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Some of this Ecological Footprint is the area required to directly provide natural resources. China imports resources requiring 130 million gha of biocapacity – nearly equivalent to that of the whole of Germany – from Canada, Indonesia, USA and many other countries. Much of the deficit, meanwhile, is the area needed to absorb pollutants, including the sequestration of China's burgeoning greenhouse-gas emissions. (China's emissions alone are now projected, based on provincial data, to greatly exceed all global CO₂ reductions under the Kyoto Protocol by 2010.3) A major concern outlined in the new report is the shift of the population toward urban areas, where individual Footprints can be 2 to 5 gha higher than in rural areas.

The report calls for strategies within a CIRCLE approach:

1. Compact urban development
(with spatially compact, and ecologically functional, cities);

2. Individual action
(with ecologically-sensitive consumption and Footprint-consciousness);

3. Reducing hidden waste flows
(such as inefficient extraction, processing and manufacturing; unnecessary packaging; and losses during storage and transportation);

4. Carbon reduction strategies
(including improved energy efficiency in production and consumption; replacing fossil fuels with biomass energy where this reduces Footprint; and carbon capture and storage);

5. Land management
(maintaining forest and pasture land for ecosystem services including water conservation; improving productivity in response to the steady decline in output for a given input since 1980; and maintaining ecosystem functionality); and

6. Efficiency increases toward a circular economy – reducing the extraction of natural capital from the biosphere
(by integrating planting, livestock and fisheries; recycling more materials; developing circular linked industrial systems; and encouraging policies that promote true-cost payment and that support clean technologies).

Finance and reversing forest loss
In October 2008 the UK Government released the independent Eliasch Review, which analyses the international financing needed to reduce forest loss and associated climate change. Current annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from deforestation are huge – comparable to total annual CO₂ emissions of the USA or China. Much of this is from tropical deforestation, estimated at 130,000 km² per year (greater than the area of Fujian). The annual cost of climate change caused by deforestation is modelled at US$1 trillion by 2100, and stabilising GHGs in the atmosphere is highly unlikely without tackling forest loss.

The current international climate change framework cannot deliver the emissions reductions needed to give even a possibility of limiting global warming to 2^oC. The Review concludes firm and urgent action is needed, particularly through the international negotiations under the Bali Action Plan towards a global climate change deal in Copenhagen. A new deal needs to halve deforestation emissions by 2020 and make the forest sector carbon-neutral by 2030. National and international policies will need to shift so that commodities come not from deforestation but from more efficient and sustainable methods.

Central to this shift will be including the forest sector in global carbon markets. Also needed are national governance reforms that incentivise sustainable production (e.g. removing tax breaks and subsidies that encourage deforestation). On the demand-side, policies are needed for the procurement of sustainably-produced products, and for increased consumer awareness.

There is wide discussion of a "cap and trade" trading system to encourage reduction in carbon emissions. The Review suggests deforestation rates could be reduced by up to 75% in 2030 if such a system is well designed to include reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), plus additional action on sustainable management. This, alongside afforestation, reforestation and restoration (ARR), could make the forest sector carbon-neutral.

The cost of forest abatement is low relative to mitigation in other sectors. In the transition period from 2012, it will need finance from carbon markets and other sources. In the very short term, developing countries will need capacity-building for entry into forest credit schemes, with estimated costs, in 40 forest nations, of US$4 billion over five years.

Source: Eliasch J, 2008. Climate Change: Financing Global Forests. The Eliasch Review. Report to UK Government,


Forests in the frame for climate negotiators
Less than one year remains for a vital agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Poznan, Poland, December 2008, focused on the vital process of long-term cooperation and the post-2012 period, but after the meeting much remained to be agreed by December 2009 in Copenhagen.1,2 Some delegates were concerned that agreement on the most critical issues, including mid- and long-term emission goals and finance, may not be reached in 2009, and blamed a lack of political leadership and determination. There was concern that countries' determination to fight climate change was not strengthening, as the scientific evidence dictates, but weakening with the recent economic crisis.

The Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) did authorise an expert meeting, to take place before Copenhagen, to focus on methodological aspects of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). These aspects include the relation of climate-change mitigation to conservation, sustainable forest management, forest cover changes and forest carbon-stock enhancement. REDD negotiations face various concerns,3,4 including a failure by UNFCCC to distinguish forests from monoculture plantations;5 a failure to address the increase in the above-ground carbon pool arising from fossil fuel use;4 a failure to discriminate between the impacts of deforestation for destructive industrial plantations and those of local swidden practices;6 a failure to recognise the roles of developed countries in tropical deforestation;4 a failure to distinguish between benefits to privileged few and benefits to the poor majority;4 diversion from the fundamental problems of unsustainable economic growth and high human population;3 and a lack of guarantees that carbon trading will help indigenous forest people.1,4 Still, many experts consider it vital to the climate and to forests that REDD negotiations succeed. To allow forest stakeholders to understand and compare current and future proposals on REDD submitted to UNFCCC7, a guidebook, The Little REDD Book, has been compiled by The Prince's Rainforests Project and Global Forest Canopy.

An interim report shows the need for policy changes to reverse decline in biodiversity and related loss of ecosystem services. (Vulnerable ecosystem services include those critical for China, such as water supply from the melting glaciers and its dependent agriculture, and medicinal plants.) Promising policy changes include rethinking subsidies to reflect future priorities; rewarding currently unrecognised ecosystem services; making sure that costs of ecosystem damage are accounted for, by creating new markets and promoting appropriate policy instruments; sharing the benefits of conservation; and measuring the costs and benefits of ecosystem services.

Source:
1 Sukhdev P, 2008. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: An Interim Report. European Communities, Cambridge, UK.


Status changes: Spoon-billed Sandpiper and China's pangolin closer to extinction
For a number of South China species, global status was revised by IUCN in 2008. Spoon-billed Sandpiper Eurynorhynchus pygmeus, a passage migrant through South China, has declined to Critically Endangered (CR) status from Endangered (EN) previously. Factors include habitat loss in its breeding, passage and wintering grounds, compounded by disturbance, hunting and the effects of climate change.

Chinese Pangolin Manis pentadactyla is now EN due to heavy ongoing hunting pressure – this is a dramatic deterioration from its former Lower Risk/Near Threatened (LR/nt) status. Eld's Deer Rucervus eldii is now EN (formerly Vulnerable, VU) due to hunting in Indochina; the semi-captive herds in Hainan, which are increasing, are excluded from the assessment of wild population status. Baer's Pochard Aythya baeri, a winter visitor to South China, is also EN (formerly VU) probably due to hunting and wetland destruction.

Sambar Rusa unicolor is now considered VU (formerly Lower Risk/Least Concern, LR/lc) due to sustained declines across its range (and despite some local increases). Asian Small-clawed Otter Aonyx cinerea is now VU (formerly Near-threatened, NT) due to habitat loss and exploitation. Chinese Water Deer Hydropotes inermis, once extending to South China but now confined to the East, is VU (formerly LR/nt) due to poaching and habitat destruction.

Leopard Panthera pardus is now NT (formerly Least Concern, LC) as it declines across its extensive range; China's Amur Leopard P. p. orientalis remains Critically Endangered (CR). Black Giant Squirrel Ratufa bicolor is now NT (formerly LR/lc) due to over-harvesting for food and habitat loss. Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata is also now NT (formerly LC) due to estimated overall global population decline.

Source: The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, www.iucnredlist.org, accessed December 2008.

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