What will a successful global climate change agreement look like? That question is only more important to ask in the wake of this weekend’s agreement by President Obama to a plan that will ask world leaders to reach a political agreement at this December’s UN climate talks in Copenhagen, ahead of a more binding agreement some time in 2010.

From a purely scientific perspective, the solution to climate change is straightforward. Burning fossil fuels and clearing forests over the last century have sharply increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to climate change. So, burn less fossil fuel and protect more forests in order to cap and eventually reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to a safer level.

The politics of that solution are much more complicated. Developed countries like the United States need to cut emissions dramatically, since their high emissions are responsible for getting us to this point. Developing countries like India and China need to take some responsibility for the future as their emissions rise and their forests continue to be cleared. For the former, that means breaking bad carbon-intensive habits. For the latter, it means establishing good low-carbon habits from the start.

A successful climate treaty will hinge on agreeing to how much developed and developing countries will reduce their respective greenhouse gas emissions, and also on agreeing how rich countries will help poor countries finance it all. At the same time, those emissions reduction commitments need to add up to enough global reductions to actually keep temperature change under 2 degrees C, the level beyond which impacts are likely to be irreversible and potentially catastrophic.

One reason countries are struggling to agree on emissions reductions going forward is that they have each had very different emission histories and so think they should have different responsibilities for containing future emissions. According to an interactive feature in the Washington Post, the United States has always been and remains a giant emitter of greenhouse gases. China’s surging coal-fired economy is now the single biggest emitter of all.

But China also has a population more than three times that of the United States, meaning that its per capita emissions are still a fraction of those from gluttonous Americans. Meanwhile, some European countries like Germany have already begun a steady but shallow decline in their total and per capita emissions. Missing from these statistics, though, are emissions from deforestation that catapult Indonesia and Brazil into the third and fourth ranks globally.

At the same time that negotiators work to agree on differential emissions commitments and the associated financing, they also need to make sure the emissions reductions add up to successfully stop climate change. According to Climate Interactive’s scoreboard, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by more than 80% by the end of the century to keep temperature change under 2 degrees C. Current pledges would reduce annual global greenhouse gas emissions by about 33%. Additional reductions being suggested could save another 33%. But more will be needed to turn the world onto a safer climate trajectory.

So what could a successful climate change agreement look like? What mix of emissions reductions would be fair for developed and developing countries, and will it be enough to stop climate change? Reductions of 25%-40% by 2020 are frequently suggested, but likely insufficient. Negotiators headed to Copenhagen have a hard job to do. But it is still possible for them to succeed.

You can explore some of these challenges and possibilities for a successful global climate change agreement using Climate Interactive’s C-Learn simulator. It lets you set emissions reduction targets for developed countries like the United States, fast-growing developing countries like China and India, and small developing countries like many in Africa. You can also set goals for reducing emissions from deforestation and sequestering emissions through reforestation. The simulator will then tell you how those targets add up in terms of overall emissions and predicted temperature change.

It may look and feel a bit complicated, but that’s how the real-world challenge is. Give it a try and see what ideas you come up with for how a successful global agreement could keep climate change under 2 degrees C. And then share your ideas here and at Planet Change.

(Image: Traffic at a stoplight in Bangkok. Credit: seasidebear/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Good news about cow poop. Good news (?) about Copenhagen. Good news for those of you who’ve always dreamed of a dress made of LED lights. Happiness is the smell of a new Cool Green Morning, to paraphrase Don Draper…

1. The rehabilitation of poop continues: The Netherlands has opened its second cow-dung power plant, reports CleanTechnica — to make biogas that will heat more than 1,000 homes.
2. In case you missed it yesterday, President Obama has endorsed a plan to push an ultimate climate change agreement sometime beyond December’s UN meeting in Copenhagen, reports The New York Times. Grist’s Dave Roberts says that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
3. Charlie the Tuna muzzled? Dot Earth says last week’s meeting among fishing countries to reach an agreement on restoring depleted numbers of tuna, shark, turtles and other marine life was missing one thing — a basis in science.
4. Count on Inhabitat to render us speechless — with a dress made of 24,000 LED lights (plus “4,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals and 40-layers of pleated silk organza crinoline.” When’s it going to hit the shelves at Target?!)
5. Always like to end on good news — this time from the Brazilian Amazon, where deforestation dropped nearly 46 percent from August 2008 to July 2009, says AP. But the “why” is a chicken and egg problem — is it because of the Brazilian government’s promotion of sustainable livelihoods in the region (coupled with enforcement of laws against deforestation), or just a drop in ag commodity prices worldwide?

Naturally we in the Cidade Maravilhosa are delighted to have beaten out the Windy City and snatched the 2016 Olympics from under the nose of the not-quite-glamorous-enough First Couple of the United States: even Obama can’t compete with Copacabana when it comes to wowing Olympic committees.

But now that the cheering has died down along with the hangovers, a sober consideration of what the Olympics will mean for the world’s most interesting and biodiverse urban environment is in order.

You don’t normally associate biodiversity and conservation with cities, but Rio de Janeiro is an exception. Its extraordinary topography means that steep hill slopes and mountainsides are still forested: not the least of the issues associated with the growth of favelas, Rio’s hillside slums, is that their expansion corrodes this green mantle.

Rio’s forests are a remnant of the Atlantic Forest that once covered most of coastal Brazil and stretched as far inland as Paraguay. Only 7 per cent is left, making it much more threatened than the Amazon and even more biodiverse, since the surviving fragments act as refuge areas for species that once had much wider ranges. This makes what survives of the Atlantic Forest extraordinarily important. One of Latin America’s oldest national parks, Tijuca National Forest, lies entirely within the city’s boundaries, a natural treasure greater than any of its beaches. What does the Olympics mean to all this? In short, a mixed bag.

There will be big environmental benefits. The thing that first strikes visitors arriving at Rio’s international airport, after the dilapidation of the airport itself, is the stench when you step outside the terminal. This toxic olfactory cocktail comes from the chemical plants and oil refineries that line Guanabara Bay, together with the sewage produced by the 5 million inhabitants of the Zona Norte, where tourists never go but half Rio’s population lives. Gagging on your way into town is an appropriate introduction to the contradictions produced by our glamorous international profile.

With the eyes – and, more to the point, the noses – of the world upon us, something will finally be done: serious sewage treatment and pollution control is coming. Maybe by 2016, for the first time in generations, it will even be possible to swim in the bay. One shudders to think what will happen to the yachting crews otherwise.

But beyond the bay, things are more ambiguous. The coming construction boom will provide alternative employment to the young men in the favelas who would otherwise move into our biggest growth industry after oil: narcotráfico. This boom will damp down violence from criminals and the police (there’s a big overlap between the two). The easy headlines about the risks posed by violence in Rio are misleading: nobody, from the drug lords down, has any interest in choking off the multidimensional bonanza the Olympics promises to be.

And therein lies a problem: after having been stable for 20 years, the city’s population is likely to jump again as the boom attracts migrants from all over Brazil, which means expanding favelas and more human pressure on that precious Atlantic Forest.

This will be most acute in the southern beachside neighbourhoods of Barra, Recreio and Vargem Grande, which were booming for years even before the Olympics. Many of the new sporting facilities in Rio’s bid, including the Olympic village, will be built here. As recently as the 1970s this area was still largely undeveloped, the stupendous beach of Barra fringing an unspoiled expanse of mangroves, coves and headlands ending in Barra da Sepetiba, a scalloped and shifting promontory of dunes and beaches pointing twelve miles into the Atlantic and the glorious (now rapidly overdeveloping) coastline south of Rio.

This oasis of nature so close to a megacity couldn’t last. From the late 1970s, a gigantic real estate boom saw Barra transformed into a depressingly Americanized complex of malls, highways, condominiums and apartment blocks. As the only reasonably flat area with land available anywhere in the city, it was inevitable this area would be earmarked for Olympic development, but the key issue is what impact this will have on the coast’s surprisingly strong zoning and development controls.

Rio’s governments, appalling as they often are, occasionally get some things spectacularly right – the 40% drop in driving deaths since a well-enforced ban on alcohol and driving began last year is a current example. In the late 1990s, in the nick of time, a municipal park called Prainha put the coast immediately south of the real estate boom off limits to developers, preserving the two stunning beaches of Prainha and Grumarí and linking them up to the still pristine coastline around and including Barra da Sepetiba, long preserved by the Brazilian Navy, to whom the promontory belongs. Ironically, a few months before the success of the Olympic bid, the developers had managed to get the zoning laws in Prainha relaxed. Now, with blood already in the water, the level of development is about to spiral. It could well spiral out of control — and if it does, the last piece of properly preserved coastline within the city’s boundaries will go.

Those of us who know and love Rio feel torn. On the one hand, there’s no denying this is a great city with a great talent for spectacle, and it has all the potential to stage a great world event like the Olympics, perhaps more memorably than has ever been done before. But Rio is a memorable place in other, less positive ways. Many local politicians would shock even Tony Soprano, and their corruption and incompetence has mismanaged the city into the ground. Many of its well-known problems are directly traceable to the city’s dreadful politics. With Brazil’s international image on the line, the federal government may have to step in.

The stakes for Rio’s environment are even higher. An image taking a hit is, in the final analysis, a trivial thing –  but once a coast or a forest goes, it almost never comes back. Fingers crossed.

(Image: Prainha, Rio de Janerio, Brazil. Credit: Rodrigo_Soldon/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

1. We’ve been talking a lot about the term “green” lately (see yesterday’s blog post), and here’s another green question to ponder (from Green Inc., of course): Do green jobs create greener Americans?
2. Do you know who the world’s top 3 carbon polluters are? The United States and China are pretty obvious, but the The Vine points out that few people know what the third country on the list is. And this third little country makes it all the more important that world leaders come up with an agreement to curb deforestation at Copenhagen.
3. Speaking of keeping forests intact, Ecuador is hoping its plan to stop drilling for oil in the Amazon will get global support before Copenhagen. The plan hinges on countries coming forward to fund Ecuador the money it would have made from the oil.
4. Scientific American showers a little optimism on us this morning: Even if Copenhagen isn’t fruitfull, 2009 has been a year of great progress toward increasing global support and addoption of renewable energy sources.
5. Scientists have a new piece in the puzzle of how birds migrate. A study of European robins found that light-sensing cells in the eyes are responsible for the birds’ ability to find north and migrate – not magnetic-sensing cells in the beak, as hypothesized.

1. Best headline of the morning award goes to Bright Green Blog: “Surprise!  The world has more trees than you probably think.” New satellite imagery shows that trees actually cover a significant chunk of the world’s farmlands, indicating that maybe agriculture and deforestation don’t always go hand in hand.
2. Ethiopian farmers may soon be able to run carbon offsets operations via text message, according to Green Inc., which could help small farmers significantly increase their profits, in addition to reducing the carbon impact of large emitters. Win-win for everyone.
3. Computer company Dell has “planted” a number of solar trees in its headquarters’ parking lot.  CleanTechnica says that the solar trees will provide 130,000 kilowatts per year to the facility, as well as lots of shade and charging stations for hybrid and electric vehicles.
4. A new report reveals that, thanks to the Pacific garbage patch, the diet of the Pacific albatross now consists of large quantities of plastic, including lighters, fishing line and, in one case, a sealed bottle of face lotion, says Scientific American’s Observations blog. Mmm, just like Mom used to make.
5. The trucking industry is primed for a sparkly green makeover, says GreenBiz. Recent analysis shows that the technology already exists to double the energy efficiency of long-haul trucks, which will ultimately keep operating costs down and increase profits — the industry just needs to get on board.

1. Does your iPhone measure the speed of wind? It could with a new application designed to raise consciousness about wind power. The app is more of a marketing tactic than scientific tool, but the makers hope to ultimately develop a database of wind maps.
2. The environmental impacts of eating meat are becoming more and more well known, but a new report says those impacts have actually been underestimated. The analysis from Worldwatch Institute says 51 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from raising livestock and poultry, far more than the 18 percent found by a 2006 FAO report.
3. Cutting down trees to save monarch butterflies? A major bark beetle infestation in Mexico’s fir trees have left officials with two choices — cut the trees down or spray them with insecticides. Since the latter would kill both the beetle and the monarch, officials are racing to fell some 9,000 infected trees before the butterflies arrive in late October.
4. It’s the story of the bat versus the wind turbine… or environmentalist versus environmentalist: a West Virginia spelunker is trying to stop the development of a wind farm because of the possible threat to endangered Indiana bats living in nearby caves.
5. San Francisco already wins the award for the city that recycles the most, but the city just doesn’t want to stop there: a new ordinance mandates that all building owners — commercial and residential — must sign up for recycling and composting services. Officials say the law is already having an impact, even though it just went into effect.

Thirteen years ago, The Nature Conservancy teamed up with Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza, American Electric Power Company, BP America and Pacificorp to buy out four logging concessions adjacent to Bolivia’s Noel Kempff Mercado National Park.

In addition to protecting almost 832,000 hectares of forest habitat and doubling the size of the national park, this purchase (which became known as the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project) aimed to test an idea that was appealing in principal but not yet tested in practice — that saving trees could reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Today, there is broad agreement among businesses, environmentalists, local communities, and government leaders that forest protection must be part of the solution in the global fight against climate change.

That consensus was most recently highlighted at the Governors’ Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles and in the findings of the bipartisan Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests.

Why such broad consensus? Because deforestation accounts for about 17 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions — more than from all the planes, trains and automobiles on Earth.

Slowing — and eventually stopping — that deforestation is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. And it is something we can do right now.

But in 1996, discussions about how to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) were in their infancy.

Trees obviously store carbon as they grow, but there were outstanding questions about how to measure the emissions reductions and to assure that saving trees in one place would not just displace logging elsewhere.

A report from Greenpeace being issued today revisits some of those old questions in an attempt to criticize the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project and to discredit emissions offsets that businesses might claim by supporting such efforts in the future.

The Nature Conservancy respectfully disagrees with Greenpeace’s assertions – a disagreement based on our experience working on the ground for more than a decade to develop high quality forest carbon projects, and on the documented accomplishments and lessons learned from the Noel Kempff project.

As the world’s first project of its kind, the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project was a pioneer project that tested and refined the science of forest carbon accounting and monitoring. It is the first — and still only — REDD project to have its carbon benefits verified by an independent third party.

The Noel Kempff project also serves as an example of how well-designed forest carbon projects can result in real, scientifically measurable and verifiable emissions reductions with important benefits for biodiversity and local communities. These benefits and reductions include:

• Avoiding 1,034,107 metric tons of verified CO2 emissions — emissions that would have been caused by logging and deforestation between 1997 and 2005;
• Preserving a rich and biologically diverse forest ecosystem that was chosen as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its outstanding biodiversity value;
• Helping local indigenous communities achieve legal status as “Communities of Native Peoples” and obtain official land title;
• Providing alternative, environmentally sustainable economic opportunities for the local communities, especially via community forestry, and jobs in park monitoring;
• Establishing an endowment which is used to fund project activities and preserve the park for future generations.

The Nature Conservancy and other organizations are now building on the experience and lessons learned in Noel Kempff to inform scientifically rigorous methods and standards for other forest carbon projects, and we are undertaking REDD projects that span entire political jurisdictions in Berau, Indonesia and Para, Brazil.

Projects like these are critical stepping stones that can help inform development of national-level programs and build up the capacity and expertise that countries will need to protect their forests on a national scale.

Getting REDD right and doing it at national scales is essential for making forests a part of the climate solution.

The Nature Conservancy is proud to have had the courage to take the first steps with the Noel Kempff Climate Action project.

We remain steadfastly committed to working with partners from all sectors to learn from, improve on and share the lessons of our experience in Noel Kempff and other forest carbon projects around the world.

(Image: Arcoiris waterfall at Noel Kempff Mercado National Park in Bolivia, South America. Credit: Hermes Justiniano.)

Good morning, Cool Green News addicts! We know you missed us yesterday, but we’re back with some hot links to get your day started. Dams are coming down, a literary classic offers lessons in the climate change debate and a note of hope emerges around the U.S. climate change bill currently stalled in the Senate. Read on!

1. Some call it a stunt, others a protest — the Maldives government will be holding its next session of Parliament underwater to call attention to the watery future the country faces if sea level rise due to climate change isn’t slowed. (See the Associated Press video above.)
2. The destruction of a massive and long-standing dam in Oregon is a sign that the United States’ era of dam building is giving way to a new era of dam breaching, reports the Los Angeles Times.
3. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Indonesia and the United States aren’t quite London and Paris circa the French Revolution, but they do present some interesting parallels in the global climate change debate – read The Nature Conservancy’s piece comparing the two countries in The Jakarta Post.
4. A new study finds that community-owned forests provide better benefits in terms of carbon storage and human well-being than government-owned forests. The authors argue that this information could help countries design the most effective forest carbon programs. (Hat-tip: Conservation Magazine.)
5. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic Senator John Kerry published a joint op-ed in the New York Times this weekend with the optimistic title “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation),”  giving many reason to hope that passage of a bill is still possible.

“The forest is our supermarket,” says Bang Liling, the deputy chief of Long Oking village inside the Berau district of Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo.

It tells you something that that’s a common phrase heard in this part of the world, which I visited earlier this fall.

“We get all of our medicine from the forest,” adds Lung Bu, village leader of Long Oking, a nearby village. “The roofs of our buildings, our huts on the field, they all came form the forest. So our lives depend on the forest.”

Think how often you go to the supermarket, not just for food but for other supplies like medicines and toiletries. Then imagine what happens when the supermarket is gone.

The protection of forests in Indonesia is clearly important to local people who depend on the forest for their resources and livelihoods. But it turns out that these forests are also important to everyone on the planet. Forests play a crucial role in fighting climate change, and Indonesia’s forests are disappearing faster than any others’ on Earth.

Forests are remarkably efficient at taking greenhouses gases out of the atmosphere. When forests are cleared, we not only lose the potential for them to pull more gases out of the atmosphere, but all the gases that were being held inside them are released and added to the global emissions tally. Deforestation alone accounts for 17 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s why The Nature Conservancy is working with local villagers and logging companies in Indonesia to reduce the impacts of conventional logging practices. Simple changes can yield more intact forests, cleaner water, healthier and happier local villagers, and more trees sequestering carbon and fighting climate change.

When I was in Berau recently with the Conservancy’s reduced-impact logging (RIL) manager, Bambang Wayhudi, it struck me that this approach to logging creates a win-win-win situation — one that keeps much-needed jobs for loggers, protects forest resources for local communities and reduces the emissions caused by conventional logging.

RIL is just one of multiple carbon emission reduction strategies that are part of an approach called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). This initiative was just announced by the Government of Indonesia for the district of Berau at the UN climate change talks in Bangkok.   

Says Agus Purnomo, head of delegation of Indonesia and head of the Secretariat of the National Council on Climate Change:

“Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation is possible, and doable. By linking our district level initiative in Berau, which is just one of the sub-national processes in our national climate change program, to the international discussions we are showing how to deliver REDD implementation.”

At the global climate change negotiations coming up in Copenhagen this December, many groups—including the Conservancy—will join with several governments to send a clear message: the protection of forests is a vital part of combating climate change.

It is Bambang’s hope and the Conservancy’s hope that the local communities continue to manage their own forests with their local knowledge for their supermarket…and ultimately for all of us.

(Image: Bambang Wayhudi. Source: Bridget Besaw.)

Mark Tercek is president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy.

Over the last few months, I have been participating in a bipartisan commission — The Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests — that is focused on the connections between climate policy here in the United States and protecting tropical forests. The commission comprises some of the country’s leading government, business, conservation, science and national security experts, and is co-chaired by former Senator Lincoln Chafee and John Podesta, the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and former White House chief of staff.

Today, the commission unveiled our report highlighting a cornerstone of the policy debate: We cannot win the battle against climate change without protecting our forests.

Destruction of the world’s forests each year produces 17 percent of all carbon emissions released into the atmosphere. Each year, roughly 50,000 square miles of forest — an area larger than the state of Pennsylvania — disappear.

Today’s report calls on Congress to pass legislation that will help cut emissions from tropical deforestation in half within a decade and achieve zero net emissions from the forest sector by 2030.

While this sounds like an ambitious goal — and it is — forest protection requires no technological breakthroughs and is one of the most cost-effective strategies we have to address climate change.

Currently, cash-poor but forest-rich nations can earn more money by destroying their forests than by conserving them. But the United States can lead in the global climate battle by providing the incentives and support developing countries need to protect their forest resources and lower emissions.

The report is particularly timely now, because the Senate is considering a climate change bill that offers a significant opportunity to implement a number of these recommendations. And by offering to partner with developing countries to reduce emissions from forest destruction, the United States could help other countries undertake more ambitious efforts to reduce emissions as the countries of the world head into climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

The commission calls for the United States to mobilize $14 billion each year by 2020 to protect the world’s forests, largely from private funds. This mobilization could be accomplished by enacting comprehensive climate policy legislation that caps and steadily reduces U.S. carbon emissions and provides incentives for U.S. companies to invest in forest conservation. In this way, such a program would create a win-win opportunity for businesses, consumers, forests and the people who inhabit them.

In the global effort to contain climate change, it is important to take steps to reduce all major sources of carbon emissions. Yet a ton of carbon emissions reduced through forest protection is just as important for our atmosphere as a ton of carbon reduced from a tailpipe or a smokestack.

The commission also recommends that the United States commit to early and sustained public investments — starting with $1 billion by 2012, and increasing to $5 billion annually by 2020 — to unlock these cost savings and begin to reduce deforestation in nations that cannot initially attract sufficient private capital. A well-designed cap-and-trade program, supplemented by bold commitments through the appropriations process, would provide an effective mechanism for providing this sustained public financing. (See a recent speech I gave at Yale University to learn more.)

At the Conservancy, we have seen first-hand how forests can be a powerful tool against climate change. For more than 10 years, the Conservancy has worked with some of the country’s leading businesses to launch programs that protect threatened forests, lower emissions, benefit local communities and fight climate change.

Our Noel Kempff project in Bolivia is the world’s first — and only — forest carbon project to have its emissions reductions verified by a third party. By bringing together AEP, PacifiCorp, BP, the Bolivian government and local communities, the project is protecting 1.5 million acres of tropical forest and will prevent the release of 5.8 million tons of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

In Indonesia, The Nature Conservancy is currently working with government agencies, private businesses, local communities and other partners to launch a massive forest carbon program that will span the entire governmental district of Berau – equal to the size of the country of Belize.

And in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Para, which account for 70 percent of Brazil’s deforestation, we are moving forward with two large-scale reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) pilot projects that have the potential to halt millions of acres of deforestation and reduce emissions of millions of tons of carbon dioxide. These programs will demonstrate to U.S. and international climate change policymakers how REDD can work in practice.

Along with reducing emissions, stopping deforestation protects biodiversity as well as the food, water and economic resources communities rely upon for survival.

Halting the destruction of the world’s forests is within our grasp. The United States can and should lead in this effort, and the report released today shows the path forward.

(Image: Arcoiris waterfall at Noel Kempff Mercado National Park in Bolivia, South America. Credit: Hermes Justiniano.)