SUMMARY
The challenge of man-made climate change requires
speedy and significant action across all fronts. While the principal
need is to reduce emissions directly through changes in behaviour
or technological improvements, some emissions, at least in the
short to medium term, continue to be unavoidable. Encouragement
and assistance must be given to individuals, organisations and
companies to offset because robust and credible offsetting can
have a useful if limited role in mitigating current levels of,
and projected short-term trends in, emissions.
There is at the moment very little evidence as to
the effect of offsets upon the behaviour of those who purchase
them. While it might be the case that offsetting beneficially
exposes those who participate in it to a greater understanding
of the challenge which climate change poses, it is clearly important
that thorough and independent research be conducted into this
area as a matter of priority.
The UK has the opportunity to lead the international
field in developing robust and helpful guidance and codes of practice
at a national government level which will endorse meaningful offsets
and assist people in choosing the best way to offset their emissions.
The UK's financial and carbon markets have much to gain from
a rapid growth in what is increasingly seen as a vital component
of commercial activity and corporate responsibility. The international
offset industry, if managed responsibly, will only grow over the
short to medium term as many governments, like the UK Government,
develop their own guidance or best practice or perhaps themselves
move towards offsetting their own emissions, for their official
travel or for their activities, as is the case in the UK.
The recent DEFRA consultation is a well-intentioned
attempt to help assist consumers and lend confidence to a market
that has recently been assailed by critics for its lack of clarity
and integrity. While elements of the market are no doubt less
than robust, offsets as a whole currently risk this taint from
a few failed projects. The suspicion that always dogs unregulated
markets could affect its prospects for growth and curtail its
benefits in reducing emissions globally.
The current consultation offers the opportunity for
the Government to bring forward measures not just to encourage
responsible and robust offsetting but also to set out clear criteria
which offsets ought to meet. It must also work with the offset
industry, with those businesses interested in offsetting, with
those working in the international carbon market, and with NGOs,
to establish an independent, authoritative body to vet and quality-mark
those providing offsets, their credits and their projects. These
criteria must also cover the provision of clear and accurate information
by the offset industry to the public without which the act of
offsetting will continue to lack the intelligibility the public
require. The Government must act quickly, and the costs of this
initiative must be borne principally by the offset industry itself
which will only benefit from increased market confidence and increased
sales.
The current restriction proposed within the DEFRA
Code of Practice which limits the approval of credits to those
from the compliance market unfortunately risks devaluing projects
and credits which are not only as methodologically sound and verifiable
as those within the Clean Development Mechanism but which also
often carry greater sustainable development benefits outside their
principal benefit to the climate. This unnecessary restriction
could seriously affect the growth of the Verified Emissions Reduction
market. This market will only prosper if the Government allows
for the approval of both Certified Emission Reductions and
Verified Emissions Reductions within its scheme as long as they
all meet the correct criteria.
Although there is still uncertainty about the future
of the Clean Development Mechanism post 2012, the Government must
work as hard as possible to improve how it operates over the next
few years. It needs to be less bureaucratic, less costly, and
less restrictive in terms of the methodologies, and the scale
and nature of the projects, which it approves and permits. The
Government must also work to ensure that any successor to the
Clean Development Mechanism embraces smaller projects, projects
in the most poor and unstable countries, and also forestry and
land-use projects founded upon preservation as well as planting.
Avoided deforestation needs a much greater priority accorded
to it both within and outside the Clean Development Mechanism.
In many people's eyes, offsets are connected principally
with forestry projects of one sort or another, although there
has in fact been a steady shift away from such projects by many
offsetters over recent years, not least because of the reputational
damage caused by media-reported project failures. However, some
offset companies still retail only forestry credits; and it would
be entirely wrong to consider this part of the market as either
a cheap or a disreputable one. Some of the most rigorous and
environmentally beneficial of all projects come from the stewardship
of tropical forests and the well-judged re-forestation or afforestation
of land in the tropics. Indeed, figures from the Stern and recent
IPCC reports stress the significance of avoided deforestation,
but also of reforestation, to avoiding dangerous climate change.
Recent scientific debate about the albedo
effect and northern temperate forests and the related debased
and largely inaccurate reports that have appeared in the general
media have been a distraction from the undoubted good that forests
provide for the climate. Well-managed forestry projects, while
they can be expensive, not least on account of their lengthy timescale
and the need to deal with the risks of impermanence and leakage,
can be as robust as other projects and invariably carry with them
many of the additional benefits and environmental extras that
consumers want to buy into. The Government must commit itself
to advance the cause of avoided deforestation in particular in
international negotiations as a matter of the very greatest priority.
It must also encourage and, where appropriate, assist those offsetters
who wish to develop strong and worthwhile projects to preserve
or increase the area and carbon intensity of our current biological
carbon sinks.
The airline industry, in addition to its expected
participation in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme from 2011 and
its commitment to fuel efficiencies and to technological and 'procedural'
developments and improvements, must consider itself duty-bound
to develop robust and effective policies with regard to offsetting.
Currently, the industry has a diverse and generally unsatisfactory
attitude towards offsetting. British Airways' initiative in this
area, for example, has been risible. The decision of the industry
to back out of discussions with the Government over its proposed
Code of Practice may well in part have been motivated by its understanding
that the DEFRA proposal was too narrow, but was in greater part
down to confected outrage at the Government's rise in Air Passenger
Duty. It may also be because offsetting only draws attention
to the malign effects of air travel on the environment. The industry
must engage with the Government and accept that it
needs to do more now to mitigate emissions from its planes and
to encourage uptake of offsets amongst its customers as a matter
of priority.
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