$ Billions For Countries That Preserve Forests

Gordon Brown has revealed details of a report that he commissioned into how to best pay for the preservation of the world’s forests.

The reality at the moment is that the cleared land and the cut down trees are very often worth far more to individual land owners, companies and governments in developing nations than a bunch of trees that cannot provide them with an income.

The Prime Minister is seeking to address this problem with what he considers to be viable solutions, and the way the report and he see it is that these countries cannot afford to save the forests, so we, the better off nations, will have to foot the bill of savings the world’s forested lungs.

He thinks that the rich countries should fund the control of rainforest activities with cash to the tune of £19-billion per annum.

The money would fund “rewards” to local communities in these countries who preserve their stocks of forest trees and do not clear the forests for farming or timber production.

The result would have a two fold benefit of saving the trees from destruction and also avoiding the huge carbon emissions produced when the scrap wood is burnt.

Some estimates say that this burning and deliberate fire setting on cleared land may account for a massive one third of the world’s carbon emissions.

The report points out that the only realistic way to stop trees being cut down is to make it more financially viable for landowners to leave the trees alone, rather than clear the land for other uses.

The Prime minister recognises that this rewarding cannot be a permanent feature of these countries economies and that by 2030 they themselves should be re-investing some of the financial benefits back into tree preservation.

The report, “Climate Change: Financing Global Forests,” surprisingly was not that well received by some Green organisations who say that such a scheme will be a license to steal cash in many developing nations and the funds will ultimately not benefit the rainforests.

They also say that this idea puts the emphasis on poor countries to save the planet so that rich ones can carry on polluting and offsetting their own carbon footprint with the donations.

Just last month Norway committed to a $1 billion investment aimed at helping locals to curb Amazon de-forestation.