Simon Dalby
Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:52:17 -0700
Marcus and GEPED folks: I trust your student has looked carefully at Larry Lohmann's arguments about sinks in his Carbon Trading book: Lohmann, L (ed) 2006 *Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power**,* *Development Dialogue* No 46. [ http://www.dhf.uu.se/publications.html] This one is a useful corrective to many of the enthusiasms about "Southern" sinks and looks at how they play out in some local circumstances. I for one have never understood why anyone would think forests are a useful sink beyond a very temporary fix; bogs where vegetation doesn't decompose, at least not much, make much more sense as sinks. So of course does ocean absorption of CO2, but there are limits there too. Not only the BC case of pine beetle destroyed forests, and if you haven't seen those forests its hard to get a sense of the scale of the damage (climate change probably the cause of the infestation because the winters haven't been cold enough to kill off the beetles) but also there are now some suggestions circulating in the media that the Boreal forests elsewhere in Canada are emitting more than sequestering due to increased forest fires as a result of hot dry summers. Positive feedback did someone say? Cheers, Simon On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 8:57 PM, Marcus Schaper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dear all, > > A student is tackling an interesting thesis project, but has come up > empty-handed in identifying literature for the theoretical framework of his > project. I hope you can help. > > His central question is: "Why are the climate stabilization services of > forests undervalued at the local level?" His hypothesis is that we value > forests as sinks at the global level, but this valuation does not translate > to disincentives to deforestation at the individual level because of gaps or > breaks in the transposition chain from the global to national to local > level. > > Any suggestions for literature on this or similar mechanisms for other > resources (water?) would be greatly appreciated. Almost > anything on regime design or mechanisms that translate global objectives to > individual incentives would be helpful. > > Thanks, > Marcus > > > -- Simon Dalby, Ph.D. Professor, Carleton University www.carleton.ca/~sdalby Political Geography Section Editor of Geography Compass (www.blackwell-compass.com)