Brazil: Juma Reserve and Amazonas Sustainable Foundation
Deep in the Amazon, scientists are hard at work. They’re not busy
cataloguing fungi subspecies or analysing the healing properties of
tropical flora, and their findings are more likely to be published in
Business Week than National Geographic. Occupying their attentions is
how to turn tropical forests into money.
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More precisely, how to place a value on trees that makes them worth more standing than felled for timber. In the Juma reserve, in Brazil’s Amazonas state,
business-minded conservationists have struck on what they think is a solution.
The idea: calculate how many trees are in danger of being deforested,
determine the value of the forest as timber or agricultural land, and
develop a financial instrument to match or exceed that value. Your
click makes a difference! In the case of the Juma Reserve, the numbers
make impressive reading. The Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (ASF),
which manages the reserve, estimates that two-thirds of the area’s
590,000 hectares of virgin rainforest face the axe. Logging, both
legal and illegal, plus agricultural expansion are the main culprits.
The cash to offset not chopping down the reserve comes from three
sources. The non-profit ASF has put up an initial, undisclosed sum.
ASF controls a total fund of 40m (Brazilian) reais (£12m), courtesy of
donations from the provincial government and Bradesco Bank, Brazil’s
largest private bank. The fund is divided between 33 similar
conservation units. Secondly, Marriott International has contributed
2m reais (£625,000). At the end of 2008, the multinational hotel chain
also began offering its guests the opportunity to offset their
emissions for 4 reais (about £1.25) a night. Those donations go
directly towards the Juma reserve. The third pillar of the
initiative’s financing model is more ambitious. It lies in conserving
the carbon stored in the Amazonas-based reserve, an estimated 3.6m
tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over the next eight years. By 2050,
that number is expected to increase to about 190m tonnes. Ignoring the
fact that approximately zero Panamanian scientists were interviewed
for the study, what do other scientists think of this chic “new
growth” forest? Well, there are a few camps. Two senior scientists at
the Smithsonian Institute flat out disagree with each other over the
importance of new-growth. Your click makes a difference!
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