Don’t Give LULUCF the FLU

7 October 2011

LULUCF has been suffering from a variety of ailments but now it looks in danger of getting FLU. The “Flexible Land Use” proposal, being heavily marketed by New Zealand, allows countries to cut down trees and replant them somewhere else, but instead of counting this as deforestation and reforestation and counting the emissions accordingly, it brings this under forest management rules – the ones that allow countries not to account for substantial increases in logging emissions compared to historical levels.

 Some might argue that New Zealand having FLU is unfortunate but not disastrous but this provision could be contagious – what if lots of other much larger countries have FLU too? What if this proposal goes viral and REDD countries catch it?  ECO suggests that a cure is achieved as soon as possible by eliminating FLU from the LULUCF discussions.