Climatico’s entire European Union team (me) has been away on holiday recently, and on my return I find that I’ve missed an eventful couple of weeks. The credibility of both the EU’s domestic climate policy and its international commitments has been dealt a couple of blows, one by a Commission publication on climate financing for developing countries and another by a European court ruling.

EU flag (Source: openDemocracy: Flickr)

Developing country financing first. As Ian Ross wrote in a – dare I say it – grumpy post in March 2009 there are longstanding disagreements within the EU over how much money it should give developing countries to help them mitigate and adapt to climate change. Back then, the EU’s environment ministers were beginning the process of trying to reach agreement over the funding they would commit to adaptation.

Now the Commission has set out its view of how developing country financing could work under an international agreement, and provided an indication of what it sees as an appropriate scale for the EU’s contribution. In its communication, the Commission adhered to its long-standing view of the amount of money that needs to be spent in developing countries by 2020 – €100bn every year. But its proposal for how much of this should come from EU funds disappointed NGOs including Oxfam, WWF, and Greenpeace. The amounts it proposed fall short of their expectations and – more revealingly – are short of the figures seen in a draft of the same document leaked the previous week.

Financing for developing countries is one of the four key areas identified by Yvo de Boer recently as crucial to a successful climate agreement. The Commission’s publication may help to provide a framework for negotiations over this topic. But its lack of ambition underlines the difficulty of resourcing climate mitigation and adaptation abroad at a time of severe public finance constraints – even for countries that are willing to commit substantial resources to reducing emissions at home.

Meanwhile, the EU’s flagship policy for reducing European GHG emissions found itself at the wrong end of a critical judgment from the European Court of First Instance last week. The court sided with Poland and Estonia in a dispute over the Commission’s role in evaluating their National Allocation Plans (NAPs) for carbon emissions for the period 2008-2012.

The background to the case is that the Commission rejected the NAPs originally proposed by these two countries for this period, and revised them downwards. The Commission’s power to review NAPs exists so that countries aren’t too generous in their allocations – this should avoid a price crash of the sort seen during the experimental first phase of the EU ETS. The Court’s judgment found that the Commission’s grounds for rejecting the NAPs weren’t legally valid and has annulled the Commission’s decision.

Although the prospect of a possible loosening of the cap sounds alarming, there are a few reasons to think that this won’t crash the carbon price. One is that the Commission will appeal the decision, dragging out the legal process and delaying any reversal until 2010 or even beyond. Even if the appeal is unsuccessful, Member States won’t have free rein to determine their own NAPs – they will still be subject to the Commission’s scrutiny. And the fact that certificates can be banked and used in the third Phase of the EU ETS, which runs from 2012 to 2020, should allow some of the excess certificates (if there are any) to be absorbed in those later years. But this is an unwelcome distraction all the same, especially at a time when weak demand for energy has already depressed the value of carbon allowances.

It rarely receives the same attention as the Amazon rain forest, one is being devastated by illegal

Deforestation (credit: energyportal.eu)

logging and development but the other, Canada’s Boreal forests also represents a key battleground against Climate Change. Set in the in the far north, not far below the arctic line, the Boreal forests are a huge band across Canada stretching from coast to coast, annually temperatures can go from 30C in the summer all the way down to -50C in the winter. Covering 2.9million km^2,, and representing 25% of the world’s un-developed forests the Boreal forests are a huge source of concern for conservationists and Scientists alike.

The Boreal is to carbon what Fort Knox is to gold.
These maps document where and how these vital reserves
– a virtual shield against global warming –
are distributed across Canada. We should do everything we can
to ensure that the carbon in these storehouses is not released.

Dr. Jeff Wells, Senior Scientist, International Boreal Conservation Campaign

From the point of view of Climate Change a truer statement could hardly have been made, because locked up in the Boreal forests are over 100 billion tonnes of Carbon, and they annually sequester 12.5m tonnes of Carbon each year making them a critical sink of Carbon but more importantly a source of Carbon that needs to remain locked in.

Their importance has for several years attracted strong concern from various environmental groups from their own Conservation group the IBCC to Green Peace and a number of similarly concerned conservation and environmental organisations. Many feel that the ever-rising demands from industries that rely on boreal forest resources could in the long-term threaten the Boreal Forests. However a turning point came in 2007 when 1,500 Scientists from over 50 countries signed a letter calling for conservation measures to be put into place.

Their concerns were not without merit. Canada’s natural resources, already a critical part of its economy are subject to ever rising demand. In particular logging, mining and energy development all place demands on the Boreal forest region. These demands are set to increase with the growing appetites of China and India for raw materials, putting greater pressure on provincial governments to open up more of the Boreal forests for development.

As if shouldering the burden of economic weight was not enough, natural phenomena have begin to take their toll on the Boreal forests, forest fires and Pine-beetles, already devastating in the US have taken their toll on Canadian forests. Pine beetles, able to spread through rising temperatures, destroyed 130,000 km² in Western Canada in 2008, as well as devastating parts of the US.

Forest fires, have been equally devastating, with perhaps the most concerning statistic being that in some years forest fires account for up to 45% of Canada’s GHG emissions, and large-scale forest fires have hardly been a scarce: 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Fortunately the importance is starting to sink in and rising awareness has prompted greater efforts to preserve, manage or sustainably develop the Boreal Forests.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest has promised to sustain 50% of its Northern forests from intensive development such as mining and 12% from any development at all. Quebec as in most has to walk the line between mining and logging mining, a multi-billion dollar industries for Canada.

Nevertheless, even Alberta, Canada’s oil state and home of the Tar-sands, has recognised the importance of preservation. The Alberta Research Council, working with the Pembina institute and Forestry leaders has formulated a policy to offset Alberta’s declining Boreal forests.

However, the most groundbreaking effort comes from Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, no stranger to bold environmental legislation (he recently proposed the Green Energy Act) he has promised to preserve 50% of Ontario’s Boreal forests and the other half subject to sustainable development regulation. This amounts to 225,000 km² of land where even hunting and fishing will be severely curtailed and other development completely banned.

Of equal importance, is the emphasis on sustainable development for the other 50%. As this article, makes clear up to 24,000 people live in the Boreal forested part of Ontario many of them first nations people and Metis communities. McGuinty has pledged to allow sustainable development with them, including reforming mining, to make it more sustainable. While the plan is estimated to take 10-15 years before its fully realised, like the Green Energy Act, Ontario has become an uncompromising trendsetter in its dedication to environmental pursuits.

The Boreal forests, might not have the attention of the Amazon, and are often second in environmentalists demands, in the place of renewable energy or fighting the tar sands but they represent a key battle that should never be far from campaigners eyes. Much of the above legislation is a start in the right direction, but how durable conservation efforts will prove, in the face of rising global demand for raw materials and the economic benefits to Canadian provinces and even local communities will prove a much greater test in the years ahead.