Last spring, Montana’s
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were happy to improve
wildlife habitat and water quality on their Flathead Indian
Reservation by replanting 250 acres of burned land with ponderosa
pines. But for the London-based company that is funding the
restoration, satisfaction comes from how much carbon dioxide the
growing trees will suck out of the atmosphere. The company,
Sustainable Forestry Management, is receiving 50,000 tons worth of
carbon dioxide emissions credits from the project * credits the
company plans to resell to CO2-emitting
industries.
The project is a gamble: There are
currently no existing limits on CO2 emissions. Sustainable Forestry
Management is one of many international companies betting that
governments will implement controversial mandatory caps on carbon
dioxide emissions, says Robert Bonnie, economist for Environmental
Defense. Bonnie explains that government caps would create a boom
for the now strictly voluntary carbon
market.
“Eventually, there will be organized
trading of carbon credits throughout the world,” says Tom Corse,
supervisory forester for the tribes. But Dan Lashof, director of
science for Natural Resources Defense Council, is wary of focusing
too much attention on emissions credits. Lashof says that keeping
carbon underground is safer than sequestering it in trees that are
vulnerable to fire and changing land-use management. “The real
concern is that storing carbon in a forest is not the same as not
emitting it in the first place,” says Lashof.
Copyright © 2001 HCN and Laurel
Jones
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Tribe’s pines fetch clean air credits.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
