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“We have only God to protect us here,” said a Brazilian farmer recently in the Washington Post, referring to the constant threat of being kicked off farmland he had cleared in the Bom Futuro protected area in the Amazon basin.
“I fought for this. I gave my blood and my sweat,” he continued. “They can’t take it away.”
This vision of deforestation as an engine of job creation and economic growth is compelling in a country like Brazil, where poverty remains widespread. But deforestation also represents the destruction of priceless ecosystems and valuable carbon sinks.
Although reconciling these two visions will not happen overnight, payments for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) are being considered as part of a future climate agreement, and would help shrink the estimated 20% share of annual global CO2 emissions attributed to deforestation.
The REDD idea is simple: Provide monetary incentives to stimulate popular and political will to preserve forests and their capacity to store carbon emissions. Ensuring that this actually happens is far from straightforward, but Brazil is well-placed to participate. The country has at once the largest rainforest, the highest rate of clearing, and the best deforestation monitoring systems in the world.
Measuring Deforestation in Brazil
Indeed, thanks to state-of-the-art, satellite-based monitoring systems, we find out each December in excruciating detail exactly where detectable deforestation has happened in Brazil over the previous 12 months. And with lesser detail but every two weeks, the environmental ministry receives a report on where large-scale destruction is taking place. Finally, if you’ve ever wondered whether your teak coffee table was sustainably produced
Related posts:
- Guyana to participate in the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility
- Up to 0.6 B Tons of Yearly Emissions Cuts Possible through Protection of Tropical Rainforests
- Brazil to Slash Amazon Deforestation More Than Half
- The Role of Forest Carbon in Emerging Ecomarkets Will be Significant, Says Environmental Economist Ricardo Bayon
- UNFCCC Posts Documents to REDD-Web Platform