Property ights to carbon in the context of climate chan.doc

Property rights to carbon in the context of climate change
Grenville Barnes and Sheryl Quail – University of Florida
“…if property involves a bundle of rights, it is not at all clear that all the sticks in the bundle fortably together.”(Singer 2000: 3)
ABSTRACT
In this paper we review the pools, flows and fluxes of carbon at a global level and the markets that have emerged since the Kyoto Protocol as a means of identifying the characteristics of carbon and the context behind the need for defining carbon property rights. We examine who has rights and interests in forest carbon emphasizing the extent munity rights. We recognize that a new set of property rights can be conceptualized in a number of different ways and to that end we discuss different lenses for viewing a property right to carbon. Finally, we consider the basic property information that would be required to support these property rights in some form of carbon cadastre. In this discussion we draw on field experience and the de jure situation in the Amazon areas of Bolivia, Peru and Brazil.
Keywords: Carbon, REDD, carbon markets, property rights, land tenure, carbon cadastre, extractive reserves, munities
Introduction
Several years ago we were interviewing a rubber tapper (Jose) in the Brazilian Amazon state of Acre as part of a project to analyze the dynamics munal land tenure (Ankersen and Barnes 2004). While wandering down one of Jose’s rubber trails, we came across a magnificent cedar tree that must have been well over 100 years old. Jose informed us that a pany had recently offered him $500 for the tree and, given the poor market prices for rubber, he was seriously considering selling the tree to make ends meet.
On the drive back to town we contemplated raising the $500 ourselves to purchase the timber rights to Jose’s cedar tree in order preserve it. At first glance this appeared to be a simple transaction, but on further reflection we began to ask several searching questions:
What rights