Much have been discussed to explore options for land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities post 2012. Among others is voluntary, national-level commitments for certain LULUCF categories, such as deforestation avoidance. The proposal, which was put up by group of Brazilian scientists, termed “Compensated Reduction”, is a voluntary national deforestation stabilization and reduction target for tropical countries having large area of tropical forests. The needs of fresh non-public fund for to conserve the remaining forest (and carbon stock) is tremendous. It would require a new payment mechanism, as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) does not allow such activity.
This proposal is similar to the way deforestation is addressed in the case of Australia under Articles 3.3 and 3.7 of the Kyoto Protocol, based on “net-net accounting”. In this approach, the net emissions from deforestation in the commitment period are compared to those in the base year (1990), and any reduction in deforestation emissions will bring the country closer to compliance with its Kyoto targets.
Are there markets? What would be the rules to determine the target and accounting system? What about the “hot air” issue? Most of questions like these are expectedly addressed in various events during COP11