Kyoto lands
Kyoto lands refer to areas that can be used as carbon sinks to help mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, a United Nations treaty aimed at combating climate change. The protocol encourages member countries to utilize natural carbon sinks—such as forests and other vegetation—that sequester carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. By incorporating these lands into their environmental strategies, countries can achieve carbon offsets, which allow them to meet legally binding emission reduction targets.
While developed nations have strict GHG emission quotas, developing countries are not bound to the same restrictions, offering them opportunities to manage their natural resources for carbon credits. This often involves trading carbon credits with industrialized nations to help them comply with their emissions goals. The concept of Kyoto lands highlights the importance of land use and management in the global fight against climate change, particularly as deforestation in regions like Indonesia and Brazil has significantly contributed to rising GHG levels.
Overall, Kyoto lands serve a critical role in both environmental policy and the ongoing efforts to address climate change by balancing economic development with sustainable land management practices.
Kyoto lands
Kyoto lands are lands within the territory of Kyoto Protocol party nations on which vegetation is planted that acts to sequester carbon. These lands enable protocol parties to earn carbon offset credits to balance their continuing GHG emissions.
Background
Forests and other types of vegetation that store or sequester carbons and are increasing in size are considered to be carbon sinks, or reservoirs. In the main, natural carbon sinks include trees, plants, and organisms that use photosynthesis to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere by incorporating, or fixing, carbon into as carbohydrates (CHOH)n and releasing oxygen (O2) into the air. Carbon sinks not only rid the atmosphere of greenhouse gases (GHGs) but also, by producing additional CO2-consuming biomass, can scavenge even more CO2 from the atmosphere.
The Kyoto Protocol, a United Nations treaty, aims to reduce GHG emissions. It allows member countries to use carbon sinks as a form of carbon offset, gaining credit for their sinks against their continued GHG emissions. These so-called Kyoto lands may then be used to comply with emission-reduction requirements of the treaty.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), if GHG emissions continue to rise at their current rate, global warming will accelerate to levels that will increase both floods and droughts, raise sea levels, and obliterate thousands of plant and animal species. The use of carbon sinks to mitigate the effects of global warming may be useful to countries with large areas of forest or other vegetation for compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Specific, legally binding quotas for reduction of GHG emissions have been established for the developed nations; developing countries are not compelled to restrict their GHG emissions, which may come, in large part, from land use such as cultivation of lands and destruction of forests. For developed nations, land use would have little effect in meeting Kyoto quotas, since most of their land has already been cultivated. Developing countries may benefit from their GHG emissions with carbon sinks via land use or green projects, and can help developed countries meet their quotas by trading carbon credits. Usually, an industrialized country will purchase carbon credits from a developing country to meet its quota.
Implementation
In implementing the Kyoto Protocol, parties to the treaty were to base their policy decisions on “defintions, accounting procedures …for carbon stocks, and changes in carbon stocks.” Per the protocol, each party “must devise its own method of verifying its carbon emission reductions (CER) to account for carbon sequestration.” In the (CDM), only afforestation, “the establishment of forest on land that has been "unforested" for a long period, decades to centuries,” and reforestation, the conversion of "nonforested" lands to forest, are allowable methods of producing CERs for the first period of the protocol, 2008 to 2012. Forest or avoidance of deforestation, “the conversion of forest to nonforest,” is ineligible.
The IPCC in its revised Guidelines for National GHG Inventories (1997) and the Kyoto Protocol itself call for a strict accounting of the carbon changes encompassing all carbon sinks within a given timeframe; they require that inclusion be limited to “land areas subject to direct human-induced activities.” GHG emissions and removals via land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULCF) may be designed to help parties to of the protocol meet their obligations. In this case, the Guidelines are to serve as the basis for “transparent and verifiable” reportage of changes in forestry and related GHG emissions.
Significance for Climate Change
Changes in land use can appreciably change the GHG emission levels, with deforestation increasing them and afforestation reducing them. Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 grew by 2.5 percent to record levels in 2006, as international efforts to fight global warming failed to curb the main gas blamed for rising temperatures. They then continued to increase to new highs throughout the 2010s and 2020. The inclusion of land use as part of the calculations for GHG emissions tends to focus on certain developing nations, notably Indonesia and Brazil, which are significantly raising their GHG emission rankings. The Kyoto Protocol would go on to serve as a framework for later climate agreements, including the Paris Agreement.
Key Concepts
- biomass: the organic substance of life-forms, especially plants
- carbon fixation: incorporation of carbon atoms into organic compounds within biomass, making it unavailable for CO2 production
- carbon offset credits: credits earned by funding projects that remove GHGs from the atmosphere and that can be used to replace reductions in GHG emissions
- carbon sequestration: isolation of carbon from the atmosphere, either by converting it into a form other than CO2 or by capturing CO2 and storing it outside of the atmosphere
- greenhouse gases (GHGs): trace atmospheric gases that trap heat, preventing it from escaping into space
Bibliography
Bassetti, Francesco. "Success or Failure? The Kyoto Protocol's Troubled Legacy." Climate Foresight, 8 Dec. 2022, www.climateforesight.eu/articles/success-or-failure-the-kyoto-protocols-troubled-legacy/. Accessed 21 Dec. 2024.
Bloomfield, J., M. Ratchford, and S. Brown. “Land-Use Change and Forestry in the Kyoto Protocol.” Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 5, no. 1 (March, 2000): 1381-2386.
Kindermann, G., et al. “Global Cost Estimates of Reducing Carbon Emissions Through Avoided Deforestation.” PNAS 105 (2008): 10302-10307.
Schulze, E.-D., et al. “Making deforestation Pay Under the Kyoto Protocol?” Science 299 (March, 2003): 1669.