Posted on 09 December
2009 - Copenhagen, Denmark – In stark contrast
to rigorous rules it is promoting for forest
based emissions reductions in developing
countries, Europe is seeking preferential
treatment for its forestry related emissions.
The loophole lies in
alternative accounting mechanisms which
would exempt emissions from “planned” forestry
operations. It is calculated that up to
one billion tons of CO2 annually, roughly
the equivalent of Japan’s annual emissions,
could escape through the loophole.
The accounting rules,
originally promoted by Austria, Finland
and Sweden, some of the European Union’s
most forested countries, are supported by
the European Union and most industrialized
countries.
“It is the essence of
hypocrisy that developed countries would
propose such weak rules for themselves while
requiring the necessary rigor from the developing
world on emissions reductions from deforestation
and forest degradation,” said Kim Carstensen,
leader of the Global Climate Initiative
at WWF.
“This is like saying
that we won’t count emissions from new power
plants as long as they are planned.
"A loophole like
this could completely undermine the entire
accounting system,” added Carstensen. “They
are jumping at the opportunity to hide a
billion tons of emission reductions through
a simple accounting trick. This is not the
kind of leadership the world has been looking
for.”
As tensions between
developed and developing nations escalate
over a number of issues at the Copenhagen
climate summit, Carstensen warned that “A
global agreement to address dangerous climate
change cannot work without trust between
nations and this loophole provides a great
opportunity for developed countries to manipulate
the system and erode that trust."
Brussels gets a last
chance to review Europe’s Copenhagen performance
Posted on 09 December
2009 - Brussels, Belgium – With mainly negative
reviews of Europe’s Copenhagen performance
so far, a last meeting of the European Council
in Brussels today has a chance to lift poor
or non-existent commitments on emissions
reductions and climate finance.
Most attention in Copenhagen
is focused on the likelihood and timing
of any switch in Europe’s mid-term emissions
reduction offer from the current 20 per
cent to the long ago promised but highly
conditional offer of 30 per cent.
As well, a number of
large loopholes have emerged that could
compromise any European promise.
WWF is calling on European
Heads of State gathering in Brussels to
match their offers on the table in Copenhage
with their commitments to keep average global
warming under the high risk threshold of
two degrees.
"The EU is using
a possible move to a 30 per cent emission
reductions target as a bargaining chip,
but it is an empty gesture," said Jason
Anderson, Head of EU Climate and Energy
Policy at WWF.
"Staying at their
present offer of 20 per cent would actually
mean slowing down the current pace of emission
reductions in Europe and committing to a
lesser effort than the United States, according
to their own internal analyses.”
For Europe to retain
its leadership and live up to the commitment
to stay on less than a 2 degree trajectory,
the Council needs to change its target to
at least a 30% reduction below 11000 levels
with the offer to move to 40% if other countries
increase their efforts, Anderson said.
Undermining any emissions
reductions are three big loopholes that
also need addressing from the European Council
meeting in Brussels tomorrow – the so-called
Hot Air leftover from negotiation of the
Kyoto protocol, accounting rules that could
allow up to a billion tones of CO2 to escape
through a land use change loophole and the
distinct possibility that much of Europe’s
emissions reductions won’t actually be achieved
in Europe.
The EU has 'hot air'
allowances – excess carbon credits granted
to some countries - left within its own
borders, which it could carry over after
2012, or sell on. Failing to flush the 8-10
tonnes of global hot air from the system
could cripple real reduction efforts.
Anderson also described
the land-use, land-use change and forestry
(LULUCF) rules that Europe is choosing to
promote as “a pick-and-choose accounting
trick” that could lead to a billion tonnes
of further so-called reductions if applied
globally.
Europe is also severely
cutting the emissions reductions it needs
to make domestically through the purchase
of carbon offsets in the developing world.
Since the EU has bought so much credit already,
it will carry over to the next commitment
period and further reduce the reductions
that need to be made to meet new targets.
Further, many of these offsets come from
projects that would have happened anyway,
cutting real reductions in emissions.
"Since these loopholes
could severely affect European, and indeed
global, reduction efforts, the EU needs
to cut them out of its own plans and positions,"
Jason Anderson continues.
"The EU also needs
to promote the concept of carbon clarity
as a key principle in Copenhagen: ensuring
full transparency on how reductions are
accounted for, so we know that they are
real."
The Council is also
preparing to agree a short-term financing
offer. What is currently planned is no more
than Europe already claims as its contribution
to international climate finance, and so
will lead to no new action - unless there
is an absolutely clear demand that this
money is new and additional.
Furthermore, Europe
has not been forthcoming about how it intends
to help in one of the fundamental building
blocks of a Copenhagen deal: medium and
long-term finance. It has vague existing
offers but no specifics on what Europe is
prepared to pay.
Europe has also introduced
but then sidelined important options to
raise money, such as from auctioning credits
in the shipping and aviation sectors, as
well as national emissions credit allowance
auctions (AAUs - the 'Norwegian proposal').
WWF is calling for the
EU to clarify their level of financial commitment,
to close the loopholes in their current
proposals and to raise their offered reduction
targets to 40 per cent.
+ More
Illegally cultivated
strawberries begin to fail the supermarket
sustainability test
Posted on 11 December
2009 - Legal and efficient use of water
and land are among the criteria being applied
by some of Europe’s leading retailers in
sourcing strawberry suppliers from around
the beleaguered Doñana National Park
in southern Spain, WWF warned today.
WWF is hoping that the
pressure from retailers will help ease some
of the problems of strawberry farm encroachment
and interception of water supplies around
the national park, while waiting on a long
promised management plan from Andalusian
authorities.
Doñana National
Park is the flagship of Spain’s protected
areas and it protects a key bird migration
route between Europe and Africa.
Europe buys nearly half
of the strawberry production of Doñana,
which implies an income of 150 Million Euros
for the sector. But in the past few decades,
an expansion of strawberry growing, part
of it illegal, restricted its vital water
supplies.
The responsible buying
principles being implemented by the collaborating
supermarkets is rapidly being adopted by
other European retailers, in order to comply
with the future requirements of the certification
of Global Good Agricultural Practices (GlobalGAP)
that will start to be applied in 2011. Among
them, the efficient use of water, which
may change from simple recommendations to
strict requirements to obtaining the certification.
Some supermarket chains,
in collaboration with WWF and some responsible
strawberry growers, began implementing stricter
buying criteria up to three years ago. The
introduction was gradual, to give farmers
time to adapt. This coming season the requirements
will be more strictly applied than ever
before.
“If we want to maintain
the access of the strawberry from Doñana
to the increasingly demanding European market,
Spain, and the Government of Andalusia in
particular, shall activate the necessary
control mechanisms”, said Juan Carlos del
Olmo, CEO of WWF Spain.
With more then 1.000
illegal boreholes in the aquifer of Doñana,
it is estimated that half of the strawberry
surface is irrigated without the legal permits
and one third is placed on formerly forested
areas. The mismanagement of the water has
reduced by 80% the amount of water that
flows from the aquifer to the protected
wetlands. But now its management in the
Doñana area is coming under critical,
external commercial scrutiny.
Doñana park is
home to endangered wildlife including the
spoonbill and the Iberian Lynx. Securing
Doñana from the threat of being turned
into eucalypt plantations and farming land
in the 1960s played a key role in both the
formation of WWF as the leading global conservation
organisation, and the establishment of the
first global environment treaty, the Ramsar
Convention on Wetlands.
