May 20 2009

Making Forests Part of the Solution

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

PG&E today joined a coalition of leading U.S. corporations and environmental organizations to endorse protecting the world's endangered tropical forests by dedicating five percent of future greenhouse gas reduction permits to effective and verifiable conservation programs.

The group's "Consensus Principles on International Forests for U.S. Climate Legislation" are aimed at influencing congressional deliberations on a massive new energy bill that likely will include "cap-and-trade" provisions to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Besides PG&E Corporation, the coalition includes American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Marriott International, The Walt Disney Company, Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists and several other organizations.

They were convened by Avoided Deforestation Partners, a project of the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. that promotes "effective, transparent, and equitable market and non-market incentives to reduce tropical deforestation."

"Destruction of the world's forests produces about 20 percent of the climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere each year - more than from all the planes, trains and automobiles on Earth," said Mark Tercek, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, one of the signatories. "Additionally, millions of people around the world depend on forests for clean water, food, shelter and their livelihoods. These principles create a real chance to conserve tropical forests for people and nature." 

Utilities are among the chief targets of proposed cap-and-trade legislation. Although PG&E is one of the nation's cleanest utilities, with greenhouse gas emissions that run only a third of the national average per megawatt-hour, its customers too would be affected by increases in the price of fossil fuels, which account for about half of its generation. Under the coalition's proposals, utilities and other entities would receive credits under a cap-and-trade system for any investments they make in "environmentally sound, measurable, reportable and verifiable" projects to protect tropical forests.

According to one expert, the five percent set-aside for tropical forest conservation programs would equal about $3.4 billion annually and would eliminate some 340 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, roughly equal to the emissions of France or Spain. 

The signers also support explicit legislative provisions protecting the "rights and interests of indigenous peoples, other forest dependent communities and the rural poor" lest they be trampled in the name of protecting the environment.

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