Carbon market should encourage tree planting, ICRAF study says

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Nairobi-based World Agroforestry Centre,ICRAF says that allowing farmers to sell that carbon on global carbon markets could reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly and effectively as possible, as well as generate as much as US10 billion each year for poor people in rural areas.

According to analysis by the ICRAF, Carbon credit politics and misplaced technical concerns are impeding efforts to encourage sustainable land use practices in tropical regions—such as better forest management and growing more trees on farms—that could curtail up to 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions while also boosting incomes of the rural poor.

“If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly and effectively as possible, we need to do everything we can to encourage the people living in and around the world’s tropical forests to adopt carbon-saving and carbon-enhancing approaches to development,” said Dennis Garrity, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre, one of 15 centres supported by the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

“One crucial way to do that is to give them the same opportunities to sell their carbon as a commodity in the global market as is encouraged in other sectors.”

“Allowing local communities to benefit from the carbon market by planting and protecting trees and forests would put money in their pockets while also helping to protect our environment and fight climate change,” said Prof. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement International.

“These long-term investments would truly benefit the entire global community.”

The market for carbon credits, in which polluters in industrialized countries offset their emissions by paying others for reducing emissions, was valued at $64 billion in 2007, by the energy firm New Carbon Finance. This figure is projected to grow in 2008.

A recent ICRAF study shows that Kenyan farmers who plant an average of 500 fodder trees that provide high-quality livestock feed increase their farm income by $95 to $120 per cow per year.

By Henry Neondo

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