Forest carbon

A forest conservation project backed by Shell, Gazprom Market and Trading and the Clinton Foundation on the island of Borneo has won approval under a carbon accounting standard, reports Reuters.

The Rimba Raya project, which covers nearly 100,000 ha (250,000 acres) of peat forest in Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province, could reduce projected emissions by 75 million metric tons over the next 30 years, generating hundreds of millions in carbon finance under the reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) program backed by the U.N. and World Bank.

New Zealand's sheep farmers are flocking to a government carbon trading program that pays more to plant trees than sell wool and mutton.

The system, begun in 2008 and the only one of its kind outside Europe, awards farmers credits that are sold to offset greenhouse gas emissions. The project may earn them about $NZ600 a hectare ($193 per acre) a year on land unprofitable for grazing animals, said David Evison, a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury's New Zealand School of Forestry.

POLITICIANS of all persuasions have had a hard time being nice to farmers in ways that don’t upset larger, more vociferous and vindictive sections of the voting public.

In this campaign, they seem to have discovered the key: carbon!