Deforestation

Fighting Climate Change emphasizes that a key driver of growing emissions is deforestation, though the profit made from felling trees across the developing world could be dwarfed by the benefits of conservation.

In Indonesia, for example, oil palm cultivation generates and estimated value of US$14 per hectare, says the Report. "As the trees that stood on that hectare burn and rot, they release CO2 into the atmosphere -- perhaps 500 tonnes a hectare in dense rainforest. At a carbon price of US$20-30 a tonne, a plausible future range on the (European Unions Emissions Trading Scheme) EU ETS, the carbon market value of that release would amount to US$10,000–15,000 a hectare." Put differently, farmers in Indonesia are trading a carbon bank asset worth at least US$10,000 in terms of climate change mitigation for around two percent of its value, says the Report.

"Countries are losing assets that could have real value in terms of carbon finance. And people depending on forests for their livelihoods are losing out to economic activities operating on the basis of a false economy," stress the authors, who call for carbon sequestration from both forests and land to be recognized as an essential parts of December's climate change negotiations in Bali.

As the climate changes, poor people are being forced to cope with increasing climate shocks and long term risks -- and the price of doing so is likely to leave their prospects for human development bankrupt, says Fighting Climate Change. Even if stringent emission cuts are put into place now, the two thirds of the world's poor that live in Asia will be increasingly vulnerable to rising temperatures. They must be given meaningful assistance now to adapt, stress the authors.

"The poor are not in a position to manage added risks. When there is a drought, they sell their seeds and livestock, they withdraw their children from school, the whole family starts skipping meals," says Mr. Watkins. This varies dramatically with how rich countries cope, says the Report.

In the low-lying Netherlands, for example, homeowners are preparing for flooding with the assistance of the Government by building homes with foundations like the hull of a ship that can float on water, yet in the densely populated villages of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, locals have been left to adapt with swimming lessons and lifejackets. While the rich are learning how to float on water, the poor are learning how to float in it, "creating a world of 'adaptation apartheid’," writes Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, in the Report.

There are examples of how adaptation efforts can make a difference. The 'char' islands of Bangladesh are home to 2.5 million people, 80 percent of whom live in extreme poverty and all of whom live in constant risk of flooding. Recent efforts to construct homes on earthen platforms and provide hand pumps and latrines to secure clean water and sanitation mean that 56,000 of the char dwellers are less vulnerable to flooding than before. According to the Report, every US$1 invested in this adaptation initiative protects US$2-3 of assets that would otherwise be lost during flooding, without mention of the highly damaging implications of flooding for nutrition, health and education that may be avoided.

Yet the finance needed to support such practical initiatives to protect the poor is not available, stress the authors. In fact, says the Report, total current spending through multilateral mechanisms on adaptation in developing countries has amounted to only US$26 million to date -- roughly one week's worth of spending on United Kingdom flood defences.This is nowhere near sufficient, says the Report, and it calls on the developed countries to support a new global investment of US$86 billion annually, or 0.2 percent of northern countries' combined GDP, in adaptation efforts to climate-proof infrastructure and build the resilience of the poor to the effects of climate change.