From: Examiner.com
With only 7 days remaining before the Copenhagen Climate Summit begins, Brazil's President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is apparently feeling the global pressure to stop the razing of Amazon rainforests.
Silva arranged for an Amazon summit last Thursday to form a unified position on deforestation and climate change for seven Amazon nations. The summit was supposed to end with delegates from these seven nations signing a declaration calling for financial help from the industrial world to halt the deforestation that causes global warming. To Silva's embarassment, the summit was poorly attended.
Regardless of the poor showing at the summit, Silva believes the message of the summit was communicated. "I don't want any gringo asking us to let an Amazon resident die of hunger under a tree," Silva said. "We want to preserve, but they will have to pay the price for this preservation because we never destroyed our forest like they mowed theirs down a century ago."
According to Silva aides the point of the summit was to let the world know that the Amazon is home to 30 million people, most of whom depend on the forest's natural riches to eke out a living. About 25 million people live in Brazil's portion of the Amazon, an area larger than Western Europe.
The Brazilian government has been trying to reduce the burning of the rain forest. Brazil alone has managed to reduce Amazon destruction to about 7,000 square kilometers (2,702 square miles) a year, which is the the lowest level in decades. But to put that into perspective, that still equals burning an area bigger than the state of Delaware every year.
The Brazilians do recognize that the Amazon rainforest is both the single biggest single natural defense against global warming as the forest absorbs carbon dioxide. It is also currently the single biggest contributor of carbon emissions due to the burning and rotting of trees that are dying due to the deforestation.
The dilemma, as stated above is economics. It is hoped for and expected that the Copenhagen summit will provide for a new global climate agreement to reward countries for "avoided deforestation," with cash or credits tradable on the global carbon market.
Norway is already making payments which should total $1 billion by 2015 as long as Brazil continues to try to stop the burning. Brazilian finance ministers are hoping to increase that amount to $21 billion, and more donations are hoped for from Japan, Sweden, Germany, South Korea and Switzerland as they are considering donating to the fund.
Perhaps Brazil would find more support if information was released with how that $21 billion will be spent.