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INFORMAL DIALOGUE ON THE ROLE OF LAND USE, LAND USE CHANGE AND FORESTRY IN THE CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS
7-9 MAY 2008, REYKJAVIK, ICELAND
CO-CHAIRS’ SUMMARY
1) Participants representing about forty countries and organisations participated in the third meeting of the Informal Dialogue on the Role of Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF). The Dialogue provides a forum for discussion in order to increase mutual understanding of key LULUCF issues among Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
2) The discussions took place during the preparatory phase for the negotiations on future commitments, to be held in Copenhagen in 2009. We recognised that LULUCF had facilitated the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol (KP), and that the rules agreed subsequently had facilitated entry into force. However, the KP rules are complex and do not always provide incentives for additional action. We trust that the treatment of LULUCF in future negotiations will be easier to understand, provide the missing incentives, and retain the catalytic effect. Agreeing the rules for treatment of LULUCF before agreeing the level of commitments may be helpful, because some of the difficulty encountered in the past was due to having agreed commitments before deciding the full range of LULUCF activities that would be available to Parties.
3) As with the first two meetings of the Dialogue (Rotorua, October 2005 and Madrid, April 2006), the discussions in Reykjavik were under the Chatham House rule, and were not intended to pre-empt the negotiations. This note summarises issues discussed in Reykjavik that were, from the Co- Chairs’ perspective, of particular significance. This Summary reflects the personal observations of the Co-Chairs and does not necessarily represent the views of all participants. It should be read together with the Co-Chairs’ summaries from the Rotorua and Madrid meetings Available at [web addresses], and with the individual presentations made in Reykjavik. These are available at [web address].
4) At about 30% of the total, Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) and Agriculture constitute a significant source of anthropogenic emissions. The share of mitigation potential increases with carbon price, indicating lower than average mitigation cost, but not dramatically so – costs and mitigation potential broadly comparable with other sectors. Further research is needed on the relationship between the top down and bottom up estimates of forestry mitigation potential, and to understand better how the mitigation potential can be realised. Nevertheless data presented in Reykjavik showed that country assessments of mitigation potential can be consistent with IPCC ranges. The effect on carbon price, were LULUCF and Agriculture were included in compliance markets under a future climate agreement, would depend in level of commitments. This is simply a matter of supply and demand and applies to other sectors also.
5) There has been a logical progression in the development of the IPCC guidelines for estimating greenhouse gas emissions and removals. There is now greater comprehensiveness and increased integration between agriculture and forestry, which are treated together in the 2006 Guidelines as Agriculture, Forestry and other Land Uses (AFOLU). The 2006 Guidelines are a development of IPCC’s previous guidance but differ in some respects – eg in treatment of CO2 that will arise in the atmosphere as a result of the oxidation of anthropogenic emissions of other gases containing carbon. But the 2006 Guidelines provide all information needed for estimates consistent with the previous methods to be made if Parties so decided. The 2006 Guidelines provide advice on all methods of accounting of Harvested Wood Products (HWP) currently under discussion, though there is no presumption about what Parties will ultimately decide about including HWP..
6) Optimum contributions to emissions mitigation from the management of HWP can be calculated. This shows that materials substitution and a cascade of uses leading finally to energy production show greatest benefit in longer term, though short term dynamics depend on national circumstances. The key to a successful agreement on HWP is to incentivise the cascade of uses of sustainable timber but not to reward use of unsustainable timber. This implies the need for appropriate signals in the sectors involved.
7) Including reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) in future climate agreement will require sufficient capacity in developing countries to participate. Rising timber demand would tend to increase international leakage. Ways to address include aiming for all-in agreement, or demand side correction for unsustainable imports, and effective action to address illegal logging. We need to consider the full range funding approaches (market and non-market). Sectoral agreements could also be developed for LULUCF by broadening the CDM. Accommodating REDD or broader sectoral agreements implies sufficiently deep emissions reduction commitments to maintain the incentives to reduce global emissions to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
8) Iceland has a unique history of land use which makes clear the connection between climate change and land degradation. Iceland is addressing this effectively through afforestation, revegetation and wetland restoration programmes. These are major factors in GHG balance of Iceland and would be relevant in a future climate agreement. World wide, land degradation affects between 2 and 3 billion people and over 30% land area. This implies huge potential for co-benefits between food security, poverty reduction and emissions mitigation through land restoration and soil conservation, and demonstrates synergies with the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) that are at least as great as the synergies with the Convention for Biodiversity (CBD) that exist through forest conservation. Iceland has established 3 year pilot project UN University Land Restoration Training Programme to share experiences with professionals from developing countries. Soil carbon stocks are quantifiable using models and can be cross-checked by measurement. Increasing soil carbon is consistent with other key soil functions – food supply, organic waste recycling, water and air quality improvement and biodiversity conservation. Realising synergies with the CBD and CCD is important and most likely to be realised through mutual awareness rather than co-negotiation. Synergies with adaptation need more research.
10) Though some amendments will be important to realise the mitigation potential currently missed by the KP rules, it will be desirable that the treatment of LULUCF in future climate agreement maintain sufficient continuity with existing rules, to give consistent signal to stakeholders. There will be a need to maintain incentives for additional action despite variation in carbon stocks which may occur because of lagged effects of planting, and statistical fluctuations due to fires or pest attack. Negotiations will probably be easier if we have a causal understanding of these effects and can project them forward. This causal understanding of trends will enable justification of the contribution that LULUCF makes to mitigation. More comprehensive treatment will help to avoid to problems due to partial accounting– eg removal of straw for energy use reduces soil carbon, but without inclusion of soil carbon this will not be captured, and the amount of mitigation overestimated. The difference between gross-net and net-net accounting is really a matter of deciding the relationship between base year, emissions, level of commitment and accounting method.
11) It is now possible to estimate include age class legacy effects in forestry, natural disturbance issues such as fire, and climate change effects such as drought. Projections made on the basis of future expectations about these processes could be the basis for including forest management in future climate agreements, and ex-post adjustment could provide a way to deal with fluctuations due to natural disturbances. However, the method is model based and not solely reliant on an inventory as its basis, it is methodologically complex, and the boundary between direct, indirect and management effects interactions could be difficult to decide.
12) We need user-friendly estimation methods and incentives if we realistically expect action. Future agreement could proceed from assessment of overall effect on anthropogenic emissions and removals, or from consideration of Kyoto rules. Negotiations will inevitably start from latter, though former must be test of success.
Jim Penman
Greg Picker
Reykjavik May 2008
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