Editor’s note: “Blue Carbon” A “Ecosystem Services”, environmental jargon is everywhere on thesis days. Conservation International seeks meaning in a series of occasional explanatory that we call “What the hell?”
In this delivery, we explore the “HFLDS” paper in the malfunction of the climate carbon.
You climate people and their acronyms.
Yes, we really use many of them.
IPCC. CMACCC. REDD. He even turned ‘trees’ into an acronym. I can’t keep them all straight.
I know. It is a lot. To be fair, “UNF-TRIIPLE-C”, as we call it in the climatic world, it is much easier to say that “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
I guess yes.
Thanks for clicking on this story, anyway.
Well, I’m here now. So what does ‘HFLD’ mean? I guess it’s an acronym for something.
It is “high forest cover, low deforestation.”
And what does that mean?
It is used to discover places, in general, with relatively large areas of intact forests and low deformation rates.
In other words, countries that have not reduced most of their forests.
More or less. Strictly speaking, HFLD countries define themselves as they have more than 50 percent of their forest coverage and a deforestation rate below 0.22 percent per year. In other words: half of its original forest cover is still there, and they are trying to keep it that way.
And this is important because forests are important …
… Indeed. We have covered this widely elsewhere, so it is not necessary to recapitulate everything here. However, for this discussion, the most important thing to remember about forests is that they absorb and store much of the climate carbon pollution that humans produce: intact and non -disturbed forests can eliminate something like 436 million. That is the same amount of greenhouse gases produced by 344 million passenger vehicles with gasoline driven for a year longer than the number of vehicles registered in the United States.
Wow. Therefore, we want more countries to be considered “HFLD”.
Well, yes, but perhaps the most important thing for now is to keep deforestation in the current HFLD countries.
OK. So how many HFLD countries are there now?
At present, 33 countries meet this definition; The first three are Guyana and Surinam in South America, and Gabon in Africa.
Excellent. So … some countries have many forests and have managed to maintain them. What is the problem, then?
The problem, in a nutshell, is that only because those countries have large and intact forests now does not mean that these forests are long -term safe. According to the Redd+Transactions Architecture Board, known as “Art”, another fun climate acronym for you! -“It is projected that future deforestation extends intact and high carbon forests, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 170 billion tons of [carbon dioxide] By 2050, four times current annual emissions. “
Therefore, there is a real risk of more countries to lose the state of HFLD if they cannot afford to maintain or go to an economic route of low deforestation and low carbon pollution. It is a warning signal if countries lose their HFLD state; In fact, five countries lost this status between 2010 and 2019: Cambodia, Laos, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe and Zambia.
So these countries need Money To keep your forests, I take it.
That is a large part of that. Unfortunately, it is worth cleaning forests, that is the main reason why people do. You can sell wood, plant crops or raise cattle instead. Many countries, including HFLD countries, need financing to help reverse the economic equation that values the most forests when they are dead when they are alive.
But there is more than just money: some need technical help, others need to solve problems related to carbon rights and land tenure.
Do HFLD countries receive financial support now?
They do it, but not so much. Since 2007, HFLD jurisdictions have received less than US $ 2 billion in climatic finances. This may sound a lot, but it pales compared to the markets that drive deforestation. For example, the production of livestock reduces US $ 80 billion per year Only in the United States. Meanwhile, the global wood industry has exceeded the value of US $ 1 billion this year. Without dedicated financing to help countries maintain their forest coverage, they are likely to be revealed by the scale of these pressures.
So what is supposed to do the HFLD country? As, why are we talking about this?
I am slippery, you asked. It is reduced to carbon markets.
Oh no.
Oh yes.
Are those things in carbon credits?
That is the carbon credit material. Or of course, we have already talked about carbon credits. In great detail. But to update their memory, carbon credits are generated by projects that pay the communities and the country to not reduce their forests, and each credit represents a ton metric carbon.
Lyrics, they work as follows: Companies can pay credits to compensate for some of the impacts of their greenhouse gases pollution. This compensation is passed to people who maintain forests in developing countries as an incentive to continue their efforts. Done well, this process generates a double benefit: companies are encouraged to reduce their emissions so that they do not have to pay so many credits, while forest protectors receive a financial benefit as long as they keep the forests standing. These forests can continue to absorb more climate carbon from the atmosphere.
So are HFLD credits?
Indeed. They are like other forest carbon credits, only that they are created using a different child and labeled child as such.
But let me guess, there is a trap.
Good. YEAH. The problem is that, according to critics, HFLD areas should not be eligible for investments such as …
… because the areas are with a sufficiently high risk of deforestation.
Precisely! Some people and organizations believe that HFLD credits do not lead to carbon emissions reductions1 – They do not meet the “additional” requirement.
Remember me: What does ‘additional’ mean?
It was already close to answering that: additional is the idea that forest protection, and carbon reductions associated with it, would do so No They have occurred without the investment. This is a fundamental concept behind carbon credits. To obtain a loan, forest protectors must demonstrate that the forest is at risk. That is difficult to establish in places that do not have a long deforestation history, although we know that these risks are real.
In a way, they were victims of their own success.
TRUE. It was a perverse situation to forest communities: the harder people worked to protect their forests in HFLD areas, the lesson Eligible were for incentives to support their work. Therefore, it ends with a situation in which the best way for communities to get access to finances is to stop trying to protect their forests and, instead, let deforestation rates increase.
Oh.
Exactly. And obtaining that financing is critical. It is much easier (and better for climate) protect existing Forests to plant new.
Wait: why? Like, why not just plant new trees?
New trees do not grow quickly enough to compensate for the loss of the oldest, which contain decades of stored carbon. There is also the fact that ripe forests are significant for wildlife, to protect water supplies, to reduce erosion, etc. We should plant new trees, it’s true, but we should do that while Protect the old, no instead or protect them.
William Moomaw, an environmental scientist, explained this in a 2019 interview:
It is not that we should do mentioned above [planting new trees] And we must make reforestation. We should. But recognize that your contribution will be further in the future, which is important. To meet our climatic goals, we have to have greater [carbon] Natural Systems Now. That implies protecting the carbon existences that we already have in the forests, or at least one sufficiently large fraction of them that import.
I see, so we have to protect the forests even if they are No Under threat.
Here is the thing: forests everywhere are Under threat. From 2000 to 2020, the world lost approximately 12 percent of intact forest landscapes, according to a report published in November 2022. At that rate, more than half of the intact forests in the world will be damaged or clear in 2100. growing.
Oh.
I know. Therefore, it is better to find ways to protect the thesis now, before it is too late, and carbon credits can help do that, on a large enough scale, Right now. It is time to give HFLD credits their due and pave the way to be part of the equation.
I can see that. And I am sure that you will find some new acronyms along the way.
Unfortunately, you are probably right.
Additional reading:
1Carbon compensation refers to the compensation of carbon dioxide emissions that arise from activities (or issued by corporations) buying an amount of the so -called “credits” equivalent to the emissions that have been reduced.
Bruno Vander Velde is the managing director of Conservation International content. Why read more stories like this? Register to obtain updates by email. In addition, please support our critical work.
