Million Acres of Guyanese Rainforest To Be Saved In Groundbreaking Deal
A deal has been agreed that will place a financial value on rainforests - paying, for the first time, for their upkeep as “utilities” that provide vital services such as rainfall generation, carbon storage and climate regulation.
The agreement, to be announced tomorrow in New York, will secure the future of one million acres of pristine rainforest in Guyana, the first move of its kind, and will open the way for financial markets to play a key role in safeguarding the fate of the world’s forests.
The initiative follows Guyana’s extraordinary offer, revealed in The Independent in November, to place its entire standing forest under the protection of a British-led international body in return for development aid.
Hylton Murray-Philipson, director of the London-based financiers Canopy Capital, who sealed the deal with the Iwokrama rainforest, said: “How can it be that Google’s services are worth billions but those from all the world’s rainforests amount to nothing?” The past year has been a pivotal one for the fast- disappearing tropical forests that form a cooling band around the equator because the world has recognised deforestation as the second leading cause of CO2 emissions. Leaders at the UN climate summit in Bali in December agreed to include efforts to halt the destruction of forests in a new global deal to save the world from runaway climate change.
“As atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide rise, emissions will carry an ever-mounting cost and conservation will acquire real value. The investment community is beginning to wake up to this,” Mr Murray-Philipson added.
Guyana, sandwiched between the Latin American giants Venezuela and Brazil, is home to fewer than amillion people but 80 per cent of its land is covered by an intact rainforest larger than England. The Guiana Shield is one of only four intact rainforests left on the planet and at its heart lies the Iwokrama reserve, gifted to the Commonwealth in 1989 as a laboratory for pioneering conservation projects.
Iwokrama, which means “place of refuge” in the Makushi language, is home to some of the world’s most endangered species including jaguar, giant river otter, anaconda and giant anteater.
Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo, a former economist, has appealed for state and private sector help for the country to avoid succumbing to the rampant deforestation currently blighting Brazil and Indonesia, in an effort to raise living standards in one of Latin America’s poorest countries.
“Forests do much more for us than just store carbon … This first significant step is in keeping with President Jagdeo’s visionary approach to safeguarding all the forests of Guyana,” said Iwokrama’s chairman, Edward Glover.
The deal, drawn up by the international firm Stephenson Harwood, is the first serious attempt to pay for the ecosystem services provided by rainforests.
“We should move beyond emissions-based trading to measure and place a value on all the services they provide,” said Mr Glover.
In addition to providing shelter to half the world’s terrestrial species and one billion of the earth’s poorest people, forests such as Iwokrama act as pumps, drawing water from the Atlantic Ocean inland to the Amazon and Guiana Shield where they help to seed clouds and deliver moisture over vast distances.
The Amazon generates the rain that falls on the vast soya estates of Sao Paulo, helping to make Brazil the second biggest agricultural exporter in the world.
Guyana’s attempt to secure its entire standing forest has received the backing of the British environment minister Phil Woolas and Downing Street has told The Independent that it is “considering the offer”. President Jagdeo met with Gordon Brown on the sidelines of a recent Commonwealth Summit in Uganda where they discussed the proposal. The UN road map to a deal to replace the Kyoto protocols foresees payments from wealthy climate-polluting nations to developing countries to compensate for potential income lost through avoiding deforestation. But there are fears that this formula may simply displace the demand for timber and cheap agricultural land.
Andrew Mitchell, head of the Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of rainforest scientists, said: “The decision on forests at December’s conference in Bali is a major step in tackling climate change but it fails to reward countries such as Guyana that aren’t cutting down their forests.”
© 2008 The Independent
Remains to be seen if a million acres of rainforest can be protected against the human plague’s illegal logging, poaching, mining, drilling, political bribery, slash and burn.
Humans take Nature for granted, while they inflate their own trivial achievements in art and science.
Humans are outraged when they are killed by Natural disease–but they arent so upset when it happens from cars, roller coasters or war because they have some control–they like to dictate terms.
Paying countries not to destroy the planet’s air supply is disgusting and typical human depravity, but its still better than letting companies do it just to supply fodder for the selfish meat eating humans out there.
Since it appears that corporations are allowed to run amok, perhaps it is best for progressives to put their money where their mouths are and follow the example of Canopy Capital and start their own corporations to enact their goals.
I would like to see FORD build a ‘tree’ - a machine with the same footprint on the soil that serves all of the same functions as a tree, pumping out oxygen, locking up carbon and trading with the micorizal fungi in the soil. All weather, all terrain, self-repairing, great smelling!
What would a FORD ‘tree’ cost?
It’s great to see former economic externalities, like the service done by a living forest, finally being acknowledged. Now what’s a functioning ocean worth? What’s a liveable climate worth. Let’s start doing the math. Let slide rules rule!
It’s exciting to read about thoughtful, visionary work for solutions. The addiction to problems — and defeatism, ezeflyer — is oppressive and useless. We are fully capable of taking responsibility, making wholesome contributions, solving problems, having motives other than those which are self-serving and immature.
In my view, the thoughtfulness, creativity and effort that’s likely been involved to bring this deal about, well deserves applause and thanks to all involved.
Humanity whispers to the captain of the Titanic - ‘better slow down, it’s April and the sea is full of icebergs this time of year’.
And the captain, pausing for just a moment, says, “I’ll take that advise into consideration”, and returns to his cabin, ignoring wise consule, thinking of his bonus for crossing the Atlantic in record time….
Yeah blame it all on the meat-eaters, asshole.
Anyways, how can paying countries to preserve natural resources be considered a bad thing? I mean, people shouldn’t have to be bribed into common-sense measures, but why crap on a good thing?
NateW said:
“Since it appears that corporations are allowed to run amok, perhaps it is best for progressives to put their money where their mouths are and follow the example of Canopy Capital and start their own corporations to enact their goals.”
The problem is that the minute liberals start making lots of money, they become conservatives and start to bribe the government. A better solution I think, is to incorporate We the People and become the government.
hobbs said:
“The addiction to problems — and defeatism, ezeflyer — is oppressive and useless.”
Agreed. But recognizing the problem is the first step to finding a solution.
Not mentioned in the equation is human diversity - the indigenous and rural peoples who are now experiencing not only the destruction of traditional lands, but the disease and hunger that the deforestation causes. In Brazil the massive planting of soy, eucalyptus and introduction of cattle into former rainforest is an economic experiment that many feel will be even more disasterous in the long run. Subtropical deforestation leaves the indigenous peoples, especially the Guarani, in southern Brazil subject to slave labor in sugar cane plantations that have mushroomed in the wake of the call for biofuels.
This seems to call for a triple-header. Increased international education and land advocacy for indigenous peoples, evolution out of the massive export oriented agriculture that uses the fuels, and a moratorium on deforestation for biofuel sugarcane plantations.
Placing a monetary value on standing forest is a start but with it needs to be an understanding that we really are just beginning to learn what indigenous peoples ancestrally live - that we are PART of the forests, water and other terrestrial dynamics, not abstract-able users somehow better by being goliath sized interests disrupting fundamental systems.
Sounds like a wonderful plan…but, I’ll play Diogenes…The Cynic…let’s check out what has happened five years from now….
These guys obviously aren’t the same Brits who ripped off a rubber tree (at risk of execution)from South America (Brazil?) about 100 years ago, took it to the Botannical Gardens in London, determined Malaysia was the best colony to grow the tree, and went into the natural rubber growing business - breaking the monopoly.
Just think how much rainforest the Iraq occupation budget could take care of!
so just 4 intact rainforests left in the WORLD…Thats the price people pay for ‘progress’. That same ‘progess’ has given us nuclear bombs, SSRI drugs that cause mass murder, plastic pollution filling the seas, foul air, cluster bombs etc etc.
I’ve done several field expeditions to Guyana. There is nothing to compare to the Guiana Shield forests and Tepuis. These forests are much in need of saving from the wholesale theft by Malaysian (etc.) lumber interests. Conservation may need to outbid the loggers for the love of corrupt officials. There are places where senior Guyanese pilots are forbidden by corporations to fly over sacrificed areas, lest they take detailed photos of the damage.
Iwokrama is not nearly enough area to preserve. Saving Iwokrama would still leave most of the country pillaged.
Janette Bulkan and others should be listened to, in great quantity.
http://www.centrelink.org/resurgence/guyana.htm
Also see
http://guyanaforestry.blogspot.com/2007/01/guyana-forestry-laws.html
I love white people. They can put a price on anything.
Beekeeper:
I’m with you there; I thought there was gonna be good news on CD for once
but by the end of the article I was well gutted.
best news i’ve read about anything in a long time. thank you, thank you, thank you.
I think someone is a bit disingenuous ..” I love white people , they can put a price on anything”
now what about all the non - whites who pillage and sell ?
Greed is color blind
hate is color blind..
sickness is color blind..
get the point?.. shouldn’t we be?
being non white isn’t an automatic pass
Trees??? Who the hell needs trees when I can have my Sunshader awning installed on my 5000 square foot house. Trees are for pussies who can’t take the heat. Trees are for those nostalgic, bucolic sorts who think that green is a natural part of the world’s color scheme. I mean, who needs green??? Gimme a desert anytime, as long as I can import water fom some “green zone”. And if they won’t gimme their water, I’ll just have to come and kill them. And don’t think it will happen when it all starts to dry up, when the oil runs out and the whole crazy system grinds to a screeching, painful halt.
“…will open the way for financial markets to play a key role in safeguarding the fate of the world’s forests.”
Since when are financial markets interested in safeguarding anything but their own maximized profits?
I’ll waiting for a real groundbreaking deal, before I start a party:
“Financial markets agree to leave the planet alone.”
WOOOT SAVE THE TREES
OK I think a lot of regulars here are like me. We remember the fights of the 60’s and 70’s that resulted in a start at environmental responsibility and regulation. Only a few researchers then were thinking about anthropogenic climate change, but we could all see how unregulated mining and manufacturing were making a cesspool and garbage dump of our home. Maybe, like me, many thought we’d be having the discussion, only now beginning, several decades ago.
Yeah, we’re frustrated and pissed at all the time that has been lost. But a wider discussion has begun at last. Is there a lot of hubris, misinformation, and plain stupidity mixed in with the positive, rational stuff? You bet; some of the environmental news and opinion posted on CD is absolutely ludicrous - no matter how flawed or half-baked, as long as it sounds the alarm, it gets posted. Oh well, this just means CD operates like any other interest group.
I don’t care how they save that rainforest, as long as they save it. Of course the carbon trading scheme exists to mitigate the pain to industry, but it is making many more industrial participants begin to think.
hobbs March 27th, 2008 12:03 pm
It’s exciting to read about thoughtful, visionary work for solutions. The addiction to problems — and defeatism, ezeflyer — is oppressive and useless. We are fully capable of taking responsibility, making wholesome contributions, solving problems, having motives other than those which are self-serving and immature.
In my view, the thoughtfulness, creativity and effort that’s likely been involved to bring this deal about, well deserves applause and thanks to all involved.
yeah hobbs there is train called integrity coming//which in higher intelligence systems is
the path of least regret
http://www.pointfocus.com
It’s too bad that soybeans were touted as environmentally friendly for decades; now we’re learning that rain forest is clear-cut to grow them. Many are now steering awy from soy products; hempseed milk is now available, for example.
“I love white people. They can put a price on anything.”
Ha !!!! Thats hilarious !
Did you know one good sized tree generates enough electricity to light a lightbulb? Did you know that the energy they produce is measureable in other ways and is healing to people? There is a reason people feel better when they get away from asphalt and concrete and spend time in the trees. Some are thousands of years old, these trees know more than you might think.
The people at The World Wildlife Fund and Harvard have been working on these trust ideas for a long time. I am delighted the Brits have done something intelligent for a change instead of supporting the American think for war and world financial domination. However, I wonder if this is not just another financial scheme in some way? I have lived too long to think this will cost the world nothing or that it is for world reclamation! the cynicism runs deeply particularly in the USA.