03
Dec 2008 - Brasilia, Brail: Brazil's revised
National Climate Change Plan, which for
the first time defines goals for reducing
massive emissions from deforestation in
the Amazon, is commendable but still short
on ambition and detail, WWF-Brazil said
today.
The revised plan was
released to coincide with the Conference
of Parties (COP) under the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)
in Poznan, Poland which is to put key processes
in place to achieve an international climate
agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol
by the next COP meeting in Copenhagen in
December next year.
Under the revised plan,
the Brazilian government establishes a goal
of reducing the annual rate of deforestation
by 40 per cent from average 1996-2005 levels
during 2006-09, with reductions of a further
30 per cent in each of the subsequent four-year
periods. The aim is to achieve a total decrease
of over 70% by 2014-2017.
Achieving these goals
would avoid 4.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions
during 2006-2017, a figure greater than
the annual emissions of the European Union.
“This goal is reasonably
ambitious,” says Carlos Alberto de Mattos
Scaramuzza, Conservation Director at WWF-Brazil.
“To achieve it, next year deforestation
will have to drop 23% in relation to this
year.”
In Brazil, land use
and land use change represent 75% of greenhouse
gas emissions, the vast majority originating
from deforestation in the Amazon region.
Hence reducing deforestation in the Amazon
is a critical component of any strategy
aimed at lowering Brazil´s greenhouse
gas emissions.
Under the scenario defined
in the plan, the average area of Amazon
forest cleared each year would be 5,742
km2 by 2014-17.
“That´s bigger
than the US state of Rhode Island,” says
Scaramuzza. “The CO2 released from clearing
this area of Amazon forest would be roughly
equivalent to the current annual emissions
of Canada.”
Together with eight
other environmental NGOs, WWF-Brazil has
proposed zero deforestation in the Brazilian
Amazon by 2015. According to Scaramuzza:
“This goal is achievable if key actors—ranging
from indigenous peoples to ranchers—are
compensated for conserving the forest and
thereby avoiding deforestation.”
In August the government
of Norway pledged US$1 billion toward a
newly established Amazon Fund. This voluntary
contribution complements the ongoing climate
negotiations, which are contemplating payments
for reducing emissions from deforestation
and forest degradation (REDD). Yet environmental
NGOs such as WWF-Brazil have expressed concerns
about the effectiveness of the Amazon Fund.
“This fund appears to
be geared primarily to supporting government
command-and-control programmes,” says WWF-Brazil’s
CEO Denise Hamú. “To achieve more
ambitious reductions in deforestation, it
will be effective mechanisms to compensate
the key actors on the ground who determine
the fate of the forest.”
As part of its long-term
conservation strategy for the Amazon, WWF-Brazil
supports a wide range of initiatives aimed
at protecting natural ecosystems and managing
natural resources.
WWF-Brazil assists the
Brazilian government´s ambitious Amazon
Protected Area (ARPA) programme, which aims
to consolidate a total of 600,000 km2 in
new and existing protected areas in the
region by 2012. A recent study found that
the protected areas established or planned
for establishment in 2008 under the program
would result in a total reduction of 5.1
gigatons of CO2 emissions by 2050, which
is roughly equivalent to 14% of global CO2e
emissions per year, or 70% of the emissions
targeted for reduction under the first commitment
period of the Kyoto Protocol.
