Avoided Deforestation Partners

Avoided Deforestation Partners, or ADP, is a leading organization promoting the role of the world’s forests in stopping climate change. The organization is playing an increasingly visible role in the climate change debate. Deforestation has become a heated scientific and legislative issue because loss of trees causes nearly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of the world's entire transport sector.

ADP has published several major studies which promote the idea that preserving tropical forests is one of the most affordable ways to reduce pollution and strengthen U.S. domestic agriculture. The National Farmers Union and Avoided Deforestation Partners calculate that stopping global deforestation would boost U.S. agricultural revenue by $190 billion to $270 billion through 2030 by cutting unfair competition from agricultural companies in the developing world which can offer better prices on the world market. Lower prices are possible because these farmers use deforested land that does not meet international standards for sustainability.Timber, beef and soy in particular are often produced from deforested land. Some farming groups have been skeptical about the overall impact of climate change legislation which is pending in the U.S. Senate.

Carbon Offsets

Central to the avoided deforestation movement is the idea of creating a forestry carbon offsets protocol, designed to incentivize developing countries like Indonesia and Brazil to stop cutting and burning rain forests. Essentially this means placing a value on not cutting down trees so countries can reap economic benefit from preserving their forests and selling the carbon dioxide processed by the trees.

Avoided Deforestation partners leads the campaign for development of this global conservation process, called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), which would allow developed countries to invest in rain-forest protection in the tropical world in exchange for carbon credits.At the December 2009 international climate meeting in Copenhagen, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the American government will give $1 billion over the next three years to developing countries that enact REDD projects to build their countries’ capacity to slow and eventually halt deforestation.

Legislation

The American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House of representatives in June 2009 set a goal of conserving the carbon trapped in forests equal to 10% of U.S. emissions, and in doing so, set aside 5% of total emissions allowance value from carbon auctions, which could bring $3 billion to $5 billion a year, to the protection of forests in developing nations. The Kerry-Lieberman bill in the Senate has the same broad goal for conserving forests but devotes no specific funds to stopping deforestation. ADP believes the unfunded mandate in the Senate bill is a blow to large scale implementation of the REDD process.