Transcript Conservation Easements and Climate Change

The Nature Conservancy, Conservation
Easements and Climate Change
Environmental Law I
Fall 2008
Two Conceptual Linkages:
• Large-scale impact assessment based on
biodiversity, conservation biology
• Role of land use in climate change
TNC: Acting Globally and Locally
To Protect Biodiversity
TNC: “Conservation by Design”
TNC’s Approach to Climate Change
Adaptation
• Conserve areas that will help provide resiliency
• Acquire and restore properties to support migratio
of plants, animals and ecosystems
• Incorporate climate change into planning process,
priorities
Resilient Marine Protected Areas
Micronesia
Coral Triangle
Indian Ocean
Hawaii
Florida Keys
Meso-American Reef
Early emissions reductions are better
than later ones—they “keep on giving”
What Wedges Look Like:
• Capture carbon from 3/4ths
Pick seven by 2050•
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Stop global deforestation
Double vehicle fuel economy
Double coal power efficiency
Increase wind power by 50 times
Increase global ethanol production by 50
times
• Increase solar power by 700 times
• Cut vehicle use in half
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of current coal plant capacity
Cut emissions from buildings
and appliances by a quarter
Double current nuclear
capacity
Replace current coal power
capacity with natural gas
Adopt ‘conservation tillage’ for
all agriculture
Trees are loaded with carbon
But logging releases a lot of carbon
Are forests that big a deal?
• An area the size of England, Scotland and Wales
combined is deforested every year.
• Deforestation produces approximately 20% of
greenhouse gas emissions.
Presently, carbon stored in trees has a
zero or negative dollar value
• Letting the forest grow is a “pure public good”—it benefits
everybody by sequestering carbon, and you can’t recapture
the economic benefit of that service.
• Private forest lands are assessed on the value of the
standing timber, at current market rates—an incentive to
cut and cash out.
• “Forestry offsets” could create economic incentives to
refrain from logging.
Tools to reduce or reverse deforestation
• Direct purchase of property interests (fee, conservation
easement, timber rights)
• Stewardship outreach (work with landowners to use more
sustainable harvesting practices)
• Mobilizing government to create better forest protection
incentives
• Raising funds to use for promoting ecological resiliency,
carbon sequestration, and forest stewardship
Strengths of TNC Approach
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Landscape-scale planning, applied globally
Based on “good science”
Networks stakeholders in partnerships
“Business-friendly,” nonconfrontational
Generates substantial monies
Context for working toward sustainability
(integrating economy, ecology, society)
Promoting Corporate Responsibility
Potential Weaknesses
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Greenwashing
False sustainability
Self-dealing
Bad or ineffective partnerships
Enabling tax evasion games
Lack of follow-through on stewardship
Failure to follow through on stewardship
• Growing popularity of land
conservancies—are we
“suboptimizing,”
checkerboarding,
over-privatizing,
undermining the tax base?