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Source: Reuters
The European Union should not allow industry to meet climate goals by funding forest conservation in developing nations before 2020, said a leaked EU Commission paper due for release on Friday.
The proposals, which would need backing from EU lawmakers and leaders, were welcomed by green groups but will come as a disappointment to private sector developers who argue that only carbon markets money can save the world's trees.
Worldwide, an area of forest greater than the size of Greece is lost every year, contributing to about a fifth of the global greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
European businesses are set a fixed quota of emissions permits under the EU emissions trading scheme, and allowing them to buy offsets from curbing deforestation would swamp that scheme, the EU executive Commission argued.
"Allowing companies to buy avoided deforestation credits would result in serious imbalances between supply and demand in the scheme," the paper said, adding that deforestation emissions were three times more than emissions regulated under the EU ETS.
The EU Commission wants to halve annual deforestation by 2020 and halt it altogether by 2030, and said that the best way to do that was through public sector funding in the near-term.
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