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Washington, DC - Rules to allow the use of forest plantations to store carbon pollution from the atmosphere and combat climate change could accelerate the destruction of old-growth native forest around the world, according to a report commissioned by Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund. The report, released today, challenges the assumption that carbon storage in trees will yield environmental benefits. It concludes instead, "the economics of the developing carbon sequestration market is becoming an additional driver for clearing native forests."

Whether industrialized nations will be allowed to resort to forests as temporary carbon stores rather than emissions of global warming gases at the source is one of the most controversial topics to be taken up in two weeks of intergovernmental negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to curb global warming, that open in The Hague, Holland, on Monday.

Today's report, entitled "The Clearcut Case: How the Kyoto Protocol Could Become a Driver for Deforestation", examines a number of Australian projects as case studies of what could emerge as a dangerous new international threat to forests and the species they support.

The report outlines how Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Japan's largest power utility, is implicated in the destruction of native forest in the Tamar Valley in the Australian state of Tasmania, and its replacement by fast-growing eucalyptus plantations intended for carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol. TEPCO's investment of. $5 million in Tamar Tree Farms accounts for 3,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantation which are expected to yield TEPCO 130,000 ton of carbon credits that could be offset against rising carbon emissions in Japan. The report shows how this project is not an isolated incident but is compatible with the forest-clearance programmes of the Australian and Tasmanian authorities.

"The U.S. should not support efforts to grant credits for carbon stored in trees. It is a blatant attempt by some countries to cheat on their Kyoto commitments," said John Passacantando, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA. "This report shows that it is also bad for the environment, leading in some cases to the destruction of old-growth forest to make way for 'carbon-sink' plantations."

Under the Protocol, industrialized nations have to reduce their emissions 5 per cent below their 1990 levels by 2008-2012. The United States, Japan, Australia and Canada want to sidestep requirements to control their rapidly growing carbon emissions from energy use by counting forest carbon storage and so claim to be meeting their Kyoto targets. Furthermore, the Protocol contains a perverse incentive allowing countries to claim carbon credit for planting trees, but not to incur a carbon debit for deforestation.

"The only way to combat climate change is through deep cuts in emissions of global warming gases," said Jennifer Morgan, Director of WWF's Climate Change Campaign. "The Tasmania project is an example of what could go terribly wrong for forests around the world if Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States get their way. We could see native forest destruction accelerate but still see no benefit for the global climate. This is potentially the largest of a number of loopholes in the Kyoto climate treaty that governments urgently need to close."

The threat to forest conservation will be exacerbated if decisions on Kyoto's "Clean Development Mechanism" promote 'carbon sinks' projects by industrialised nations in developing countries, where countries do not have to count their land-use emissions.

Greenpeace and WWF are calling on the 184 Parties to the Climate Convention not to expand the types of sinks activities from those already recognized in the Kyoto Protocol for industrialized countries and to exclude land-based activities completely from the Clean Development Mechanism. The organizations want industrialized nations to achieve their Kyoto commitments through pollution prevention and domestic reductions in global warming gases.

"The global forest commons is facing its biggest challenge since the Industrial Revolution," said report author Tim Cadman of the Native Forest Network. "Many forest-dependent species are on the brink of destruction. How ironic it would be if the Kyoto Protocol were complicit in sending some of them over the edge."

Proposals for relying on plantations to soak up carbon overlook the vulnerability of forests to global warming, and the urgency of cutting emissions. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose Second Assessment Report from 1995 is the current international scientific consensus on climate change, one third of the world's forests will undergo major changes as a result of global warming. Entire forest types may disappear and large amounts of carbon could be released into the atmosphere during transitions from one forest type to another.

Read the report "The Clearcut Case: How the Kyoto Protocol Could Become A Driver for Deforestation" online: (all in PDF format)

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• Executive Summary
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Watch the Video on Tazmanian Forests and Global Warming:
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