RTT Board and Volunteers

New board members Dr. Michael Bresnan (second from right) and Don Droppo (not in picture)

Board members from left to right:

Lauren Hintlian, (Co-director & Secretary), Harry Hintlian, Bob Sussler, Herster Barres, (Director), David Anderson, Treasurer,   Michael Bresnan, Scott Keller RTT (volunteer)

Photo of board members and volunteers at the November 2009 meeting of the Board of Directors of Reforest the Tropics, Inc.

Deforestation accounts for one-fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — about the same as China’s emissions, more than the emissions generated by all of the world’s cars and trucks. And the world is doing far too little to stop it. An estimated 30 million acres of rain forest disappear every year, destroying biodiversity and pouring billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The article continues by noting that, economically speaking, forests may be more valuable as carbon sinks than as land for crops under the newly proposed legislation such as the Waxman-Markey bill:

The economics make sense. . . . The World Bank estimates that an acre of rain forest converted to crops is worth $100 to $250. It’s worth far more under a system that puts a value on carbon. An average acre stores about 200 tons of carbon; assuming a low price of $10 a ton, that acre is suddenly worth $2,000.

Reforest the Tropics is committed to the importance of tropical forestry, via preservation and reforestation, as a means of ensuring our planet’s health.  We commend the editorial staff of the New York Times for this insightful editorial.

Rows of corn planted between rows of trees in the Triumvirate Carbon-Offset Forest. Photo taken April 24, 2009

The crops include corn (shown at right), yucca, cilantro, pineapple, plantains, bananas and papaya.  Some of the latter two plants are left to grow purposely to feed wildlife.

Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute pointed out in a recent article that “the biggest threat to global political stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause governments to collapse.  Those crises are brought on by rising demand and ever worsening environmental degradation.”

The RTT Model forests help meet the challenges of climate change and local food scarcity in a small way.

Happy Earth Day — from Reforest the Tropics, Inc.

Seven-year old deglupta tree in the Connecticut College Carbon-Offest Forest. Photo taken Jan. 24, 2007.

Reforest the Tropics will be an exhibitor at Earth Fest!, Connecticut College’s Earth Day celebration, to be held on campus this Saturday, April 18.  Stop by for a visit!

Connecticut College sponsored a 37-acre forest to offset the CO2 emissions associated with the Crozier-Williams Student Center located on the college’s campus in New London, Connecticut.  The forest was planted by RTT in November 1999 in the Las Delicias Farm in Costa Rica.  Read more about it here.

The main benefit of CCS is that it can divert the greenhouse gas CO2 from the atmosphere, thereby helping to mitigate climate change.  Critics argue, however, that the economics of CCS are uncertain, and that CCS reduces the incentive to develop renewable energy sources—the only truly sustainable solution to climate change.  In 2005, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published an authoritative report summarizing emerging CCS technology.

Whether you are for or against CCS, there’s no dispute that the popular press has taken note of this intriguing technology.  Last month, Scientific American posted an article discussing CCS, and the Economist published an informative summary of the benefits and controversy surrounding CCS.

Lost in the debate, however, is careful consideration of forestry as a viable alternative to CCS.  In response to the Economist article, Professor Pekka Kauppi of the University of Helsinki wrote a letter to the editor, in which he noted:

In looking for cost-efficient CCS, please step up and walk to your window, where you may see a tree. The evolution of woody plants has solved the problem of capture (photosynthesis) and storage (formation of durable cells) at minimal cost.

Here at Reforest The Tropics, we couldn’t agree more.  Forests indeed represent a form of “old-school” carbon capture and storage.  Beyond “capturing” and “storing” carbon, forests carry the added benefits of being pleasant to walk through and friendly to wildlife.  Moreover, the RTT model posits that carbon-offset forests can also be profitable for the farmers on whose land they are grown.

While renewable energy is no doubt the long-term key to climate change mitigation, we must remember that, in the interim, forestry provides a natural, safe, affordable, and pleasant form of CCS, which is free from many of the risks and uncertainties associated with cutting-edge CCS technology.

The graph shown here details the carbon sequestration and growth rate in the Home Depot forest.  It provides the total sequestration (upper lines) and current annual sequestration (last 12 months; lower lines) in tonnes of carbon dioxide and cubic meters of wood production.  The current annual sequestration was 29.4 tonnes of CO2, down from the past year.  The total amount of CO2 stored in the forest in the past 6.64 years is 170.9 tonnes of CO2.  The current and total production in cubic meters of wood are 33 and 188 cubic meters, respectively.  The average annual sequestration and growth since planting are 25.7 and 28.3, respectively.

Long-term management and profitability for the farmer are the keys to sustainability and long-term carbon storage in farm forests.  This project is managed by Reforest The Tropics under a 25-year agreement between RTT and the farm owners.  The forest belongs to the farmer while the rights to the CO2 sequestered belong to the Home Depot during the agreement.

The reason behind the new estimate, it appears, are measurements indicating that increased temperatures at the Earth’s poles are causing glaciers not only to melt, but also to break up.

If there’s any silver lining to this dark cloud, it may be the urgency that this finding could impart on proceedings at the upcoming climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany.