PNG Delegate Presses For Forest Credits At Bonn Climate Talks

[hatrack]

BONN, Germany — "Developing nations should be paid to preserve tropical rain forests from the Amazon to Africa as part of a drive to slow deforestation and global warming, a Papua New Guinea delegate said on Tuesday. Most efforts to rein in global warming, widely blamed on a build-up of greenhouse gases, have so far focused on curbing emissions of carbon dioxide from cars, power plants and heavy industries.

"Forests are our assets and should be valued," said Robert Aisi, Papua New Guinea's representative to a two-day 190-nation climate seminar in Bonn on ways to widen the U.N. Kyoto protocol on slowing climate change.

The international treaty sets caps on gas emissions from factories, power plants and cars in developed nations as a step to avert potentially catastrophic climate changes this century and entered into force on Feb. 16 despite a U.S. pullout. Under the extension plan, farmers in the developing world would get a cash incentive to preserve trees, which soak up greenhouse gases as they grow, rather than sell them to loggers or cut them down to make way for crops.

"The loggers come in and tell villagers we'll give you $10 for your tree -- then they cut it down and sell it for $1,000. Who wins? We lose because we get land degradation. The whole world loses," Aisi told Reuters. "The commercial value of cutting down our forests is now far higher than retaining them," he said. He said Papua New Guinea's rainforest was third biggest in the world after those in the Amazon and Congo."

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http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7763

[phantom power]

1. I've often wondered if it would make a difference if...

somebody went around and explained to all the 3rd-world locals just how much profit is being made at their expense. So the next time some lumber company or mining company tries to buy their resources for pennies on the dollar, they get laughed at.

Same thing for sweatshops. Are these people actually aware that every single T-shirt they make is eventually purchased for as much money as they're paid in a week? If they were, could they do anything about it?

Probably a pipe dream.