The carbon neutral fraud at the World Forestry Congress

According to its organizers, the XIII World Forestry Congress (WFC), to be held from 18 – 23 October, in Argentina, “will be the first World Forestry Congress which shall achieve ‘Carbon Neutral’ ranking”. The organizers plan to reach such status through the purchase of “carbon credits” from Nobrecel’s “Forestry-industrial Sector Biomass Energy Project” in Brazil.

The monoculture tree plantation “forests”

Before analysing the validity of the “carbon neutrality” claim, it is important to understand where the “carbon credits” are coming from, because this relates directly to the misleading slogan of the WFC: “Forests in Development: a vital balance”.

Probably anyone would in principle agree about the importance of balancing development with forest conservation, thereby finding the slogan acceptable. However, many people would strongly disagree with it if they were told that for many WFC participants –if not most- eucalyptus or pine plantations are considered to be forests.

In line with a definition that equates plantations with forests, the WFC organizers did not find any problem in making a deal with Nobrecel, a company holding an extensive area of eucalyptus “forest” in Brazil, which feeds its pulp mill in the State of São Paulo.

A strange “renewable” fuel

In the case of Nobrecel, the “carbon credits” did not arise from the company’s monoculture eucalyptus plantations –as has been the case in other carbon projects- but from changes introduced to its pulping process.

The Project “consists of improvements in the structure and operation” of the black-liquor recovery boiler. The boiler used to basically consume fuel oil and the improvements have allowed the boiler to almost exclusively use black-liquor as fuel.

Black liquor is a byproduct of the kraft process, one of the processes used by pulp mills during the production of paper pulp. Wood is decomposed into cellulose fibers (from which paper is made), lignin fragments and hemicellulose. Black liquor is an aqueous solution of lignin residues, hemicellulose, and the inorganic chemicals used in the process. The black liquor contains more than half of the energy content of the wood fed into the digester.

In what can be considered a unique piece of cynical publicity, the company goes as far as stating that “Black liquor is an organic by-product of pulp and paper production, therefore a renewable fuel”.

The obvious conclusions from the above are that the company is polluting less than before (by recycling the black liquor), that it is saving money (through the use of waste as fuel) and that it has ceased to emit fossil fuel-related carbon dioxide from its boiler. Which is of course fine.

The question is: who can understand the relationship between those changes –that should have been imposed on the company by the government years ago- and the WFC’s claim that its meeting will be “carbon neutral”?

When WFC “forests” become destructive

Although the company does not provide precise figures on the total area planted to eucalyptus, we do know that it at least owns some 5000 hectares of eucalyptus and that it has promoted plantations through contract farming agreements with its neighbours.

The company’s plantations have resulted in a number of impacts on local people which ended up in a very recent Public Civil Action (29 September 2009) initiated by the State’s Public Prosecutor against both Nobrecel and Monsanto.

The action is aimed at preventing the companies from using a herbicide in the eucalyptus plantations located in the municipality of Piquete in the Paraíba Valley. The product is resulting in damages to the local population and the regional ecosystem.

The action is also aimed at suspending the harvesting of eucalyptus in Piquete until environmental impact assessments are carried out in relation to the expansion of this monoculture in the municipality.

According to Wagner Giron de La Torre, the Public Prosecutor that filed the action, Nobrecel has been using the herbicide Scout-NA –produced by Monsanto- since November 2004. Dr Giron has collected testimonies from people affected by the product, including former Nobrecel workers.

“I even gathered testimonies from biologists, veterinarians and small farmers in the region, who until this day are receiving medical treatment because they suffered fainting, loss in visual capacity, fall in red blood cells, metal contamination in their bodies, rigidity in legs and arms and weakness in legs.”

Dr Giron also revealed that huge numbers of fish died in one single day. The use of the herbicide was also responsible for the death of birds, amphibians and insects, as well as hundreds of fruit trees.

The Public Prosecution’s action demands that Nobrecel and Monsanto compensate each victim affected by the herbicide by paying a sum equivalent to 500 minimum wages. The action also demands each company to pay 5000 minimum wages to compensate the damages caused to the municipality of Piquete.

A second question therefore is: how can the WFC turn a blind eye on these impacts and continue to pretend that its slogan –“Forests in Development: a vital balance”- applies to monoculture tree plantations such as these?

The “carbon neutral” myth

The idea of “neutralising” fossil fuel emissions is based on the premise that the carbon released from burning fossil fuels can in some way be “neutralised” by other activities such as the Nobrecel project. This is simply not possible.

What needs to be understood is that the carbon released through the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) has not been part of the functioning of the biosphere for millions of years. Once fossil fuels are extracted and burnt, that carbon –which until then had been safely stored underground- is released, thereby increasing the above ground carbon stock. Once released, that carbon cannot be returned to its original storage place and the more it is extracted, the more the total amount of carbon in the biosphere is increased, thus further enhancing the greenhouse effect.

In the case of the WFC, the organizers themselves explain that most of the emissions related to its meeting will come from overseas flights. Carbon neutral flights are perhaps the best way to show that this is a cheating game. Planes do not fly on renewables; they run on oil. Once burnt to enable the planes to fly, the carbon contained in the fuel is released. No “fuel switch in black liquor boiler” can make that carbon return back underground.

In spite of that, the WFC 2009 organization has designed “a simple and brief survey in order to precisely assess the carbon emissions generated by the XIIIth World Forestry Congress.” Participants are being requested to complete an electronic form, to “help us demonstrating the commitment of the international forestry sector with our Planet.”

Instead of channeling money to a company such as Nobrecel –thus subsidizing its destructive activities- the international forestry sector could show its commitment with our Planet by ceasing to promote monoculture tree plantations. Instead of trying to achieve an impossible “carbon neutrality” it could tackle the much more achievable objective of excluding tree monocrops from the definition of forests.