Director of CIFOR’s Forests and Environmental Services, Dr. Markku Kanninen, says paying countries to protect forests is gaining increasing acceptance.
One of the key issues at the Conference of the Parties (COP) on Climate Change discussions in Bali later this year looks set to be payments to countries for protecting their forests. More correctly known as payments for environmental services, such measures have long been earmarked as a potentially high-impact low cost tool in the international fight against climate change.
But what is meant by the term ‘payments for environmental services’ (PES)? In technical terms, a PES scheme is an arrangement where a well-defined environmental service is “bought” by one or more external service buyers from one or more local service providers.
For example, a city council representing people living downstream of a river that provides drinking water may pay the people upstream not to cut down trees near the river to help preserve the water’s quality. In effect, the payment reimburses the environmental service providers for not using the land and the forest in ways that jeopardize the environmental service.
PES schemes for forests have received increasing attention over the past 10 to 15 years, but overall the environmental value of forests is ignored.
As stated in the website of the organizers of this years COP meeting – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the world doesn't ‘pay’ much for the positive effects of forests. The focus tends to be more on the forest’s value as a source of lumber and firewood, or for the value of the land they occupy for housing or farming – all of which are short-term and specific.
According to the UNFCCC “The value of forests for preventing global warming and preserving the earth's biodiversity, by contrast, are long-term and their rewards apply to everyone generally. A way has to be found to make the expansion and nurturing of forests appealing and cost-effective to the local populations that usually decide their fate.”
This last point is being increasingly taken up by governments and climate change experts. A recent article by Associated Press quotes Indonesia’s Environment Minister, Rachmat Witoelar, as saying that not only Indonesia, but also other developing nations, will expect developed countries to pay them to preserve forests in any new arrangements to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
According to CIFOR’s Director of Forests and Environmental Services, Dr. Markku Kanninen – also quoted in the article - the possibility of paying countries to safeguard their forests from destruction is gaining more support from governments around the world.
AP reports Kanninen saying that with deforestation accounting for 20 percent of global carbon emissions, paying people to protect their forests is an inexpensive way of achieving climate benefits.
“This is quite a cheap way of achieving some climate benefits,” he told AP, “We are not constructing any expensive technological solutions, we are just preserving something that is there.”
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