Carbon is the fundamental building block of all life and Bangladesh people

At the United Nations Conference on environmental Development in June 1992, 154 heads of state and respective signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It entered into the force in March 1994, by 2001, 186 countries and the European Community had ratified or acceded. Parties eventually decided that the developed countries original aim of returning to 1990 emission levels by 2000 was inadequate. In 1997, parties meeting in Kyoto, Japan consented on a protocol under which industrialized countries would reduce their combined greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5% below 1990 levels during the period 2008 to 2012. Countries may fulfill their individual commitments by reducing emissions from sources e. g. smokestacks, or by recapturing carbon dioxide (CO₂) in sinks, e.g. forest and soils. As of 1^st August 2002, 76 countries had ratified the Kyoto Protocol, among them 22 from the industrialized countries. These 22 countries accounted for 36% of the industrialized countries 1990 emissions. This percentage much reaches 55 for the Kyoto Protocol to enter into force (Schoenne, 2002).   In all, 174 countries have ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which aims at "the stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." In December 1997, the signatory nations agreed to the Kyoto Protocol, which sets out the first steps toward achieving this goal by reducing fossil fuel emissions and the net emissions from some terrestrial ecosystems in developed countries. According to the Kyoto Protocol, The inclusion of terrestrial carbon sources and sinks in a legally binding emissions reduction framework is significant (EC, 1998). The Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has provided a vehicle for considering the effects of carbon sinks and sources. The cost aspect of forest based carbon sequestration, as an offset mechanism is particularly important. It determines how carbon sequestration compares with other potential carbon offset mechanisms in the broader scheme of greenhouse gas reduction policies. According to the protocol, each country will be given carbon credits based on the carbon emission and sequestration scenario. If developing countries like India, Bangladesh have to improve on the issue of carbon credits, then role of vegetation patches in carbon sequestered should be considered. A related issue is the "unintended consequences" associated with the development of a carbon sequestration system. Simply focusing on forests for carbon sequestration would probably lead to the almost exclusive establishment of single species tree plantations. When ecosystem climax levels are reached, old growth forests in effect become neutral, acting primarily as a fixed carbon sink rather than a net sequester. Without proper incentives, there exists the possibility that monoculture crops, which are known to sequester carbon rapidly, and thus offer greater short-term carbon storage gains than the previously existing ecosystem, will replace biodiversed heterogeneous forest ecosystems. Here while formulating a strategy for plantation, care should be taken that diversified plants should be chosen for afforestation programme. The international climate change treaty's provisions allowing countries to plant trees to help meet their carbon dioxide emission reduction targets is one of the Kyoto Protocol's provisions (EC, 1998).  

The concept of carbon trading is an opportunity for the developing countries. The Kyoto Protocol has developed a strategy by which the developed country will sponsor for the establishment of a new forest to the developing countries On the basis of this several fund were established according to which project implementers will receive the forest credits (Schoene, 2002). 

 

 

The CDM is the only one of the three flexible mechanisms that explicitly addresses developing countries. The purpose of the CDM is to assist developing countries in achieving sustainable development and at the same time to assist developed countries in fulfilling their commitments under the KP. However, in the first commitment period of the KP, there is an important restriction for inclusion of CS in the CDM (FAO, 2003a). CDM was established to supervise the project of the establishment of the new forest (Schoene, 2002).

In 2002, worldwide trading of credits in GHG emissions tripled to about 67 million tonnes of CO₂. However, only 13 percent of these credits involved developing countries. In order to increase the potential for developing countries to participate in this trade, the World Bank has recently created two carbon funds specifically aimed for projects in developing countries. However, these funds are based on the rules of the CDM and are ultimately dependent on the CDM as the international body for recognition and certification. The target of both funds is small-scale projects in the least-developed countries. Both funds comprise a mix of public and private funding and each have a target of US$100 million (FAO, 2004)

The Bio Carbon Fund was launched in November 2002 and scheduled to become operational in autumn 2003 and run for 18 years (Newcombe, 2003). The fund is intended to provide funds for carbon-sink projects through various landscape-management activities. The Bio Carbon Fund should be seen as a learning opportunity for post-pilot projects on how to implement, monitor and verify CS schemes and also to test the permanence of the stored C. It is estimated that the Bio Carbon Fund will comprise less than 4 million tonnes of CO₂, which is much less than the 1 percent stipulated by the CDM. The Bio Carbon Fund will implement projects in two different “windows”. The first will be fully compliant with the present CDM requirements, i.e. restricted to afforestation and reforestation. The second window will implement activities that are currently not eligible for KP-compliant carbon credits. This includes LULUCF and soil-sink activities. Another contentious issue in the CDM is the possibilities of obtaining credits for avoided deforestation. There are currently no credits available for this type of activity. However, the second window of the Bio Carbon Fund might well provide opportunities for exploring them (FAO, 2004).

The Community Development Carbon Fund (CDCF) was announced by the World Bank in April 2003, and is similar in many respects to the Bio Carbon Fund. The main difference is that the CDCF will not invest in carbon sinks but in emission reductions. The main underlying principle is that each project must lead to improvements in the material welfare of the community or communities involved in it. Projects under the CDCF need to comply with the CDM principles. However, projects that do not comply with these principles might be proposed and can be considered for funding by the Executive Board (FAO, 2004)

The GEF is a joint funding programme established by developed countries to meet their obligations under various international environment treaties. The GEF has allocated US$ 4000000000 in grants and leveraged an additional US$12 000 000 000 in co financing from other sources to support more than 1 000 projects in more than 140 developing nations and countries with economies in transition. There are six focal areas of the GEF: biodiversity, climate change, international waters, ozone, land degradation, and persistent organic pollutants. The projects that are funded and implemented through the GEF are governed by the operational programmes (OPs) (FAO, 2004).

 

Carbon is the fundamental building block of all life. Carbon is present in the atmosphere, in plant and animal life, in nonliving organic matter, in fossil fuels, in rocks, and dissolved in oceans. Movement of carbon molecules from one form to another is known as the carbon. Plants acquire carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Using CO₂ from the atmosphere and energy from sunlight, plants convert CO₂ to organic carbon as they produce stems, leaves, and roots. The cycle of life and death of plants results in accumulation of decomposing plant tissue, both aboveground and belowground (plant roots), and produces a significant amount of soil organic carbon. Carbon sequestration is the extraction of the atmospheric carbon dioxide and its storage in terrestrial ecosystems for a very long period of time ­many thousands of years (Warren and Patwardhan, 2001). Carbon sequestration is the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by photosynthetic organisms. It is based primarily on the active absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and its subsequent storage in the biomass of growing trees or plants. Carbon sequestration has tended to be equated to tree planting both in natural forest and plantation contexts. Although there are many more options than simply afforestation and reforestation, estimates of the global potential of carbon sequestration have taken as their starting point the area of land available for afforestation (Bass et al., 2000). Global carbon is held in a variety of different stocks. Natural stocks include oceans, fossil fuel deposits, the terrestrial system and the atmosphere. In the terrestrial system carbon is sequestered in rocks and sediments, in swamps, wetlands and forests, and in the soils of forests, grasslands and agriculture. About two-thirds of the globe’s terrestrial carbon, exclusive of that sequestered in rocks and sediments, is sequestered in the standing forests, forest under-storey plants, leaf and forest debris, and in forest soils. In addition, there are some non-natural stocks. For example, long-lived wood products and waste dumps constitute a separate human-created carbon stock. Given increased global timber harvests and manufactured wood products over the past several decades, these carbon stocks are likely increasing as the carbon sequestered in long-lived wood products and waste dumps is probably expanding. A stock that is taking-up carbon is called a "sink" and one that is releasing carbon is call a "source." Shifts or flows of carbon over time from one stock to another, for example, from the atmosphere to the forest, are viewed as carbon "fluxes." Over time, carbon may be transferred from one stock to another. Physical processes also gradually convert some atmospheric carbon into the ocean stock. Biological growth involves the shifting of carbon from one stock to another. Plants fix atmospheric carbon in cell tissues as they grow, thereby transforming carbon from the atmosphere to the biotic system. The amount of carbon stored in any stock may be large, even as the changes in that stock, fluxes, are small or zero. An old-growth forest, which is experiencing little net growth, would have this property. Also, the stock may be small while the fluxes may be significant. Young fast-growing forests tend to be of this type. The potential for agricultural crops to act as a sink and sequester carbon appears to be limited, due to their short life and limited biomass accumulations (Warren and Patwardhan, 2001).