Report: Rich Countries Must Pay To Save World’s Forests
Tropical nations should receive funds from rich nations to save the world’s forests, according to a UK-commissioned report on Tuesday.
Additionally, developing countries should also start paying to help create "carbon neutral" global forests through binding targets to slow deforestation and plant trees by 2030.
Approximately one fifth of all greenhouse gases are caused by the burning and clearing of forests.
"Deforestation will continue as long as cutting down and burning trees is more economic than preserving them," said Johan Eliasch, author of the report and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s special representative on deforestation.
Some carbon traders and green groups disagreed with the new report, titled “Climate Change: Financing Global Forests," saying it down-played costs and skirted real world issues of corruption and land disputes.
The report found that finance from carbon markets could curb deforestation rates by 75 percent by 2030, and urged inclusion of forests in a new global climate pact slated for agreement under U.N.-led talks by the end of next year.
However, a funding gap of $11 ““ 19 billion would remain by 2020, according to the report. That figure would be met by donors currently struggling against a worldwide banking crisis.
Some critics said that the report’s cost estimate of $33 billion a year to halve deforestation by 2030 was too small.
Offsets would have to compensate farmers for not planting valuable crops such as palm oil.
"Over the next decade, forest carbon credits could conceivably cut mitigation costs by 13 percent," said Eric Bettelheim, chairman of a private company Sustainable Forestry Management, citing an estimate by Environmental Defense.
In addition, the report excluded the cost of planting new trees to replace the shortfall in timber supply.
"It’s an enormous, industrial-scale undertaking, trees take time to grow and planting trees and maintaining them is expensive," added Bettelheim, estimating the total cost to halve deforestation rates at $50-100 billion.
Simon Counsell, executive director at the green group the Rainforest Foundation said the Eliasch report failed to address the effects of corruption or illegal logging.
"It really fails to appreciate just how serious and long-term these problems of corruption and governance actually are," said Counsell, adding they would take 10 years to address.
"In DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) there’s fewer than 10 people in the forestry department managing an area of forest twice the size of France. That’s the reality on the ground."
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Image Caption: Jungle burned for agriculture in southern Mexico. Courtesy Jami Dwyer – Wikipedia
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