Insuring Trees Poses International Difficulties

Over the past few years, planting trees has been a widely-advocated way of reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and finding ways of stimulating land owners not to cut any more forests down has been an international priority. Now, a carbon trade system may be implemented for forests as well, but, in order to do this, insurances must be set in place.
 

Seeing how future credits may be worth billions of dollars, insurance companies have realized that investing in tree safety is a very profitable business. However, there are several other issues that need to be resolved before the system can be applied worldwide. Natural occurrences such as insect plagues and lightning-induced wildfires could put insurers' backs to the wall, as they would have to refund huge sums of money to land owners.
 

Illegal logging is also a problem, especially on those very large surfaces, where thorough control over the region cannot be established by brute force. Burning forests for farming land is currently responsible for around 20 percent of all carbon emissions placed in the atmosphere. Besides the ash trees generate when they burn, they also release the large quantities of carbon they stored over time, and which they use to convert light and water to oxygen and nutrients, through photosynthesis.

 
More than 190 nations will meet under UN leadership in Poznan, Poland starting December 1st, to discuss several key issues regarding global warming and climate change. Among them, will be the implementation of a forest carbon credit, which will encourage forest owners to keep them as pristine as possible, on account of the large sums of money they could win.
 

UN officials say that poor countries in Africa and Latin America could receive very large incentives for maintaining their forests, which, in turn, could help their economies develop faster than they do now. "From a formal point of view insurance shouldn't be a problem. If Tina Turner's legs can be insured, why not forests?" asked Wojciech Galinsky, a UN representative, who is currently involved in developing and promoting green investment projects in poor countries.