Million Acres of Guyanese Rainforest To Be Saved In Groundbreaking Deal

[babylonsister]

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.

more...

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

[catgirl]

1. This is really great!

:-)

[AlecBGreen]

2. finally

"the powers that be" recognize a healthy, undisturbed forest is worth more than the board-feet that can be yanked out of it.

:party: