ClimateWire: Many see saving the Amazon as the cheapest and fastest way to combat greenhouse gas emissions.
Experts say stopping slash-and-burn deforestation and protecting the forests could be more effective than replacing coal-fired power plants or switching to electric cars.
Projects under the United Nations’ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, rules would channel money back to forest protection, offsetting the damage done by slash-and-burn deforestation, which accounts for about 15 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Governors representing Brazil’s nine Amazon states are pushing industrialized nations to invest in REDD projects. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signed on to measure carbon in the forests to sell carbon credits in the state’s cap-and-trade market starting in 2012. Money would also be sent for forest protection. And under proposed federal climate change legislation, U.S. companies could invest in forest protection if they faced carbon controls. The United States also has teamed with Australia, Britain, France, Japan and Norway to pledge $3.5 billion to preserve tropical forests.
Brazilian policies in the past have not protected the rain forest. They included a program started in the 1960s that encouraged residents to cut down trees to make land more productive. But faced with the reality that slash-and-burn deforestation is a rampant polluter, Brazil is getting tougher. The nation’s space agency tracks deforestation in real time, and the country has created forest reserves and has stopped new settlements in untouched forest areas. The South American nation is also stepping up enforcement within the forest.
“We are working hard on the topic of climate change,” said Environment Minister Carlos Minc.
Amazon trees store between 80 billion and 130 billion metric tons of carbon in their leaves and trunks. If the entire forest were burned, the output would be 50 times more carbon dioxide than the United States emits every year (Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 21). – JP