Forest Researcher Favors 'Payments for Ecosystems Services'.Posted by Rhett A. Butler, Mongabay.com, August 18, 2008. "Andrew Mitchell… director of the London-based Global Canopy Program, said he is encouraged by signs that investors are beginning to look at the value of services afforded by healthy forests. Speaking [in June to] an audience of more than 500 scientists at the annual meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation [in Suriname], Mitchell said… the world is… looking at four ways to deal with emissions from deforestation… [and of the four, he]… has the most hope for 'payments for ecosystem services'... Mitchell compared forests to giant utilities that offer services… [For example,]… the Brazilian Amazon [rainforest]… contains some 60-70 billion tons of carbon, discharges 55% of the world's fresh water, and generates 20 billion tons of rain per day, supplying water to the $1 trillion agricultural industry in the La Plata river basin in Argentina. Mitchell believes financial markets will eventually pay for this hugely valuable utility. He said emerging models - including FUNDECOR in Costa Rica and the Amazonas Initiative in Brazil -- offer some clues on who will pay and at what price. In the end, Mitchell argued that future markets will be about more than just carbon and that payments for ecosystem services could drive billions of dollars per year to forest-owning nations… 'The central issue in this whole debate is how we put a true value on standing rainforest to the world community,' he said."
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