How California can save the Amazon
When Gov. Jerry Brown convenes the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco later this month, it will be a chance to mark the huge strides he has made on behalf of the climate, and measure how much remains to be done. Under his leadership, California has cut greenhouse gas emissions well ahead of its own ambitious targets while adding a million jobs and growing into the world’s fifth largest economy.
Even as the federal government has abdicated its responsibilities, the state has set environmental standards, including for cleaner cars, that have redounded far beyond its borders. But Brown has the opportunity to make his biggest impact yet by harnessing the power of forests to reduce carbon dioxide pollution, the principal cause of global warming.
Without protecting these forests, the world can’t cut emissions quickly enough to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change. Trees photosynthesize carbon dioxide, using it to build their wood and leaves, and then lock this carbon safely away — so long as they remain standing. If burned or cut, trees become a major source of the pollution that threatens the world. Though California is far away from the world’s vast tropical rain forests, the state is in a position to protect these rich carbon storehouses through its cap and trade market. This market allows companies to meet some of their legal obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by buying verified reductions that others have made, thereby offsetting their pollution.
California should create credits for saving whole forest landscapes, across entire states or nations. The credits would be calculated based on the tons of carbon banked in trees in these protected regions, and could be purchased by companies to offset up to 2 percent of their emissions. The money generated would be returned to forest communities to pay for these protections, to create sustainable livelihoods that are in harmony with their forest homes and to strengthen cultural traditions.
Brown should direct the California Air Resources Board, 12 of whose 14 voting members he appoints, to include a rain forest standard in proposed regulations the board is expected to release soon, updating the state’s cap and trade program. This would be an enormously important step toward stabilizing the global climate, fortifying indigenous communities and their cultures and protecting the fragile and incredible biodiversity of these forests.
Slowing deforestation and restoring damaged forests could deliver a quarter or more of the carbon reductions needed by 2030 to avert dangerous climate change. In the Amazon, the largest aboveground carbon stock on earth, Brazil has shown what’s possible. The country was able to cut greenhouse gas emissions more than any other country between 2005 and 2013, while also increasing cattle and soy production. The governments of Britain, Germany and Norway provided critical support for this effort by paying rain forest states for the emissions avoided by reducing deforestation. But expanding this success across the tropics and reversing a recent uptick in cutting and burning in Brazil will require the larger, longer-term infusions of capital that only a private market can provide.
A California standard for forest credits could unlock such a market, establishing a framework for companies and investors to use to meet a growing demand for these pollution allowances that will only accelerate in January 2020, when a new global aviation agreement will require international flights to reduce or offset their emissions.
California’s climate is directly affected by the Amazon, all the more reason for Gov. Brown to act. One recent study found that deforestation in South America affects rainfall and snowpack across the Pacific states. The recent droughts, floods, heat waves and wildfires reveal how acutely vulnerable California is to climate change. The effects of extreme heat fall particularly hard on low-income communities of color, which in cities like Los Angeles tend to be where temperatures climb highest.
Achieving climate stability will involve real trade-offs for countries and communities with these forests, including forgoing development built on more largescale clearing of forests for crops, cattle and timber. But this can be done. The state of Acre in Brazil’s western Amazon has kept its forests both protected and productive; 87 percent remain intact. The economy is centered on small businesses that collect Brazil nuts, tap rubber and grow acai and other high-value fruits. They bring these goods by animal or bicycle to cooperatives where they are processed and marketed, often for export.
Preserving biodiversity is the other imperative for creating these credits. As many as half of the world’s species of plants and animals live in tropical rain forests, one in 10 in the Amazon. Many are found only there and many are endangered. Their survival depends on keeping these forests standing.
Brown already is a climate hero. Leading the fight to save global forests would be a crowning achievement and fitting final chapter for his time as governor.