Developed Nations Must PayTo Protect Tropical Forests, Report Says

The best way to save the world’s rapidly dwindling tropical forests is to establish a global carbon market through which wealthy donors and industrialized nations can pay developing countries not to clear their rainforests, according to a report prepared for the British government. The report, written by Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s special representative on deforestation, Johan Eliasch, said that carbon market financing could reduce deforestation rates by 75 percent by 2030, at a cost of $33 billion a year. But skeptics of the proposal criticized it on two fronts: that it would enable wealthy countries to avoid reducing greenhouse gas emissions by offsetting them with investments in rainforest protection, and that the infusion of large sums of forest protection money into countries such as Indonesia would fuel corruption and may not slow illegal logging, which is widespread. Scientists estimate that deforestation in the tropics is responsible for about 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.