What Would It Cost to Save Nature?(Part 3) 标题:Sharing the Blessings, While Protecting Biodiversity 新闻来源:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,554982-3,00.html (需有正确连结) By Philip Bethge, Rafaela von Bredow and Christian Schwagerl Part 3: Sharing the Blessings, While Protecting Biodiversity Nevertheless, Tamayo insists that the research facility, which now works primarily with universities, is still "a model of success." The institute, says Tamayo, helps to demonstrate how developing countries can share in the blessings of biotechnology while simultaneously protecting their own biodiversity. A share of the licensing fees INBio receives goes into protecting Costa Rican forests. Costa Rica is already considered a model country within the international conservation movement. In the country's booming ecotourism industry, about 1.5 million tourists spend close to $1.5 billion (€970 million) a year to visit the natural wonders of Costa Rica's rainforests and montane forests. And protecting those forests has been elevated to a national doctrine in Costa Rica. In the 1970s and 1980s, loggers cleared almost 80 percent of the Costa Rican rainforest. Today more than half of the country is forested once again. In the southern part of the country, the densely forested Osa Peninsula juts out into the Pacific. Deep in the jungle, in the mountains above the tiny village of Golfito, Jorge Marin Picado keeps watch over 46 hectares (114 acres) of primeval forest. A flock of pale red Aras flies over the site, where the smell of rotting vegetation fills the air. Lianas snake their way up giant trees. Picado, wearing the standard machete in his belt, is the manager of the finca, or farm, perched along the edge of the coastal range. Under an agreement the farm's owner has signed with the Costa Rican forestry agency, the government pays him $350 (€225) per hectare each year to keep the forest undisturbed and prevent anyone from stealing plants or illegally cutting down trees. Rewarding Farmers for Keeping Trees Untouched The government calls the system its "Environmental Services" program, and conservationists consider it exemplary. Under the program, the government rewards landowners for planting new trees or leaving existing forest untouched. "We want to enlarge the forest area and offer farmers an alternative," says Katia Alegria of the forestry agency. As a result, pastureland where cattle have grazed until now is becoming forest once again. Instead of oil palms and banana trees, species like teak and the local ron-ron tree are growing in the new and preserved forests. The program is funded with taxes on the sale of gasoline and funds from the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility, into which the CBD member states pay. But Costa Rica also hopes to turn a profit in the future from the carbon dioxide captured by trees. Indeed, the ability to capture enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and store it could ultimately be forests' lifeline in this era when man is desperately searching for ways to halt global warming. Bogs can also bind substantial amounts of CO2. Restoring and preserving them "offers a cost-effective way of curbing climate change and protecting diversity," says UNEP Executive Director Steiner. This is also an opportunity for Germany. Researchers at Greifswald University have calculated that restoring one hectare of lowland bog in Germany and allowing the native alder forest to grow results in the capture of 30 tons of CO2 a year. The governments of countries with large tropical rainforests, like Guyana, Indonesia, Brazil and Papua-New Guinea, have become especially enthusiastic 1;31madvocates of the revolutionary idea of selling their forests as greenhouse gas sinks. If the plan works, they could rake in billions in profits, which in turn could be spent on protecting forests. A New Currency for Environmentalism The currency in the new environmental age is called a "forest certificate," and a potential market for the green money already exists. In the EU emissions trading system, for example, industrial corporations and energy utilities are allocated carbon dioxide pollution rights known as CO2 certificates. They define how much carbon dioxide a given company's factories are permitted to emit into the atmosphere. If a company's CO2 emissions exceed its allocated limit, it must buy additional certificates to offset the difference. Unused pollution rights can be sold. In other words, the certificates have a real monetary value, which is currently at €25 ($39) per ton of CO2, but could increase to €60 ($93) in the future. The tropical rainforest countries are keenly interested in entering this growing market. At the next UN Climate Change Conference, in Copenhagen in 2009, the course could be set for the development of a market in forest certificates. Large electric utilities, like Germany's RWE, are already waiting in the wings. "Forests as a part of a global emissions trading system would be of interest to us," says Michael Fubi, the company's climate protection manager. The company would benefit by satisfying climate protection requirements more quickly and at a lower cost than through the installation of costly new technologies. In the medium term, however, this could not serve as a replacement for modernizing power plants, says Fubi. How much money this forest certificate system would ultimately generate is still written in the stars. Experts estimate that it would cost $10 billion ( €6.45 billion) a year to truly benefit the world's forests. Otherwise it would be far more profitable for tropical countries to cut down their forests for lumber. "Logging produces from $100 to $500 million (€65 to €322 million) a year in revenues for Papua-New Guinea," says Kevin Conrad, Papua-New Guinea's special envoy for climate protection and conservation, highlighting the country's dilemma. The country has to be offered more than this amount to make protecting its forests an attractive proposition, "otherwise the forest will be gone -- and it'll happen very soon." Turning Canopies into Capital In Brazil, the chainsaw is still winning out over conservation. Almost 20 percent of the country's 3.65 million square kilometers (1.41 million square miles) of Amazon rainforest have already been cut down and turned into pastureland and soybean fields. After taking office in 2003, Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva managed to reduce the rate of deforestation from 28,000 to 12,000 square kilometers (10,810 to 4,633 square miles) a year. She introduced new rules that allowed owners of forests to log on no more than 20 percent of their property, and imposed a credit freeze on violators. But last week Silva, an icon of the global forest protection movement, made the surprising announcement that she was resigning, saying that she was tired of "playing the green fig leaf" for President Lula da Silva. As it happens, dead forests are more valuable than living forests on global markets, and it will take a lot of money to reverse this. There are, however, a few initial success stories. The World Bank, for example, has introduced its Forest Carbon Partnership, a program designed to protect both the climate and the environment simultaneously. One of the partnership's model projects could soon be that of Germany's Hans Schipulle, who hopes to transform the Congo basin rainforest into a cash cow. In anticipation of a growing market for forest certificates, the US investment bank Merrill Lynch recently agreed to pay Indonesia's Aceh Province $9 million (€5.8 million) a year for four years to protect the rainforest in its Ulu Masen preserve. Canopy Capital, a London-based company, has spent a sum numbering in the millions to secure the value that it believes Guyana's Iwokrama rainforest could soon have for mankind. Canopy's managing director, Hylton Murray-Philipson, explains the concept: "No one would pay anything for the intact forest today, but I believe that it is extremely likely that markets will soon take a different view of the value of nature." Experts predict that the trade in the natural assets of forests, bogs and reefs could translate into $10 billion (€6.5 billion) in revenues by 2010. Can such global financial transfers truly bring about change? "Once CO2 trading translates into large amounts of money, the question that inevitably arises is who actually owns the forest," says Tom Griffiths, who is with the human rights organization Forest Peoples Programme. "Is it the investors or the people who live in the forest?" Future Power Struggles over Carbon Sinks Griffiths fears that a highly profitable forest protection system could lead to power struggles over lucrative carbon sinks, which in turn would translate into more corruption, speculation, land grabs and conflicts. The logging company Asia Pacific Resources International, for example, clears forests and drains peat bogs in Indonesia to plant new tree plantations. Suddenly the company has launched a CO2 pilot project in which it plans to restore a few bogs. But the project smacks of an eco-scam, too, because Asia Pacific will only be able to pocket profits from CO2 trading as a result of the fact that it destroyed large swathes of the ecosystem in the first place. To secure biological diversity in the long term, the parties to the Biodiversity Convention are also promoting classic methods of conservation. There are roughly 100,000 nature reserves around the globe. According to a recent study by the WWF, the world community spends $6.5 to $10 billion (€ 4.2 to €6.5 billion) a year on protected areas. This sounds like a lot of money, but in fact is well short of what is needed. Experts estimate that at least twice as much will be required to protect nature in the long term. Professional environment police officers must monitor the reserves. Education is critical in helping local populations find new ways to live in harmony with nature. Microloans are needed to help people implement new business models compatible with the natural environment. -- 「只有在人们能够自由地利用和享受知识带来的好处时，新知识的发现才对他们有价值。 新发现对所有的人都有潜在的价值，但不是牺牲人们所有的现实价值为代价。无限发展的 『进步』不能给任何人带来好处，那麽这『进步』就是一种恐怖的谬论。」 Ayn Rand<The Virtue of Selfishness> --

※ 发信站: 批踢踢实业坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 59.113.10.44 ※ 编辑: NPLNT 来自: 59.113.10.44 (05/24 15:30) ※ NPLNT:转录至看板 Ecophilia 05/24 17:40