November 21, 2000

U.S.-Canada-Japan Forest
Management Proposal on CO2 Emissions

Limits forest absorption credit for CO2 reduction efforts

The United States, with Canada and Japan, has come up with a proposal to limit the amount of carbon dioxide absorption by forests that can be used in measuring a country's overall efforts to reduce emissions of that gas, according to a document released November 21 at the Sixth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-6) at The Hague, Netherlands.

The United States, along with other nations, has pledged to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels, which have been implicated in global warming.

Forests naturally absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, and, the State Department estimates, American forests absorb 310 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.

If the United States could count all of that absorption as part of its efforts to lower emission levels, it would make easier the U.S. task of reaching by 2012 an emission level seven percent below the level it had in 1990.

Instead, to move forward negotiations on reducing emissions, the United States has suggested that only a portion of the carbon dioxide that forests absorb from the atmosphere be counted in a country's efforts to reduce overall emissions.

More information on the conference is available at: http://www.usemb.nl/cop6.htm

Following is the text of the document:

Proposal by United States, Canada, Japan
Phase-in for Forest Management in the
First Commitment Period, November 21, 2000

Benefits

• Promotes additional action to enhance sinks.

• Meets needs of Parties.

• Preserves nature of the Kyoto bargain.

Description

• To receive credits, tons would need to be fully and transparently reported, and undergo a thorough international review, with the same quality standards used for emissions estimates.

• The phase-in would apply only in the first commitment period to deal with the scale of the proposed sink activities relative to the agreed targets for the first period.

• The phase-in would apply only to forest management. Parties may count cropland and grazing land management fully, since the scale of these activities would not have a significant impact on first commitment period targets.

• A Party could fully count forest carbon due to existing effort up to a level that is the lesser of 20 million tons of carbon per year over the commitment period and a negotiated percent.

• A Party may fully count sequestration due to additional effort. The Parties would agree to a threshold approach to distinguish between sequestration due to current trends (which would be discounted as described below) and additional effort (which would be counted fully).

• The remainder of the sequestration due to existing effort would be discounted by 2/3 - i.e., a party would be able to count only 1/3 of the total tons.

• In addition to the U.S. proposal regarding the first commitment period phase-in for forest management, the U.S. is committed to including provisions in the sinks decisions to protect old growth forests and sensitive native ecosystems.

Share of credit for net removals - see graph at http://www.usemb.nl/phase-in.doc

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