Carbon credits and the conservation of natural areas

Author:

Freedman Bill12,Stinson Graham12,Lacoul Paresh12

Affiliation:

1. Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS B3H 4J1, Canada.

2. Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, 506 West Burnside Rd, Victoria, BC V8Z 1M5, Canada.

Abstract

Increasing the amount of organic-carbon stored in the biomass of terrestrial ecosystems is an effective way to reduce the net anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. This can be done by conserving existing ecological reservoirs of fixed organic-carbon, maintaining or enhancing the rate of sequestration, and restoring stocks that have been depleted by past land-use practices. Most trading systems for greenhouse-gas offsets recognize the validity of projects that gain ecological offsets, and permit them to sell carbon credits in an emerging marketplace for these novel commodities. Although ecological carbon-offset projects have been criticized from a variety of perspectives, most of the supposed problems can be satisfactorily mitigated. In addition to offsetting emissions of greenhouse gases, ecological projects that accumulate carbon credits may have a strong cross-linkage to the conservation of natural values, which in itself is an important action for society to undertake. This is, however, less of a consideration for projects that are based on anthropogenic ecosystems, such as no-till agricultural systems and plantation forests, which provide relatively few benefits to native biodiversity and might even detract from that objective if developed on newly converted natural habitat. Moreover, the existing rules for carbon-offset systems exclude some kinds of ecological projects from the trading markets, even though they would result in avoided emissions or enhanced sequestration of organic-carbon. As the emerging marketplace for carbon offsets grows, it will be important to understand the co-benefits and side effects of offset projects on non-carbon values, including native biodiversity.

Publisher

Canadian Science Publishing

Subject

General Environmental Science

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3