TalkClimateChange

 

The good news is that deforestation in the Amazon rainforest fell by 20% between August 2006 and July 2007.

But hold the champagne…

Recent satellite images suggest deforestation is starting to rise again. The fall in deforestation has primarily been due to a drop on market prices for products such as soya and meat, and not due to any form of effective logging control.

As prices for these commodities rise, so does the rate at which the rainforest is destroyed. The demand for biofuels will do little to stem the rate of destruction, and latest predictions are that over half of the Amazon could be gone by 2030.

So what’s the link with carbon offsets and trading?

We have always been suspicious of carbon offsets. Rather than temper our over consuming society they encourage it, and nobody really knows if your money ends up doing something useful anyway.

Carbon trading leaves us similarly unconvinced, although mainly because we can just can’t imagine it working effectively and it is likely to turn into nothing more than an administrative bureaucratic nightmare.

But our interest was awoken by a study carried out by the University of Michigan who have estimated that in the case of the Indonesian rainforest, carbon credits could generate up to $515 million a year in revenue for their government, almost double the $258 million it currently gets in tax revenue from logging and palm oil.

Once people start to realise that their trees are actually worth more alive than dead, then the rainforests may have a future once again.

This is good news since despite years of campaigning we have performed quite miserably when it comes to protecting some of the most important eco-systems on our planet.