The Nature Conservancy - Standing Army

Go Deeper

Help offset your carbon footprint
You can help reduce the impacts of climate change and restore critical wildlife habitat by participating in The Nature Conservancy’s voluntary carbon offset program.

The Conservancy's Global Climate Change Initiative
Climate change is already affecting our lives and the places we live, and has the potential to dramatically impact the lives of future generations.

Deforestation is now the third-leading cause of climate change, just behind energy generation and industrial emissions from factories. But the current Kyoto climate treaty offers no rewards for preventing forest destruction. The Nature Conservancy, together with a number of international officials and organizations, is working to change that in the next global climate deal, pressing for new incentives that promote forest preservation as a key component of protecting the climate.

“Deforestation causes 17 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions—more than the transportation sector,” says Bill Stanley, science lead of the Conservancy’s Climate Change Team. “A forest area about the size of New York State is cleared every year.” Slowing deforestation, he says, could be a real win for both habitats and the climate.

To help stem the loss of these forests, the Conservancy has committed $5 million toward the launch of a new $300 million World Bank pilot project to establish financial incentives to protect forests, as well as set up tools and measurements for verifying that forests remain protected. The project was launched last December at the climate negotiations in Bali, Indonesia. Potential participants might be timber companies that get paid not to harvest a timber concession, or communities in need of financial support to pay for protecting their local forests. “There is now a value to conserving, not just harvesting, the forest,” says Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank.

There are plenty of wrinkles to iron out before the Kyoto accord expires in 2012, such as determining which forest activities should be rewarded, and whether to tie incentives to markets that buy and sell carbon emissions credits or whether to simply provide incentives such as government subsidies. But this new mechanism has the potential to give rural landowners in places like Indonesia and Brazil a financial stake in protecting their lands. “If we can pay them more under this new system, it would make life a lot easier,” says Ben Jarvis, a field manager for the Conservancy in Indonesia. “It might tip the balance from bad management toward good management.”

—Oakley Brooks