Unfortunately, in many American bedrooms tonight, that horror is likely to be reality.

A report released today by Rainforest Action Network finds that a majority of the top ten U.S. children’s publishers have released at least one children’s book that tested positive for paper fiber linked to the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests, including some books that describe the benefits of rainforest conservation.

To create the report, the San Francisco based environmental group randomly tested 30 books – three from each of the top ten children’s book publishers. Eighteen of the 30 tested, or 60 percent, contained controversial fiber linked to the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests. RAN believes that the test results point to a growing industry trend of printing children’s books, as well as other glossy paper books like coffee table books and textbooks on fiber that is from controversial and endangered sources.

“There are clear, workable alternatives to printing on paper that destroys the world’s last remaining rainforests,” said Lafcadio Cortesi, RAN’s Forest Campaign director who initiated the report. “The publishing industry shouldn’t tolerate printing even one book that contributes to rainforest destruction, species extinction and climate change. ”

Indonesia’s rainforests are some of the most valuable on earth, both because of their high ecological value and because of their importance to stopping climate change. The forests of Borneo, Sumatra and Papua are the only home of man’s closest relative, the orangutan, as well as the world’s smallest tiger species and countless other unique mammals, birds and plants. Not to mention, these forests provide food, shelter and livelihoods for millions of Indonesian communities, cultures that have lived in harmony with the rainforests for generations.

Not only does the destruction of these rainforests threaten these communities and species though, it threatens our climate. Worldwide, the degradation and destruction of tropical rainforests is responsible for fifteen percent of all annual greenhouse emissions. The carbon emissions resulting from Indonesia’s rapid deforestation account for up to five percent of global emissions: more than the combined emissions from all the cars, planes, trucks, buses and trains in United States. This huge carbon footprint from the destruction of forests and peatlands has made non-industrialized Indonesia the third-largest global greenhouse gas emitter, behind only the U.S. and China.

Publishers can solve this problem by screening out fiber that comes from endangered forests and controversial suppliers.

You can help ask them to do it – RAN has a petition up that goes straight to publishers, asking them to step up their game.

There is no reason why we can’t love books and rainforests too.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Today, a new report reveals that the nation’s largest private agribusiness company — Minneapolis-based Cargill — is a major culprit behind rainforest destruction. It turns out that Cargill, who both owns their own palm oil plantations and buys and trades palm oil from others, is directly destroying rainforests in Indonesia to produce palm oil. In fact, since 2005, Cargill has mowed down an area of rainforest the size of Disney World (including hotels) and replaced it with palm oil.

Since Cargill sells this palm oil to most of the nation’s largest food companies — including General Mills, Mars, Kraft, and Nestle — chances are high that if you’ve bought any packaged food within the last week, you’ve purchased a bit of their orangutan-killing oil.

Now, Cargill doesn’t really want you to know this — which is why they’ve been lying about the number of palm oil plantations that they actually own. On their two “public” plantations, Cargill is following rules set out by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (the only available certification body — of which Cargill is a certified member). However, it turns out that they own two additional plantations, the ones that they aren’t bragging about on their website or reporting to the RSPO, where they are cutting down rainforest, polluting waterways, taking land from communities and destroying carbon-rich peat swamps (a major trigger for climate change).

So what does this have to do with you?

Almost half of all consumer goods sold in grocery stores, including the items above contain an ingredient called palm oil, a thick, long-lasting oil that is sourced mainly from tropical nations like Indonesia and Malaysia. Its use is widespread and increasing around the world, but particularly in the United States, where its consumption has tripled in the last five years.

Unfortunately, palm oil has been tightly linked to the destruction of some of the world’s remaining rainforests, particularly those in Indonesia. Expanding consumption has triggered expanded production, replacing once lush rainforests with palm oil plantations and endangering unique species including orangutans and sun bears. Orangutans are particularly affected, as powerfully described in a 2009 TED talk and blog:

Orangutans are sentient beings who share approximately 97.8 percent of our DNA and express a range of emotions that is just as wide as our own. The forests of Borneo and Sumatra are the only two places on Earth where these gentle, intelligent creatures live. The cultivation of palm oil over the last decade has directly led to the slaughter of thousands of individuals as the industry has expanded into previously undisturbed areas of old-growth rainforest. The UNEP estimates that an area of Indonesian rainforest the size of six football fields is cut down every minute of every day. Read that sentence again.

So Cargill is lying and orangutans are dying. Who wants that in their Cheerios?

The largest of all cats, the tiger is one of the most charismatic and evocative species on earth. It’s also one of the most threatened. WWF estimates that there could be as few as 3,200 wild tigers left in the world – a shockingly low number.

What’s bad for tigers is also bad for people. In Indonesia, where maybe only 400 Sumatran tigers (one of the seven remaining subspecies) exist in the wild, tiger-human conflicts have escalated as the rainforest – traditional tiger habitat – is cut down. In March 2009, Indonesian environmental group Eyes on the Forest released a report comparing the locations of the last 12 years of tiger attacks with logging concessions. Not surprisingly, they found that deforestation correlates highly with tiger attacks. Happily, at a recent ministers meeting in Hua Hin, Thailand, all 13 tiger range countries have committed to the goal of doubling tiger numbers by 2022 (the next lunar Year of the Tiger).

“Tigers are being persecuted across their range – poisoned, trapped, snared, shot and squeezed out of their homes,” said Mike Baltzer, Leader of WWF’s Tiger Initiative. “But there is hope for them in this Year of the Tiger. There has never been such a committed, ambitious, high-level commitment from governments to double wild tiger numbers. They have set the bar high and we hope for the sake of tigers and people that they reach it.”

To meet these goals, however, governments in rainforest nations need to get serious about saving tiger habitat – particularly rainforests. And governments in developed countries need to start regulating the commodities – like palm oil – that are driving the destruction.

WWF, who has declared 2010 the Year of Tiger Conservation, notes that:

“European countries currently have an annual import of around 5.8 million tons (5.3 million metric tons) of palm oil, an ingredient used in making countless everyday foods and products, from lipstick to ice cream to biofuels and detergents. Rainforests are often leveled to make way for palm oil plantations, and much of that destruction is taking place in Indonesia and Malaysia, home to Sumatran and Malayan tigers. Efforts to require that palm oil be produced from sustainable sources that don’t destroy forests are gaining ground, but much more needs to be done to save these two tiger subspecies.”

The U.S. is no different. Major U.S. agribusiness companies are importing and trading palm oil, encouraging the destruction of rainforests and tigers who live in them. Worse, we’re failing to stop the international trade in tigers and tiger parts – over 5,000 captive tigers now live in the United States, 1,800 more than exist in the wild.

The year of the tiger happens every 12 years. We know the solutions that will save tigers from extinction: preserve habitats, stop resource extraction and enforce laws, and totally ban trade in tiger parts. If we don’t want the tiger to join the more mythical animals of the zodiac like the unicorn, we’d better start getting our act together now.

So Copenhagen is over, with forests mentioned in one paragraph of a politically ambiguous “Copenhagen Accord” and an incomplete REDD agreement stapled on the back with major safeguard and finance issues still unresolved. Clearly, high hopes of a deal that might save the world’s forests and reduce the 15-20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation will have to wait, at least till next year’s December meeting of the UNFCCC in Mexico City, if not beyond.

So along with many other people, you might be wondering, what happens now for REDD and for the world’s tropical forests?

Not much it seems. Forests remain under threat for all the same reasons that we’ve historically cut them down — illegal logging, industrial agriculture expansion, and destructive “development” projects. At least for one more year, business as usual is certainly going to continue and tropical forests will probably continue to be lost at the shocking rate of one acre per second.

Things are going to keep moving, however.

The UNFCCC process will continue as the REDD working group meets again in Bonn in June to work out technical issues, hopefully starting where they’ve left off in Copenhagen and further strengthening key provisions rather than going back to square one. Political negotiations will continue at least through Mexico City — a continuation of the process that started in Bali.

As Kevin Conrad, executive director of the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, aptly put it to the AP:

“It’s depressing,” he said. “It means I’ve got to spend another year … coming to meetings and talking about the same things.”

Various other processes intended to address the rapid destruction of the world’s tropical forests will also continue, but without resolution of critical environmental and social safeguards (notably including recognition and respect for indigenous people’s rights) that a Copenhagen forest agreement might have provided. The most notable of these include the U.N.-REDD initiative, the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and new initiatives started to help countries with “REDD readiness” planning.

This proliferation of initiatives, plus the consideration of a U.S. Senate climate bill with its large REDD provisions linked to dodgy offset approaches, results in a divide and conquer approach for forest protection — keeping advocates of a more rights-centric and environmentally friendly approach sorely stretched.

But the most depressing fail for the forests out of Copenhagen is the lack of binding targets to reduce fossil fuel emissions and start to halt climate change. If global temperatures rise above 2 degrees C, most scientists predict that tropical forests will be profoundly affected, experiencing extreme droughts, increased forest fires and other catastrophic weather events. Even if a separate deal to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries had been agreed upon, the lack of commitment to deep fossil fuel emissions in a legally binding climate change agreement would continue to threaten the world’s forests.

We can’t save the forests if we don’t save the climate. And that means that REDD without a larger climate deal is no deal at all.

COPENHAGEN — Many of us who are here reading the text drafts, talking to ministers and following the negotiations were a bit surprised to read in the New York Times yesterday that we’re about to close a deal on REDD.

Vaka0627 via FlickrIt’s true, negotiations have progressed, and balanced-but-far-from-completely-resolved text moved early this morning from delegates to a ministerial level, meaning that we’re moving away from technical bickering to a political fight over big issues that bureaucrats could not resolve on their own.

And what big issues!

Four key aspects of the deal have been left to ministers to negotiate, decisions that could make the difference between a REDD that protects the world’s rainforests and forest peoples rights and a REDD that fails for forests. These issues are the stickiest ones in the negotiations: how REDD will be financed, what it’s official reduction targets are, how important social and environmental safeguards will be implemented, and whether countries will make national level commitments for action.

Even if these issues are resolved properly, it’s hard to imagine how a REDD deal can happen in the absence of a larger legal agreement of a wider climate deal in which it must be embedded. Many key issues in the REDD text, including what the exact financing mechanism will be, is linked to other parts of the agreement. Moreover, the mandate for REDD is set to expire on Friday at 6pm with the rest of the agreement, so the COP must forward on the Copenhagen agreement for REDD to have any effect.

The discussion around finance and targets are linked, and mirror the divide between developed and developing countries in the larger agreement and goes straight to the heart of what REDD is intended to do.  Currently, the world economic system puts a greater value on cutting forests down than keeping them standing. What REDD intends to do is to halt deforestation (and thus the 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions that stem from the destruction of the world’s rainforests) by shifting money from developed countries to developing countries. So there’s a trust problem: developed countries want to see money on the table before they commit to a target to reduce deforestation, but developed countries, notably the EU want developing countries to make pledges before they put up the cash.  And more fundamentally, developing countries want to see the deep developed country fossil fuel emission targets that are needed to protect the climate in a legally binding framework.

That means that nothing’s decided until everything’s decided.

Everyone here knows that saving forests is important – both in developed and developing countries. But saving forests can’t just become a cover up for the continued use of fossil fuels in developed countries. And developing countries like Indonesia and Brazil understandably don’t want to take steps to reduce their major sources of emissions when the US isn’t doing anything to reduce it’s own emissions.

REDD can’t exist in a vacuum. As I wrote earlier, forests won’t actually survive warming greater than 2 degrees Celcius, but worse, REDD won’t survive a collapsed deal. And right now in Copenhagen, a deal doesn’t seem likely.

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In the midst of decreasing expectations over a global climate deal, saving forests has been held out as the one thing that might be achieved over the next two weeks in Copenhagen. Says Newsweek:

“One of the few tangible achievements expected from the climate talks in Copenhagen this month is agreement on a program called REDD, or Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation, a complex set of regulations that would help developing countries keep their rainforests standing by turning their carbon-storing capacity into a source of income.”

Others, including the AP, have joined in the chorus of excitement. It sounds too good to be true: can we actually save the climate by saving the rainforest? And can Copenhagen produce such a deal?

Of course, it’s very hard to tell at this point what the outcome of Copenhagen is likely to be – some form of political agreement, probably, that may or may not include forests as a part of it. However, what’s very clear is that to meet the expectations that forests could be protected by a climate change treaty, two major things need to happen here at Copenhagen.

1.    The REDD treaty text has to get a whole lot better, and

2.    We need a deal that actually keeps climate change below 2 degrees Celsius of warming, i.e. a deal that deeply reduces emissions from fossil fuels.

Current treaty text for REDD is not in good straights. Major issues are still unresolved, including the insertion of essential social and environmental safeguards to ensure that REDD monies do what they are intended to do. It’s an unfortunate coincidence that countries with the largest stands of remaining natural forests are also some of highest levels of corruption on Earth. As pointed out in a recent Human Rights Watch report on Indonesia’s illegal logging problem:

“In particular, there is a critical need for adequate safeguards to be in place to accurately monitor the actual logging rates and their legal compliance, and stop the flow of cash if forests are not protected. It will be important to protect against conflicts of interest by ensuring an institutional separation between those who will benefit from carbon payments and those overseeing performance. In the absence of safeguards, the carbon finance market will simply inject more money into an already corrupt system, shortcutting needed reforms and exacerbating the situation.”

 REDD has not yet established a way to recognize the rights of the indigenous communities who live in most of the forest areas that would be targeted by REDD and whose lives and livelihoods will be altered if the agreement goes forward. This is a major flaw, and the reason that many Indigenous groups here are deeply suspicious of REDD.

Also, as currently formatted, REDD does not provide any guarantees that forests could not still be cut down. Under the current text, endangered or high conservation value forests could still be logged and countries could be paid to do it. This is because of poor forest definitions, but also because there is still no explicit language against it. Unless this is fixed, REDD monies could actually be used to subsidize logging in primary tropical forests, a totally perverse outcome.

 No matter how good REDD is, however, tropical forests will not the continued unregulated emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels into the atmosphere. According to Climate Analytics, who is tracking the aggregate commitments of countries in the Copenhagen process so far, “the emission commitments and pledges put forward by industrialized and developing countries for the Copenhagen climate negotiations shows that the world is headed for a global warming of well over 3 degrees C by 2100. Carbon dioxide concentrations are projected to be over 650 ppm, with total GHG concentrations close to 800 ppm CO2 equivalent.”

Like many other ecosystems, tropical forest will just not survive this kind of warming. Already, rainforests like the Amazon have experienced droughts that disrupt the ecosystem and inhibit their ability to absorb the world’s carbon. In a statement on their website, the Society for Conservation Biology states that:

“… we now have evidence that whole rainforests can — and in 2005 for one year, the Amazon did — die faster than they grow, in response to climate driven drought and heat, in this case resulting in higher net emissions of carbon dioxide than the CO2 emitted by all of Europe and Japan. Because life as we know it relies upon the Amazon rain forest, and all forests, we do not have any significant room left for additional greenhouse gases and we must reduce them now. The climate policy principles offer ways forward and cite studies offering further details as well.”

We have to save forests if we are going to save the climate, that’s true. But just saving rainforests isn’t actually sufficient to stop climate change. We have to both reduce fossil fuel emissions AND take strong action to protect forests. Will it happen this week? I’ll keep you posted.

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Photo: Shi!

A paper policy, you say? That’s not really fashionable, is it?

Turns out it is. Gucci Group’s policy puts it at the front of a list of major companies — including Tiffany & Co., H&M Group, Hugo Boss, Bulgari, and Ferragamo — that have decided  they don’t want their brands to be associated with the destruction of rainforests or with encouraging climate change.

Worldwide, the degradation and destruction of tropical rainforests is responsible for 20 percent of all annual greenhouse emissions. In Indonesia, which supplies much of America’s paper, a lot of this deforestation is driven by the pulp and paper industry — notably the notorious paper company Asia Pulp and Paper.

This hurts the climate as well as the forests. The carbon emissions resulting from Indonesia’s rapid deforestation account for around 8 percent of global emissions — more than the combined emissions from all cars, trucks, buses, planes, and trains in United States.

The Gucci Group’s comprehensive policy commits it to one of the strongest paper standards in the industry. With its new policy, the Gucci Group has pledged to reduce the amount of paper it uses, eliminate fiber from high-conservation-value forests, and only purchase recycled products or those certified by the Forest Stewardship Council by December 2010.

“Standing rainforests are not a luxury, they’re a necessity if the world wants to stop climate change,” said Mimma Viglezio, executive VP for global communications at the Group. “Our actions are lowering our own carbon footprint, but we hope that they will also raise awareness inside the fashion industry that it’s possible for our industry to make a difference for rainforests and for the climate.”

Because it contains the word “sustainable,” this term conjures up images of nice standing forests, perhaps occasionally harvested by indigenous peoples to make “sustainable” furniture or artisanal paper for those of us in the United States.

However, here in Bangkok, SFM is at the heart of a fierce debate over what the fundamental shape of the climate change treaty will be.

Environmentalists are lining up against industry interests in a debate over the inclusion of SFM in the treaty language. Who ultimately wins will determine whether or not the climate change treaty will actually reduce the 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions that stem from forests by providing support to keep tropical forests standing; or will the treaty incentivize a massive logging boom that will focus on maintaining so-called carbon stocks (the industry word for forests) – allowing corrupt elites in tropical countries to continue business-as-usual exploitation of natural resources.

Part of the problem with SFM is that it’s unclear what the term actually means. Peter Wood of Global Witness, co-author of a new report on the subject, told me that, “SFM the most abused word in forestry. It’s been used and abused to describe some of the nicest forestry in the world to some of the most damaging forestry in the world. And there is nothing you can do to prove or disprove the term.”

Born in 1992 at another UN environmental conference, SFM was made purposely ambiguous as part of an effort to broker a forest policy compromise. In the intervening years, the logging industry has embraced the term, using it as a justification to clear-cut of thousands of hectares by leaving a few clumps standing, or to greenwash the conversion of ancient forests into tree plantations.

“SFM is a European model of nice neat rows of trees that will be managed like a crop,” continues Wood. “We’re talking about the difference between antiques and Ikea.”

That difference between “managed” stands of trees and natural forests makes a huge difference in terms of carbon accounting. According to an earlier Global Witness report, even the most benign forms of commercial logging can release up to 80 tons of carbon per hectare. Logged forests are also more susceptible to forest fires. During the El Niño events in the late 1990s, 60 percent of logged forests in Indonesian Borneo went up in smoke, sending massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Only 6 percent of primary forest burned.

In the short-term, SFM may bring more profits, but it certainly won’t be sustainable. Allowing SFM into the climate change treaty opens up the possibility that money meant to protect forests and reduce emissions might actually end up subsidizing forest destruction and thus, increased carbon emissions.

It will also certainly result in a loss of biodiversity as habitats are destroyed and cultures are lost, along with the natural forests that have housed them for generations. This would be a betrayal of the original intention of the UN climate process, and a tragedy for forest peoples around the world.

Bukit Tigapuluh Forest is truly one of those special places. It’s got three endangered species, two minority groups of indigenous people and a superlative: it’s the last remaining stand of tropical lowland forest left on the island of Sumatra.

Funnily enough, it’s also about to be cut down.

Notorious rainforest destroyer Asia Pulp and Paper has cut a road through the forest and is working on getting a concession to convert the forest (containing over 1,000 species of trees) into a tree plantation (containing maybe 2 species).

They’re calling this development.

Nonprofits and businesses around the world are calling it deforestation. Unfortunately, the new forest part of the of the climate change treaty (called REDD) under negotiation this week here in Bangkok may end up calling it carbon savings and subsidizing its destruction.

Only two days into Bangkok, REDD talks have been picking up from the snail’s pace that they were running at in the Bonn sessions earlier this year. Developing countries like India and Brazil have come out with stronger positions that are challenging developed countries to truly make forests a priority in the negotiations, and formerly timid Australia is stepping up to the plate.

But forest definitions remain a problem. As the situation currently stands, the proposed treaty text does not distinguish between intact natural forests (those that humans didn’t plant) and tree plantations. Not only is this a problem from a cultural and biodiversity point of view – since tree plantations don’t provide any of the habitat or cultural benefits of natural forests – it’s a problem from a climate point of view.

Intact natural ecosystems like forests store and absorb massive amounts of carbon, tree plantations, being younger and less diverse, store and absorb significantly less carbon. This equation means that converting forests to plantations is a net loss for the climate, increasing the 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation, rather than decreasing it, which is ostensibly, the point of REDD. 

Right now, Bangkok is all about setting rules for how the game of REDD will be played. Just like in any sport, we need to know where the goal is and which plays will draw a red card. If the rules aren’t set out clearly, we may end up permanently offsides.

Forest definitions sound geeky, but they really do matter. If a treaty intended to protect forests and the climate can’t save a place like Bukit Tigapuluh, then what are we doing here?

If the earth was a car, it would come with an operating instructions not to drive faster than 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, like an unruly teenager, humanity – with the United States in the drivers seat – has already revved up the engine and broken all speed limits – we’re speeding at 387 ppm and our tires are already smoking. Unless we start breaking, we’re full speed ahead towards engine meltdown in the scarily near future.

The final plenary session today at the Bonn climate talks drove this point home. As the draft “shared vision” language was discussed (the language that will eventually form the preamble to the agreement) various country delegations put their positions on the table. While the Alliance of Small Island States pleaded for immediate action to keep their nations from sinking into the ocean by adopting clear targets to keep the world below 2 degrees of warming by enshrining science-based targets in the text: a 45 percent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and more than 90 percent by 2050 (from 1990 levels). The EU is halfway there, suggesting a goal of 50 percent (from 1990 levels) by 2050. The United States, however, gave a disappointingly Bush-esque statement calling for a purely aspirational vision containing no clear target for reductions.

The negotiations here are the world’s best hope to prevent total climate meltdown in our lifetimes. The science is clear – and millions of people around the world are asking for action. With the conclusion of this round of talks, negotiators have succeeded in creating a legal draft text that will be refined at the next round of talks in Bonn in August – now up to 200 pages from the original 50 created in Poznan ­- but we still are missing the critical fuel that we will need to continue the process all the way to Copenhagen: the political will to actually achieve emissions reductions, particularly on the part of the United States. We’re also missing adequate traffic rules – the safeguards that will ensure that whatever else we do, we will make sure that we don’t sacrifice biodiversity or indigenous cultures on the way to saving the climate.

As we move towards Copenhagen, the world needs to hear President Obama clearly commit, “the level of our ambition must rise to match the urgency of the challenge that is facing the world,” and give the U.S. delegation the mandate it needs for a successful deal in Copenhagen. It’s clear that if the United States chooses to lead, other recalcitrant countries like Australia and Saudi Arabia will be more likely to follow.   

In many ways, the U.S. is in the drivers seat. If we aren’t going to drive the world off a cliff, we have to learn to drive more carefully.  We’ve already gotten so many speeding tickets – from the financial meltdown to the food crisis.  Obama has been doing a good job patching up some of our reckless driving injuries, but climate change is and will be different. Mother Nature is one car that we can’t afford to total.