So what is expected from this year’s negotiations?

Well, the primary goal of this COP will be to finalize something referred to as the Paris Rulebook. In order to understand what that will entail, we must first go back to what happened at COP21 in 2015. That year the negotiations, which took place in Paris, created the global climate Paris Agreement. It was a huge success, creating an international framework with the goal to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). This is to be achieved by allowing each country to make its own plan to address carbon emissions, called nationally determined contributions, or NDCs. These NDCs give countries the flexibility to adapt and implement their own climate policies, while the UNFCCC process will help to ensure the transparency and environmental integrity of such contributions.

Unfortunately, research indicates that even with current NDCs fully implemented, the projected global rise in temperature is still above the 2 degrees Celsius threshold established in the Paris Agreement. There is broad consensus that temperature rise above this threshold is a major threat to wildlife, plant life, and people (You can read NWF’s recent “Unnatural Disasters Report” or explore an interactive natural disasters map to learn more.)

This year is the deadline for Parties to finalize the Paris Rulebook – which will help address this problem. The Rulebook’s main function will be to provide guidance to countries on how to implement and strengthen their NDCs to meet the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. The Rulebook will ideally create a functioning system to mobilize concrete climate action in every country in the world.

What does this mean for wildlife back home?

The recently published National Climate Assessment details the effects of climate change on the people, wildlife and ecosystems of the United States. Ecosystems will become less productive and less able to buffer the impacts of extreme whether like droughts, wildfires and flooding. This has drastic ramifications for wildlife. Climate change has caused contractions in the range of half of the plant and animal species observed. For example, the Prairie Pothole Region provides important wetland habitat for the majority of waterfowl hatch in North America. Warming temperatures and drought are projected to reduce wetlands in this region by 25% by mid-century. The assessment details over two dozen species native to the US that will undergo major stressors due to direct or indirect impacts of climate change.

The National Wildlife Federation will be attending COP24 with these very important issues in mind. We will be hosting the side event “Reducing emissions from deforestation through supply chain transparency” on Wednesday, December 5th. Our panel will bring together government, civil society and private sector representatives to discuss how new tools that help companies address deforestation-risks in their supply chains can help to accelerate efforts toward 2020 targets. Currently, deforestation and agriculture account for almost one-quarter of global carbon emissions; yet the protection, restoration, and sustainable management of the land and coastal ecosystems can offer up to 37% of the solution for keeping global temperatures below the Paris Agreement threshold, These “Natural Climate Solutions” will be pushed by NWF and our allies at the COP.

Over the course of the negotiations, we will also be monitoring progress on several other topics. Climate finance has historically been a contentious topic at these negotiations, and will likely continue to be so. We’ll be following how cooperative approaches between countries (or in UNFCCC parlance, “Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs)”) are incorporated into the Paris Rulebook to ensure that emissions reductions traded between countries aren’t counted more than once. This, of course, will keep an accurate measure of the total carbon offsets.

After last year’s breakthrough in the agriculture negotiations, the negotiations (known as the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture”) will now focus on the inclusion of this sector into countries’ NDCs by increasing crop resiliency and helping to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from this sector. More information is available here.

Finally, the Talanoa Dialogue, which began at last year’s COP will conclude in Katowice. This year-long process has been used to assess the progress of the long term goals of the Paris Agreement. These discussions are designed to facilitate meaningful dialogues with leaders about where we are currently in our international climate ambition, where we would like to go in the future, and how we intend to get there. Hereafter, every five years, Parties will undertake a “Global Stocktake” (beginning in 2023) to assess collective progress. In Katowice, Parties will be discussion the format on the Stocktake, and the key questions it should answer.

Follow us @NWF_Intl to see our updates straight from COP24 on how progress is being made!

Hopefully that’s very easy for you to answer. But this simple question serves as an entry-point to a complex topic: orangutan conservation.

At this point, if you’re asking yourself, “What could my hygiene possibly have to do with saving orangutans?!” – I don’t blame you. It’s an odd question to begin a blog about tropical rainforest conservation and new cutting-edge research from the National Wildlife Federation and leading scientists, so let me explain:

You see, wild orangutans live solely in the tropical rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia – specifically on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo – where they are critically endangered due to habitat loss. In Indonesia, huge swaths of forest have been cleared of valuable timber and then burned to make room for oil palm plantations. This not only hurts iconic wildlife like the orangutan, Bornean pygmy elephant, and Sumatran rhino and tiger, but leads to massive amounts of carbon pollution and well-documented human health impacts (how would your lungs feel after spending weeks living right next to a huge campfire?).

What is Palm Oil?

Palm oil – the vegetable oil pressed from the fruit and seeds of the oil palm – is the world’s most widely used vegetable oil, and business has been booming. Much of the developing world uses it as their primary cooking oil, but it’s also used in all sorts of packaged foods, cosmetics, and detergents. But don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it. On ingredient lists, it will rarely be listed as “palm oil” outright, but rather as “vegetable oil” (which could also be other oils, like soy), “palmitate,” Elaeis guineensis (the scientific name for the oil palm tree), or “Sodium Lauryl/Laureth Sulfate,” among many other possibilities. Several of these compounds or derivatives help packaged baked goods retain their texture, while others are effective at removing oil and dirt, or helping soaps and shampoos to lather and get sudsy. Now your lightbulb should be switching on. Check the ingredient list on your shampoo, body wash, and toothpaste. Chances are, you’ve used palm oil today . . . perhaps without even knowing it.

Now, you might be thinking that we should just ban palm oil from these products; but unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Palm oil is a very useful commodity given its chemical properties, and oil palm is the most productive crop for producing vegetable oil. This means swapping it for another vegetable oil, like soy or canola, would require vastly larger amounts of land, leading to even greater pressure on tropical forests and savannahs. Instead, we should be looking for palm oil that is produced sustainably. But what does that even mean in practice, and how do we know whether the products we buy contain sustainable palm oil?

Sustainable Palm Oil

Back in 2004, that very question led industry and environmental organizations to come together to form the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (commonly called the “RSPO”). The RSPO has a checklist of requirements for the sustainable production of palm oil, including environmental and social criteria (e.g. no slave labor, which has historically also been a huge problem). Palm oil that meets these requirements gets certified and tracked through the supply chain – from the mill that extracts the oil, to the refinery where it gets converted into different compounds, and ultimately to the manufacturer, where the final product receives an RSPO label. As a result, consumers know what to buy and which brands to support. At least, this is how it was supposed to work in theory (I warned you it was a complex topic, didn’t I?).

Forest Protection

Unfortunately, the RSPO’s requirements, called the “Principles and Criteria” or “P&C” only protect certain types of forest – those that have “High Conservation Values” (like endangered species) or haven’t been disturbed at all – which is problematic because even logged-over forest have lots of value for wildlife. Moreover, determining how to draw the boundaries around these specific forest-types on the ground is messy and subjective work. As a result, when forests were cleared, it was nearly impossible to know if the clearance was permissible under RSPO rules. Many non-governmental organizations attacked the RSPO as being too lax. After years of campaigning and demands from consumers, many companies took on new “zero deforestation” or “deforestation free” commitments beginning in 2013. These were added on top of existing commitments to source RSPO-certified palm oil, based on the perception that RSPO wasn’t actually protecting forests. But the reality is that no one actually knew the impact of sustainability certification on deforestation – until now.

New Study

In a brand new cutting-edge analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from several prominent American Universities, NASA (yes, that NASA), and the National Wildlife Federation calculated the effect of RSPO certification on deforestation and fire in Indonesia, the largest producer of palm oil in the world.

Here’s the ten-second version of a four-year study:

• We created a new database of oil palm plantation locations in Indonesia;
• Using photographs taken from satellites, we looked at the amount of forest left standing after palm oil was grown;
• Then we used statistics to figure out whether the amount of forest remaining differed between plantations certified by the RSPO and those that weren’t;
• Finally, we used econometrics (i.e. extra-fancy statistical analyses) to demonstrate that it was actually the RSPO certification that caused the difference, and not other unforeseen factors.

Study Findings

So what did we find? RSPO certification did significantly reduce deforestation by about a third from what would have happened in its absence. So that’s good news! . . . But (and it’s a big ‘but’), the actual area conserved was surprisingly small (only 8 square miles). That’s smaller than the smallest ‘National Park’ in the U.S. National Park System (Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas is about 360 acres larger), and only about one-tenth the size of the home range of one endangered Bornean elephant. We also found that there was still some impermissible deforestation after certification, and that certification had no impact on the fires or the clearance of carbon- and biodiversity-rich peatlands. This is a big deal because when peat is drained, it becomes like kindling, leading to massive wildfires and “haze” that can choke the entire region of Southeast Asia. As a result of this burning, Indonesia is now one of the world’s largest emitters of carbon pollution!

In the end, we concluded that the RSPO is a mixed bag. Its rules are definitely not sufficient to ensure that palm oil is produced free from deforestation. But it’s important to note that the RSPO does still contain many other worthwhile and important elements of sustainability (such as limiting dangerous pesticide use). Rather than scrapping it, we’re fighting to make it more effective.

Fortunately, there is a big window of opportunity. The RSPO is currently reviewing its Principles and Criteria, to be finalized in late 2018, and there are a few simple steps it can take to improve its record on forests and transparency.

Foremost, the RSPO needs to extend its protections to cover all forest types (including secondary forest) and peatlands, and then utilize satellite-based monitoring to determine whether companies are complying. It’s 2017 – there are lots of tools out there to do this reliably and cheaply.

The RSPO also needs to get strict with companies that are expanding on forest frontiers, where active deforestation is happening. Typically, it was the very old plantations which had cleared their forests long ago that got certified, and these should no longer be the focus. Under the rules, to become a member of the RSPO, companies must establish plans to get all of their operations certified according to an agreed-upon timeline (called a time-bound plan). Though rarely followed, it’s about time that the RSPO enforced these plans. Only then will it have truly meaningful conservation benefits for climate and wildlife.

What Can You Do?

• Be a consumer activist! Go to Supply-Change.org to see if your favorite companies are committed to deforestation-free sourcing of palm oil and whether they’ve made any progress.
• Send a message to your favorite retailer, supermarket, or brand via email or on Facebook or Twitter and let them know that you do not want products linked to deforestation from oil palm expansion. If they are RSPO members, ask them to support “no deforestation” in the P&C review process.

By improving the sustainability tools we have, we can all get a little “cleaner” when we shower.

Want to learn more about deforestation-free palm oil, cattle, or soy? Check out the NWF International Wildlife Conservation website, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, or write to us here.

Speak out for wildlife! Ask how Congress will build on the new Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement will take effect in 2020, when the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period expires, and many countries’ new obligations kick in (for example, in the U.S., our commitment centers around the Clean Power Plan). In the intervening five years, countries are encouraged to ramp up their actions at home.

The National Wildlife Federation was in Paris working hard to ensure that the Agreement was ambitious, rigorous, and transparent. For that to occur, the Agreement had to highlight the important role of the land sector (agriculture, forestry, and land-use change like deforestation).

Why the Agreement Needed to Address Deforestation

But forests and agriculture also have great potential to be a part of the solution due to plants’ unique ability to store or “sequester” carbon which involves removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in roots, trunks, branches, and leaves. Existing forests must be left standing; and where they have already been cleared, they should be replanted.

In short, the long term goal of the agreement would not be reachable without tapping into the “great green carbon sink” – our forests.

An important feature of the Agreement that the National Wildlife Federation fought to preserve is the explicit recognition of the role that tropical forests play in reducing climate pollution because of the immense amount of carbon they can hold. Forests and deforestation are so important to reaching our shared goal that they were referenced in the Agreement and the United Nations’ Decision to adopt it eleven times (other sectors were rarely, if ever specifically named).

Article 5 of the Paris Climate Agreement calls on governments to take action to conserve and enhance forests, and explicitly recognizes “REDD+” (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, and the “+” referring to the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks) – a package of previous United Nations decisions designed to incentivize developing countries to leave forests standing. The inclusion of REDD+ in the Agreement provides a powerful political and economic signal that forests need to remain a part of the solution. Ceasing deforestation and restoring forests has the potential to contribute over one third of the potential emissions reductions we need by 2030.

NWF encourages governments to ramp up financing for REDD+ before and after 2020, and for the private sector – producers of commodities like palm oil, soy, beef and leather, international traders, manufacturers, and retailers – to put private capital to good use and to fully implement zero-deforestation commitments.

Though the Paris Agreement charts the course to a world limited to 1.5°C increase in temperature, we still need to walk the walk to get there. The set of commitments agreed in Paris still need to be implemented. Even if they are implemented fully, they simply won’t get us there alone. They will need to be strengthened over time, with additional actions taken, including putting a price on carbon.

Moreover, additional finance is needed for spurring clean energy and adaptation in developing countries – to safeguard people and wildlife from the unavoidable impacts of climate change. Fortunately, the Agreement keeps all Parties committed to revising and improving their commitments every five years.

The pieces are now in place. It’s up to all of us to act – to insist that all nations move forward with implementation and ramp up their ambition – including through the conservation of forests that are so vital to climate, livelihoods, and wildlife.

When Senators and Representatives are home this holiday season, they should hear from you. Send a message to remind Congress that addressing climate change is a priority for wildlife and for our American outdoor heritage!

Read the National Wildlife Federation’s President and CEO, Collin O’Mara’s statement on the Paris Agreement here.

Help NWF seize this opportunity to call for an ambitious and fair climate agreement that will limit dangerous climate pollution and ensure protections for people and wildlife.

Share on Facebook or tweet this message to President Obama urging him to finalize an ambitious climate agreement!

But time is short and many hard decisions need to be made before COP21 comes to a close this week and high-level diplomats return to their home countries.

The final agreement needs to bring governments back to the table before 2020 to improve the current carbon pollution reduction pledges they’ve each made over the course of the year. Many experts calculate that these pledges, currently called “INDCs” (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) are a good start, but still too weak to avoid serious impacts from climate change.

These INDCs (or whatever name they come to be called in the ultimate agreement) should be reviewed frequently and strengthened as needed to ensure they set us on the 1.5^oC path. Developed countries also need to assure that developing countries are receiving the necessary finance and technical assistance they need to adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

Governments must also be transparent about how they account for emissions reductions in the sector. This requires a clear set of rules, based on the best-available science. The National Wildlife Federation staff in Paris are actively fighting to ensure sound accounting principles – for all sectors – are solidly enshrined in the final Agreement.

Bolstered by speeches from President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and other global leaders, our staff is increasingly optimistic as we watch the general consensus form that the Paris Agreement, for the first time in history, will apply to all countries and that all will participate. The tone of the talks in Paris right now is showing an unprecedented level of support and willingness to reach a strong, comprehensive, and ambitious climate deal that sets us on the path we need for the benefit of wildlife and our children’s future.

Help NWF seize this opportunity to call for an ambitious and fair climate agreement that will limit dangerous climate pollution and ensure protections for people and wildlife.

Share a post on Facebook or retweet on Twitter urging President Obama to finalize an ambitious climate agreement!

In September 2014, Cargill endorsed the New York Declaration on Forests, which was announced at the United Nations Climate Summit in New York City.  The broad goal of the Declaration (signed by the National Wildlife Federation and almost 200 other organizations, companies, and governments) is to halve global deforestation by 2020 and eliminate it by 2030.  But more immediately, it commits its signatories to “support and help meet the private-sector goal of eliminating deforestation from the production of agricultural commodities such as palm oil, soy, paper and beef products by no later than 2020, recognizing that many companies have even more ambitious targets.” The same declaration commends Cargill for adopting a zero-deforestation palm oil policy earlier that year – a palm oil policy that was “effective immediately”.

Clearly, I was expecting Cargill’s new umbrella policy to bolster this commitment and demonstrate how Cargill would put it into action – but as you may have guessed from my question above, I was sadly mistaken.

Wildlife Cannot Wait

Cargill’s new policy conveniently misinterprets the Declaration’s commitment to eliminate deforestation from supply chains by 2020, instead opting for 2030. Given the rapid and critical declines in wildlife and wildlife habitat, and accelerating climate impacts from deforestation (the world lost an area of forest last year the size of North Dakota!), an additional ten years is simply far too long!  Some 125 million hectares of suitable land exists across the tropics, meaning that Cargill has every opportunity to act quickly, easily, and economically – especially given that their main competitors (such as major soy trader Archer Daniels Midland) are already figuring out ways to do it now.

In its Action Plan, Cargill states that it will give priority to tackling illegal deforestation first, and only then turn to address “legal deforestation” – but how long will that take?  Can wildlife wait?  Do orangutans, jaguars, elephants, and macaws care if the deforestation is legal or illegal if they no longer have a home?

On soy from Brazil, Cargill did the right thing by supporting the extension of the very important Amazon Soy Moratorium. But soy is actually grown in far greater quantities in regions other than the Brazilian Amazon, places like the Brazilian cerrado and Paraguay, where deforestation continues at an extremely high rate. Cargill should live up to its CEO’s commitment by extending the HCV and HCS protections in its palm oil policy to its soybean operations and other commodities as well.  After all, as far as jaguars and sloths are concerned, it really doesn’t matter if a forest is being cleared for palm oil or soy or sugar – the important thing is that it’s being cleared.

So what can you do to help wildlife? 

Click to tweet thanking Cargill for releasing their new Forest Policy and encouraging them to eliminate deforestation by 2020 – because wildlife can’t wait!

Last year’s negotiations in Warsaw, Poland culminated in the adoption of a technical framework to reduce carbon pollution associated with the clearing of forests – it’s called the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ (“REDD +” means Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).  Since then we have even more reasons to be optimistic.  In September, the UN hosted a Climate Summit in New York, yielding the New York Declaration on Forests, in which over 130 governments, international companies, and civil society organizations pledged to halve global deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030.  In addition to saving invaluable wildlife habitat, implementation of this Declaration would prevent the release of dangerous carbon pollution equivalent to removing the one billion cars that are currently on the world’s roads!  November’s historic bilateral climate agreement between the U.S. and China has also bolstered the image of the U.S. in the eyes of the global community, and given a renewed sense of hope to the international negotiation process.

So what does all of this mean for the Lima negotiations?

Essentially, Lima is a preparatory meeting for next year’s negotiations in Paris, where we hope countries will finally decide on the architecture of a new global climate agreement, to begin implementation in 2020.  While forests won’t be front and center this year, they will play a role in several ongoing negotiations as part of the overall package. One outstanding issue to be tackled this week: the government Parties will need to decide whether additional guidance is needed on what they call “Safeguard Information Systems” (SIS), which are meant to promote transparency and guard against unintended social and environmental consequences of REDD+ activities (e.g. ensuring that land protection rules don’t infringe on the rights of indigenous peoples).

Because climate change impacts us all – including in the U.S. – the U.S. has a very important role to play. I’m unexpectedly reminded of the global interconnections that climate change represents while writing this very blog, as a flash of bright red catches my eye.  Almost as though on cue, a Scarlet Tanager briefly settles in the tree next to me.  This is one of the most beautiful songbirds of the Eastern U.S. forests, and it spends winters in South America, including Peru. I’m thrilled to spot this unexpected guest so far from home.

While we know that global efforts to reduce deforestation will indirectly benefit U.S. wildlife through mitigating climate change, the Tanager’s fly-by is a powerful reminder that protecting tropical forests will also directly benefit some of our most colorful and awe-inspiring species.

Stay tuned over the coming two weeks for more updates from Lima by NWF staff Dr. Nathalie Walker, Ryan Sarsfield, and Simon Hall!