Rainforest preservation incentive

Deforestation is a global problem, but it takes place on a local level. Most often the driving force boils down to poverty and a lack of alternatives for economic growth.

Building on the notion that deforestation is a problem that affects the whole planet, a group of developing countries is saying, "Pay us so we can preserve our forests." They're bringing a proposal to the United Nations conference on climate change this week.

It's not hard to make a case for the notion that the responsibility for maintaining the remaining forests should be spread across the globe.

"Right now, these rain-forest nations are providing enormous environmental services to the rest of the world — biodiversity, reduced greenhouse gas emissions — and they are not being compensated," said Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, part of a cadre of academics at Columbia University championing the proposal. "From the viewpoint of global economic efficiency, the best use for rain forests is to maintain them as rain forests."

Not only do forests play a vital role in the global eco-system, mowing them down and using the land for something else has played a huge role in increasing carbon dioxide emissions over the last decade.

Deforestation and other land-use changes accounted for as much as one-fifth of the excess carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere during the 1990s, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, hundreds of scientists who periodically summarize the consensus on global warming.

Yet international efforts to address the causes of climate change have focused on trying to reduce the burning of fossil fuels by wealthy countries rather than on slowing deforestation.

--

Comments

[Alex Fochtmann]

I am glad to see that I am not the only one who strongly believes there is no sense in destroying rainforests. If we have an entire planet with trees, true they still need preserving, but rainforests are rare, species goldmines, and homes for so many plants and animals; then why in the world destroy something that is already disappearing when we have another option? We are not only destroying rainforests and the organisms in them, but we are destroying ourselves by not preserving them. It's a fact that all the rainforests of the world combined produce one third of Earth's O2. What is the point in destroying such a beautiful rarity?