India, China to work on 'carbon sinks'

Having pushed the idea that countries should be compensated for conservation of forests at the UN convention on climate change at Bali, India is once again in a leading role to make this happen.

New Delhi has invited China, that had supported India's idea vociferously, and all other developing nations to a two-day meet where scientists and policy makers are discussing ways to quantify 'carbon sinks' "" which in the layman's terms means the amounts of harmful green house gases (GHG) that a particular forest has guzzled up and thereby helped climate change mitigation.

The international workshop on "developing methodology for assessment of enhancement of forest carbon stocks due to conservation, sustainable management of forests and increase in forest cover" organised by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Environment and Forests, saw scientists from China, Bhutan Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Kingdom, Malaysia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea converge at New Delhi.

Brazil, which supports a variation of the same idea on compensating forest cover gave the conference a miss. So did Indonesia, which has sizable stocks of forests.

Jagdish Kishwan, director general, ICFRE, said the meeting would aim at converging all available technologies to adopt a common approach to quantify carbon sinks.

Says Kishwan, who was present at Bali: A study by the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science has reported that India would increase its carbon stocks from forests to 9.75 billion tonnes in 2030 from the present level of 8.79 billion tonnes.

The figures are an approximate assessment of the carbon worth of the forests in India. The government wants to identify a methodology acceptable to the world to measure the carbon stocks available in the forests.

The UN Inter-government Panel on Climate Change has in place a regime of compensation for reduction of GHG emissions by companies in the developed countries. They can buy 'carbon credits' from the companies of developing countries in case they are unable to meet their targets.

India and China are claiming to have recorded an increase in their green cover and want a similar regime for compensating forest cover.

The scientists at the meet said while the modern satellite-based and remote sensing techniques were helpful and affordable, the cost of hiring experts and data analysts was likely to grow.

Jiang Chungian, head of the Research Institute of Chinese Forestry, Beijing, said China and India would continue to remain partners in their common strategy at the global conference on climate change.