ESM at the UNFCC Climate Change Conference 2012 in Doha, Qatar
An ESM team of three scientists participated in COP18 in Doha. ESM Program Leader Michael Obersteiner delivered keynotes at three side-events dealing with forest conservation, REDD+, and greenhouse gas emissions pledges.
There was special focus on a side-event on “REDD+, Bioenergy and CCS: Options and actions to achieve negative emissions.” This event was organized by ESM scientists Florian Kraxner and Sabine Fuss and hosted jointly by IIASA’s ESM Program, International Energy Agency (IEA), the Indonesian REDD+ Task Force, and the Indonesian National Committee for IIASA. Various high-level speakers from the hosting institutions focused on the role of forests, bioenergy, and carbon capture technologies in mitigating climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere.
Pictured is IIASA Council member for Indonesia, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, speaking at the REDD-PAC side-event.
Programs such as the UN’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus (REDD+), and Bioenergy plus Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), are important pieces of the puzzle for meeting ambitious climate goals, according to many experts. The researchers lead IIASA’s REDD-PAC project, a policy assessment center which helps to design and support international REDD+ architecture. The side-event was carried out under ESM’s REDD-PAC project funded by the German International Climate Initiative (IKI).
ESM researchers quantified the relative importance of negative emission technologies in a wide range of mitigation scenarios, focusing on the issue of delayed climate action and their potential impacts on biodiversity. They also discussed the social and environmental challenges and opportunities accompanying landscape management for negative emissions, and outlined compensation mechanisms for early mover actions.