Think for a moment about the speech you’d expect to hear from an environmental leader on the eve of Copenhagen.

Now forget it.   This is not going to be that speech.

You might expect someone in my position to call for – to demand – a final international agreement to solve the climate crisis before Copenhagen delegates go home for Christmas.   I will not.

You might expect me to assert that the greatest threat to our planet will come about if New Year’s Day 2010 arrives without a new treaty.   It will not.

And that signing a final treaty is the only way Copenhagen can be successful.  It is not.

Let me explain.

Continue reading his full remarks.

Whatever else you can say about the draft bill that Senators Boxer and Kerry introduced in the Senate yesterday, it was welcome news to country negotiators and NGOs at the climate talks in Bangkok.

For several weeks the main question everyone has been asking me is “What’s the next U.S. move and when will it happen?” Now I can give them an answer – Senators introduced draft climate and energy legislation. Today.  Continue »

This echoes the call for U.S. leadership from the governor's summit in California. The scientific urgency, public opinion and global path are all in place — now it's up to the Senate.

Al Gore arrived in town, fresh from his testimony in the U.S. Senate, and he got up on stage and told a roomful of rich and powerful Davos-ites that if we use the economy as an excuse to ignore climate change then we are making an inexcusable mistake. And what do you know? It appears to have worked.

Suddenly climate change is in the headlines today and people are asking if renewable energy investment and Obama’s stimulus package can point the way out of the economic crisis. Of course, nobody seems to think it’s going to be quick or easy – which is good, because it’s not – but the change in tone from yesterday is almost palpable. The headlines even have words like "hope" and "action" in them – that just wasn’t there yesterday.

And of course, it’s not just Gore who changed the tone. Gordon Brown made a powerful call today for global cooperation, and Kofi Annan has spoken with singular clarity about how we must care for the climate and society if we are to have any hope of fixing the economy. Barack Obama has been another inspirational star, he's thousands of miles away but everywhere present in the news.

There’s a lot on the menu in Davos – climate, the economy, ethics, regulation and cooperation. And somehow, from here it feels like the world is looking to the U.S. for leadership (despite some vocal recriminations that it was Wall Street that got us here in the first place). There’s a simple and logical reason why that might be the case – we have a very, very, very, big economy. The world can’t cooperate on climate change or the economy without us. And at this moment, no one wants to be headed in the wrong direction.

Andrea Welsh is EDF's international media director. 

But new research shows that old-growth forests are even more important than previously thought. According to a new study in Nature, old-growth forests aren’t just standing there maintaining the status quo. They still actively take up CO₂ from the atmosphere.

The dominant trees in old-growth forests are about as big as they're going to get. So for a long time, scientists thought that old-growth forests were carbon neutral – that the plants took up as much CO₂ from the atmosphere as was released from plant and soil respiration. (To learn about respiration, see Bill's post on agricultural offsets.)

To check this assumption, researchers compiled data from 519 studies that reported one or more components of the carbon cycle. Because data for tropical forests was scant, the study included only boreal (northern) and temperate forests.

Their analysis showed that even centuries-old forests are active carbon sinks – they take up more CO₂ than they release. In fact, old-growth forests in temperate and boreal zones take up as much as 1.3 gigatons of carbon (Gt C) a year. To put that in perspective, that's approximately 17 percent of global fossil fuel CO₂ emissions in 2005.

It's been estimated that deforestation accounts for 20 percent of current global greenhouse gas emissions. This study adds to the urgency of protecting forests. As the study's authors put it:

The present paper shows that old-growth forests are usually carbon sinks. Because old-growth forests steadily accumulate carbon for centuries, they contain vast quantities of it. They will lose much of this carbon to the atmosphere if they are disturbed, so carbon-accounting rules for forests should give credit for leaving old-growth forest intact.

We agree! EDF's market-based plan to give credit for leaving forests intact is called Compensated Reduction (CR), and we're working hard to make this a reality. EDF is an active participant in the international negotiation towards a post-Kyoto agreement. We're pleased that deforestation was a major topic at the Bali talks, and the more recent talks in Accra, Ghana, as well.

This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.

Here are the highlights from a week packed with negotiations, side events and planning sessions.

A key issue in these talks was how to engage developing countries in reducing global warming emissions. We wanted to build support for two mechanisms:

• Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation or REDD – an approach to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest conservation (see summary article [PDF]). The REDD discussions made the most progress of any issue on the agenda. Our side event packed the meeting room, and we had to turn away dozens. Most parties expressed support, with E.U. negotiators citing EDF's economic analysis of how REDD effects carbon markets.

  As part of our continuing efforts to integrate indigenous peoples' perspectives in these negotiations, we supported the participation of Juan Carlos Jintiach, Shuar indigenous leader from Ecuador and coordinator of the Washington-based Amazon Alliance. Also, EDF's Dr. Korinna Horta helped to coordinate an E.U. civil society forum on indigenous peoples and REDD. This was attended by about 40 NGO and indigenous leaders from developing countries.

• Clean Investment Budgets or CIBs – a new approach to encourage developing countries to cap their emissions (see summary description). At our side event, Dr. Gernot Wagner (EDF economist) and Dr. James Wang (EDF climate scientist) presented new analyses of CIBs.

  The event was crowded despite two last minute room switches, and a competing event by the E.U. in the same time slot. A senior U.S. negotiator told me, "I figured that if it was a proposal by EDF, I'd better be there since it could get traction." It was the first side event he'd attended in two years!

  We also caught the attention of several developing countries and emerging economies, including a former Soviet republic. A member of their delegation asked if we could run the numbers for them, or had a Russian-speaking economist who could help them do it. It was extremely gratifying to be able to tell him, "Yes! Producing in Russian is no problem."

  We got some skeptical questions about what is admittedly a work in progress. But we reminded ourselves that we faced much greater skepticism when we introduced emissions trading, and that became a pillar of the Kyoto Protocol.

Our delight in Ghana's warm and generous hospitality was slightly tempered by the long delay at the airport, but even that had a silver lining. I found an outdoor café near the airport to await boarding. And there I finally got to deploy my binoculars, as several species of birds foraged for breakfast in the courtyard's palms and rubber trees.

Now that the talks are over, our team is compiling and digesting the intelligence gathered in Accra in preparation for the next round of talks in Poznan, Poland this December. It will be a busy fall!

This post is by Jennifer Haverkamp, managing director for international policy and negotiations at Environmental Defense Fund. She is writing from the climate talks in Accra, Ghana.

That's a pretty powerful statement, and it leads to the question: How do we convince developing countries to set limits on their emissions? A possible answer to that challenge brought me to Ghana this week.

Environmental Defense Fund has long been a staunch supporter of market mechanisms to achieve environmental goals. "Clean investment budgets," or CIBs, are one such mechanism that could help move the world towards a global climate deal. It's a potential grand bargain between industrialized and some developing countries.

CIBs would reward developing countries that take a firm cap on emissions earlier than would otherwise be required. They take advantage of timing, allowing developing economies to use the global carbon market to help finance their transition to cleaner energy production.

Please consult our overview of how CIBs work for more on the actual mechanism and a concrete example. To get a sense of the discussion among economists, you might visit a blog post I wrote for Environmental Economics, which is getting some thoughtful comments. (I wrote that post in response to an article that Carter Bales and Rick Duke published in Foreign Affairs.)

Here in Ghana, we are looking forward to making a presentation about CIBs at a side event this evening. We'll help the delegates and our colleagues understand how this mechanism can help avert dangerous changes to our climate.

This post is by Gernot Wagner, an economist in our Climate and Air program who is attending this week's negotiations in Accra, Ghana.

Early this week, the team from Environmental Defense Fund started boarding planes for Accra, Ghana to attend the international Climate Change Talks. The official first day was Thursday, but Wednesday was busy with pre-meeting workshops.

Steve Schwartzman attended a discussion of finance mechanisms for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), where he spoke about the benefits of our market-based Compensated Reduction approach. Korinna Horta attended a workshop on encouraging participation of African countries in the global negotiations.

Jason Funk and I attended a workshop on increasing participation of developing countries in a future REDD system. The central issue is how to measure and monitor forests – which countries currently can do this, and which countries will need help in the form of financial and human capital. Workshop attendees came from all over Africa, Asia, and South America.

In the evening, the EDF team met for dinner and compared notes.

The Conference Begins

At 7:30 the next morning, a police escort with sirens blaring led us to the conference center in a caravan of other delegates and observer organizations. Dodging traffic and ubiquitous street corner vendors cut our travel time in half.

Our team registered and received our yellow NGO badges. Then, as Annie Petsonk did for me over five years ago, I gave the first-time members of our team a quick course on logistics and protocol. I described where to find documents, how to read official missives, and how an agenda item moves from introduction on the first day to agreement on the last day. And then I described how to talk to negotiators – what to say, what not to say, how best to approach them, and how and when to give negotiators EDF documents, flyers and invitations to EDF events.

After walking around to locate meeting rooms, the computer room, and the biggest coffee bar – every negotiator's favorite spot – we gathered in the main hall, where we are now. We were greeted with a traditional Ghanaian dance, complete with drummers and dancers in brilliant bright prints. The President of Ghana then opened the meeting, followed by the Minister of Rural Development, who welcomed the delegates and talked about Africa's extreme vulnerability to climate change. The rest of the morning, countries will give opening statements on their expectations for this meeting, their most important issues, and their thoughts on solutions.

The afternoon will be devoted to a workshop on "sectoral approaches", which some advocate as an interim measure for developing countries. Under a sectoral approach, greenhouse gas emissions limits would be applied to sectors (for example, the cement sector, the electricity generation sector, or the forestry sector) rather than the nation as a whole. Success might be measured as an absolute reduction in emissions, or as a reduction in the "intensity" of emissions (a decrease in pollution per unit of output).

Given the science, EDF does not believe a sectoral approach is adequate, nor is a reduction in emissions intensity. We advocate absolute, economy-wide caps on greenhouse gas emissions since this is the only way to reduce global emissions enough to avoid dangerous climate change.

Tonight the Ghanaian government will host a reception for delegates and observers. We're looking forward to the spicy, local food and the opportunity to meet negotiators in a relaxed atmosphere.

I'll let you know how it goes!

Last December, a team from Environmental Defense Fund attended climate change negotiations in Bali – an annual meeting of some 190 countries. Next week, we're headed to Accra, Ghana for another round of talks. These meetings, along with other talks this year and next, are part of an international negotiation process that will conclude in Copenhagen in late 2009.

The goal is to put the world on a path to avoid dangerous climate change. As part of this effort, EDF is working to encourage full participation of the United States, all other developed countries, and all major developing countries. The findings, recommendations and negotiated text coming out of these interim meetings will form the basic structure of the Copenhagen deal.

Deforestation was a major topic at the Bali conference, and one of the best things to come of that conference was a path towards ending deforestation in developing countries. Deforestation accounts for 20 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and is the largest source of emissions from developing countries.

The Ghana meeting is important because, for the first time, we will take an in-depth look at how this would work – how we can channel money to developing countries that reduce emissions from deforestation, and where this money would come from.

Money can come from both market and non-market sources, and we think both are essential. Non-market sources include Official Development Assistance (ODA) and voluntary contributions from developed countries to a deforestation fund. The market-based approach that EDF has long advocated is called Compensated Reduction (CR).

The concept behind CR is simple: Any nation that reduces deforestation below a baseline (derived from historical deforestation rates) would receive emissions allowances that could be traded in the global carbon market – i.e., the market would pay them to reduce emissions. CR gives developing countries an incentive to reduce deforestation on a voluntary basis. Plus, by focusing on a nation's entire forest system rather than individual projects, it avoids the loopholes that hindered consensus in the past.

EDF also plans to present another innovative approach – this one to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries that don't have significant forests. Called Clean Investment Budgets (CIBs), it's an alternative to the problematic Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). I'll explain how it works in my next post.

The high and mighty are gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), and right there in the center of the conversation, confabulation and champagne is our own Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense.

The annual WEF forum is an important venue for exchanging and shaping opinions on climate change and other environmental issues among global leaders from business, government, NGOs, and the press. (The other two sectors of human endeavor – religion and organized crime – are not heavily represented.)

The Financial Times invited Fred to write about the forum on its Davos Delegates blog. There are the regular meetings, but the most important things at Davos will happen in the byways and alleyways, and between mouthfuls of caviar from the groaning boards of hors d'oeuvres. Fred's reports will give us some sense of those personal conversations as well. Here's a snippet from today's post:

Is there a more important quality for businesses, governments and NGOs than trust? Probably not, and in today's age of access to information and opinions "anytime … anywhere" the eyes of the world are more open and aware then ever. Representing an NGO that has a long history of partnering, I've learned that collaboration between non-profits and business can have significant impacts on stakeholder trust. This was the key theme in a panel I participated in this morning put on by the communications firm Edelman (read about their "trust barometer").

You can see all Fred's posts from Davos on the Financial Times site.

As I reported in my last bulletin from Bali, after much sturm und drang, countries finally agreed to a two-year process that can lead to the next international climate change treaty in 2009 – the "Bali Roadmap".

Deforestation was a major topic at the Bali conference, and ended up being one of the most positive components of the Bali Roadmap. Environmental Defense helped lead the way there.

Annie Petsonk, our International Counsel, has devoted much time and intensity to the cause of Compensated Reduction to stop deforestation, and has led many of our delegations to international conferences. She wasn't part of the Bali delegation (she recently gave birth to her first child, a son), but the fruits of her efforts were there for all to see.

On Friday, Stephan Schwartzman, co-director of our international program and the spearhead of our work on Compensated Reduction, arranged and moderated a brilliant, standing-room-only panel on deforestation in the Amazon and the Congo Basin. The technical experts presented a dazzling report on the reach and effectiveness of new technologies for monitoring carbon capacity and rates of deforestation.

But the star was Manoel Cunha, President of the National Council of Rubber Tappers, with whom Steve has worked closely. Manoel, who was our guest at the Bali Conference, lives in an extractive reserve (protected area), and speaks in moving terms of his own personal relationship to the forest.

There were a fair number of people at the Bali conference who opposed the use of markets to stop deforestation and the 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions it causes. But Manoel Cunha said the rubber tappers and indigenous peoples welcomed markets.

Over the last few decades they've won legal recognition for their rights to a fifth of the Brazilian Amazon, and they have organized themselves to control their territories and manage their resources. The area comprises over 1 million square kilometers of forest, equivalent to twice the size of California.

But, Manoel noted, they need support to improve access to health care and education, and to build the basis for durable prosperity in the forest. Access to carbon markets can provide the funds to do that.

He told the audience that if we do it right – with the active participation of forest peoples in designing the policy – markets can create the basis for large scale forest protection and durable prosperity for forest peoples.

And finally, on Saturday, the rest of the world – including the U.S. – agreed.

The Bali Roadmap gives developing countries an unprecedented opportunity to dramatically ramp up efforts to reduce deforestation. This will significantly help efforts to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions that are vital to keeping global warming below 2°C, which scientists generally agree is the tipping point for climate change.

Despite the Bush Administration's efforts to write the Bali goals in invisible ink – supported at various times by the delegations from Canada, Japan and Russia – the U.S. ultimately acknowledged the groundbreaking concessions by the Group of 77 (a coalition of developing nations that includes China), agreeing for the first time to actions mitigating the effects of global climate change.

The Bali Roadmap presents a workable path to a global climate deal and a big step towards ending tropical deforestation. We have moved a step closer to a serious agreement by 2009 on global warming. But to cross the goal line the U.S. will have to be a constructive player.

With the framework of the Roadmap, the U.S. can, if it chooses, assume a leading role in forging the 2009 global agreement. The entry stakes for the U.S. to play such an important role? Getting a law like the Climate Security Act on the books so that the U.S. is decreasing, rather than increasing, its emissions.