December 2006
Seeing The Wood For The Trees
As people have become more socially aware in recent years, Christmas presents have taken a decidedly ethical turn. With re-usable wrapping, fair-trade gifts and even the growth of such sites as sendacow.org.uk, Christmas is slowly evolving from an exploitative commercial enterprise into a more socially minded one. This year, one of the most popular “green gifts” has been carbon offset certificates.
These involve donating money to a scheme which will offset part of the carbon emissions of the recipient of the gift through investment. The most popular of these schemes are often based around reforestation as this is often the cheapest and most easily implementable, operable in any country. However, there have been recent warnings that not all of these so called "green schemes" in operation are beneficial.
A number of factors may offset any supposed benefit, ranging from poor planning, to inadvertent, but active negative impacts on sustainability as a whole. Executive Director Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth is more concerned than most about this. Of particular concern was reforestation, a topic which he addressed at the ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) in November:
"A lot of these schemes focus on reforestation, but in countries where there are issues of land rights, people are being turfed off agricultural land to that someone can plant a tree to make themselves feel better about flying… Other offsetting schemes are being multiply sold, so that there is not actually any benefit. Offsetting can play a role but it needs to be regulated."
Such is the concern that a representative from the Office of Climate Change stated that the government would be holding consultative talks to develop official guidelines to prevent confusion or abuse.
But in spite of this proposed safeguard, computer modelling data presented at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting has indicated that reforestation schemes aimed at reducing CO2 levels may be outweighed by their capacity to trap heat near the ground. Trees only really work towards cooling the planet when planted in the tropics. Even in mid-latitude, temperate areas the climate benefits of planting are near zero, according to Dr Govindasamy Bala of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He continued:
"[In] the seasonally snow-covered regions [at higher latitudes], planting new trees could be actually counter-productive".
This problem is compounded by the fact that the dark canopy provided by thick forests planted in latitudes far from the equator serves to absorb heat, further aggravating global warming.
The analysis of their data reveals three key factors in reforestation carbon-offset schemes:
- Forests can cool the planet by absorbing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide during photosynthesis.
- They can also cool the planet by evaporating water to the atmosphere and increasing cloudiness; a deck of white clouds reflects incoming solar radiation straight back out into space.
- Trees can also have a warming effect because they are dark and absorb a lot of sunlight, holding heat near ground level.
So just a word of warning before buying those green gifts for your nearest and dearest. Make sure you know the exact details of the scheme, ensure it is properly regulated, and if possible, invest in carbon reduction rather than carbon offsetting schemes.
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