Nora Greenglass, a research assistant at the Woods Hole Research Center, shared her impressions as a negotiator for the UN program for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) with members of the Woods Hole Science and Technology Education Partnership (WHSTEP) last week.

Nora Greenglass shares her impressions of the UN climate change conference with members of WHSTEP

From Falmouth to Copenhagen

Nora Greenglass was among 8,000 party negotiators in Copenhagen, as world governments, NGO’s, and activist groups converged on the Danish capital for COP 15.

It was not her first UN climate conference, but the first one where she had to wait for five hours in the snow with other accredited observers, just to get into the conference hall.

That’s when the observers did just what 30,000 climate change activists had been doing over the course of the 2-week conference: they protested.

“They barred civil society from entering when the heads of state were there. It was a bone of contention. This was supposed to be an open process,” she said. “Needless to say, I did not get much work done that day.”

Ms. Greenglass went to Denmark with a team of other researchers from WHRC (and other Woods Hole Consortium participants from the MBL and WHOI) to give scientific input on aspects of climate change that rarely make the headline news.  Among those are the REDD initiative and the impacts of rising greenhouse gas emissions on the world’s oceans.

The UN-REDD Programme is aimed at tipping the economic balance in favour of sustainable management of forests so that their formidable economic, environmental and social goods and services benefit countries, communities and forest users while also contributing to important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions… The immediate goal is to assess whether carefully structured payment structures and capacity support can create the incentives to ensure actual, lasting, achievable, reliable and measurable emission reductions while maintaining and improving the other ecosystem services forests provide.

-the UN Collaborative Program on REDD

Reducing poverty and emissions?

The main purpose of the conference this year was to develop a “cap and trade” system for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. With the Kyoto Protocol past its prime, the outcome of Copenhagen was meant to set a new blueprint for setting emissions reduction targets, and ways to measure progress toward those goals.

However, negotiations broke down between developing nations and some of the biggest emitters (including the BASIC countries, Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) on the terms of such a high-stakes deal.

From the point of view of the developing nations (led by Africa), the system would allow industrialized countries to keep polluting, thus endangering their chances of survival. In the case of small island nations or places where desertification threatens arable crop land, climate change is indeed a matter of life or death.

But as Ms. Greenglass pointed out, the countries that produce the lion’s share of CO2 need to act now to reduce their emissions, and need  incentives to do so.

The World is Waiting for US

Despite the worldliness of the conference, Ms. Greenglass said that the elephant in the room was legislation currently stalled before the US Senate. (Last fall, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require polluters to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, but a Senate version is not expected to pass.)

“The world is waiting for Congress, and we know where that’s going,” she said.

President Obama made an attempt to save the day, crafting an 11th-hour document known as the Copenhagen Accord, with 29 other nations (out of 194). Among other things, this non-binding document states that the US will reduce its emissions by 17% (from 2005 levels) by 2020. However, this pledge requires congressional approval– in an election year, in a recession.

A few positives did come out of Denmark in the waning days of the conference, Ms. Greenglass said.

• The REDD negotiations are nearly complete, with a “relatively prominent” place in US legislation, and a favorable view from US industry.
• In addition, the US pledged $100 billion to go towards climate adaptation measures, technology transfer, and forest protection for vulnerable countries by 2020.
• The US pledged $1 billion to help implement REDD; an additional $3.5 billion was committed by France, Norway, Australia, Japan, and the UK.
• An agreement was made on a transparent mechanism for evaluating the performance of each nation’s emissions reductions through an independent review process.

Pat Harcourt, an education specialist with WBNERR, asked how much of a role science plays in determining the outcome of policy.

Ms. Greenglass said that the specific targets, such as the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) maximum for global temperature rise, are based on sound  science, but overall, the negotiations are “frighteningly political.”

“We need to peak global emissions by 2020,” she told WHSTEP members.

These days, Ms. Greenglass and thousands of other science policy consultants are heading back to the drawing board in preparation for COP 16, this November, in Cancun, Mexico.

Tracy Johns in her office at the Woods Hole Research Center

It’s been a month after COP 15, the UN Climate Change conference that was supposed to give the world a new system for reducing carbon emissions.

A month to reflect, regroup, and respond to this reporter’s questions about what happened, and what didn’t, in Copenhagen.

From Woods Hole to Copenhagen

Tracy Johns is a research associate and policy advisor at the Woods Hole Research Center who focuses on the role of forests in stabilizing the world’s climate. She is an advisor to several countries on the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degredation (REDD) initiative, intended to create a carbon trading system that would adequately compensate countries that do not cut their remaining forests.

Having attended the last five COPs (Conference Of Parties), Ms. Johns said that the negotiations in Copenhagen, by comparison, were chaotic. Thousands of people from official delegations, NGO’s, and protest movements, crowded into a noisy meeting hall. It was difficult to find out where negotiations were taking place, even those related to REDD. When a delegation of African nations walked out of talks on carbon credits, she said, the conference really broke down.

With the REDD initiative dependent on the overall treaty, the process is stalled for now. Ms. Johns said she can sympathize with the African and developing nations, which are likely to feel the most deleterious effects of climate change, and yet are not responsible for the lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions. However, she said, the stalled negotiations do not help anyone.

The Copenhagen Accord was eventually drafted by the US, China, Brazil, India, and South Africa, which other nations did not adopt. Because the UN Climate Change treaties must be adopted by consensus (remember the stalled Kyoto Protocol?) that means that there is no blueprint going forward. But, Ms. Johns said, there is still a lot that countries, especially the US, can do to reduce carbon emissions on a domestic level.

Seeing the forest for the trees

Rainforests have been dubbed the “lungs of the world” for their ability to “inhale” carbon dioxide (CO2) and “exhale” oxygen (O2), a well-known chemical exchange that sustains our every breath. In this way, trees are able to store or “sequester” large amounts of CO2, one of the critical greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.

But as trees are clear-cut for lumber or to make way for soybean plantations or cattle ranches, much of that carbon sequestered in trees is released back into the atmosphere. In addition, the trees are no longer able to inhale the atmospheric CO2 that is increasing in concentration each year. From Brazil to Gabon to Indonesia, deforestation is responsible for 12 to 18 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, said Ms. Johns.

“We will not be able to avoid the devastating effects of climate change without stopping deforestation,” she said. “Forests are a vital piece of the puzzle.”

In working out the jigsaw of economics versus the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the REDD program aims to put a value on forests that are removing CO2 from the atmosphere every day, free of charge. Not only will this give developing nations a monetary incentive to protect their remaining forests, it will encourage consumers to make responsible choices, Ms. Johns said.

A fair trade?

While her focus is on the global carbon credit market, provisions in the Waxman-Markey bill– passed last June by the House of Representatives– allow companies to purchase carbon “0ffsets” for their emissions by contibuting to reforestation efforts or rainforest conservation, both in the US and abroad, Ms. Johns said. This initiative could make the US the largest carbon trading market in the world, she added, since the European Union does not allow REDD credits.

“As the legislative process moves forward, most of the bills being discussed include pretty strong pieces that wold allow a REDD to happen,” she said. “But the numbers President Obama has announced are far below our goals.”

In her work with some of the agricultural stakeholders in Brazil, for example, Ms. Johns has found that they would gladly find alternatives to cutting down the rainforest, but their practices reflect global demand for cheap beef and soybeans.

“One of the reasons why climate change legislation is important is that we’re not paying for the cost of pollution. If we understood the costs, it’s much cheaper to consume sustainably,” she pointed out.

“It’s got to be a collaborative effort between consumers and providers. Without a change in consumption practices, there will be no incentive to change.”

What can you do?

While forests in the US Northeast enjoy a fair amount of protection, Ms. Johns said people living here can have a part in reducing deforestation. She encourages us to do a little research to learn about the origins of products, and make an effort to support industries that use sustainable practices.

• The Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability is one website that makes it easier to find (and verify) eco-certified products.
• One common sense tip in regard to forests would be to eliminate paper-based products like paper plates from your shopping list, and in the case of necessities like toilet paper, purchasing a post-consumer recycled brand.
• Shop locally for “green” building and household products at the “G” Green Design Center in Mashpee Commons.