WWF urges new approach to protecting Amazon
18 February 2009
A new WWF study says that we can help protect the Amazon rainforest by placing a financial value on the ecological services it provides for the world – and getting industrialised nations to contribute to its upkeep.
It’s long been acknowledged that the rainforests are vital to the planet in terms of both their biodiversity and their influence on local and global climate. The tricky issue has always been to provide a commercial incentive for keeping the forests intact and standing, rather than felled for timber or converted to farmland.
The new study – Keeping the Amazon forests standing: a matter of values (carried out by the Copernicus Institute of the University of Utrecht on behalf of WWF-Netherlands) – has found a way of quantifying the financial worth of the environmental services provided by the Amazon. This includes carbon storage, erosion protection and ecotourism.
Promising solution
To date, the real monetary value of these services has rarely been realised due to the lack of appropriate financing mechanisms. At the same time, the revenue received is often not high enough to discourage unsustainable activities that lead to deforestation.
One of the most promising potential solutions currently under discussion is REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). The central idea is that industrialised countries would pay to preserve forests and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in developing countries.
WWF believes that REDD offers an opportunity to make forests more valuable standing – but any measures to reduce deforestation must still allow local communities access to vital resources which they rely on.
Tackling the drivers of deforestation is also vital. We believe that companies need to play a role in the sustainable development of the Amazon – selecting their suppliers carefully and ’decarbonising’ their production chains. Consumers can also all help by choosing to buy only sustainably produced goods – such as timber approved by the Forest Stewardship Council.
You can…
- Read about our work safeguarding the Amazon
- Be an eco-friendly consumer and buy only sustainably-produced goods
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