EU includes aviation in CO2 curbs

The European Parliament has backed a law to include aviation in Europe's CO2 Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for cutting greenhouse gases.

MEPs voted 640 to 30 for aviation to be included in the scheme from 2012. It includes both EU and non-EU airlines.

Under the UN's Kyoto Protocol, the EU is required to cut its CO2 emissions by 8% from 1990 levels by 2012.

Airlines will have to cut emissions by 3% in the first year, compared to 2005, and by 5% from 2013 onwards.

The measures will now be ratified by the 27 EU member states, which agreed the deal in June.

Industries included in the ETS have to buy and sell permits that allow them to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Airlines will have to pay for permits covering 15% of their pollution quotas, the remainder being issued free.

Aviation currently only accounts for about 3% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions, but the sector has seen an 87% increase in CO2 since 1990.

The new legislation says the revenues generated from the auctioning of emissions permits should be used to fund: measures to combat climate change, research on clean aircraft, anti-deforestation measures in developing countries and low-emission transport. Within that framework, the member states will decide how to allocate the revenues.

US opposition

US officials and US-based airlines have criticised the extension of the ETS to aviation, arguing that the EU has no right to force airlines using its airspace to abide by the ETS rules. They say the EU must wait for a global agreement to be reached.

Peter Liese, a German MEP who helped negotiate the aviation package, said that "of course, a global agreement is our final goal, but the inclusion of third country flights starting and landing in Europe is a major step for the global fight against climate change".

"Other industries like steel would very much like to be in such a situation," he added.

The ETS began operating in 2005. It applies to major energy and industrial concerns which collectively account for about 40% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions.

The aviation deal backed by the MEPs excludes: light planes with a take-off weight under 5.7 tons, UN-approved humanitarian flights, firefighting or other emergency flights, flights by police, customs or military forces, research flights and flights by small, low-emission airlines.

The deal was criticised by the German carrier Lufthansa on Tuesday. A spokesman quoted by Reuters news agency said the ETS was "ecologically counter-productive and economically harmful".

The aviation scheme will include official flights by EU heads of state and ministers.

The European Commission reckons that the scheme could increase return air ticket prices by 4.6 to 39.6 euros (£3.6 to £31) by 2020, depending on the journey length.

Nature loss 'to hurt global poor'

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Damage to forests, rivers, marine life and other aspects of nature could halve living standards for the world's poor, a major report has concluded.

Current rates of natural decline might reduce global GDP by about 7% by 2050.

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) review is modelled on the Stern Review of climate change.

It will be released at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Bonn, where 60 leaders have pledged to halt deforestation by 2020.

"You come up with answers like 6% or 8% of global GDP when you think about the benefits of intact ecosystems, for example in controlling water, controlling floods and droughts, the flow of nutrients from forest to field," said the project's leader Pavan Sukhdev.

"But then you realise that the major beneficiaries [of nature] are the billion and a half of the world's poor; these natural systems account for as much as 40%-50% of what we define as the 'GDP of the poor'," he told BBC News.

Globalised decline

The TEEB review was set up by the German government and the European Commission during the German G8 presidency.

The two institutions selected Mr Sukhdev, a managing director in the global markets division at Deutsche Bank, to lead it.

At the time, in an article for the BBC News website, Germany's environment minister Sigmar Gabriel wrote: "Biological diversity constitutes the indispensable foundation for our lives and for global economic development.

"[But] two-thirds of these ecosystem services are already in decline, some dramatically. We need a greening of globalisation."

The document to be released at the CBD is an interim report into what the team acknowledges are complex, difficult and under-researched issues.

The 7% figure is largely based on loss of forests. The report will acknowledge that the costs of losing some ecosystems have barely been quantified.

The trends are understood well enough - a 50% shrinkage of wetlands over the past 100 years, a rate of species loss between 100 and 1,000 times the rate that would occur without 6.5 billion humans on the planet, a sharp decline in ocean fish stocks and one third of coral reefs damaged.

However, putting a monetary value on them is probably much more difficult, the team acknowledges, than putting a cost on climate change.

The report highlights some of the planet's ecologically damaged zones such as Haiti, where heavy deforestation - largely caused by the poor as they cut wood to sell for cash - means soil is washed away and the ground much less productive.

'Too little, too late'

There are some indications that biodiversity and ecosystem issues are now being heard at the top tables of politics.

G8 environment ministers meeting in Japan last weekend agreed a document noting that "biodiversity is the basis of human security and... the loss of biodiversity exacerbates inequality and instability in human society".

It also emphasised the importance of protected areas and of curbing deforestation.

At the CBD on Wednesday, 60 countries signed pledges to halt net deforestation by 2020.

But the main CBD target agreed by all signatories at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 - to "halt and begin to reverse" biodiversity loss by 2010 - is very unlikely to be met.

An early draft of the TEEB review, seen by BBC News, concluded: "Lessons from the last 100 years demonstrate that mankind has usually acted too little and too late in the face of similar threats - asbestos, CFCs, acid rain, declining fisheries, BSE and - most recently - climate change".

The Stern Review talked to governments in a way that earlier climate reports could not, because it was written by and for economists; and the architects of TEEB hope it will eventually do the same thing for biodiversity.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Publisher creates 'green' books

Publisher Dorling Kindersley claims to have printed the most environmentally conscious series of books in the world.
It has done so, it declares, by using vegetable inks, 100% recycled card and "environmentally friendly" glues.
Chief executive Gary June said its Made with Care series represented "a best practice example of how green and clean books can be produced in the future".
The first four titles include a guide to organic gardening and a children's encyclopaedia on the environment.
The company, a division of Penguin Books, has called their launch "a global publishing first".
'Fantastic'
By removing the book's jackets and an energy efficient binding process, the company said it had saved both paper and energy.
It has also printed the books on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), ensuring a tree is planted for each one used.
Travel has been minimised by printing the titles locally in Europe, using a German firm with a strong track record of environmental work.
Julia Young, manager of the WWF-UK Forest and Trade network, called the Made with Care series "a fantastic initiative".

US to set 'binding' climate goals

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

The US is ready to accept "binding international obligations" on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, officials say, if other nations do the same.

The comments came in a news conference in Paris given by James Connaughton and Daniel Price, environmental and economics advisers to President Bush.

The US hopes the world's major economies will conclude a "leaders' declaration" before the July G8 summit.

There was no indication of how much the US might be prepared to cut emissions.

But the Bush administration is clearly looking for some kind of binding commitment from major developing countries such as China, India and Brazil.

"The US is prepared to enter into binding international obligations to reduce greenhouse gases as part of a global agreement in which all major economies similarly undertake binding international obligations," said Mr Price, the president's deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.

The United Nations climate process emphasises that different countries have "common but differentiated responsibilities" for climate change, which in practice has meant industrialised nations promising to cut emissions while developing countries do not.

But the US officials suggested the phrase should mean something different - supporting the poorest nations, while expecting those that are developing successfully to take on some kind of obligation to cut emissions.

"An effective framework requires the participation of all major economies, developed and developing alike," said Mr Price.

"Europe and the US could turn out the lights today, and come 2030 or 2050 we would not have addressed the problem of climate change."

Some countries might commit to firm emissions targets while others promised energy efficiency gains, he suggested. Commitments could cover a country's entire economy, or just certain sectors.

Shuffling the decks

The notion that major developing countries might take on binding targets might prove politically difficult, suggested Philip Clapp, deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group

"The White House knows that taking a binding target of comparable size [to that taken by the US or EU] is neither a negotiating option nor a physical possibility for the Chinese government," he told BBC News.

He also suggested that an acid test of a leaders' declaration would be the timescale for making cuts.

At the last G8 summit, Japan proposed setting the goal of reducing emissions globally by 50% by 2050, a target which Daniel Price said could potentially form part of the declaration.

"It's become increasingly apparent that the Bush administration is willing to agree to a target that would take effect 40 years from now, and wants to portray that as a major accomplishment," said Mr Clapp.

"A key question is whether the administration is willing to accept binding targets that take effect before 2020, because a binding commitment that doesn't take effect for 40 years is really just shuffling the problem off one more time."

Trading plans

The US comments stem largely from a process initiated by President Bush last year, a series of talks involving 17 nations that together account for about 80% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

The "major economies" or "big emitters" group had its second meeting in Hawaii last month, and the next is scheduled for Paris in April.

Environmental groups have criticised the process as a distraction from the UN negotiations, and because the developing countries involved have much lower per capita emissions than the US.

But European delegates involved in the Hawaii meeting described the mood as frank and engaging.

The EU and US are working together within the World Trade Organization (WTO) on a proposal that all countries should slash tarriffs on trade in clean energy equipment.

"Some countries, in particular the major developing countries, have tarriff schedules as high as 70%," said Mr Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

"We're trying to get the world to eliminate tarriffs, and that could increase global trade in clean energy technologies and services by up to 14% per year.

"This is the single largest step we could take immediately to transfer available technologies to the developing world at very low cost."

Mr Price suggested the style of dialogue between the EU and US, which he categorised as "the EU berating the US to do more", needed to change, with both blocs working together to ensure the participation of major developing countries.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Biocombustibles empeoran el cambio climático, concluye estudio científico

Sería uno de los mayores fraudes ambientales de la historia, advierten auditores

Por: Steve Connor (The Independent)

La expansión de cultivos para producir biocombustibles conduce al envío de enormes cantidades de dióxido de carbono a la atmósfera y en nada contribuye a detener el cambio climático o el calentamiento global, según la primera auditoría integral de un presupuesto para ese rubro.

Los científicos han producido evidencia condenatoria, la cual sugiere que los biocombustibles podrían ser uno de los mayores fraudes ambientales, porque en realidad empeoran el calentamiento global al contribuir a las emisiones de dióxido de carbono producido por humanos que supuestamente deben reducirse.

Dos estudios separados, publicados en la revista Science, muestran que los cultivos que hoy se desarrollan para producir alternativas “verdes” a los combustibles basados en el petróleo emiten mucho más dióxido de carbono a la atmósfera del que puede ser absorbido por las plantas.

Los científicos descubrieron que en el caso de algunos cultivos se requerirían varios siglos para pagar la “deuda de carbono” que se genera. Estos costos ambientales no toman en cuenta la destrucción adicional del medio ambiente, por ejemplo la pérdida de biodiversidad causada al desmontar áreas de selva.

“Todos los biocombustibles que usamos hoy destruyen los hábitat, ya sea en forma directa o indirecta. La agricultura global ya produce alimentos para 6 mil millones de personas; producir biocombustible basado en plantas también implicará convertir más tierra a uso agrícola”, advierte Joe Fargione, de la organización privada estadunidense The Nature Conservancy, quien encabezó uno de los estudios.

Los científicos llevaron a cabo un análisis que se había omitido ante la precipitación por cultivar biocombustibles, estimulada por las políticas de Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, cuyos proponentes han estado ansiosos por exaltar las virtudes de los biocombustibles como alternativa verde a los combustibles fósiles para el transporte.

Ambos estudios observaron la cantidad de dióxido de carbono que se libera cuando una porción de tierra se convierte al cultivo de biocombustibles. Descubrieron que cuando las tierras de turba de Indonesia se convierten en plantaciones de palmera para producir aceite de coco, por ejemplo, se requieren 423 años para pagar la deuda de carbono.

Otro caso nocivo es cuando la selva amazónica se desmonta para convertirla en parcelas para soya. Los científicos descubrieron que se requerirían 319 años de producción de biodiesel a partir de la soya para pagar la deuda de carbono causada por el derribamiento de los árboles.

Tales conversiones de tierra para cultivar maíz y caña de azúcar para biodiesel, o aceite de coco y soya para bioetanol, emiten entre 17 y 420 veces más carbono que el que se ahorra al año por el remplazo de combustibles fósiles, calculan los científicos.

“La pregunta es: ¿vale la pena? El carbono que se pierde al convertir bosques, pastizales y turba, ¿supera al que se ‘ahorra’ al usar biocombustibles en vez de combustibles fósiles?”, expresa el doctor Fargione. “La respuesta es no. Estas áreas naturales almacenan gran cantidad de carbono, así que convertirlas en tierras de cultivo conduce a que se emitan toneladas de carbón a la atmósfera”.

“Al encontrar soluciones al cambio climático, debemos asegurarnos de que el remedio no resulte peor que la enfermedad”, señala Jimmie Powell, integrante del equipo científico de The Nature Conservancy. “No podemos darnos el lujo de desdeñar las consecuencias de convertir tierra para biocombustibles. Hacerlo significa que sin proponérnoslo podríamos promover alternativas peores que los combustibles fósiles. Los hallazgos de estos estudios deben incorporarse en las políticas de emisión de carbono de aquí en adelante”, consideró.

© The Independent

Traducción: Jorge Anaya

Flying clouds the real climate culprit / Volar nubla el verdadero culpable climático

VIEWPOINT
Martin Wright

The aviation industry has become public enemy number one for environmental groups, says Martin Wright. But, he argues in this week's Green Room, they should focus their efforts on "the real elephant in the room" - forest destruction.


Ask some vaguely green people what's the single biggest thing they can do to tackle climate change, and most will respond with a guilty smile: "yes, I know, I should stop flying."

A few brave, selfless souls do just that. But the rest of us are far too used to cheap, quick getaways to kick the habit completely.

There's nothing like a few months of unremitting English mizzle to soften the resolve of the most committed "no flyers".

Environmentalists will always struggle to persuade people to eschew pleasure in favour of the planet. After all, no-one likes being told off for having a good time. Any argument that says, in effect: "save the planet - stay at home in the wet" is hardly going to win hearts and minds.

Sure, there's always the slow train to Provence. But like so much of the Slow Movement (food; travel; life, even), it still reeks of privilege. It's more expensive, it takes (and lasts) longer.

There could be all kinds of ways - from subsidies to sabbaticals - of making it more accessible for those whose only hope of a great escape is an Easyjet south. But for the moment, life in the slow lane is still a velvety green luxury for the favoured few.

So until such time as fuel prices go through the roof, or draconian caps on carbon stifle the market, air travel will remain a seductive option for all but the deepest of greens.

Real carbon culprit

But while we're agonising over our aircraft addiction, we're missing the real "elephant in the living room" of climate change: forest destruction.

It is already the largest single source of carbon emissions after energy, contributing up to 10 times as much as aviation.

The Stern Report, no less, warned that rainforest destruction alone would, in the next four years, release more carbon into the atmosphere than every flight from the dawn of aviation until 2025.

Burning forests produces a particularly nasty double whammy of warming. As they burn, they send vast swathes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And once they're gone, they can't soak up the carbon from industry, cars and power plants.

But despite all this, people get far more exercised over the evils of aviation than they ever do over forest loss.

This is partly because aviation looms large on those instant "carbon calculators", designed to give a rough-and-ready guide to an individual's impact.

Deforestation, for the most part, doesn't, as it's virtually impossible to quantify individual responsibility for forest loss - unless you happen to be a timber trader or a palm oil planter.

But it's also because the forests are disappearing in "faraway countries": the chainsaws and fires aren't exactly on our doorstep, so it's easy to believe it's nothing to do with us - and there's nothing we can do about it, either.

This is bitterly ironic, because politically and economically it would be much easier to make massive reductions in deforestation than to achieve similar cuts in air travel. And in terms of curbing climate change, that would be massively more effective, too.

Tree hugging

So if we could just persuade people to be as excited about saving forests as they feel guilty about flying, then maybe we'd achieve something.

That means making forest conservation everyone's business - literally. And one of the best ways of doing so is to make the future of forests worth investing in - not just for the planet, but for your own pocket, too.

After all, you don't need complex technical fixes to stop forest destruction. You just have to make trees worth more standing than felled. And with the fate of civilisation cradled in their canopy, they should carry quite a price tag.

On paper, it's a no brainer. By any rational calculation, forests can yield better returns when kept intact than when cleared.

Take their role in protecting watersheds, for example, or their value as a source of fruit, nuts, shade-grown coffee, game and medicinal herbs - even, in some cases, a genuinely sustainable source of high-quality timber.

That's been the basis for a range of initiatives known as "payments for ecological services".

In essence, these are deals between forest communities and "buyers", who benefit from the forest remaining in place - such as towns and cities downstream, or the owners of mines or hydro plants, all of whom depend on the water supply that the forest ensures.

Cool Earth, a charity set up by businessman Johan Eliasch, allows individuals to buy parcels of rainforest - not for their own profit, but to hold them in trust on behalf of local communities, so taking them out of the clutches of the loggers.

It's an intriguing scheme, but it's still driven by charity, not business.

Sound investment

But once you introduce forests' ability to store carbon into the equation, then the balance sheet really starts to shift in their favour.

According to one recent study, most ventures which drive forest destruction - whether logging or for agriculture - generate around $5 (£2.50) for every tonne of carbon released as a result of the forest loss.

Europeans are typically paying up to seven times that amount to offset the same amount of carbon.

And as emissions trading takes off, so the carbon price will rise. One estimate puts the value of greenhouse gas storage in some forests at a healthy $2,200 (£1,100) per hectare.

And it's that which is pricking the interest of the financial markets. Invest in a forest now, and you can expect its value to appreciate substantially over the years - especially since, after the recent UN climate conference in Bali, forest owners can expect to "sell" their benefits on the emerging global carbon markets.

All of a sudden, it opens up the prospect of massive investments from pension funds, drawn to the long-term security which standing forests can provide.

Halving forest destruction by 2030, says the Stern Report, would cost around £10-£15 billion a year - that's roughly the same as we spend on alcohol in Britain alone. It is, in other words, a sum which should be readily available - as long as there's the prospect of a decent return.

The Global Canopy Programme - an alliance of forest scientists - is urging the adoption of a global market in forest carbon credits to help unleash a tide of investment.

Forum for the Future and others are working on schemes for forest-backed bonds; some are predicting the launch of Forest PEPs. Such is the potential value in keeping forests intact that even those masters of the dark arts of finance, the hedge funds, are starting to sniff around.

There are all manner of pitfalls, of course. For some, it smacks of "carbon colonialism".

Others warn that such schemes will inevitably favour wealthy landowners, who can cope with all the complex legal processes involved, rather than forest peoples themselves.

Then there's the question of proving that a particular stretch of forest, which may lie in a remote, hard-to-monitor area, really has survived intact.

But these are not insuperable obstacles. Investors don't have to buy up forests to make a return on them; they merely have to ensure they share in the proceeds of their conservation over times.

So they can for example rent, or lease, an interest in the forests from local communities, who are in any case best placed to safeguard the assets - and so can reasonably expect to share in the profits, too.

On the monitoring side, satellite mapping is now sophisticated enough to zero in to the scale of individual trees, providing pinpoint, 24-hour surveillance. Microchips inserted in selected trunks can report instantly if they're felled - and then track the timber, electronically fingering everyone involved.

So in a few years' time, you could sit at home on the sofa, and, via your laptop, check up on the health of "your" patch of forest, in real time.

Result? The world will have a million or more eagle-eyed forest monitors, casting a protective eye over the green canopy of their investments. (And only occasionally, you'd hope, needing to utter the anguished cry: "Oi! That's my pension plan going up in smoke!")

The logic is simple; the implementation will be anything but. But if we wait till we've a perfect system, we'll be wasting precious time; time in which thousands of square miles of forest will be irrevocably lost.

Martin Wright is editor (at large) of Green Futures Magazine

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

Society depends on more for less / La sociedad depende del más por menos

VIEWPOINT
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart

If the world is to end the threat from climate change, we need to produce more with less energy, says Mark Moody Stuart. In this week's Green Room, he outlines his vision that will help society fulfil this goal.


To address the climate challenge we need to reduce the carbon content of our energy by at least half.

But at the same time we must learn to generate a unit of GDP for about half the energy which we use at present.

Energy efficiency and carbon content of energy are equally important, but they require different approaches to achieve them.

I am a great believer in both the power of consumer choice and the market. As we come to understand the consequences, we do tend to make greener choices.

But most of us will only make those choices if they deliver the convenience and utility to which we are used or aspire; and if they do not cost more (or we can afford the luxury of choice).

Consumer opinion and choice is important, but it will not do the trick on its own. Its importance is in encouraging companies to supply the market in more climate friendly ways, and most importantly in encouraging governments (for whom consumers vote) to take the steps needed.

'Bitter experience'

So what of the market? It is an unsurpassed mechanism for allocating resources to deliver better things. Through competition, technologies are optimised or discarded, opening the field for creativity and choice. I believe in the power and value of markets.

But like most things, they have a failing. Without regulation to channel their power, markets will not deliver things which are of no immediate benefit to the individual making his or her choice, even though they may be beneficial to society.

Without regulation, markets would not have delivered unleaded gasoline, catalytic converters on the exhausts of cars or seatbelts and airbags, nor clean air to London after the killer smogs of the 1950s.

In New Delhi, regulation forced three-wheeled vehicles, taxis and buses to switch to clean gas fuel. The initial complaints were great, but everyone, including the taxi drivers, blessed the result.

These regulations were not cost free, but everyone benefited. Regulation was needed to channel the power of the market, but regulatory frameworks have to be simple and practical.

The gut opposition of business people to regulation comes from bitter experience of regulations which don't just frame the market but bind it hand and foot and tell us how things must be done.

This kills markets and takes the fun and variety out of life.

Carbon price

So what are the frameworks we need?

For carbon content, we need a mechanism which forces energy supplies in the right direction. This means putting a price on carbon for major producers (and large-scale users) of energy through a carbon cap and trade system, such as we already have in Europe.

Unfortunately, this system has been initially subject to government and business special pleading and gaming. Or it means a carbon tax.

Both are complex and should only be applied to major producers or users. Trading encourages carbon-avoiding investment where it has the most impact. It also allows the transfer, through market mechanisms, of financial resources to China and India.

I do not think we will get a more global agreement without such transfer. Taxation has the great merit that it provides a clear floor price of carbon.

So for me the preferred option is a combination - a tax, but with the ability to reduce it through trading, getting the best combination of a floor price and efficiency of investment.

Most people think that a price of something around 40 dollars a tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) to producers would do the trick.

Market decides

Before you panic about the cost to you and industrial transport, that is only about 5p a litre on fuel - within the noise of oil price variations.

On the other hand, for efficiency we need regulatory frameworks - very tough efficiency standards on buildings, on lighting and on personal transport.

That means banning the manufacture or import of old fashioned light bulbs.

Technically, this actually just means putting a standard on the efficiency of lights so that markets decide whether the best answer is compact fluorescent lights or the newer LEDs - old incandescents would never meet such a hurdle.

It means very tough standards on buildings. This is already having an effect in London where to achieve highly valuable planning permission, developments are already achieving energy efficiency which we thought we would not achieve for a decade or more.

And for personal transportation? That means banning "gas guzzlers" and steadily increasing the total efficiency of any vehicle sold.

You can buy the roomiest, vroomiest car, as long as it meets the efficiency standard.

My wife and I have driven a hybrid since 2001 and it is a beautiful and comfortable piece of engineering, silent and will do 100mph (we tried it, but not in England!).

That may not be the best technology - the market will find out. But we must constrain the market in an efficiency framework.

To achieve the same through taxation would mean fuel taxes at levels which would play havoc with industry, countryside dwellers and the poor who need transport.

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart is non-executive chairman of Anglo American, and is a member of the UN Global Compact and chairman of the Global Compact Foundation

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website