A group of distinguished ecologists have asked President Obama to push for the inclusion of tropical forests in climate policy.
In an open letter published Wednesday, dozens of U.S. ecologists called for the Obama administration to support forest conservation as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation and forest degradation accounts for 15-18 percent of human-caused CO2 emissions, a share greater than all the world’s cars, trucks, planes, and ships combined.
 Are we on the brink of saving rainforests? July 22, 2009 Until now saving rainforests seemed like an impossible mission. But the world is now warming to the idea that a proposed solution to help address climate change could offer a new way to unlock the value of forest without cutting it down.Deep in the Brazilian Amazon, members of the Surui tribe are developing a scheme that will reward them for protecting their rainforest home from encroachment by ranchers and illegal loggers. The project, initiated by the Surui themselves, will bring jobs as park guards and deliver health clinics, computers, and schools that will help youths retain traditional knowledge and cultural ties to the forest. Surprisingly, the states of California, Wisconsin and Illinois may finance the endeavor as part of their climate change mitigation programs. |
The letter comes as government and business leaders are meeting in New York for a week-long U.N. climate summit. Today Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is hosting a high-level event on reducing emissions from tropical deforestation (REDD), a proposed mechanism that would pay tropical countries for protecting their forests. REDD is seen as a cost-effective means to help address climate change while generating a multitude of co-benefits, including biodiversity conservation, sustainable livelihoods for rural populations, and provision of other ecosystem services like watershed protection and erosion control.
“We are facing an ecological and a climate crisis, and we have the knowledge to act wisely, but we need decisive global political leadership to get the job done,” said Steve Hamburg Chief Scientist of Environmental Defense Fund in a statement. “We need global climate policies to conserve tropical biodiversity.”
“The handwriting on the wall says we need the living planet — especially forests — to address climate change,” added Tom Lovejoy of the Heinz Center.
The text of the letter appears below.
The Letter
Dear President Obama:
We commend your leadership at the 2009 G-8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy as well as the
July 2009 Major Economies Forum, in particular on their recognition of the scientific
consensus that the global average temperature should not exceed 2°C above pre-industrial
levels. This threshold was also identified in the American Clean Energy Security Act,
H.R. 2454, as passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. To realize the goal of
limiting warming below this critical threshold, immediate and strong action is needed to
reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions. The G-8 declaration calls for developed
countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80% or more of 1990 levels by 2050, a
target that should be matched with ambitious nearer-term emission reductions for
industrialized nations. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation
(REDD) can be a critical piece of this near-term action.
We write specifically to urge you to make the conservation and restoration of native
forests in the tropics and sub-tropics a central pillar of U.S. climate policy. Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in tropical forest countries, coupled with
aggressive action in our own country to reduce emissions, can play a crucial role in
limiting warming to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and in helping nations
adapt to the impacts of some unavoidable climate change.
- Tropical deforestation has contributed 15-20% global greenhouse gas emissions
annually over the past decade. REDD is therefore an immediately available source of
emission reductions that can be accessed earlier than many other kinds of emission
reductions, particularly important during the crucial time-window for action to avert
2°C warming. In addition to the critical preservation of intact forests, restoration of
degraded forest land with native forest vegetation is valuable.
- Tropical forests store some 300 billion tons of carbon in their biomass. Emissions
from deforestation, principally in the tropics, have placed Indonesia and Brazil as the
world’s third and fourth largest emitting nations, and constitute a major source of
emissions in many other tropical and sub-tropical nations. Providing economic incentives for preservation of forests can play a critical role in achieving the early
reductions needed to avert warming greater than 2°C.
- Tropical forests are storehouses of natural resources that provide food, fiber,
medicines, and ecosystem services to the globe. Because tropical forests house more
than half of the world’s species, deforestation threatens the biodiversity of the entire
world. REDD, by conserving biodiversity and protecting these natural storehouses,
can be vital to reducing ecosystem and consequent human impacts of climatic shifts.
- Tropical forests drive global weather and hydrologic cycles and protect watersheds on
which millions depend. Forest destruction will exacerbate climate-triggered strains
on water supplies. But REDD can help modulate those impacts.
Further, compensating forest peoples for protecting forests can buttress forests’ role in the
survival of some of the world’s most vulnerable people. REDD also offers developing
countries the opportunity to demonstrate leadership in rising to the global climate change
challenge, set forth in the G-8 declaration, of reducing global emissions goal of achieving
at least a 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050. REDD may also provide a model
for restoration of other ecosystem types, in which reversing degradation could benefit
biodiversity and improve carbon sequestration capacity in other regions.
We commend you on the 2009 G-8 declaration’s commitment to “support the
development of positive incentives in particular for developing countries to promote
emission reductions through actions to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, and
to “consider the inclusion of financial mechanisms within the future global agreement on
climate change. REDD has a significant role to play in making this commitment a
reality. It requires no new technology, but rather policies that acknowledge the value of
forests and by incentivizing their preservation.
A wide range of policy tools is available to achieve this goal. The benefits are many — for
the climate, for the world’s biodiversity, for our shared future. We suggest the following
as priority actions:
- Begin immediately working on a bilateral basis with tropical forest countries to assist
them in developing national capacity to develop forest baselines and robust
measurement, monitoring and reporting programs for emissions from deforestation
and degradation.
- Develop an effective and transparent registry to record baselines and emissions
reductions globally.
- Actively engage with and enlist the expertise and enthusiasm of the scientific
community, both within our federal agencies and the academic research institutions.
We urge you to make reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation,
conservation and restoration of native forests, a centerpiece of U.S. climate policy.
Signed
David Ackerly
Associate Professor of Plant Ecology and Evolution
Department of Integrative Biology
University of California, Berkeley
Fred Adler
Professor of Biology and Mathematics
Department of Mathematics
University of Utah
Peter Ashton
Charles Bullard Research Professor of Forestry
Harvard University
Walter Carson
Associate Professor
University of Pittsburgh
William L. Chameides
Dean and Nicholas Professor of the Environment
Nicholas School of the Environment
Duke University
F. Stuart Chapin, III
Professor of Ecology
Institute of Arctic Biology
University of Alaska
Robin Chazdon
Professor of Tropical Forest Ecology
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of Connecticut
Deborah Clark
Research Professor
Department of Biology
University of Missouri, St. Louis
Phyllis Coley
Distinguished Professor
Department of Biology
University of Utah
Gretchen Daily
Bing Professor of Environmental Science
Department of Biological Sciences
Stanford University
M. Denise Dearing
Professor
Department of Biology
University of Utah
Ruth DeFries
Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development
Department of Ecology
Columbia University
Christopher P. Dunn
Director
Lyon Arboretum
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Paul Fine
Professor of Plant Ecology and Evolution
Department of Integrated Biology
University of California, Berkeley
Peter Frumhoff
Director of Science & Policy
Union of Concerned Scientists
Cambridge, MA
Steven Hamburg
Chief Scientist
Environmental Defense Fund
New York, NY
Henry Howe
Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Biological Sciences
University of Illinois at Chicago
Michael Kaspari
Presidential Associate Professor of Zoology
Department of Zoology
University of Oklahoma
Thomas A. Kursar
Associate Professor
Department of Biology
University of Utah
William Laurance
Senior Staff Scientist
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Panama City, Panama
Gene Likens
Distinguished Senior Scientist
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Milbrook, NY
John Longino
Professor of Neotropical Myrmecology
Evergreen State College
Thomas E. Lovejoy
Biodiversity Chair
The Heinz Center
Washington, D.C.
Margaret Lowman
Director of Environmental Initiatives,
Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies
New College of Florida
Pamela Matson
Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies,
Dean, School of Earth Sciences
Stanford University
Nalini Nadkarni
Professor of Environmental Studies
Evergreen State College
Gretchen North
Professor of Plant Biology and Ecology
Department of Biology
Occidental College