The Kyoto Protocol: provisions and unresolved issues relevant to land-use change and forestry

This paper describes the relevant text of the Kyoto Protocol and its implications for land-use change and forestry (LUCF) activities and addresses some of the technical issues that merit further consideration and clarification before the treaty comes into force. Although the phrasing of the Protocol is sometimes ambiguous and the opportunities limited, the Protocol does provide for some selected forest-related activities to be used to meet national commitments for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. To implement the forest-related portions of the Protocol, most importantly: (1) a clear definition for the word ‘reforestation' is required, (2) contradictory wording in Article 3.3 needs to be clarified to establish how credits are to be measured, (3) further thought should be given to the sentence in Article 3.7 which provides that countries with a net carbon sink in LUCF in 1990 cannot include emissions from land-use change in their 1990 baseline, whereas countries with a net carbon source in LUCF can include those emissions in their 1990 baseline, (4) the rules and baseline issues for joint implementation and the clean development mechanism need to be clarified and (5) inclusion of additional forest management activities needs to be considered.