Source: MiamiHerald.com
MANAUS, Brazil -- The aging mayor of this crammed jungle city in the heart of the Amazon once handed out chainsaws to cut down the rainforest.Now he throws around slogans to save it.
That legendary shift is part of a new attitude that's driving a wave of innovation by Brazilian business and government. Those efforts are helping to slash deforestation to its lowest level on record, and have emboldened Brazilian leaders to seek a key role this week at global climate talks in Copenhagen.
``We must add economic value to the forest,'' said Amazonas state Gov. Eduardo Braga, whose eco-subsidies, environmental endowment and plans to sell carbon credits to California have made the area around Manaus a public lab for sustainable forestry.
At the heart of this week's summit debate is how much nations are willing to pay to slow deforestation, and what role Brazil will play in that effort. Home to more tropical forest than any other nation, Brazil already has paired with India, China and South Africa to craft a plan, which its 700-member delegation is now promoting in hotel and convention halls of Copenhagen.
PRESIDENT'S PUSH
President Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is expected to join the conference next week, has cast himself as a mediator.
To bridge the emissions gap between rich and poor nations, he is pushing emerging countries to limit pollution, while insisting that developed nations help pay the bill.
``The worst thing that could happen in Copenhagen is that world society thinks its leaders aren't taking responsibility for the seriousness of these problems,'' he said.
Since 2003, Brazil has pushed to slow the destruction, creating 250,000 square miles of new protected forest, arresting hundreds of illegal loggers and granting farm loans on the condition that they follow environmental compliance. The country has added faster satellite surveillance, designed a $1 billion ``Amazon Fund'' to finance conservation and vowed to cut emissions by at least 36 percent from what's expected for 2020.
Because it's easier to fight deforestation than fossil-fuel use, experts say Amazon conservation could slow global emissions while buying time for the world to develop clean energy technology. It also could help the world's trees clean the air by absorbing more carbon dioxide: The Amazon now stores at least 80 billion tons of carbon, 50 times annual U.S. emissions, according to Greenpeace.
Brazil ``really can be a nature power,'' said Marcia Cota, Brazil development director at Conservation International in Arlington, Va. ``They still hold this immense, vast natural resource that everybody needs.''
The question is: How much is the world willing to pay for that?
More than $100 billion changed hands on global carbon markets last year. Brazil could draw a good share of that, especially by selling carbon ``offsets'' that would allow foreign companies to meet pollution caps by paying entrepreneurs or state programs to protect a piece of forest, rather than by cutting emissions.
But Brazil's federal government is still wary of letting rich nations ``buy'' the right to keep polluting. So businesses are finding their own ways to profit off conservation.
Small firms sell natural Amazon cosmetics and candy, while Sao Paulo's stock exchange hosts a ``sustainability'' index to draw investment to eco-friendly companies and 22 of Brazil's biggest corporations are courting consumers with their own pledge to cut emissions.
Marina Silva, Lula da Silva's first environment minister, welcomes that shift. But as the child of rubber tappers and protégé of legendary activist Chico Mendes, she insists that conservation must be profitable for people in the forest, too.
``We have to change the model of development,'' she said. ``Fighting deforestation has to be an integrated effort by various government sectors, and at the same time, an economic activity that helps lives.''
Stakes are high: Carbon dioxide emissions rose 80 percent since 1970, pushing CO2 levels to a 650,000-year peak and boosting world temperatures, according to the U.N.-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Deforestation contributes at least 12 percent of those gases, with nearly half coming from Brazil, where most of the destruction is meant to make way for cattle pastures.
THE FALLOUT
Studies also show that deforestation speeds climate change, and most Brazilians live in coastal states threatened by sea-level rise.
Forest destruction may disrupt rainfall, parching the breadbasket that makes Brazil a top exporter of soy, beef, coffee and sugar; and because Brazil gets 85 percent of electricity from hydropower, drought would paralyze industry, too.
In Amazonas, Gov. Braga is determined not to let that happen.
His government subsidizes forest-friendly rubber, nuts and oils, and lends $20 million a year for sustainable development. A private endowment he built with Coca-Cola gives about $30 a month to 7,000 families who protect the forest, increasing incomes a third; and a deal with Marriott International lets guests donate $1 a night to ``offset'' their emissions, funding the 2,300-square-mile Juma reserve.
Unwilling to wait for federal approval to sell offsets, Braga also brought together all nine Amazon governors, traveling twice to Los Angeles to negotiate state-to-state carbon deals with California, Illinois and Wisconsin. The governors now plan to travel to Copenhagen.
``This is a golden opportunity that Brazil cannot afford to miss,'' the governors said in an open letter to Brazil's president earlier this year. ``We can shift from being villains to heroes in the fight against climate change.''