Forest Trends Brainstorming…On carbon credits and deforestation

The sad thing about this post is that I have no photos...hope you enjoy the reading!


At the low key, yacht friendly resort of Lola island, a workshop was in progress, gathering an eclectic group of managers involved in various aspect of forest exploitation and conservation. All these executives from a fundation called Forest Trends (check website www.forest-trends.org) were here to observe the forest situation in the Solomons and discuss global carbon credit strategies. They were extremely welcoming to outsiders, which enabled me to witness some of the discussions, that were going on. With the state of the planet changing rapidly, the Kyoto protocol is up for review in Copenhagen 2009, before further agreements.

The Kyoto Protocol obliges the 35 industrial states that have ratified the document to cut emissions by 5% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012 but there is a severe dispute about who of the developed and developing countries should bear the burden of the restrictions imposed. A German man involved in the preparation for the Copenhagen agreements chaired one of the meetings at Lola and described the excuse for China’s refusal to abide by the thresholds imposed by Kyoto: Chinese have to catch up with development first before restricting emissions: the other developed countries have had their share of carbon emissions for a century already!

Now a global market of carbon emission credits is growing and, with it, the need to re-think the world economy in environmental terms. Conservation has become a business. To be able to continue operating whilst compensating for their excess carbon emissions, developed countries will have to buy carbon credits from developing countries (some of which remain low carbon emission countries) Developing countries that still have trees standing are in a strong position in the carbon credit market. And conservation agencies may make the price of standing trees attractive to compete with logging companies and acquire conservation power through this market.

Where do the Solomon Islands’ forests fit into this ? Well, there is still a long way to go and unfortunately, the slow process by which conservation NGO’s can release cash to pay the communities to refrain from logging can not beat how fast the Malaysian logging companies bring cash in hand to pillage the forest. The Solomon islander’s culture is such that cash TODAY wins over everything else.
The – inexistent- land tenure structure is such that, even when a village community is willing to protect an area from logging, a few corrupted individuals can decide to split and register as a different tribe and sign off with the loggers under their names, and sell the people forest assets for their own benefits. Corruption and lack of control on the ground. Such cases are innumerable and explain how the country’s forests assets have been pillaged.


Whilst preparing to go up filming at the top of Kolombangara Island with Chris Filardi from the New York Museum of Natural History, we learned of a few initiatives combining expertise from local forestry companies (KFLP), communities and even schools are currently growing, such as the Kolombangara conservation project (see Post in May). Such project aims at protecting corridors of canopy from the summit to the shore to support diurnal migrations. Some rare species of birds roost at the top but feed on coastal fruiting trees and benefit from the continuum of forest habitats, which is threatened by loggers from all . Gathering footage from the top of Kolombangara will help with raising awareness of potential private donors, accelerating conservation process.


And I have no pictures because we never made it to the top of Kolombangara because Chris was too busy with the board of forest but learned a lot!! The KUNA will later return to Kolombangara