy based, in part, on bioenergy. Bio-fuels from sustainably harvested forests trap and store the current energy income of the planet (ie sunlight), just as fossil fuels represent the captured energy of previous millennia. The long-term benefit of trading in carbon sinks, therefore, may be to stimulate planting and thereby permit the formation of a sustainable biomass resource. The current rationale for such trading—sequestration of carbon—is likely to prove ephemeral.