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Cash for Carbon
Paying Brazil to Keep its Forests
Article by: Claire Austin
Environmental groups in Brazil and other heavily forested nations are paying people who own forested land to keep it that way. Every year, farmers in some of these countries are paid for each acre of trees they do not cut or burn down to make room for crop fields or grazing land. The aim is to make preserving forests more profitable than selling crops.
Deforestation accounts for 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of Brazil’s emissions. Forests are an important sink for carbon dioxide because trees take the chemical out of the air through photosynthesis and in turn produce the oxygen we breathe. When trees are burned, the smoke adds to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The ground is either re-planted with monoculture crops (soybeans and sugar in Brazil, palm trees to make biofuel in Indonesia) or used for cattle grazing land. The supply chains for both products are filled with sources of greenhouse gases and pollution, like methane gas.
Tambopata
Last year, the Brazilian government launched the Amazon Fund. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wants the fund to raise about $21 billion by 2012. The UN has a similar fund called the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) Program Fund, which rewards preservation efforts with carbon credits that can be sold in an international market or used to cover emissions from other sources—but this requires a global cap on emissions that creates a market for them. The Waxman-Markey bill on climate change that passed in the House of Representatives in June includes provisions that support aid to developing countries from the developed world for forest preservation.
Forests are an important sink for carbon dioxide because trees take the chemical out of the air through photosynthesis and in turn produce the oxygen we breathe.
Week-in-Wildlife-Brazil
The Brazilian government requires 80% of property to be preserved in the upper Amazon and 50% in developed areas closer to cities; however law enforcement is minimal, especially in less-developed areas far from cities. People who own huge tracts of land can lose track of property limits and squatters cutting down trees and farming illegally on their land. Often, developing forested land is the only way to determine who owns it.
Farmers in underdeveloped countries like Brazil may be more inclined to deforest their land for some extra cash, rather than preserve the environment. International demand for beef and biofuels drive up costs for those goods, making it harder for agencies to compete with the money farmers would be getting for their crops per acre. However, the programs might prove to be a better offer for farmers whose land is less suitable for growing crops.
For more information, visit www.amazonfund.org
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