Brazil Wants $21 Billion to Protect the Amazon Rainforest with No Strings Attached
On Friday, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva headlined an event to officially launch a new international fund that will raise money to protect the Amazon Rainforest. “We are conscious of what the Amazon represents for the world… It’s better for the country’s image to do things right, so we can walk in international forums with our heads high,” Lula pontificated.
It is hoped that the fund will raise up to 21 billion dollars over the next 13 years from nations around the world. Norway has already chipped in, pledging 100 million dollars to kick things off. Brazil has made it clear though that donations are only being accepted with a condition of no strings being attached. In other words, countries that donate money will have no say over how the money is used.
This stringent policy has its roots in resentment. Some Brazilians feel that they have been unfairly criticized by other countries for the deforestation of the Amazon. They claim that these nations often sit back and provide little in the means of help, or have their own environmental peccadilloes that make these slights toward Brazil’s conservation efforts hypocritical. Brazil’s Minister for Strategic Affairs, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, voiced this sentiment at the press conference: “The fund is a vehicle by which foreign governments can help support our initiatives without exerting any influence over our national policy. We are not going to trade sovereignty for money.”
According to one source, when carbon emissions from deforestation are included in the equation, Brazil ranks 4th worldwide in greenhouse emissions, only behind China, the United States, and Indonesia. The Amazon deforestation rate in Brazil has also increased somewhat this year. While Brazil is not the only country that contains the Amazon Rainforest within its borders, with 60% it does possess the largest single tract of the forest’s span. Eight other countries also contain parts of the Amazon, with Peru having the next largest piece of the pie at 13%. The difference percentage wise between the 1st and 2nd countries shows just how big of a player Brazil truly is when it comes to protecting the Amazon Rainforest.
The fund will be administered by a Brazilian bank owned by the government. The money will be used to support sustainable development projects like making condoms from rubber in trees, scientific research, and also to combat illegal logging. Whether or not the fund can attract donations remains to be seen– as well as Brazil’s ability to properly use the funds to sponsor legitimate efforts and research that will help to protect the Amazon. But the creation of the fund should be praised without doubt as an unequivocal step in the right direction for Brazil as leaders of conservation efforts in South America.
The Amazon Rainforest has been in the news quite a bit this year for several other reasons. The first photographs of a long-isolated tribe that live in the forest were released earlier this year, causing a media frenzy and false rumors of a hoax. The Brazilian Government’s plans to construct several new hydroelectric dams in the Amazon also came under scrutiny from numerous Brazilian tribes who claim they would be affected negatively by the dams.
Read More About the Amazon Rainforest on the Green Options Network:
Marriot Unveils Green Meetings to Help Save the Amazon Rainforest
Amazon Under Threat from Cleaner Air
“Justicia Now” Documents “Rainforest Chernobyl”
Photo Credit: laslzlo-photo on Flickr under a Creative Commons license
If Brazil is not able to protect the Amazon, it is because the Brazilian government is more concerned about protecting the interests of the elite who profit from its destruction, through land speculation, mining, logging, and the building of hydroelectric dams in the rainforest (for details, please see my blog http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/blog/glenn-switkes ). The donors would get better results by supporting environmentalists, social movements, and initiatives of indigenous peoples and river bank dwellers for improved management of rainforest resources, and equal justice in the Amazon.
It’s a tragedy to see any of it go.
We may be destroying the cure for cancer in that forest.
I am impressed that the Brazilian government was able to attain energy independence before most of the world was even talking about it. I think this may be a positive indicator of the administration of these donated funds. I don’t blame the Brazilian government for wanting to be free of foreign influence on domestic affairs. I applaud them for this initiative.
If its like any other South or Central American country, most of that money will find its way somewhere else. Such is the nature of foreign aid with no strings. Better to engage in trade not aid.
“This stringent policy has its roots in resentment. Some Brazilians feel that they have been unfairly criticized by other countries for the deforestation of the Amazon.”
What a load of BS. Why can’t environmental strings be attached, such as a stipulation that the money can only be used to help the environment as opposed to funding questionable organizations that purports to help the environment or even outright extramarital spending?
Some points of this article are not well explained:
1 - Amazonia is an old reserve of green with low cap of refill O². The most O² refilled on the world comes from the wather planctons, not from the Brazilian Trees. The core of these wolrdwide cares are focoused on the many treasures inside that forest (biodiversity, rare minerals, etc…).
2 - In fact there are many ilegal abuse of explorement on those fields. What the world dont want see is that the bigger explorers looking for medical solutions, rare mineriums, even petroleum are outside that country. If u get scared when u see a Brazilian map w/o Amazonian area, some truth are behind that reality. Japanese, Italian, French, Russian and American folks are the higher obtainers of privated area on that jungle.
3 - So, when Lula comes to tell that his govern have some care for that area, in fact they are not worry to “save the green” for “the most cleaner O²”. They are only avoiding lose that lands for other coutryes, that in fact they are losing at the moment in some other ways.
Wow that seems like a pretty good deal. Wish I had 21 Bil laying around to buy it!
JT
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
It is a shame that a country has to be bribed to do the right thing.
Just convince Mr. Warren Buffet, he alone has more than 21 billions, and he is actually giving away his fortune to the Gates Fundation…
Indonesia and Brazil are currently the world’s third and fourth highest greenhouse gas emitters, largely because of rainforest destruction.
However, both these countries have the potential to become world leaders in addressing the problems of climate change and environmental damage.
As stewards of the rainforests, these countries are standing on the threshold of an exciting new and beneficial industry, the rainforest preservation industry.
While all countries should be encouraged and recognized in some way for protecting their forests and preserving biodiversity, tropical rainforests are particularly precious carbon sinks.
Rainforests are vital for the world, so the world must pay for their preservation and management. This is not just about emissions, we must also cherish these rainforests as valuable ecosystems and bastions of biodiversity.
Some people might argue, “We can’t just pay these countries for doing nothing, for just leaving their rainforests standing”. But it’s not “payment for nothing”. It’s payment for preserving and managing a vital resource which is beneficial for the world, and compensation for development opportunities foregone.
Of course, it won’t necessarily be easy. There are many complex economic, social, conservation, forest management and governance issues to consider. But this issue needs to be addressed NOW, before the rainforests are all gone.
I hope an alliance of world leaders from developing and developed countries will urgently cooperate on this. We need political will and leadership at the very highest level to make this work.