Could big business carbon investment save endangered species?

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2010/10/26/3048208.htm




Could big business carbon investment save endangered species?
By Brendan Wintle and Sarah Bekessy
ABC Environment | 26 Oct 2010


Investment in carbon could be tweaked to invest in biodiversity and prevent species extinction.

With companies keen to go carbon neutral, forest carbon offsets have become a hot item for the big end of town. But Brendan Wintle and Sarah Bekessy argue that unless biodiversity is included, the real opportunities will be missed.

BY THE END OF THIS year, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation will be carbon neutral across all of its businesses. They are not alone; the World Bank Group, Formula One, and Virgin Blue are just a few of the many big players who have committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and offset the remainder by investing in forests and other environmental initiatives. Together with the offsets funded by governments and individuals, the carbon market is shaping up as a very big business proposition and the acquisition of carbon offsets will be the biggest financial investment in the environment sector to date.

At the same time, we are in the middle of a mass-extinction event due to over-exploitation, habitat loss, invasive species and climate change. More than 35 per cent of all species will be committed to extinction by 2050 based on conservative climate change scenarios. Massive investment in carbon sequestration presents a unique opportunity to restore biodiversity through the promotion of carbon capture based on ecological restoration.

This has been said before, so why is it not happening? There is currently no evidence of large investment in biodiverse carbon capture. Forestry carbon sequestration schemes currently provide little biodiversity benefit, because accounting rules favour fast-growing plantations and most carbon offset certification schemes ignore biodiversity completely.

If the rules of carbon trading or carbon taxation do not encourage biodiverse sequestration, then investors will rapidly settle on alternative options such as energy efficiency or renewable energy investments. Without immediate action by government, this unique opportunity to redress the extinction debt will pass us by.

Here we describe a plan for a "biocarbon" banking scheme that would harness this opportunity and deliver the biodiversity benefits that carbon sequestration offers.

The key is to establish a government-backed biocarbon investment scheme comprised of a biodiversity savings bank that is fully integrated with a carbon accounting scheme. Investors would be attracted by an up-front tax break on establishment and management costs while receiving ongoing payments through carbon offset schemes, and would have the option of selling their biodiversity credits on a biodiversity market once they have matured.

On top of financial gains made from carbon and biodiversity credits, public relations benefits arise for companies advertising their dual role in saving us from climate change and the threatened species from extinction. To that end, a biocarbon certification scheme would provide a recognisable and marketable brand for biocarbon investors. But the devil is in the detail: how can a biocarbon scheme be made competitive with other carbon investment options?

The rules of the biocarbon bank must be developed in a manner that promotes genuine, long-term biodiversity benefits. Inclusion of agriculture and forestry in any carbon tax or trading scheme is essential because it generates a market for low carbon, biodiversity-friendly industries in those sectors. Similarly, inclusion of below-ground biomass in carbon accounting will provide a better indication of the true-carbon storage potential of various land management practices and will stimulate investment in slower-growing, stable carbon stores such as grasslands and dry woodlands.

While the measurement of carbon is already a relatively mature science, metrics of biodiversity benefit are relatively young, and tend to be quite complex. Nonetheless, progress has been made in the development of workable biodiversity metrics that are already part of existing systems for offsetting vegetation destruction.

From a practical standpoint, biodiversity and carbon go hand-in-hand. High biodiversity, old-growth Mountain Ash forests in south-eastern Australia have recently been shown to store massive amounts of carbon. Emerging evidence shows that planting biodiverse native vegetation can sequester more carbon than monoculture plantations when below ground biomass is counted, indicating that biodiversity and carbon investments are highly complementary. Even native grasslands are effective carbon sinks. Monoculture plantations impact on the water cycle, produce high soil carbon emissions during harvesting, and provide short term carbon storage depending on the life-cycle of the product.

The convergence of carbon and biodiversity incentive schemes presents an opportunity to revolutionise environmental management. If correctly harnessed, the power of carbon initiatives could fuel a major biodiversity renaissance. Uncertainty is not an argument against the biocarbon bank; the carbon benefits are more certain than alternatives such as 'clean coal' and the magnitude of carbon money may see this succeed where all other biodiversity initiatives flounder. This "no-brainer" opportunity will pass us by unless the rules and incentives to make it happen are implemented now.

Brendan Wintle is a senior lecturer in the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne, and Deputy Director of the Commonwealth Environment Research Facility for Applied Environmental Decision Analysis.

Sarah Bekessy is senior lecturer in Environmental Studies at RMIT University and theme leader of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions
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