Title:Sustaining Puerto Rico's Rain Forest. Earthwatch Institute Journal, 15264092, 2001 Research & Exploration, Vol. 20, Issue 1Database:MasterFILE Premier
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SUSTAINING PUERTO RICO'S RAIN FOREST
Section:Central America & the Caribbean ENDANGERED ECOSYSTEMS PROGRAM Testing the effectiveness of a new logging method that
Las Casa de la Selva, Patillas, Puerto Rico--The World Resources Institute estimates that each year some 13.7 million hectares of tropical forest is cut down. And most of that loss is through dear cutting, which decimates a forest, prompts severe erosion, and has drastic consequences for biodiversity. But what if there were another way to harvest rainforest trees, one that had minimal impact on the forest, that promoted biodiversity, and provided a sustainable income for local people? That is precisely what Sally Silverstone (Tropic Ventures Foundation) and Dr. Mark Nelson (Ecotechnics Corporation) are testing in a secondary forest here at Las Casas de la Selva.
The method they are testing mimics what happens when a rainforest tree naturally falls; it opens a long, narrow line of light in the forest in which new trees can get a start. Silverstone and Nelson duplicate this effect by cutting long, narrow slots through the forest, each about three meters wide, and each line separated from the next by thirty meters of intact rainforest. In each line, they plant commercial tree seedlings, mostly Honduras mahogany. Within a year or two, the cut is indistinguishable from the surrounding forest. When the trees are full grown and ready for harvesting, they will be cut so that they fall along the same line in which they were planted, so they don't disturb the surrounding forest. It is one of the lowest-impact forestry techniques ever devised. But does it work? The first trees were planted six years ago and have not been measured since. Silverstone and Nelson, who lived in the Biosphere Two for two years, need your help to collect the data that will tell them which kinds of planting sites are working best, how the trees are growing generally, and exactly what the impact of this program is on surrounding forest.
You'll work with partners to hike the steep mountainsides to the planted sites, where you will take several measurements of each tree, record the amount of light reaching it, and tag any previously unmarked trees. You'll also go into a forest that has not been touched to mark off transects and count and identify trees, to create a biological baseline against which to measure the impact of the planted sites. The results of your work will inform tropical forestry practices and could have a significant impact on on rainforests everywhere.
FIELD CONDITIONS: This is a mountainous site with high heat and humidity and some fairly rigorous hiking across steep, slippery slopes with gorgeous forests. You'll stay in large tents with cots near the main house of the research area. The house has hot and cold running water, toilets and showers, and the usual conveniences, including a good cook.
MAX TEAM SIZE: 10 2001 TEAMS: I: Jul 6-15 II: Dec 14-23 III: Dec 27-January 5, 2002 IV: Jan 7-16, 2002
SHARE OF COSTS: $1,295 £860 $A2,350 ¥142,450
RENDEZVOUS SITE: San Jose, Costa Rica www.earthwatch.org/expeditions/silverstone.html_
Title:Fruit Seed helps save rainforest. By: Amire, Roula, Candy Industry, 07451032, Oct99, Vol. 164, Issue 10Database:MasterFILE Premier
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FRUIT SEED HELPS SAVERAINFOREST
Section:Earth Watch
Although many chocolate companies are attracted to the Amazon rainforest for the cacao bean, Jeff Moats, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, is more interested in a fruit seed that grows in wild abundance.
Moats has used the capuacu fruit seed, a cousin of the cacao bean, to create the 85-gram, caffein free Amazon Bar that although cannot legally be called chocolate, is almost identical.
"It looks, smells and tastes just like chocolate, and has a better mouthfeel with a fruity undertone to it," says Moats, who founded Amazon Origins in 1992. "You wouldn't know the difference between the taste of this bar," and one used with the cacao bean, he insists.
It was through the Kapok Foundation, an organization founded in 1994 by Moats to fund rainforest research, that the full potential of the cupuacu fruit seed was discovered. Unlike the cacao bean, the cupuacu is so readily available that it rots by the ton in the Amazon.
"The advantage of the whole project is the fact that it is a truly sustainable crop," says Moats. "It's helping therainforest."
Rather than cutting the cupuacu tree down and burning it to sell as charcoal as was being done, the tree is now far more valuable. "We have set up cooperatives, and it's a guaranteed economic commodity. We've assured the cupuacu tree longevity," he says.
Eight percent of pre-tax profits are donated to the Kapok Foundation for its continued work in the Amazon Basin.
Other Amazon Origin products include coffee and Gummi Rainforest Critters, of which the cupuacu pulp is used to create new topical flavors fro gummies shaped as endangered species. They will be available by December, and are packaged in four-ounce decorative Rainforest tin can.
"We literally have hundreds of people over the course of the year delivering the cupuacu seed to us daily. People are literally picking cupuacu fruit off of trees all year long," he says. The indigenous people are paid for the seeds directly by Moats. The seeds are fermented in the Amazon and shipped to Japan, where the bar is produced by Asahi Foods in Kobe, Japan. "I do it there because I couldn't find a U.S. manufacturer interested in it. "They (Asahi Foods) were ready to take the risk."
Moats says there is no acidic or bitter aftertaste, and some of the bars come with inclusions such as puffed rice or Brazilian nuts. "We use our super premium Brazilian Arabica coffee, grind it and add it to dark bittersweet."
He plans to expand production to Budapest to make the Amazon Bar available to the European market.
Within the United States, two varieties of the Amazon Bar are available solid milk and milk with freshly roasted whole almonds. The Amazon Krisp Bar (cupuacu mass with honey coated puffed rice) will be available in first quarter of 2000.
Moats is also launching a 1.2 ounce Amazon Bar in milk and Krisp varieties for fundraising.
"We've gotten a tremendous amount of interest by schools and school children wanting to help therainforest by selling this candy bar." The primary audience for the bar, in fact, is the juvenile market. "These kids are really plugged into what's going on. They realize what something like this may be able to do," says Moats.
"We never intended to compete with a Mars or Hershey type product. We consider this to be on the higher end of the market," he says. The bar retails between $2.49-$2.89.
Title:Restoring the rainforest. By: Stycos, Steven, Progressive, 00330736, Sep96, Vol. 60, Issue 9Database:MasterFILE Premier
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RESTORING THERAINFOREST
Section:ON THE LINE
Dateline: Costa Rica
As chainsaw-wielding loggers continue to level rain-forests, a volunteer organization is trying to prove that the world's most diverse ecosystem can be restored, one seed at a time.
Headed by retired Cornell University professor Carl Leopold, the Tropical Forestry Initiative has had spectacular success. Some of the gallinazo tree seeds Leopold planted three years ago now stand forty-two feet tall. In five years, Leopold expects the Initiative's hand-planted mixed forest to achieve "crown closure," a key event marking elimination of direct sunlight to the forest floor. Once that happens, says Leopold, rainforest shade plants and other species will return and the trees will grow faster as they struggle for sunlight.
Leopold's project started in 1992. Determined to reverse some of the ecological damage of the last fifty years, he and other Ithaca residents purchased a 181-acre farm in a wet tropical forest in mountainous Costa Rica. Much of the farm was pasture, cleared after World War II to raise beef for the North American export market. But when Americans shifted to less fatty foods in the 1980s, the cattle market collapsed, leaving the farm idle. Rainforest restoration is nearly unknown in Costa Rica. With no mail-order companies to supply cocobolo seeds and no nurseries to sell cenizaro saplings, local nursery manager Memo Fallas and Initiative volunteers started, literally on their knees, collecting seeds.
Unlike the seeds of most temperate trees, rainforest seeds are fertile for only a short time after they fall from the parent tree. So the Initiative workers must locatethe desired species in ravines and other pockets of uncut land. Then they must return, as the seeds fall, to gather and plant them before they die or are eaten by animals.
Since 1993, the nonprofit group has gathered the seeds of seventy different trees, planted them in a nursery, and then transplanted 15,000 seedlings.
In some ways, the reforestation project resembles that of Leopold's father, Aldo, a pioneer American environmentalist. During the 1930s and 1940s, the elder Leopold bought an abandoned Wisconsin farm and, with the help of his wife and children, replanted it with the trees and rare prairie grasses he discovered on railroad sidings and in cemeteries.
To promote environmentally sound forestry, the Tropical Forestry Initiative has helped twenty-two small landowners form a local forestry association. The group hopes to broker a deal with the government to restore therainforest and increase local logging income: If the government will exempt local landowners from regulations, they promise to plant 100 rain-forest seedlings for every tree they cut.
Many landowners are already interested in reforestation. Last year they planted 3,500 seedlings supplied by the Initiative's nursery.
With an annual budget of $25,000, the group depends on volunteers. To donate your time or money, write Tropical Forestry Initiative, Box 285, Ithaca, NY 14851. Contributors receive a semi-annual newsletter.
But is the rate of loss rising or declining?
The news coming out of the Amazon basin never seems to be good. Stories on rainforest losses generally use comparisons with U.S. states or Countries of the world: since 1970, an area of rainforest the size of Texas has been lost; in the worst year ofdeforestation, 1995, an area equivalent to Belgium went under the chainsaw and the match.
Apart from emphasizing the sheer scale of the mightiest rainforest in the world--even the loss of a Texas-sized patch leaves more than 80 percent of it intact--these comparisons are not very useful for helping the concerned citizen judge what is really going on in the Amazon. What matters to most people is whether deforestation is coming under control, or whether this magnificent ecosystem is doomed to relentless decline, with all the implications for the millions of unique species it harbors, for the survival of precarious indigenous cultures, and for the global climate.
A better way of getting a handle on this question is to look at trends over time. And here the news of recent years has offered a glimmer of hope (see figure, right). Estimated annual deforestation figures for the Brazilian Amazon reveal a marked drop in the rate of forest loss over the past three years. After reaching a peak of more than 27,000 square kilometers in 2004, it fell to "only" 11,000 square kilometers lost between August 1, 2006 and August 1, 2007, the period used for these purposes in the release of satellite-derived data for year-to-year comparisons.
That still means the annual loss of an area of forest larger than Lebanon (sorry to go back to those comparisons), but it represents a drop of nearly 60 percent in thedeforestation rate. The figures for last year were the lowest since the early 1990s, so it is not surprising that the Brazilian government has been using them as evidence of success for the anti-deforestation measures introduced under the administration of President Luiz Imácio Lula da Silva.
A downward trend in deforestation has taken on added importance since the Bali Climate conference in December 2007. One of the key decisions there was to launch a process looking at financial incentives to reward developing countries that protect their forests, in recognition of the fact that something like one-fifth of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are accounted for by deforestation. The trajectory of rainforest loss, in other words, could have very significant implications for Brazil's income in the years ahead.
So any suggestion that the trend of Amazon destruction is starting to move upwards again is bound to be politically explosive. And it was precisely such a bombshell that the Brazilian National Space Research Agency (INPE) dropped in January this year. Satellite States
To understand the significance of what the new data were showing, it is worth backing up a bit to describe how the Brazilian government goes about measuring and reporting the scale of deforestation in the Amazon.
Until 2005, the only method was the Amazon Deforestation Estimate Project (PRODES, the Portuguese acronym), an annual analysis of around 200 high-resolution images taken of the Amazon region by the NASA Landsat satellite, supplemented by other satellite data when there are problems of cloud cover. By comparing vegetation cover within each image with those of the previous year, it is possible to get a pretty accurate estimate of the deforestation that has taken place in those 12 months.
The problem with this system is that by the time the complex analysis of each year's deforestation is complete, the damage has long since been done. It serves only as a historical record and is of little use in aiding the authorities to chase after illegal deforesters. So in 2005 a new system was introduced as part of the Lula government's Amazon Deforestation Action Plan. The Detection of Deforestation in Real Time (DETER) system is designed to complement rather than replace PRODES. As the name suggests, the idea is to get data back quickly, using different satellites that generate much more frequent images, albeit at a lower resolution. Analysis from the DETER system is available every two weeks or so, and given the vastness of the Amazon region, the theory is that this should give the authorities valuable information about new areas of deforestation and guidance on where they should be concentrating their enforcement efforts.
It was this second, quick-turnaround system of monitoring that created such alarm in January. In a highly unusual move, INPE called a news conference to announce that in the last five months of 2007, DETER had registered deforestation totaling 3,235 square kilometers (about the size of Rhode Island). Because of the low-resolution images, this system is reckoned to underestimate the true scale of deforestation by 40-60 percent, and the agency itself put a figure of 7,000 square kilometers as the probable loss of rainforest between August and December 2007. With another seven months to go before the next year-to-year measurement, it is easy to see why there are real fears that the last annual figure of 11,000 square kilometers will be surpassed this year.
Another factor added significantly to the concern about these observations. Normally, torrential Amazon rains bring deforestation to a virtual halt in the months of November and December. Yet these two months accounted for 60 percent of the destruction registered by the satellites, with ranchers and lumber companies apparently taking advantage of an extended drought. This led both INPE and the Brazilian Environment Ministry to describe the findings as unprecedented, and added to fears that the pace of deforestation was picking up again.
The announcement was not entirely unexpected. An unusually large number of fires had been reported in the Amazon during the latter part of 2007, and INPE scientists had been hinting for some weeks of grim news to come. Even so, the announcement of the new figures was greeted with a mixture of alarm and denial in political and media circles in Brazil. The charismatic and highly respected environment minister, Marina Silva, showed the seriousness with which she was taking the figures by attending the press conference at which they were announced. She took the opportunity to make it clear she thought there was a close relationship between the upturn in deforestation and high commodity prices, especially those of soybeans and beef. Within hours, her colleague Reinhold Stephanes, the minister of agriculture, had flatly denied such a link, beginning a period of open disagreement within the government on the significance and even accuracy of the INPE data.
The most violent denials came, perhaps not surprisingly, from Governor Blairo Maggi of Mato Grosso, the state which accounted for more than half of thedeforestation registered by the DETER system. Maggi also happens to be one of the world's largest soybean producers (and winner of Greenpeace's 2005 "Golden Chainsaw" award for being the Brazilian who contributed most to Amazon destruction) as well as a key political ally of President Lula. His reaction to the announcement was to give an interview demanding to know on whose behalf the scientists at INEPT were lying.
Maggi was also known to have spoken at length with President Lula himself to explain his doubts about the figures, and some of that skepticism appeared to have registered. In comments a few days after the announcement, Lula said he thought the reaction had been exaggerated, and attacked those who had rushed to condemn agrobusiness for destroying the Amazon, saying rather cryptically, "It's as if you went to the doctor with a small tumor, and instead of doing a biopsy to find out how to treat it, you went out saying you had cancer."
Lula also said that instead of criticizing Brazil for allowing deforestation to take place in the Amazon, NGOs should first "go and plant trees in their own country"--a comment which intensely annoyed Brazilian groups that had voiced alarm about the figures. Beef--and BioFuels?
The dynamics of deforestation in the Amazon are complex, and there is no easy single answer as to what might have caused this latest upsurge--if it is an upsurge--or whether the battle is being won or lost. As Marina Silva herself observed after a visit to Mato Grosso following the January announcement, the process tends to follow a distinct pattern: first a rainforest area is logged for its valuable lumber, then burned for cattle grazing, and as the land becomes exhausted, plowed up for crops such as soybeans.
What is undoubtedly true, however, is that the number of cattle in the Amazon has increased dramatically in recent years. Just a few days before the newdeforestation figures were announced, the Brazilian office of Friends of the Earth published a report cataloguing this growth, entitled The Cattle Realm: A New Phase in the Livestock Colonization of Arnazonia. The report revealed that the number of cattle in the Amazon region had reached 74 million in 2007, outnumbering people by more than three to one. In the state of Mato Grosso this ratio was more than nine to one. Cattle numbers in the Amazon had grown 46 percent in just three years and the region had accounted for virtually the entire increase in the size of the Brazilian cattle herd between 2003 and 2006.
Friends of the Earth's director for the Brazilian Amazon, Roberto Smeraldi, sees a clear link between the relentless increase in beef production and the likelihood of a new upsurge in deforestation following the lull of the past three years. "We had a real overdose of deforestation between 2002 and 2005, which led to abundant availability of cleared land," he says. "Now this land has been occupied, the process heats up again."
A hot issue surrounding all this is whether the boom in biofuels is adding to the pressure on the Amazon. The constant refrain of the powerful sugarcane industry in Brazil, and that of the government, is a resounding no. They point to the fact that current and projected expansion of sugar plantations to meet growing demand for ethanol is concentrated in the central southern region of the country, far distant from the Amazon, where the rainfall is too heavy to be much good for growing the crop.
It is true that very little sugarcane is grown in the Amazon, but some groups have pointed to possible indirect links between biofuel expansion and deforestation. It is already the case that many areas in, for example, the western part of the state of São Paulo are seeing a large-scale change of land use from cattle pasture to sugar plantations as the ethanol boom heats up. And the question arises, where do the cattle go?
The answer from the pro-biofuel lobby is that improvements in productivity mean that more cattle can be concentrated in smaller areas, and that there is more than enough degraded pasture to accommodate the growth in ethanol production. However, there have been reports in the press of ranchers deciding to move their herds north to the Amazon where grazing land is cheap, and although the evidence of this "displacement effect" is still largely anecdotal, it is bound to be a concern if sugarcane becomes ever-more dominant in the landscape of other Brazilian regions.
Whatever the direct or indirect causes of the latest deforestation, the big question is whether the "amber light," as minister Marina Silva has called the figures for August December 2007, has prompted a sufficiently strong response from the Brazilian authorities to prevent a further upturn in the longterm trend.
The stakes are very high. As Brazil seeks ever-greater influence on the world stage, as a key emerging economy and favored candidate for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the continued destruction of the Amazon is more than just an awkward embarrassment. It is increasingly seen as a threat to the world's climate and therefore also to its longterm security.
The Brazilian government argues that since the benefits of the rainforest are shared by the whole of humanity, it is reasonable to expect the rich world to share the costs of protecting it--especially since the industrialized world had no compunction about decimating its own ecosystems in the rush for wealth. As President Lula put it in a speech to a meeting of legislators from the G8 and key developing countries in February, "The countries that are the polluters of the world must pay their share, so that poor countries can do in the 21st century what the rich countries didn't have the courage to do in the 19th century, even if they didn't have the knowledge: preserve nature to the full."
Specifically, Lula is arguing for the setting up of a voluntary fund under the UN Climate Convention that would attract significant investment from richer countries to the cause of forest protection in the tropics. It's among several options that will be discussed in the talks on a post-Kyoto climate framework that are due to conclude by the end of 2009, each intended in someway to make it financially attractive for countries to avoid deforestation.
Which is why the Brazilians desperately do not want their record of declining Amazon forest loss since 2004 to be broken. To avoid that outcome, some high-profile and pretty draconian measures have been taken since the announcement of the latest figures, aimed at ensuring that they remain a blip rather than a new trend.
Among the first responses was a presidential decree affecting the administration of 36 municipalities that together accounted for more than half of the totaldeforestation witnessed in the past three years. They lie along the so-called "arc of deforestation," the agricultural frontier running mainly along the southern and eastern fringes of the rainforest. Special measures are being imposed on these areas, including a ban on any new forest-clearing licenses and a requirement for all large landholders to re-register their property using original documents with correct geographical references. This latter measure, described by Minister Silva as an "X-ray of the region,' is seen as a vital step because so much Amazon deforestation is carried out by holders of fraudulent land claims, a process that even has a special word in Portuguese, grilagem.
A blacklist of the worst deforesters is also being drawn up and published and banks are being brought in to ensure that credit is cut off to any landowners found to be infringing environmental laws in the region. An enforcement blitz by federal authorities, code-named "Arc of Fire," is being added to these measures in an attempt to persuade illegal loggers and others clearing the forest that they can no longer act with impunity. ProFit vs. Necessity
If a test of the seriousness of these measures is the extent to which they generate protest and controversy, then the signs are positive. Federal troops had to be brought to the city of Tailândia in the state of Pará in February, as lumber companies mobilized the population to blockade the highway in protest at the confiscation of around 15,000 cubic meters of illegal wood.
As of late February, it is too soon to judge whether the emergency action taken by the Lula government in the Amazon will be sufficient to do what it claims to be possible: bear down strongly enough on deforestation to keep the annual rate below last year's figure (to August) of 11,000 square kilometers, despite the worrying rise in the final months of last year.
The pessimistic view is that these are the kind of palliative measures we have seen before, such as those introduced following the 2005 murder of the American-born nun Dorothy Stang. Stang was assassinated after she challenged the interests of powerful ranchers through her Work helping local communities to live sustainably in the forest. A notoriously lawless region in Pará was flooded with troops and for a while the presence of the state kept deforestation at bay. But Pará is once again in the big league of Amazon destruction. According to the doubters, what have not been tackled are the structural causes of deforestation, such as the pressure from big agribusiness and government-supported infrastructure projects (e.g., dams and roads) that actively encourage land speculation and illegal activity in the forest. Without such action, the doubters say, annual deforestation figures will start to move up again and the Amazon will continue its dangerous decline.
The optimistic view is that this is a battle Brazil can't afford to lose, and so it won't. It will root out the bad guys, deprive them of credit, and reward those who act responsibly in the region. Combined with a growing network of protected areas and indigenous lands, and an imaginative new system of concessions of public forest land to private companies under sustainable management plans, sustainable approaches to development in the Amazon will value the standing forest highly enough to counteract the shortterm attractions of cut ting it down.
In the vast and complex mosaic of the Brazilian Amazon, you can find plenty of supporting evidence for each of these outcomes. Which of them prevails will depend not only on the actions of the Brazilian authorities, but on decisions of governments, private companies, and consumers around the world. That "amber light" of late 2007 could prove to have been just the catalyst that was needed to kick-start effective public policy in the region. Or it might have been evidence that the downwarddeforestation trend of the previous years was just a temporary response to market conditions at the time, and in a period of high food prices we are in for another depressing round Of destruction. One thing is certain: this is a crucial turning point for the Amazon, and the outcome matters hugely to us all.
Section:caring for society and environment Leading organic drink company brings healthy beverage alternative to the United States
WHAT BEGAN as a college class project a decade ago has emerged as a leading organic drink company inspiring a new generation of socially responsible entrepreneurs. Alex Pryor and David Karr — founders of Guayaki Sustainable Rainforest Products — have brought a South American rainforest drink to the U.S. called organic yerba mate. In the process, they have created economic opportunities that protect the rainforest and their way of life. It's called sustainable Market-Driven Restoration.
Guayaki Yerba Mate is a healthy tea, coffee and energy drink alternative that outsells coffee 7-1 in Pryor's native country of Argentina. "Our goal was to create consumer demand for healthy rainforest products, providing native people with alternatives to destructive land use practices," states Karr. Vast acres of rainforest are being wiped out for cattle grazing, huge soy plantations and timber harvesting. "There is no doubt that paying a fair, premium price creates an incentive for farmers to focus on organic quality and to continue on with sustainable land use that nurtures the rainforest." "It's also rewarding to see how sales of Guayaki products in the U.S. help support reforestation, upgrades to housing and schools, and improved medical care," Karr sums up.
A project that exemplifies Guayaki's strong commitment to fair trade is the company's partnership with the Aché Guayaki tribe, the last "hunters and gatherers" in the Atlantic Forest. The Kue Tuvy Preserve in Paraguay sustains dozens of families of Aché people whom help protect 12,500 acres of rainforest. Guayaki has planted thousands of yerba mate trees below the rainforest canopy to provide them with future economic means. The inaugural harvest will be in 2008.
It is yerba mate harvest season for Guayaki, and therefore it is a good time to highlight Guayaki's Yaguarete Project in Argentina. The Yaguarete Preserve is a farm with 200 acres of Interior Atlantic Forest, bordering the 150,000 acre Iguazu National Park. The farm is an important biological corridor for Jaguar migration. Guayaki has funded training and technical assistance for the Yaguarete farm to obtain organic certification and reforest 60 acres of sun-grown yerba mate with native tree species. This year, Guayaki purchased more than 20 tons of organic yerba mate from this farm at a price that is 100 percent above market value.
Unlike coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar and fruits, there is not yet an official fair trade certification for yerba mate. But Guayaki isn't waiting around for it to be official before implementing this social justice concept. "We're a member of the Fair Trade Federation, and in that capacity we meet or exceed the standards that are set for other fair trade commodities such as coffee," notes Karr. "We have been working with other organizations to help establish the yerba mate standard and expect that it will come to fruition in the near future."
One thing is for sure, American consumers are embracing fair trade. Sales of many popular fair trade coffees, such as Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, have penetrated mainstream America and have been growing by 40-50 percent over the past couple of years. According to a study by the Natural Marketing Institute, nearly 90 percent of Americans say it is important for companies to be mindful of their impacts on society and the environment, with more than 70 percent saying they're more likely to support companies that do. DEFORESTATION AND GLOBAL WARMING
Another new science report has highlighted deforestation as the second leading human activity causing climate change. The latest data, crunched by an alliance of leading rainforest scientists called the Global Canopy Programme (GCP), indicates that deforestation accounts for 25 percent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases. An Australian study issued in May in the journal Science, has determined that tropical deforestation releases 1.6 billion tons of carbon into the Earth's atmosphere each year. Vast acres of rainforest are still being clearcut for lumber, or slashed and burned to make way for cattle grazing and huge soy bean plantations.
"Guayaki is proving that profitable business can go hand-in-hand with rainforest protection," says Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network, a nonprofit that protects the forests through education, grassroots organizing, and nonviolent direct action. The Atlantic Forest of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil is one of the world's top biodiversity hotspots and one of South America's highest priority sites for bird conservation. "Less than five percent of the rainforest is left and creative approaches are needed to halt the destruction and to turn the tide by employing reforestation techniques," says Brune.
Not only does Guayaki create a strong incentive for people to leave the forest standing by purchasing shade-grown organic yerba mate from farmers at premium prices in areas where the forest canopy is intact, the company also has several projects underway to replant native tree species in deforested areas, which will regrow to become the future home to the "drink of the gods" — organic, shade grown, fairly-traded Guayakí Yerba Mate.
Guayaki has raised-the-bar by offering organic drinks that are stimulating, refreshing, nourishing, and made with only pure natural ingredients. Unlike other functional and energy drink concoctions on the market today that feature synthetic ingredients such as isolated vitamins, high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors, processed caffeine and other weird stuff derived in a lab, Guayaki follows a "whole plant — whole health" herbal tradition that unleashes the power of natural functional ingredients.
Founded in 1996, Guayakí is the leading provider of organic, fairly-traded, rainforest-grown yerba mate in North America with products sold at thousands of natural foods stores, cafes and supermarkets. The award-winning company integrates the triple bottom line principles of economic viability, social justice, and environmental stewardship in all aspects of their business. THE POWER FOODS GROUP AND ITS VALUES
THE POWER Foods Group is a marketing initiative that includes organic food industry leaders including Sambazon acal, Dagoba Chocolate, Guayaki Sustainable Rainforest Products and Manitoba Harvest Hemp products. The companies often share resources on ads, show booths, event sponsorships and communications.
All four are marketing exotic food commodities from foreign countries in the form of consumer brands to the U.S. They include: Sambazon markets acai berry from Brazil that grows on palm in the Amazon Rainforest — Ryan and Jeremy Black (brothers) www.sambazon. com; Dagoba markets cacao in the form of chocolate from many sources such as Costa Rica and Indonesia -Frederick Schilling — www.dagobachocolate.com; Guayaki markets yerba mate from Argentina — David Karr — www.guayaki.com; and Manitoba Harvest markets hemp foods and oils from Canada -Mike Fata — www.manitobaharvest.com.
Title:Tree trade movement. New Scientist, 02624079, 5/19/2007, Vol. 194, Issue 2604Database:MasterFILE Premier
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Tree trade movement
Saving the planet from global warming is easy: just start paying countries not to slash and burn their tropical rainforest. That's faster and cheaper than new technology to trap or block the carbon dioxide we produce by burning fossil fuels, according to a report published on Monday by the Global Canopy Programme in Oxford, UK.
"In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much carbon dioxide as would be produced by aircraft carrying 8 million people from London to New York," says Andrew Mitchell of the Global Canopy Programme. So instead of limiting air travel, for example, just pay for forests to be left alone.
The potential to prevent CO2 emissions is huge, as deforestation accounts for 18 per cent of all emissions, second only to the 24 per cent from power stations. Forests also have other "free" effects that are useful to commerce and agriculture, such as generating rain and stabilising temperatures, so it might be possible to find ways of charging for these "services" as well, Mitchell says.
Yet existing forests are excluded from today's schemes for trading carbon credits. The Kyoto protocol, for example, only allows credit payments for newly planted forests; so farmers can get more money by cutting down virgin forest and growing trees anew than if they spared the original forest.
Mitchell hopes this will change in December when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change convenes in Bali, Indonesia. For anti-deforestation schemes to work, there must be pay-offs larger than those available for clearing forest, he says. Brazil, for example, has proposed a scheme to generate rainforest credits. - ec12tboehmer Mar 5, 2009- ec12tboehmer Mar 5, 2009
By Staff
Title:The earth is crying out for its trees. By: Deas, Gerald W., New York Amsterdam News, 00287121, 12/29/2005, Vol. 97, Issue 1Database:MasterFILE Premier
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The earth is crying out for its trees
Section:Health Care House Calls
Well, Christ-mass is over for another year and there are millions of leftover, dead Christmas trees. There are also many trees that will be undressed of their glitter and will be cast aside. Every time I see that masterful tree raised in Rockefeller Center I almost cry to think of how long it took to grow only to be used for such a short period.
I'm sure you remember the term photosynthesis. If you don't, let me review it for you. The foliage on trees absorbs the gas carbon dioxide, a human waste product, and produces oxygen which sustains life in this plant. If there is no oxygen, the plant dies.
The rain forest, which covers 6% of the world's land surface, holds between 50% and 80% of the world's terrestrial species of plants and animals. Due to recent hurricanes and earthquakes throughout the world, tree life has been destroyed. This great loss has affected the global temperature, which ultimately causes the formation of further destructive forces such as global warming.
The cutting down of trees for the production of timber products such as firewood, office paper, newspaper, paper for books, toilet paper, construction timber, plywood and wood used for furniture causes soil erosion, landslides and a loss of sediment runoff into streams.
Although a non profit organization known as Forest Stewardship Council has been formed to guide the timber industry away from destroying trees, only 17% of the lumber companies follow the rules and thus most clear the forest illegally. Lumber companies who are concerned with illegal deforestation have placed a stamp (FSC) on their wood. This stamp should be used by the consumer as an indication that the wood is coming from forests that have been designated for legal clearing.
Next Christmas, I suggest that instead of using a live tree, take your old coat hangers and make a tree and dress that, or purchase an artificial tree that you can use for years which will preserve our living forest.
In closing, remember the lines of a famous poem that states, "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree." I'm sure that all of those beautiful pine trees will sing a chorus and give a quality life to this little green planet!
Section:Leaders Local resources and global assets The rich world wants a say in the fate of the world's rainforests. It should put its money where its mouth is
THE world's rainforests are owned by the mainly poor countries they cover--but at the same time they are a global asset. Cutting them down for profit, or to free land for farming, is a tempting source of income for their owners. Left intact, on the other hand, the forests are sinks that withhold carbon from the atmosphere, mitigating the problem of man-made global warming; and they are rich storehouses of biodiversity, another global resource, as well. Plainly, a balance between local and global interests must be struck. How, exactly?
The owner-occupiers consider this question with understandable suspicion. The easiest way to rile Brazilian officialdom is to suggest that the Amazon rainforest belongs more to humanity than to Brazil (and the other countries it covers). The Ministry of Agriculture recently berated The Economist and others for suggesting that agricultural expansion had anything to do with deforestation. The connection is obvious--but the denial highlights the sensitivity. It all adds up Deforestation in the Amazon starts with land speculation and logging, but ranching, some of it highly competitive, is the main use to which cleared land is then put. Soya, the most lucrative crop, sometimes arrives later, prompting ranchers to open new fronts in the forest. These and other activities, including slash-and-burn agriculture by small farmers, have levelled about 15% of the Amazon in the past few decades and are carving away about 1/2% of the forest a year. Overall,deforestation in the tropics may account for 10-20% of the carbon released into the atmosphere by human activity during the 1990s. Deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia alone amounts to roughly four-fifths of the annual reduction in carbon emissions mandated by the Kyoto Protocol from 2008 to 2012.
Tropical countries--which are usually poor--should not be denied the benefits of any and all deforestation. Brazil's commodities boom has helped the country to avoid a financial crisis lately, despite enormous foreign debts. Last year, farming was one of the few bright spots in an economy that shrank 0.2%. The United States and Europe chopped down most of their forests over the past few centuries (though in recent decades North America has reforested). Who are they to tell Indonesia, Brazil and Congo to do otherwise?
Self-interest alone does in fact argue for some restraint. Large-scale deforestation has little-understood effects on the local climate, which may well do the deforesters more harm than the rest of the world. Beyond a certain point, deforestation simply doesn't pay. Less than 20% of the Amazon forest is suitable for soya, at least with the current technology. Ranching can go further profitably, but not without limit. Some of the Amazon's defence is, or should be, home-grown.
Yet the deforestation that is optimal for Brazil is still likely to be greater than what would suit humanity as a whole. It makes sense, therefore, to come up with ways to make maintaining forest as rewarding for Brazil as it is for the world, once the broader benefits and opportunity-costs are taken into account. When that calculation has been made, the rest of the world should foot its share of the bill.
Such a system would not aim, as a matter of principle, to stop all tropical deforestation. The right approach would aim to reward carbon sinks anywhere (not just in the Amazon) at a rate equal to the marginal costs of carbon added to the atmosphere. In some cases, reducing carbon with forests will be more expensive than reducing it by other means (for instance, consuming less energy, or extracting carbon from fuel and burying it). So far as global warming is concerned, a well-designed system would not discriminate in favour of preserving the Amazon over other rainforest, or preserving any rainforest over other ways of abating carbon.
At the moment, such mechanisms barely exist. The Amazon Reserves and Protected Areas project, a partnership between Brazil's government and international organisations such as the World Bank, is supposed to invest $400m over ten years in protecting forests. The plan should safeguard 14% of the rainforest, but mainly in areas remote from the front of deforestation. The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol offers emitters of greenhouse gases a way to offset this pollution by paying for projects that reduce emissions or sequester carbon in new forests. But it does not permit paying for "avoided deforestation". In general, the Protocol, largely at the behest of rich-world greens, frowns on carbon sinks, apparently regarding comparatively painless ways of reducing global warming as insufficiently punitive. Ways to pay
If conservation of tropical forest offers global benefits, ways must be found to charge beneficiaries globally. These are beginning to emerge. There is a fledgling market for payments for "environmental services", such as sequestering carbon and preserving biodiversity. Peru, for example, offers "conservation concessions" to groups with the means and know-how to manage forest. A proposal for "compensated reduction" of carbon emissions would discourage deforestation and give developing countries, which have few commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, a bigger role in reducing greenhouse gases. Countries that reduce deforestation in 2008-12 below a certain baseline would be able to sell carbon certificates to governments or private investors. Assuming a carbon price of $5 a tonne, such credits would make a hectare of forest more valuable than one of pasture (though not as lucrative as soya). Another proposal is to dodge the Kyoto thicket by dividing forests into large blocks, which could be auctioned off to bidders with an interest in preserving them. Then there is market pressure: consumers can pay a premium for beef, soya and timber from producers certified as obeying environmental standards.
Such initiatives are not the whole answer, which must include developing institutions capable of policing the frontier (see pages 33-35). Yet the world has begun to recognise that it needs the Amazon and other tropical forests. The time has come to start paying for them.
Title:Sustaining Puerto Rico's Rain Forest. Earthwatch Institute Journal, 15264092, 2001 Research & Exploration, Vol. 20, Issue 1Database:MasterFILE Premier
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SUSTAINING PUERTO RICO'S RAIN FOREST
Section: Central America & the CaribbeanENDANGERED ECOSYSTEMS PROGRAM
Testing the effectiveness of a new logging method that
Las Casa de la Selva, Patillas, Puerto Rico--The World Resources Institute estimates that each year some 13.7 million hectares of tropical forest is cut down. And most of that loss is through dear cutting, which decimates a forest, prompts severe erosion, and has drastic consequences for biodiversity. But what if there were another way to harvest rainforest trees, one that had minimal impact on the forest, that promoted biodiversity, and provided a sustainable income for local people? That is precisely what Sally Silverstone (Tropic Ventures Foundation) and Dr. Mark Nelson (Ecotechnics Corporation) are testing in a secondary forest here at Las Casas de la Selva.
The method they are testing mimics what happens when a rainforest tree naturally falls; it opens a long, narrow line of light in the forest in which new trees can get a start. Silverstone and Nelson duplicate this effect by cutting long, narrow slots through the forest, each about three meters wide, and each line separated from the next by thirty meters of intact rainforest. In each line, they plant commercial tree seedlings, mostly Honduras mahogany. Within a year or two, the cut is indistinguishable from the surrounding forest. When the trees are full grown and ready for harvesting, they will be cut so that they fall along the same line in which they were planted, so they don't disturb the surrounding forest. It is one of the lowest-impact forestry techniques ever devised. But does it work? The first trees were planted six years ago and have not been measured since. Silverstone and Nelson, who lived in the Biosphere Two for two years, need your help to collect the data that will tell them which kinds of planting sites are working best, how the trees are growing generally, and exactly what the impact of this program is on surrounding forest.
You'll work with partners to hike the steep mountainsides to the planted sites, where you will take several measurements of each tree, record the amount of light reaching it, and tag any previously unmarked trees. You'll also go into a forest that has not been touched to mark off transects and count and identify trees, to create a biological baseline against which to measure the impact of the planted sites. The results of your work will inform tropical forestry practices and could have a significant impact on on rainforests everywhere.
FIELD CONDITIONS: This is a mountainous site with high heat and humidity and some fairly rigorous hiking across steep, slippery slopes with gorgeous forests. You'll stay in large tents with cots near the main house of the research area. The house has hot and cold running water, toilets and showers, and the usual conveniences, including a good cook.
MAX TEAM SIZE: 10 2001 TEAMS: I: Jul 6-15 II: Dec 14-23 III: Dec 27-January 5, 2002 IV: Jan 7-16, 2002
SHARE OF COSTS: $1,295 £860 $A2,350 ¥142,450
RENDEZVOUS SITE: San Jose, Costa Rica
www.earthwatch.org/expeditions/silverstone.html_
Amire, Roula. "Fruit Seed helps save rainforest." Candy Industry 164.10 (Oct. 1999): 20. MasterFILE Premier__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=2563735&site=ehost-live>.
Title:Fruit Seed helps save rainforest. By: Amire, Roula, Candy Industry, 07451032, Oct99, Vol. 164, Issue 10Database:MasterFILE Premier
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FRUIT SEED HELPS SAVE RAINFOREST
Section: Earth WatchAlthough many chocolate companies are attracted to the Amazon rainforest for the cacao bean, Jeff Moats, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, is more interested in a fruit seed that grows in wild abundance.
Moats has used the capuacu fruit seed, a cousin of the cacao bean, to create the 85-gram, caffein free Amazon Bar that although cannot legally be called chocolate, is almost identical.
"It looks, smells and tastes just like chocolate, and has a better mouthfeel with a fruity undertone to it," says Moats, who founded Amazon Origins in 1992. "You wouldn't know the difference between the taste of this bar," and one used with the cacao bean, he insists.
It was through the Kapok Foundation, an organization founded in 1994 by Moats to fund rainforest research, that the full potential of the cupuacu fruit seed was discovered. Unlike the cacao bean, the cupuacu is so readily available that it rots by the ton in the Amazon.
"The advantage of the whole project is the fact that it is a truly sustainable crop," says Moats. "It's helping the rainforest."
Rather than cutting the cupuacu tree down and burning it to sell as charcoal as was being done, the tree is now far more valuable. "We have set up cooperatives, and it's a guaranteed economic commodity. We've assured the cupuacu tree longevity," he says.
Eight percent of pre-tax profits are donated to the Kapok Foundation for its continued work in the Amazon Basin.
Other Amazon Origin products include coffee and Gummi Rainforest Critters, of which the cupuacu pulp is used to create new topical flavors fro gummies shaped as endangered species. They will be available by December, and are packaged in four-ounce decorative Rainforest tin can.
"We literally have hundreds of people over the course of the year delivering the cupuacu seed to us daily. People are literally picking cupuacu fruit off of trees all year long," he says.
The indigenous people are paid for the seeds directly by Moats.
The seeds are fermented in the Amazon and shipped to Japan, where the bar is produced by Asahi Foods in Kobe, Japan. "I do it there because I couldn't find a U.S. manufacturer interested in it. "They (Asahi Foods) were ready to take the risk."
Moats says there is no acidic or bitter aftertaste, and some of the bars come with inclusions such as puffed rice or Brazilian nuts. "We use our super premium Brazilian Arabica coffee, grind it and add it to dark bittersweet."
He plans to expand production to Budapest to make the Amazon Bar available to the European market.
Within the United States, two varieties of the Amazon Bar are available solid milk and milk with freshly roasted whole almonds. The Amazon Krisp Bar (cupuacu mass with honey coated puffed rice) will be available in first quarter of 2000.
Moats is also launching a 1.2 ounce Amazon Bar in milk and Krisp varieties for fundraising.
"We've gotten a tremendous amount of interest by schools and school children wanting to help the rainforest by selling this candy bar."
The primary audience for the bar, in fact, is the juvenile market. "These kids are really plugged into what's going on. They realize what something like this may be able to do," says Moats.
"We never intended to compete with a Mars or Hershey type product. We consider this to be on the higher end of the market," he says. The bar retails between $2.49-$2.89.
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Stycos, Steven. "Restoring the rainforest." Progressive 60.9 (Sep. 1996): 14. MasterFILE Premier__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=9608292062&site=ehost-live>.
Title:Restoring the rainforest. By: Stycos, Steven, Progressive, 00330736, Sep96, Vol. 60, Issue 9Database:MasterFILE Premier
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RESTORING THE RAINFOREST
Section: ON THE LINEDateline: Costa Rica
As chainsaw-wielding loggers continue to level rain-forests, a volunteer organization is trying to prove that the world's most diverse ecosystem can be restored, one seed at a time.
Headed by retired Cornell University professor Carl Leopold, the Tropical Forestry Initiative has had spectacular success. Some of the gallinazo tree seeds Leopold planted three years ago now stand forty-two feet tall. In five years, Leopold expects the Initiative's hand-planted mixed forest to achieve "crown closure," a key event marking elimination of direct sunlight to the forest floor. Once that happens, says Leopold, rainforest shade plants and other species will return and the trees will grow faster as they struggle for sunlight.
Leopold's project started in 1992. Determined to reverse some of the ecological damage of the last fifty years, he and other Ithaca residents purchased a 181-acre farm in a wet tropical forest in mountainous Costa Rica. Much of the farm was pasture, cleared after World War II to raise beef for the North American export market. But when Americans shifted to less fatty foods in the 1980s, the cattle market collapsed, leaving the farm idle.
Rainforest restoration is nearly unknown in Costa Rica. With no mail-order companies to supply cocobolo seeds and no nurseries to sell cenizaro saplings, local nursery manager Memo Fallas and Initiative volunteers started, literally on their knees, collecting seeds.
Unlike the seeds of most temperate trees, rainforest seeds are fertile for only a short time after they fall from the parent tree. So the Initiative workers must locatethe desired species in ravines and other pockets of uncut land. Then they must return, as the seeds fall, to gather and plant them before they die or are eaten by animals.
Since 1993, the nonprofit group has gathered the seeds of seventy different trees, planted them in a nursery, and then transplanted 15,000 seedlings.
In some ways, the reforestation project resembles that of Leopold's father, Aldo, a pioneer American environmentalist. During the 1930s and 1940s, the elder Leopold bought an abandoned Wisconsin farm and, with the help of his wife and children, replanted it with the trees and rare prairie grasses he discovered on railroad sidings and in cemeteries.
To promote environmentally sound forestry, the Tropical Forestry Initiative has helped twenty-two small landowners form a local forestry association. The group hopes to broker a deal with the government to restore the rainforest and increase local logging income: If the government will exempt local landowners from regulations, they promise to plant 100 rain-forest seedlings for every tree they cut.
Many landowners are already interested in reforestation. Last year they planted 3,500 seedlings supplied by the Initiative's nursery.
With an annual budget of $25,000, the group depends on volunteers. To donate your time or money, write Tropical Forestry Initiative, Box 285, Ithaca, NY 14851. Contributors receive a semi-annual newsletter.
Hirsch, Tim. "The Incredible Shrinking Amazon RainForest." World Watch 21.3 (May 2008): 12-17. MasterFILE Premier__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=31733991&site=ehost-live>
Title:The Incredible Shrinking Amazon RainForest. By: Hirsch, Tim, World Watch, 08960615, May/Jun2008, Vol. 21, Issue 3Database:MasterFILE Premier
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The Incredible Shrinking Amazon RainForest
Contents
But is the rate of loss rising or declining?
The news coming out of the Amazon basin never seems to be good. Stories on rainforest losses generally use comparisons with U.S. states or Countries of the world: since 1970, an area of rainforest the size of Texas has been lost; in the worst year ofdeforestation, 1995, an area equivalent to Belgium went under the chainsaw and the match.
Apart from emphasizing the sheer scale of the mightiest rainforest in the world--even the loss of a Texas-sized patch leaves more than 80 percent of it intact--these comparisons are not very useful for helping the concerned citizen judge what is really going on in the Amazon. What matters to most people is whether deforestation is coming under control, or whether this magnificent ecosystem is doomed to relentless decline, with all the implications for the millions of unique species it harbors, for the survival of precarious indigenous cultures, and for the global climate.
A better way of getting a handle on this question is to look at trends over time. And here the news of recent years has offered a glimmer of hope (see figure, right). Estimated annual deforestation figures for the Brazilian Amazon reveal a marked drop in the rate of forest loss over the past three years. After reaching a peak of more than 27,000 square kilometers in 2004, it fell to "only" 11,000 square kilometers lost between August 1, 2006 and August 1, 2007, the period used for these purposes in the release of satellite-derived data for year-to-year comparisons.
That still means the annual loss of an area of forest larger than Lebanon (sorry to go back to those comparisons), but it represents a drop of nearly 60 percent in thedeforestation rate. The figures for last year were the lowest since the early 1990s, so it is not surprising that the Brazilian government has been using them as evidence of success for the anti-deforestation measures introduced under the administration of President Luiz Imácio Lula da Silva.
A downward trend in deforestation has taken on added importance since the Bali Climate conference in December 2007. One of the key decisions there was to launch a process looking at financial incentives to reward developing countries that protect their forests, in recognition of the fact that something like one-fifth of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are accounted for by deforestation. The trajectory of rainforest loss, in other words, could have very significant implications for Brazil's income in the years ahead.
So any suggestion that the trend of Amazon destruction is starting to move upwards again is bound to be politically explosive. And it was precisely such a bombshell that the Brazilian National Space Research Agency (INPE) dropped in January this year.
Satellite States
To understand the significance of what the new data were showing, it is worth backing up a bit to describe how the Brazilian government goes about measuring and reporting the scale of deforestation in the Amazon.
Until 2005, the only method was the Amazon Deforestation Estimate Project (PRODES, the Portuguese acronym), an annual analysis of around 200 high-resolution images taken of the Amazon region by the NASA Landsat satellite, supplemented by other satellite data when there are problems of cloud cover. By comparing vegetation cover within each image with those of the previous year, it is possible to get a pretty accurate estimate of the deforestation that has taken place in those 12 months.
The problem with this system is that by the time the complex analysis of each year's deforestation is complete, the damage has long since been done. It serves only as a historical record and is of little use in aiding the authorities to chase after illegal deforesters. So in 2005 a new system was introduced as part of the Lula government's Amazon Deforestation Action Plan. The Detection of Deforestation in Real Time (DETER) system is designed to complement rather than replace PRODES. As the name suggests, the idea is to get data back quickly, using different satellites that generate much more frequent images, albeit at a lower resolution. Analysis from the DETER system is available every two weeks or so, and given the vastness of the Amazon region, the theory is that this should give the authorities valuable information about new areas of deforestation and guidance on where they should be concentrating their enforcement efforts.
It was this second, quick-turnaround system of monitoring that created such alarm in January. In a highly unusual move, INPE called a news conference to announce that in the last five months of 2007, DETER had registered deforestation totaling 3,235 square kilometers (about the size of Rhode Island). Because of the low-resolution images, this system is reckoned to underestimate the true scale of deforestation by 40-60 percent, and the agency itself put a figure of 7,000 square kilometers as the probable loss of rainforest between August and December 2007. With another seven months to go before the next year-to-year measurement, it is easy to see why there are real fears that the last annual figure of 11,000 square kilometers will be surpassed this year.
Another factor added significantly to the concern about these observations. Normally, torrential Amazon rains bring deforestation to a virtual halt in the months of November and December. Yet these two months accounted for 60 percent of the destruction registered by the satellites, with ranchers and lumber companies apparently taking advantage of an extended drought. This led both INPE and the Brazilian Environment Ministry to describe the findings as unprecedented, and added to fears that the pace of deforestation was picking up again.
The announcement was not entirely unexpected. An unusually large number of fires had been reported in the Amazon during the latter part of 2007, and INPE scientists had been hinting for some weeks of grim news to come. Even so, the announcement of the new figures was greeted with a mixture of alarm and denial in political and media circles in Brazil. The charismatic and highly respected environment minister, Marina Silva, showed the seriousness with which she was taking the figures by attending the press conference at which they were announced. She took the opportunity to make it clear she thought there was a close relationship between the upturn in deforestation and high commodity prices, especially those of soybeans and beef. Within hours, her colleague Reinhold Stephanes, the minister of agriculture, had flatly denied such a link, beginning a period of open disagreement within the government on the significance and even accuracy of the INPE data.
The most violent denials came, perhaps not surprisingly, from Governor Blairo Maggi of Mato Grosso, the state which accounted for more than half of thedeforestation registered by the DETER system. Maggi also happens to be one of the world's largest soybean producers (and winner of Greenpeace's 2005 "Golden Chainsaw" award for being the Brazilian who contributed most to Amazon destruction) as well as a key political ally of President Lula. His reaction to the announcement was to give an interview demanding to know on whose behalf the scientists at INEPT were lying.
Maggi was also known to have spoken at length with President Lula himself to explain his doubts about the figures, and some of that skepticism appeared to have registered. In comments a few days after the announcement, Lula said he thought the reaction had been exaggerated, and attacked those who had rushed to condemn agrobusiness for destroying the Amazon, saying rather cryptically, "It's as if you went to the doctor with a small tumor, and instead of doing a biopsy to find out how to treat it, you went out saying you had cancer."
Lula also said that instead of criticizing Brazil for allowing deforestation to take place in the Amazon, NGOs should first "go and plant trees in their own country"--a comment which intensely annoyed Brazilian groups that had voiced alarm about the figures.
Beef--and BioFuels?
The dynamics of deforestation in the Amazon are complex, and there is no easy single answer as to what might have caused this latest upsurge--if it is an upsurge--or whether the battle is being won or lost. As Marina Silva herself observed after a visit to Mato Grosso following the January announcement, the process tends to follow a distinct pattern: first a rainforest area is logged for its valuable lumber, then burned for cattle grazing, and as the land becomes exhausted, plowed up for crops such as soybeans.
What is undoubtedly true, however, is that the number of cattle in the Amazon has increased dramatically in recent years. Just a few days before the newdeforestation figures were announced, the Brazilian office of Friends of the Earth published a report cataloguing this growth, entitled The Cattle Realm: A New Phase in the Livestock Colonization of Arnazonia. The report revealed that the number of cattle in the Amazon region had reached 74 million in 2007, outnumbering people by more than three to one. In the state of Mato Grosso this ratio was more than nine to one. Cattle numbers in the Amazon had grown 46 percent in just three years and the region had accounted for virtually the entire increase in the size of the Brazilian cattle herd between 2003 and 2006.
Friends of the Earth's director for the Brazilian Amazon, Roberto Smeraldi, sees a clear link between the relentless increase in beef production and the likelihood of a new upsurge in deforestation following the lull of the past three years. "We had a real overdose of deforestation between 2002 and 2005, which led to abundant availability of cleared land," he says. "Now this land has been occupied, the process heats up again."
A hot issue surrounding all this is whether the boom in biofuels is adding to the pressure on the Amazon. The constant refrain of the powerful sugarcane industry in Brazil, and that of the government, is a resounding no. They point to the fact that current and projected expansion of sugar plantations to meet growing demand for ethanol is concentrated in the central southern region of the country, far distant from the Amazon, where the rainfall is too heavy to be much good for growing the crop.
It is true that very little sugarcane is grown in the Amazon, but some groups have pointed to possible indirect links between biofuel expansion and deforestation. It is already the case that many areas in, for example, the western part of the state of São Paulo are seeing a large-scale change of land use from cattle pasture to sugar plantations as the ethanol boom heats up. And the question arises, where do the cattle go?
The answer from the pro-biofuel lobby is that improvements in productivity mean that more cattle can be concentrated in smaller areas, and that there is more than enough degraded pasture to accommodate the growth in ethanol production. However, there have been reports in the press of ranchers deciding to move their herds north to the Amazon where grazing land is cheap, and although the evidence of this "displacement effect" is still largely anecdotal, it is bound to be a concern if sugarcane becomes ever-more dominant in the landscape of other Brazilian regions.
Whatever the direct or indirect causes of the latest deforestation, the big question is whether the "amber light," as minister Marina Silva has called the figures for August December 2007, has prompted a sufficiently strong response from the Brazilian authorities to prevent a further upturn in the longterm trend.
The stakes are very high. As Brazil seeks ever-greater influence on the world stage, as a key emerging economy and favored candidate for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the continued destruction of the Amazon is more than just an awkward embarrassment. It is increasingly seen as a threat to the world's climate and therefore also to its longterm security.
The Brazilian government argues that since the benefits of the rainforest are shared by the whole of humanity, it is reasonable to expect the rich world to share the costs of protecting it--especially since the industrialized world had no compunction about decimating its own ecosystems in the rush for wealth. As President Lula put it in a speech to a meeting of legislators from the G8 and key developing countries in February, "The countries that are the polluters of the world must pay their share, so that poor countries can do in the 21st century what the rich countries didn't have the courage to do in the 19th century, even if they didn't have the knowledge: preserve nature to the full."
Specifically, Lula is arguing for the setting up of a voluntary fund under the UN Climate Convention that would attract significant investment from richer countries to the cause of forest protection in the tropics. It's among several options that will be discussed in the talks on a post-Kyoto climate framework that are due to conclude by the end of 2009, each intended in someway to make it financially attractive for countries to avoid deforestation.
Which is why the Brazilians desperately do not want their record of declining Amazon forest loss since 2004 to be broken. To avoid that outcome, some high-profile and pretty draconian measures have been taken since the announcement of the latest figures, aimed at ensuring that they remain a blip rather than a new trend.
Among the first responses was a presidential decree affecting the administration of 36 municipalities that together accounted for more than half of the totaldeforestation witnessed in the past three years. They lie along the so-called "arc of deforestation," the agricultural frontier running mainly along the southern and eastern fringes of the rainforest. Special measures are being imposed on these areas, including a ban on any new forest-clearing licenses and a requirement for all large landholders to re-register their property using original documents with correct geographical references. This latter measure, described by Minister Silva as an "X-ray of the region,' is seen as a vital step because so much Amazon deforestation is carried out by holders of fraudulent land claims, a process that even has a special word in Portuguese, grilagem.
A blacklist of the worst deforesters is also being drawn up and published and banks are being brought in to ensure that credit is cut off to any landowners found to be infringing environmental laws in the region. An enforcement blitz by federal authorities, code-named "Arc of Fire," is being added to these measures in an attempt to persuade illegal loggers and others clearing the forest that they can no longer act with impunity.
ProFit vs. Necessity
If a test of the seriousness of these measures is the extent to which they generate protest and controversy, then the signs are positive. Federal troops had to be brought to the city of Tailândia in the state of Pará in February, as lumber companies mobilized the population to blockade the highway in protest at the confiscation of around 15,000 cubic meters of illegal wood.
As of late February, it is too soon to judge whether the emergency action taken by the Lula government in the Amazon will be sufficient to do what it claims to be possible: bear down strongly enough on deforestation to keep the annual rate below last year's figure (to August) of 11,000 square kilometers, despite the worrying rise in the final months of last year.
The pessimistic view is that these are the kind of palliative measures we have seen before, such as those introduced following the 2005 murder of the American-born nun Dorothy Stang. Stang was assassinated after she challenged the interests of powerful ranchers through her Work helping local communities to live sustainably in the forest. A notoriously lawless region in Pará was flooded with troops and for a while the presence of the state kept deforestation at bay. But Pará is once again in the big league of Amazon destruction. According to the doubters, what have not been tackled are the structural causes of deforestation, such as the pressure from big agribusiness and government-supported infrastructure projects (e.g., dams and roads) that actively encourage land speculation and illegal activity in the forest. Without such action, the doubters say, annual deforestation figures will start to move up again and the Amazon will continue its dangerous decline.
The optimistic view is that this is a battle Brazil can't afford to lose, and so it won't. It will root out the bad guys, deprive them of credit, and reward those who act responsibly in the region. Combined with a growing network of protected areas and indigenous lands, and an imaginative new system of concessions of public forest land to private companies under sustainable management plans, sustainable approaches to development in the Amazon will value the standing forest highly enough to counteract the shortterm attractions of cut ting it down.
In the vast and complex mosaic of the Brazilian Amazon, you can find plenty of supporting evidence for each of these outcomes. Which of them prevails will depend not only on the actions of the Brazilian authorities, but on decisions of governments, private companies, and consumers around the world. That "amber light" of late 2007 could prove to have been just the catalyst that was needed to kick-start effective public policy in the region. Or it might have been evidence that the downwarddeforestation trend of the previous years was just a temporary response to market conditions at the time, and in a period of high food prices we are in for another depressing round Of destruction. One thing is certain: this is a crucial turning point for the Amazon, and the outcome matters hugely to us all.
LeBel, Michael. "Protecting Rainforest and Way of Life." In Business 29.5 (Sep. 2007): 12-13. MasterFILE Premier__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=27459681&site=ehost-live>
Title:Protecting Rainforest and Way of Life. By: LeBel, Michael, In Business, 01902458, Sep/Oct2007, Vol. 29, Issue 5Database:MasterFILE Premier
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Protecting Rainforest and Way of Life
Contents
- DEFORESTATION AND GLOBAL WARMING
- THE POWER FOODS GROUP AND ITS VALUES
Section: caring for society and environmentLeading organic drink company brings healthy beverage alternative to the United States
WHAT BEGAN as a college class project a decade ago has emerged as a leading organic drink company inspiring a new generation of socially responsible entrepreneurs. Alex Pryor and David Karr — founders of Guayaki Sustainable Rainforest Products — have brought a South American rainforest drink to the U.S. called organic yerba mate. In the process, they have created economic opportunities that protect the rainforest and their way of life. It's called sustainable Market-Driven Restoration.
Guayaki Yerba Mate is a healthy tea, coffee and energy drink alternative that outsells coffee 7-1 in Pryor's native country of Argentina. "Our goal was to create consumer demand for healthy rainforest products, providing native people with alternatives to destructive land use practices," states Karr. Vast acres of rainforest are being wiped out for cattle grazing, huge soy plantations and timber harvesting. "There is no doubt that paying a fair, premium price creates an incentive for farmers to focus on organic quality and to continue on with sustainable land use that nurtures the rainforest." "It's also rewarding to see how sales of Guayaki products in the U.S. help support reforestation, upgrades to housing and schools, and improved medical care," Karr sums up.
A project that exemplifies Guayaki's strong commitment to fair trade is the company's partnership with the Aché Guayaki tribe, the last "hunters and gatherers" in the Atlantic Forest. The Kue Tuvy Preserve in Paraguay sustains dozens of families of Aché people whom help protect 12,500 acres of rainforest. Guayaki has planted thousands of yerba mate trees below the rainforest canopy to provide them with future economic means. The inaugural harvest will be in 2008.
It is yerba mate harvest season for Guayaki, and therefore it is a good time to highlight Guayaki's Yaguarete Project in Argentina. The Yaguarete Preserve is a farm with 200 acres of Interior Atlantic Forest, bordering the 150,000 acre Iguazu National Park. The farm is an important biological corridor for Jaguar migration. Guayaki has funded training and technical assistance for the Yaguarete farm to obtain organic certification and reforest 60 acres of sun-grown yerba mate with native tree species. This year, Guayaki purchased more than 20 tons of organic yerba mate from this farm at a price that is 100 percent above market value.
Unlike coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar and fruits, there is not yet an official fair trade certification for yerba mate. But Guayaki isn't waiting around for it to be official before implementing this social justice concept. "We're a member of the Fair Trade Federation, and in that capacity we meet or exceed the standards that are set for other fair trade commodities such as coffee," notes Karr. "We have been working with other organizations to help establish the yerba mate standard and expect that it will come to fruition in the near future."
One thing is for sure, American consumers are embracing fair trade. Sales of many popular fair trade coffees, such as Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, have penetrated mainstream America and have been growing by 40-50 percent over the past couple of years. According to a study by the Natural Marketing Institute, nearly 90 percent of Americans say it is important for companies to be mindful of their impacts on society and the environment, with more than 70 percent saying they're more likely to support companies that do.
DEFORESTATION AND GLOBAL WARMING
Another new science report has highlighted deforestation as the second leading human activity causing climate change. The latest data, crunched by an alliance of leading rainforest scientists called the Global Canopy Programme (GCP), indicates that deforestation accounts for 25 percent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases. An Australian study issued in May in the journal Science, has determined that tropical deforestation releases 1.6 billion tons of carbon into the Earth's atmosphere each year. Vast acres of rainforest are still being clearcut for lumber, or slashed and burned to make way for cattle grazing and huge soy bean plantations.
"Guayaki is proving that profitable business can go hand-in-hand with rainforest protection," says Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Rainforest Action Network, a nonprofit that protects the forests through education, grassroots organizing, and nonviolent direct action. The Atlantic Forest of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil is one of the world's top biodiversity hotspots and one of South America's highest priority sites for bird conservation. "Less than five percent of the rainforest is left and creative approaches are needed to halt the destruction and to turn the tide by employing reforestation techniques," says Brune.
Not only does Guayaki create a strong incentive for people to leave the forest standing by purchasing shade-grown organic yerba mate from farmers at premium prices in areas where the forest canopy is intact, the company also has several projects underway to replant native tree species in deforested areas, which will regrow to become the future home to the "drink of the gods" — organic, shade grown, fairly-traded Guayakí Yerba Mate.
Guayaki has raised-the-bar by offering organic drinks that are stimulating, refreshing, nourishing, and made with only pure natural ingredients. Unlike other functional and energy drink concoctions on the market today that feature synthetic ingredients such as isolated vitamins, high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors, processed caffeine and other weird stuff derived in a lab, Guayaki follows a "whole plant — whole health" herbal tradition that unleashes the power of natural functional ingredients.
Founded in 1996, Guayakí is the leading provider of organic, fairly-traded, rainforest-grown yerba mate in North America with products sold at thousands of natural foods stores, cafes and supermarkets. The award-winning company integrates the triple bottom line principles of economic viability, social justice, and environmental stewardship in all aspects of their business.
THE POWER FOODS GROUP AND ITS VALUES
THE POWER Foods Group is a marketing initiative that includes organic food industry leaders including Sambazon acal, Dagoba Chocolate, Guayaki Sustainable Rainforest Products and Manitoba Harvest Hemp products. The companies often share resources on ads, show booths, event sponsorships and communications.
All four are marketing exotic food commodities from foreign countries in the form of consumer brands to the U.S. They include: Sambazon markets acai berry from Brazil that grows on palm in the Amazon Rainforest — Ryan and Jeremy Black (brothers) www.sambazon. com; Dagoba markets cacao in the form of chocolate from many sources such as Costa Rica and Indonesia -Frederick Schilling — www.dagobachocolate.com; Guayaki markets yerba mate from Argentina — David Karr — www.guayaki.com; and Manitoba Harvest markets hemp foods and oils from Canada -Mike Fata — www.manitobaharvest.com.
"Tree trade movement." New Scientist 194.2604 (19 May 2007): 4-4. MasterFILE Premier__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=25333823&site=ehost-live>.
Title:Tree trade movement. New Scientist, 02624079, 5/19/2007, Vol. 194, Issue 2604Database:MasterFILE Premier
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Tree trade movement
Saving the planet from global warming is easy: just start paying countries not to slash and burn their tropical rainforest. That's faster and cheaper than new technology to trap or block the carbon dioxide we produce by burning fossil fuels, according to a report published on Monday by the Global Canopy Programme in Oxford, UK."In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much carbon dioxide as would be produced by aircraft carrying 8 million people from London to New York," says Andrew Mitchell of the Global Canopy Programme. So instead of limiting air travel, for example, just pay for forests to be left alone.
The potential to prevent CO2 emissions is huge, as deforestation accounts for 18 per cent of all emissions, second only to the 24 per cent from power stations. Forests also have other "free" effects that are useful to commerce and agriculture, such as generating rain and stabilising temperatures, so it might be possible to find ways of charging for these "services" as well, Mitchell says.
Yet existing forests are excluded from today's schemes for trading carbon credits. The Kyoto protocol, for example, only allows credit payments for newly planted forests; so farmers can get more money by cutting down virgin forest and growing trees anew than if they spared the original forest.
Mitchell hopes this will change in December when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change convenes in Bali, Indonesia. For anti-deforestation schemes to work, there must be pay-offs larger than those available for clearing forest, he says. Brazil, for example, has proposed a scheme to generate rainforest credits.
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By Staff
Deas, Gerald W. "The earth is crying out for its trees." New York Amsterdam News 97.1 (29 Dec. 2005): 27-27. MasterFILE Premier__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=19528278&site=ehost-live>.
Title:The earth is crying out for its trees. By: Deas, Gerald W., New York Amsterdam News, 00287121, 12/29/2005, Vol. 97, Issue 1Database:MasterFILE Premier
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The earth is crying out for its trees
Section: Health CareHouse Calls
Well, Christ-mass is over for another year and there are millions of leftover, dead Christmas trees. There are also many trees that will be undressed of their glitter and will be cast aside. Every time I see that masterful tree raised in Rockefeller Center I almost cry to think of how long it took to grow only to be used for such a short period.
I'm sure you remember the term photosynthesis. If you don't, let me review it for you. The foliage on trees absorbs the gas carbon dioxide, a human waste product, and produces oxygen which sustains life in this plant. If there is no oxygen, the plant dies.
The rain forest, which covers 6% of the world's land surface, holds between 50% and 80% of the world's terrestrial species of plants and animals. Due to recent hurricanes and earthquakes throughout the world, tree life has been destroyed. This great loss has affected the global temperature, which ultimately causes the formation of further destructive forces such as global warming.
The cutting down of trees for the production of timber products such as firewood, office paper, newspaper, paper for books, toilet paper, construction timber, plywood and wood used for furniture causes soil erosion, landslides and a loss of sediment runoff into streams.
Although a non profit organization known as Forest Stewardship Council has been formed to guide the timber industry away from destroying trees, only 17% of the lumber companies follow the rules and thus most clear the forest illegally. Lumber companies who are concerned with illegal deforestation have placed a stamp (FSC) on their wood. This stamp should be used by the consumer as an indication that the wood is coming from forests that have been designated for legal clearing.
Next Christmas, I suggest that instead of using a live tree, take your old coat hangers and make a tree and dress that, or purchase an artificial tree that you can use for years which will preserve our living forest.
In closing, remember the lines of a famous poem that states, "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree." I'm sure that all of those beautiful pine trees will sing a chorus and give a quality life to this little green planet!
"Saving the rainforest." Economist 372.8385 (24 July 2004): 12-12. MasterFILE Premier__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=13907238&site=ehost-live>
Title:Saving the rainforest. Economist, 00130613, 7/24/2004, Vol. 372, Issue 8385Database:MasterFILE Premier
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Saving the rainforest
Contents
- It all adds up
- Ways to pay
Section: LeadersLocal resources and global assets
The rich world wants a say in the fate of the world's rainforests. It should put its money where its mouth is
THE world's rainforests are owned by the mainly poor countries they cover--but at the same time they are a global asset. Cutting them down for profit, or to free land for farming, is a tempting source of income for their owners. Left intact, on the other hand, the forests are sinks that withhold carbon from the atmosphere, mitigating the problem of man-made global warming; and they are rich storehouses of biodiversity, another global resource, as well. Plainly, a balance between local and global interests must be struck. How, exactly?
The owner-occupiers consider this question with understandable suspicion. The easiest way to rile Brazilian officialdom is to suggest that the Amazon rainforest belongs more to humanity than to Brazil (and the other countries it covers). The Ministry of Agriculture recently berated The Economist and others for suggesting that agricultural expansion had anything to do with deforestation. The connection is obvious--but the denial highlights the sensitivity.
It all adds up
Deforestation in the Amazon starts with land speculation and logging, but ranching, some of it highly competitive, is the main use to which cleared land is then put. Soya, the most lucrative crop, sometimes arrives later, prompting ranchers to open new fronts in the forest. These and other activities, including slash-and-burn agriculture by small farmers, have levelled about 15% of the Amazon in the past few decades and are carving away about 1/2% of the forest a year. Overall,deforestation in the tropics may account for 10-20% of the carbon released into the atmosphere by human activity during the 1990s. Deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia alone amounts to roughly four-fifths of the annual reduction in carbon emissions mandated by the Kyoto Protocol from 2008 to 2012.
Tropical countries--which are usually poor--should not be denied the benefits of any and all deforestation. Brazil's commodities boom has helped the country to avoid a financial crisis lately, despite enormous foreign debts. Last year, farming was one of the few bright spots in an economy that shrank 0.2%. The United States and Europe chopped down most of their forests over the past few centuries (though in recent decades North America has reforested). Who are they to tell Indonesia, Brazil and Congo to do otherwise?
Self-interest alone does in fact argue for some restraint. Large-scale deforestation has little-understood effects on the local climate, which may well do the deforesters more harm than the rest of the world. Beyond a certain point, deforestation simply doesn't pay. Less than 20% of the Amazon forest is suitable for soya, at least with the current technology. Ranching can go further profitably, but not without limit. Some of the Amazon's defence is, or should be, home-grown.
Yet the deforestation that is optimal for Brazil is still likely to be greater than what would suit humanity as a whole. It makes sense, therefore, to come up with ways to make maintaining forest as rewarding for Brazil as it is for the world, once the broader benefits and opportunity-costs are taken into account. When that calculation has been made, the rest of the world should foot its share of the bill.
Such a system would not aim, as a matter of principle, to stop all tropical deforestation. The right approach would aim to reward carbon sinks anywhere (not just in the Amazon) at a rate equal to the marginal costs of carbon added to the atmosphere. In some cases, reducing carbon with forests will be more expensive than reducing it by other means (for instance, consuming less energy, or extracting carbon from fuel and burying it). So far as global warming is concerned, a well-designed system would not discriminate in favour of preserving the Amazon over other rainforest, or preserving any rainforest over other ways of abating carbon.
At the moment, such mechanisms barely exist. The Amazon Reserves and Protected Areas project, a partnership between Brazil's government and international organisations such as the World Bank, is supposed to invest $400m over ten years in protecting forests. The plan should safeguard 14% of the rainforest, but mainly in areas remote from the front of deforestation. The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol offers emitters of greenhouse gases a way to offset this pollution by paying for projects that reduce emissions or sequester carbon in new forests. But it does not permit paying for "avoided deforestation". In general, the Protocol, largely at the behest of rich-world greens, frowns on carbon sinks, apparently regarding comparatively painless ways of reducing global warming as insufficiently punitive.
Ways to pay
If conservation of tropical forest offers global benefits, ways must be found to charge beneficiaries globally. These are beginning to emerge. There is a fledgling market for payments for "environmental services", such as sequestering carbon and preserving biodiversity. Peru, for example, offers "conservation concessions" to groups with the means and know-how to manage forest. A proposal for "compensated reduction" of carbon emissions would discourage deforestation and give developing countries, which have few commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, a bigger role in reducing greenhouse gases. Countries that reduce deforestation in 2008-12 below a certain baseline would be able to sell carbon certificates to governments or private investors. Assuming a carbon price of $5 a tonne, such credits would make a hectare of forest more valuable than one of pasture (though not as lucrative as soya). Another proposal is to dodge the Kyoto thicket by dividing forests into large blocks, which could be auctioned off to bidders with an interest in preserving them. Then there is market pressure: consumers can pay a premium for beef, soya and timber from producers certified as obeying environmental standards.
Such initiatives are not the whole answer, which must include developing institutions capable of policing the frontier (see pages 33-35). Yet the world has begun to recognise that it needs the Amazon and other tropical forests. The time has come to start paying for them.