The Forest Stewardship Council has warned that any moves to set up a carbon market around avoided deforestation should not lose sight of the other environmental and social issues that intertwine in forests. The independent responsible-forestry certifier also says it should play a role in any emerging forest carbon finance system.
There is now strong and broad international support for formal incentives for a global financing mechanism for preserving forests, or what’s become known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (
REDD). The REDD initiative would see payments from the developed world to governments and communities in the developing world, particularly those in which tropical rainforests lie.
The recent UN climate meeting in Accra saw broad agreement that such a system, involving either direct funding or a carbon trading market, should be part of a future climate change treaty to follow on from the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.
In a statement on climate change, the FSC says the forest management standards it has built up over 15 years makes it well-placed to ensure that the carbon financing incentives that arise are fully harmonised with other forest uses values – such as biodiversity and the rights of forest communities.
The FSC says its forest management standards and certification system should be a pre-requisite for any carbon financing initiatives. It sees a lead role for itself in the verifying of the carbon benefits of avoided deforestation activities and says its auditing tools can do the job on
additionality, permanence and leakage.
FSC Statement on Forests and Climate Change [PDF]
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