Fwd: [graffis-l] SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT RAIN FORESTS!

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>Million Acres of Guyanese Rainforest To Be Saved In Groundbreaking D

>Posted by: " Mark Graffis " mgraffis mgraffis

>Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:51 am (PDT)

>http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/27/7923/

>

>Published on Thursday, March 27, 2008 by The Independent/UK

>Million Acres of Guyanese Rainforest To Be Saved In Groundbreaking Deal

>by Daniel Howden

>A deal has been agreed that will place a financial value on rainforests -

>paying, for the first time, for their upkeep as “utilities” that provide

>vital services such as rainfall generation, carbon storage and climate

>regulation.

>

>The agreement, to be announced tomorrow in New York, will secure the

>future of one million acres of pristine rainforest in Guyana, the first

>move of its kind, and will open the way for financial markets to play a

>key role in safeguarding the fate of the world’s forests.

>

>The initiative follows Guyana’s extraordinary offer, revealed in The

>Independent in November, to place its entire standing forest under the

>protection of a British-led international body in return for development aid.

>

>Hylton Murray-Philipson, director of the London-based financiers Canopy

>Capital, who sealed the deal with the Iwokrama rainforest, said: “How can

>it be that Google’s services are worth billions but those from all the

>world’s rainforests amount to nothing?” The past year has been a pivotal

>one for the fast- disappearing tropical forests that form a cooling band

>around the equator because the world has recognised deforestation as the

>second leading cause of CO2 emissions. Leaders at the UN climate summit in

>Bali in December agreed to include efforts to halt the destruction of

>forests in a new global deal to save the world from runaway climate change.

>

>“As atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide rise, emissions will carry an

>ever-mounting cost and conservation will acquire real value. The

>investment community is beginning to wake up to this,” Mr Murray-Philipson

>added.

>

>Guyana, sandwiched between the Latin American giants Venezuela and Brazil,

>is home to fewer than amillion people but 80 per cent of its land is

>covered by an intact rainforest larger than England. The Guiana Shield is

>one of only four intact rainforests left on the planet and at its heart

>lies the Iwokrama reserve, gifted to the Commonwealth in 1989 as a

>laboratory for pioneering conservation projects.

>

>Iwokrama, which means “place of refuge” in the Makushi language, is home

>to some of the world’s most endangered species including jaguar, giant

>river otter, anaconda and giant anteater.

>

>Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo, a former economist, has appealed for

>state and private sector help for the country to avoid succumbing to the

>rampant deforestation currently blighting Brazil and Indonesia, in an

>effort to raise living standards in one of Latin America’s poorest countries.

>

>“Forests do much more for us than just store carbon … This first

>significant step is in keeping with President Jagdeo’s visionary approach

>to safeguarding all the forests of Guyana,” said Iwokrama’s chairman,

>Edward Glover.

>

>The deal, drawn up by the international firm Stephenson Harwood, is the

>first serious attempt to pay for the ecosystem services provided by

>rainforests.

>

>“We should move beyond emissions-based trading to measure and place a

>value on all the services they provide,” said Mr Glover.

>

>In addition to providing shelter to half the world’s terrestrial species

>and one billion of the earth’s poorest people, forests such as Iwokrama

>act as pumps, drawing water from the Atlantic Ocean inland to the Amazon

>and Guiana Shield where they help to seed clouds and deliver moisture over

>vast distances.

>

>The Amazon generates the rain that falls on the vast soya estates of Sao

>Paulo, helping to make Brazil the second biggest agricultural exporter in

>the world.

>

>Guyana’s attempt to secure its entire standing forest has received the

>backing of the British environment minister Phil Woolas and Downing Street

>has told The Independent that it is “considering the offer”. President

>Jagdeo met with Gordon Brown on the sidelines of a recent Commonwealth

>Summit in Uganda where they discussed the proposal. The UN road map to a

>deal to replace the Kyoto protocols foresees payments from wealthy

>climate-polluting nations to developing countries to compensate for

>potential income lost through avoiding deforestation. But there are fears

>that this formula may simply displace the demand for timber and cheap

>agricultural land.

>

>Andrew Mitchell, head of the Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of

>rainforest scientists, said: “The decision on forests at December’s

>conference in Bali is a major step in tackling climate change but it fails

>to reward countries such as Guyana that aren’t cutting down their forests.”

>

>© 2008 The Independent

 

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