Day 3: Highlights from Poznan - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation.

In Poznan, The Wilderness Society delegation will be urging world leaders to take strong action to reduce logging and land clearing - as part of the global plan to tackle climate change.

Tonight The Wilderness Society and Birds International will host an event at Poznan on the critical role the protection of native forests must play as part of global efforts to reduce climate change.

In climate negotiation speak, this issue is called REDD - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation.

Forest Degradation is essentially logging, while Deforestation is the clearing of native vegetation for some other land-use like agriculture or cattle ranching. Problem is there are currently some major loopholes in the way these are defined which leads to bad outcomes for forests around the world.

For instance:

Deforestation - If you log an old-growth forest and convert the land to pine plantations or a crop to be used to create energy, that IS NOT deforestation, even though you have lost most of the carbon and almost all of the biodiversity that lived in the old growth forest.

Degradation - The logging industry in Australia and overseas wants a new climate deal which encourages countries to log old growth forests and convert vast areas to young regrowth native forests or plantations, arguing that young forests sequester (suck in) more CO₂. While these forest have the potential to suck in large amounts of CO₂, the loggers don't want to calculate the carbon lost by the logging itself, or the reduced size of the carbon bank. When you convert old growth forest to young trees, you reduce the size of the carbon bank in that area by as much as 60%

The logging industry also wants carbon credits for the wood products manufactured from logging. The problem here is that 80% ends up as paper products which release their carbon with 3 years on average. Even wood products like furniture release their carbon as CO₂ into the atmosphere within 80 years on average. This only ends up making climate change worse.

Today talks also continue with the Australian government, urging them to take a strong stance on forest protection, and other measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong arrives in Poznan next Tuesday.

 
Check out our regular 'Postcards from Poznan' for updates and progress on the climate change negotiations.

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