Liveblog: Kevin Conrad on Keeping Global Forests Standing

by Emily Gertz

Published May 02, 2009 @ 12:12PM PT

Here at the 350 Climate Conference, Kevin Conrad has provided a welcome perspective from the front lines of climate diplomacy, with a refreshing chaser of candor.  Conrad is the Special Envoy and Ambassador for Environment and Climate Change for Papua New Guinea, a lead negotiator for the G77 and China within the UN's climate change agreement structure, and a Columbia professor.

My general takeaways from his presentation (he offered much more detail, particularly economic):

Greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation make up 20% of the world's climate problem -- and most of that deforestation is happening in developing nations.  But under the international climate treaty, these countries get no economic value for not cutting their trees down; in the lingo of the Kyoto protocol, they are not incuded in any of the asset classes of tradeable carbon emissions credits.

Everyone understands how not to cut down a tree; it's cheap and easily transferable.  What the international climate treaty system needs to do is to create incentives and offer analytical, financial and economic development support, help in creating solutions that can scale up effectively, for countries like Papua New Guinea to keep their forests standing.  

The likely cost?  Around $70 billion.  That's a lot, but looked at another way, it's less than $100 per American per year.  Norway has put $33 billion on the table to help developing countries reduce deforestation, which is a lot more per captia than $70 billion would be for the US.

The king of the oil age is Exxon, valued at around $300 billion.  But if Exxon disappeared tomorrow, there would be plenty of other companies supplying oil.

The king of the information age is Google, valued at over $138 billion.  If it disappeared tomorrow, there would be other search engines to fill in.

The value of the world's forests today: $0.  Despite our understanding that if they disappeared tomorrow, it would be a climactic disaster.  "There's something wrong with this."

Going in to Copenhagen, what he thinks would set the table for strong action would be for the Annex 1 countries (the industrial nations) to agree to deep cuts in their carbon emissions.  This would create some trust and help move the world's nations toward a solution to the climate problem.

However, he feels, the Obama administration's current position won't cut it.  The White House is proposing that the US come in to the Copenhagen negotiations committing to reducing emission to 1990 levels by 2020.  

To the rest of the world, this will be the biggest emitter saying it needs 12 extra years to get to the starting line, that the other nations were at years ago.  It won't bring about the depth of the emissions cuts that we need.