From: Telegraph.co.uk
Amazonia has become synonymous with the destruction of the world’s rainforests, but the Copenhagen climate summit heard today that Brazil could have stopped cutting it down altogether in little more than ten years time. The country has already reduced the felling to little more than a third of its the average rate between 1996 and 2005, and by about three quarters from its peak in 2004.
It has recently expanded its protected areas in the Amazon from 1.26 to 1.82 million hectares and cracked down on illegal logging, confiscating timber and imprisoning offenders. But a reduction in demand for beef and soy, historically the main drivers of deforestation, has been even more important. The recession is partly responsible for this, but so is a widespread move by the beef and soy industries to move away from supplies from deforested areas.
The Brazilian government announced last month that it was going to cut the felling even more, to just a fifth of the average rate by 2020. But a new study by Brazilian and American scientists published in the journal Science last week, concluded that it could come down to zero by then if the Copenhagen summit agrees to adopt proposals – longwindedly entitled Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation – to compensate countries and local people for giving up the immediate revenue to be gained from cutting and felling timber and farming the land.
The study – procatively entitled The End of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon – estimates that this would cost $7 to $18 billion beyond what the country’s government is presently spending on the problem. Norway has already offered $1 billion and Brazil has also set up a fund of its own. The rewards would be great – cutting global carbon dioxide emissions by up to five per cent and preserving one of the most important ecosystems on the planet. And Amazonia would then become a symbol of what can be done when the world becomes serious about valuing, rather than ripping off, the environment.
