APPENDIX 6
Memorandum submitted by Future Forests
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Future Forests welcomes the opportunity
to submit evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee's inquiry
on climate change. Future Forests is a proven leader in engaging
individuals and companies on the issue of climate change. Our
measure, reduce and offset pathway (see appendix) has been adopted
by over 200 organisations and 50,000 people worldwide, including
Elliot Morley MP and Tim Yeo MP, both of whom have pledged to
run CarbonNeutral (see annex) campaigns in the next General Election.
1.2 The United Kingdom and European Union
emission trading experience, combined with various voluntary initiatives
in countries which have not yet ratified Kyoto, specifically the
United States and Australia, has shown emissions trading to be
an effective method of engaging the international community. It
allows nations to share the burden of tackling climate change
in a cost-effective manner and provides flexible solutions appropriate
to a more efficient market system.
1.3 Future Forests fully supports emission
trading schemes as an appropriate method of ensuring national
and international progress against climate change. However, we
believe that progress can be accelerated if voluntary action on
climate change is encouraged in parallel with, and as an extension
to, the development of international trading systems.
2. EXTENDING
THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF EMISSION
TRADING SCHEMES
2.1 The United Kingdom has pioneered the
Emissions Trading System and paved the way for the current European
Union ETS programme. The process for setting and allocating reductions
at a national level is being refined and important progress has
been made in setting the rules, processes and targets. This experience
can be extended to international schemes.
2.2 However, the ETS's mandatory targets
are modest in relation to the overall challenge of a material
reduction in emissions, and indeed have recently been revised
to make them even less ambitious in absolute terms. The process
only directly impacts on selected industries and companies and
excludes critically material sources in land and air transport,
small and medium sized enterprises, and the commercial and residential
sectors. In so doing it places an unreasonable burden upon a small
sub-section of the economy, and excludes the wider public from
active participation.
2.3 There are a number of ancillary problems
in the way that the ETS is currently configured. The ETS is targeted
at the lowest common denominator internationally, thereby determining
a slow rate of progress which is insufficient to effectively tackle
the problems posed by current carbon emissions. An international
system will take time to develop, with targets which are likely
to be considerably lower than those which scientists believe to
be appropriate to the problem. While countries remain outside
the trading system, inequalities and un-competitive pressures
will continue to emerge.
2.4 Furthermore the current trading schemes
distribution of the problem is not at all equitable. The current
divisions are neither reflective of different national nor industry
requirements. We support the Convergence and Contraction approach
as a more equitable means of setting global and local targets,
and see it as a valuable constituent of systems for the next generation
of approaches in the post-Kyoto world.
2.5 The present ETS design also fails to
engage and mobilise support from those organisations that are
ready to go further than the regulated minimum. The Government
must give full encouragement to any effort to cut carbon emissions.
In keeping with our general philosophy of encouraging voluntary
action, we believe that the Government should encourage additional
reductions past national minimums, though fiscal and tax incentives
proportionate to the level of reduction. Stabilising atmospheric
concentrations of climate change gases requires actions which
go far beyond the current basic regulatory requirements. The Government
must recognise and support this by encouraging all possible reductions.
2.6 With regards to the specific objective
and approach that the UK Government should adopt towards combating
climate change, Future Forests firmly espouses the "polluter
pays principle" (see appendix). We believe that every person
and every organisation "owns" a share of the problem,
because every part of our current patterns of production and consumption
give rise to the emissions which cause climate change. Consequently
it is the responsibility of each element of civic and corporate
society to participate in the solution. Unless the costs of climate
change are internalised in local, national and global economies
then progress will not be possible.
2.7 As a part of this, Future Forests believes
that the measure, reduce, offset pathway (see annex) is a valuable
method of engaging people. It encourages individuals to measure
the full extent of their carbon "footprint" and then
to eliminate all avoidable emissions at source. Those emissions
which can not be eradicated must be offset to balance out the
individual's carbon impact. The CarbonNeutral programme (see annex)
has been highly successfully at engaging people and in publicising
the problem of climate change. It is a practical example of the
convergence and contraction model at work and is a valuable method
of extending the reach of the ETS and Kyoto systems.
2.8 The real value of offset is that it
provides a pricing signal which encourages a shift from compensation
(which costs money) to reductions at source (which can save money).
Further, where offset projects are chosen within the CDM and JI
frameworks of the Kyoto system, funds are directed towards projects
which speed up the introduction of energy efficiency and renewable
power technologies.
2.9 Future Forests believes that individual
Government departments must follow up on this by ensuring maximum
awareness amongst the public of individual's personal carbon impact.
In particular we believe that three specific areas of life must
receive additional focus—the school, the home and the workplace.
The Department for Education and Skills should introduce a module
on climate change management in school curricula to make sure
that children are fully aware of the impact and dangers of global
warming.
3. CONCLUSION
Future Forests calls on the Government to adopt
an urgent and proactive attitude to improving the effectiveness
of international, national, and local climate change regulation
and legislative frameworks—specifically in the area of emissions
trading. The adoption of the European Union Emissions Trading
Scheme will go some way towards this, but we believe that the
Government must go further by introducing a supplementary incentives
scheme for sections of the economy which wish to go beyond the
regulatory minimum. On a domestic level the Government must ensure
that British public is fully engaged with the issue and has appropriate
incentives to take action in their own lives.
| 
