India says forests soak 10 percent emissions annually

Tue Aug 4, 2009 7:53am EDT
By Krittivas Mukherjee
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's forests are absorbing about 10 percent of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) every year, the environment minister said on Tuesday.
Jairam Ramesh's announcement was India's first quantification of climate benefits from its forest cover, a move that could boost its demand for funds to fight global warming under a U.N. scheme.
Citing a new government study, he told parliament the plan was to protect and extend the forest cover beyond the present 65 million hectares, or about 20 percent of India's land. Last week, he said the government had allocated $200 million for the scheme.
"If we take the forestry cover further, then you can imagine how much green house gas emission we can absorb," he said.
India's total GHG emissions stood at 1,853 million metric tons equivalent of carbon dioxide, about 4.9 percent of global emissions in 2005, according to the World Resources Institute.
Forests soak up vast amounts of planet-warming CO2 and can act as a brake on climate change.
Under an emerging U.N. scheme called reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, or REDD, developing nations could potentially earn billions of dollars by setting aside and rehabilitating their forests.
The valuable carbon offsets they earn could be sold to rich nations to help them meet emissions goals under the program, likely to be part of a broader climate pact from 2013.
India is also trying to expand its forest cover by another six million hectares over the next six years. (Editing by Ron Popeski)

Carbon Credits Finance New Approach to Large-Scale Conservation

Unprecedented Partnership Conserves Prairie Habitat Through Direct Payments to Landowners

MEMPHIS, Tenn., November 20, 2007 – It pays to conserve habitat these days. Literally. In an unprecedented conservation agreement, Ducks Unlimited, Equator Environmental, LLC and New Forests Inc. are helping landowners conserve grasslands and store carbon on their property – and make money doing it.

“This is a totally novel approach to habitat conservation,” said Jim Ringelman, Ducks Unlimited’s Director of Conservation Programs in the Great Plains. “DU’s highest priority is protecting the grasslands of the Prairie Pothole Region from destruction, and one way we do that is through conservation easements. When landowners agree to an easement that prohibits plowing that land, they’re also ensuring that the carbon in that soil won’t be released. So, we thought ‘What if DU could offer landowners money for the conservation easement, and money for the carbon credits on their land.”

It sounds complicated, but according to Dan Spethmann, Manager of Investment Programs for New Forests, it’s not.

“On the prairies of North and South Dakota, millions of acres of grassland plants are storing, or ‘sequestering,’ a huge reserve of soil carbon. If that land is plowed, the soil carbon is exposed to oxygen, decomposed and released as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. In the process, vital waterfowl breeding habitat is destroyed,” says Spethmann.

Full Story