Citola Blog
When Is A Forest Not A Forest?
We have a novel question for you, a variant on the philosophy teachers’ classic. If a whole conference room full of people argue for an hour about the definition of what constitutes a “forest”, and no lawmakers are there to hear it, does the legal meaning of meaning of “forest” change at all?
We thought you’d enjoy that one – and this lively blog from Bolivia, where the grandly titled Bolivia’s World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth is just finishing. We fear that, in terms of making progress on what a forest actually as, more heat and light has been shed on the matter, but we’re monitoring events and will keep you informed.
It may be a little difficult to say that Bolivia is pro-forest (given that there’s uncertainty over the meaning of the term), but the Bolivians are definitely pro-tree. The Bolivians are broadly sceptical about the value of the carbon offset trading schemes and the efficacy and ethics of the cap-and-trade systems that many other countries and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change favour. As such, we at Citola can once again note with some satisfaction that our offering wins both ways – we’re creating carbon sinks, don’t forget.
That said, some delegates to the Bolivian conference argue that indigenous populations have been harmed by the REDD projects which can be the case when governance fails.
It’s natural that there should be a diversity of views on such an important subject. But, to paraphrase Hamlet, there’s nothing good or bad but that the saying makes it so. Witness an amusing piece of analysis regarding the Icelandic volcano that disputed air travel in Europe this month.
It seems that for the period when some 60 per cent of flights were cancelled across Europe, 206,465 tons of Carbon Dioxide were saved (netting off the carbon emissions from the volcano against the emissions that the flights would have generated).
That looks like an incontrovertible fact – for the moment. We await the counter-arguments with interest.
Post new comment