A Breath of Fresh Air

YOU COULD SAY Laura Ledwith Pennypacker MPP 2004 teaches grade school ecology on a massive scale to some very influential students.

Every 11-year-old knows trees absorb carbon dioxide and that cutting them down and burning them spews climate-warming carbon into the atmosphere. But multiply that scenario by millions of acres of trees per year, add developing nations torn between destroying their forests or economic extinction, and you have an extraordinarily complex public policy problem.

"Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of carbon emissions annually," Ledwith Pennypacker says. As manager of international policy and science at Conservation International (CI), she highlights the link between forest preservation and lower carbon emissions.

Policymakers often overlook that link, Ledwith Pennypacker says. Under the Kyoto Protocol, which lets companies earn the right to pollute by paying developing countries to reduce their own emissions, forest preservation doesn't earn carbon credits.

That's partly because measuring a forest's carbon-reducing value is inherently difficult. But a 2005 report by the governments of Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica proposed using satellite technology to monitor deforestation emissions on a national level. By extrapolating those amounts into a baseline figure, they argued, countries could be credited for slowing the destruction of their forests.

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FACT Forests cover about 1/3 of the world's land surface and account for about 1/2 of the terrestrial carbon. Deforestation and land degradation account for an estimated 15 percent to 25 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, largely from tropical developing countries.
Source: Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change, Feb. 2007 Report
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A two-year feasibility study of the proposal will be presented at the December UN Framework Convention for Climate Change meeting. CI and Ledwith Pennypacker haven't waited, though. The organization has helped develop guidelines for forest-based projects in the voluntary carbon-offset market.

Now, in countries such as Madagascar, China, and Ecuador, CI sets up "conservation carbon" programs where companies can earn carbon credits by investing in forest-preservation areas. The investment income gives poor communities an alternative to cutting down their trees.

"It's a puzzle," Ledwith Pennypacker says. "You're trying to increase the protection of biodiversity while improving the economic prospects of community residents." It means coordinating stakeholders up and down the chain to find unique solutions.

One promising project is in Liberia, where President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf MPA 1971 has pushed to set aside 3.7 million acres of protected forest.

CI has been in Liberia for eight years, working even during its brutal civil war. Many endangered forests are located in violent areas, but Ledwith Pennypacker argues, waiting for a cease-fire often isn't an option.

"If you wait for peace and quiet before you go in, everything's going to be gone." -- CO