Title:   Governments must begin closing Kyoto treaty loopholes
 Proposals could provide incentives to chop down old growth
 forests.
 Source:  WWF Press Release
 Status:  Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint
 Date:    June 2, 2000

 In the coming two weeks of climate negotiations in Bonn, governments
 should act on new scientific conclusions and rule out the most extreme
 and unreliable proposals for relying on forests and soils to soak up
 global warming gases, WWF, the conservation organization, said today.


 Leading contributors to global warming including the United States,
 Canada and Japan favour relying as much as possible on trees, crops
 and soils - known as 'sinks' - to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
 In this way they can avoid having to meet pollution targets that would
 mean cutting emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants and cars.

 But new research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
 (IPCC), the foremost international expert group on climate change,
 outlines the risks and uncertainties of the 'sinks' approach.

 "The scientific uncertainties should warn governments to rely as
 little as possible on forests to soak up carbon. Instead governments
 should concentrate on tackling the root of the problem - carbon
 dioxide emissions from smoke stacks and tailpipes," said Jennifer
 Morgan, director of WWF's Climate Change Campaign. "Solving global
 warming is only as complicated as governments want to make it."

 Last month's IPCC report shows that accurately assessing how much
 carbon can be claimed as being stored in vegetation and soils, or
 released when forests are felled, is critically dependent on how
 governments define 'deforestation', 'reforestation', and
 'afforestation'. Many areas of scientific uncertainty remain,
 including how increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
 will impact the growth of trees. The IPCC is also unsure how carbon
 uptake will change as the world's forests are themselves impacted by
 climate change. It underlines WWF's message that temporary storage of
 carbon in forests is no substitute for avoiding carbon pollution by
 leaving coal, oil and gas in the ground.

 WWF's top priority in Bonn is to persuade governments to drop
 proposals that could provide incentives to chop down old growth
 forests that are rich havens for nature, and replace them with forest
 plantations or genetically-engineered fast-growing trees. WWF also
 wants to see governments rapidly narrow their negotiating options in
 order to finalize the operating rules for the Kyoto treaty at
 November's climate summit.

 "The Kyoto treaty will be virtually useless as a tool for reducing
 emissions of global warming gases from the industrialized world unless
 governments pull their most extreme proposals for get-out clauses from
 the table," said Jennifer Morgan.

 In Bonn, WWF will also be promoting its proposal for the treaty's
 'Clean Development Mechanism' to give priority to making clean and
 efficient energy technologies available to developing nations, in
 place of nuclear power that is being supported by France, Canada and
 Japan.

 For more information:
 Kyla Evans, Press Officer, WWF International. Tel: +41 22 364 9550
 Jennifer Morgan, Director, WWF Climate Change Campaign. Tel: +1 201
 873 0034 (mobile)

 Notes to editors:
 (1) Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry, Summary for Policymakers.
 A Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
 Approved at the IPCC Plenary session, Montreal 1-8 May 2000.