PFT’s Tuttle Addresses Global Forest Community at World Forestry Congress

It’s not every day you get a chance to offer your perspective on forests, climate, and carbon markets to more than 1,000 people from around the world.

In fact, when you’re addressing the World Forestry Congress, that opportunity only comes up every six years.

“This is the time when foresters, national Ministries of Forestry, all the United Nations forest organizations, and forest advocates from around the globe come to take the pulse of the world’s forests,” said PFT Board Member Andrea Tuttle, Ph.D., who was invited to speak at this year’s XIII World Forestry Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Tuttle, who was part of the Congress’ Oct. 21 forum on climate change and its effects on forests and people, joined more than 7,000 participants from over 160 nations who gathered to discuss the urgent issues surrounding sustainable forest management and climate change.

Andrea Tuttle, Pacific Forest Trust; Avrim Lazar President of the Forest Products Association of Canada; Tim Rollinson, Moderator, Director-General, Forestry Commission of the United Kingdom and, Risto Seppälä, Professor at the Finnish Forest Institute. Photos Courtesy IISD RD "Linkages."

Providing a perspective on the American experience, Tuttle challenged the international audience to tackle head-on the potential challenge of billions of tons of carbon offsets proposed in current U.S. climate legislation. These offset tons are aimed directly at tropical forests, to help domestic industries meet requirements to cap their carbon emissions.

“Who but you in this audience knows more about your own forests than you do?” Tuttle asked. “Who except you knows as much about your indigenous communities, your land tenure problems, your drivers of deforestation and your governance than you? And who except you knows as much about the real opportunities that might really be there, and knows the places where this notion of REDD might really work?”

“REDD” refers to Reducing carbon Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in developing tropical countries. A REDD framework for further action is anticipated to be one of the successes emerging from the Copenhagen climate negotiations this December.

Foresters need to be savvy to the business of project developers and recognize the potential dangers of an unfettered carbon market. But the progressive forest and climate model developed in California with Pacific Forest Trust (PFT) leadership has set a high standard for rigorous accounting that creates real benefits for the planet, forest stewardship and forest owners.

“The Pacific Forest Trust is the developer of a tremendously successful forest carbon project in my backyard, the redwoods of northern California,” Tuttle said. “These remain the highest value offsets on the voluntary market because of their rigor, generating millions of dollars, and we dearly wish we had more to sell.”

Highlighting the progressive measures PFT has worked for — such as accurate accounting for all forest-based carbon emissions and storage, tracking carbon gains and losses in the forest sector as a whole, rigorous forest offset standards including verification and registries, a forest land base retention policy, and incentives for forest landowners to keep forestlands as forests — Tuttle underscored the importance of the California program as a model, both for federal climate legislation and the international offset program.

“Whether we like it or not, the carbon market is coming,” Tuttle said, citing the tremendous demand that will be created for high-quality, forest offset projects. “Buyers do not want low-quality or failed offsets because their reputation is at risk in the marketplace of public opinion, which will be closely watching.”

Recognizing the tremendous advantage afforded by so many diverse perspectives on the specter of climate change and forests, Tuttle observed: “One of the important aspects of attending conferences such as this is the opportunity to see the forests of the world through different eyes.”

Looking ahead, Tuttle envisioned a symbiosis between domestic and international forests in U.S. climate policy. And, as in any symbiotic relationship, the strength of each individual component — both forests in the United States and abroad — will be critical to the ultimate success of both.

You can download a PDF version of the final declaration from the Congress here.

For the future, Tuttle looks forward to bringing a strong domestic forest model to the upcoming U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she and PFT colleague Emily Russell-Roy will be sending updates to www.forestsworkwonders.org and our Twitter account.