Emission Reductions
With commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, countries must reach their targets primarily through policies and regulations that either directly limit emissions or that create incentives for renewable energy or more energy efficiency in power generation, industry, and transportation.
The Kyoto Protocol also introduced three market-based mechanisms to help countries reduce their emissions:
- Emissions trading
- Joint implementation
- Clean development
Carbon is now tracked and traded like any other commodity. This is known as the "carbon market." Since carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas, people speak simply of trading in carbon, and other greenhouse gases (methane, for example) are expressed in carbon equivalent (CO2eq).
Emissions trading allows developed countries that have lowered their emissions below their assigned limit to sell their unused credits to other Annex 1 countries. In other words, they can sell their excess reduced emissions to other countries that have not met their emission reduction targets.
The Joint implementation mechanism allows an Annex I country to invest in a project that would reduce emissions in a different country. For example, if the cost is too high to reduce emissions in Japan, Japan could invest in a project in France. In this example, France would benefit from the foreign investment and technology, and Japan would be better able to meet its greenhouse gas target.
The Clean Development Mechanism (also known as CDM) is the only one that allows developing countries to participate. Under this mechanism developed countries with emission-reduction commitments may invest in projects in developing countries—those without commitments—to generate carbon credits inexpensively. These projects can earn saleable, certified emission reduction credits that can be counted towards meeting Kyoto targets.
Examples of CDM projects might include:
- Bringing electricity to rural areas using solar panels or wind-powered generators
- Switching from fossil fuels to biofuels
- Managing urban and rural waste to avoiding methane emissions
- Sequestering carbon by planting trees where forests have been cleared (reforestation) or on land where forests didn’t previously exist (afforestation). The CDM mechanism has already registered more than 1,838 projects and the number is ever-growing.
The CDM mechanism has already registered more than 1,838 projects and the number is ever-growing.
For developing countries, CDM projects provide sustainable development and emission reductions, while giving industrialized countries some flexibility in how they meet their emissions reduction targets.
How have countries participated in the CDM?
As of September 2009, 5,340 projects were in some stage of the CDM project cycle. China had the most with 1,987 projects (37% of the total), India was next with 1422 (27%), followed by Brazil with 405 projects, 8% of the total. Together, they represent 72% of existing projects.
In terms of emissions reduced by these projects, Brazil contributed 6% of the global total.
Although CDM projects can involve afforestation and reforestation, projects that try to avoid emissions by preventing forests from being cut or burned in the first place are excluded from this mechanism. Because Brazil is one of the top five greenhouse gas emitters and more than half of its carbon emission comes from deforestation, there has been a lot of talk about creating a program to reduce emissions from deforestation using a mechanism like CDM in developing countries.
This idea has a history that stretches back to 2003 when a group of researchers led by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) introduced a proposal called “Compensated Deforestation Reduction” at the COP 9 meeting in Milan. The proposal suggested that developing countries that voluntarily reduced emissions from deforestation would receive international financial compensation equivalent to the avoided emissions based on carbon market prices.
After that, many other proposals were made, inspired by the one presented in Milan. At the COP11 meeting in 2005, a block of developing nations led by Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica proposed compensating countries with tropical forests for reducing deforestation.
In 2007, at COP 13 in Bali, Indonesia, preventing emissions from tropical deforestation and preserving forests were central issues. At the meeting’s end, the importance of forests to climate was officially recognized. The member nations decided that in the next two years, they would create a mechanism to reduce emissions from forests under a program called REDD (the acronym for the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries). REDD was officially defined as policies and financial incentives that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, conserve and sustainably manage forests, and enhance forest carbon stocks in developing countries.
Member nations will have to decide how to make REDD a reality and how much they are willing to spend to do it, as more money will help it happen faster.
In the next few years, there will be many changes in how the world’s nations address the problem of climate change. REDD is one part of the solution, but ultimately it will be the attitudes of governments and individuals alike that will determine how we cope with climate change. For updates and more information, please visit and bookmark our website: http://www.ipam.org.br/
