More about enviro-dorks.

Even before Kyoto, policy experts were considering an enticing concept: “avoided deforestation.” After all, existing rain forests, in particular, are crucial carbon sinks, and from Indonesia to Brazil, they are being cut down — mainly for grazing land and timber. This doesn’t just lead to the loss of a carbon sink; in many cases the forests are cleared by burning, which itself pours carbon into the atmosphere. It’s widely reckoned that global carbon emissions would be 20 percent lower were it not for the destruction of forests and the resulting loss of their carbon-storage capacity.

It's actually soybeans and palm oil plantations that are replacing rain forests, but even so there is no real loss of carbon-storage capacity. More carbon could be stored in the soil than in the forest, and it could be done in a truly durable way. If the biomass from the forest, and wastes from continuing operations, were returned to the soil as biochar the net effect would be greater than the forest and would accumulate over time.

That doesn't mean that forests have no value, but there are far better reasons to wish to preserve them. Trying to loop them into the climate change hustle is no good for forests.

An avoided-deforestation market relies on stable governments for its functioning — like carbon markets generally, only more so. A government cannot promise to preserve a forest unless it controls that forest. That, to some, is the idea’s great weakness. “I’m bearish toward that particular section of the market,” says Cindy Dawes, who trades carbon credits in the European market. “The main obstacle is governance, because most of these activities are in markets that are politically difficult.” Indeed, the biggest recent news in avoided deforestation is the certification by conservation groups of a plan to preserve, and generate carbon credits for, Indonesia’s vast Ulu Masen forest, an extreme example of “politically difficult” — it is in Aceh province, which has seen decades of insurgency. But it is in just such places that the battle against climate change may be won or lost.

This is a really, really stupid idea. If nothing else, they can burn up, and surely will do so at some point, and release all the carbon back to the atmosphere. When you add political instability, also a surety over time, even in old world Europe, the foolishness of such approaches comes clear. It's just rent seeking by political grifters.