[新聞] Sharing the Blessings, While Protect …

[NPLNT (Bruzi Geist)]

※ [本文轉錄自 IA 看板]

作者: NPLNT (Bruzi Geist) 看板: IA
標題: [新聞] Sharing the Blessings, While Protecting Biodiversity
時間: Sat May 24 15:20:45 2008


What Would It Cost to Save Nature?(Part 3)

標題:Sharing the Blessings, While Protecting Biodiversity


新聞來源:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,554982-3,00.html
                                 (需有正確連結)

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.





--
「只有在人們能夠自由地利用和享受知識帶來的好處時，新知識的發現才對他們有價值。
新發現對所有的人都有潛在的價值，但不是犧牲人們所有的現實價值為代價。無限發展的
『進步』不能給任何人帶來好處，那麼這『進步』就是一種恐怖的謬論。」

                                            Ayn Rand<The Virtue of Selfishness>

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◆ From: 59.113.10.44
※ 編輯: NPLNT           來自: 59.113.10.44         (05/24 15:30)
推 swallow73:不曉得我有沒有誤解,看來目前保護環境立即可得的經濟利
→ swallow73:潤看來是來自國際機構跟少數有遠見的大金主的捐款了
→ swallow73:看來要說服擁有豐富樹林的國家以保護代替開採,必須靠有
→ swallow73:自覺的富裕國家集體捐保護費才行了.
→ swallow73:至於碳排放費,這鼓勵了各大企業往減碳的方向走,說起來是
→ swallow73:不是也能用類似的方式鼓勵素食呢?素食生產既減少大量的
→ swallow73:碳排放,就糧食利用上也是效率更高的做法.如果能輔導蓄牧
→ swallow73:業者轉業(看來同樣也需要有錢人捐錢補注蓄牧業者),同時
→ swallow73:也給素食者省能省碳補注金,相信會有更多人願意改吃素食
→ ncyc:肉類中蘊含的蛋白質是蔬菜比不上的，與其說吃素，不如讓人們
→ ncyc:減低食肉量。
→ ncyc:像國軍救災，勞動一整天的士兵吃素，不翻臉才有問題
推 swallow73:做為較容易達成共識的妥協方案先推行減少肉食也可以接受
→ swallow73:不過重點還是需要政策配合,只靠個人自覺進程恐怕是有限
→ swallow73:不曉得給肉食加稅,並把所得拿去做自然生態保護或提供開
→ swallow73:發中國家民眾糧食是不是可行的做法?
推 ncyc:給多數人的日常糧食加稅，這是要人民革命嗎？
推 swallow73:富裕國家消耗肉食的量超過人體日常需要是很常見的事吧
→ swallow73:加稅了以後,人們花一樣的錢攝取的量應該會跟最低限度更
→ swallow73:接近,不但與人體無害,還省下了食肉過度會消耗的食糧生產
→ swallow73:與健康成本.我想在意義上是跟加徵煙酒稅是類似的
推 ncyc:「因為環保緣故，所以政府決定要給肉類加稅」，這個政策口號
推 swallow73:當然如果無法說服人民實施這項政策的重要性,下次選舉
→ ncyc:在個人觀點來看，說服力不比菸酒徵稅高啦
→ swallow73:就會落選了,也沒有革命的必要.
推 swallow73:用民主選舉來做為價值仲裁的標準,ncyc大應該不會反對
推 ncyc:是不反對，因為我認為在選舉的考量，根本不會有政治人物動這
→ ncyc:種腦筋
推 swallow73:有志者也只好出錢出力自己宣傳打廣告了.能取得社會共識
→ swallow73:的話,自然會有政治力量靠過來.
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