Earth Equity News

In Brazil, Paying Farmers to Let the Trees Stand. By Elisabeth Rosenthal, NYTimes, August 21, 2009. "Deforestation, a critical contributor to climate change, effectively accounts for 20% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions and 70% of the emissions in Brazil [PDF, 132 pp]. Halting new deforestation, experts say, is as powerful a way to combat warming as closing the world's coal plants. But until now, there has been no financial reward for keeping forest standing. Which is why a growing number of scientists, politicians and environmentalists argue that cash payments are the only way to end tropical forest destruction and provide a game-changing strategy in efforts to limit global warming... In Mato Grasso, 700 square miles of rain forest was stripped in the last five months of 2007 alone, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, which tracks vanishing forests. 'With so much money to be made, there are no laws that will keep forest standing,' John Carter, a rancher who settled here 15 years ago, said as he flew his Cessna over the denuded land one day this summer... Neldo Egon Weirich, 56, who moved here in 1978 and noted that to be eligible for loans to buy tractors and seed, a farmer had to clear 80% of his land... Mr. Carter has started a landowners' environmental group, called Alianca da Terra, whose members agree to have their properties surveyed for good environmental practices and their forests tracked by satellite by scientists at the Amazon Institute for Environmental Research (IPAM), ensuring that they are not cultivating newly cleared land. Mr. Carter is currently negotiating with companies like McDonalds to purchase only from farms that have been certified."