Tropical forests provide a bargain climate service,cheaply reducing emissions. The Paris summit should agree payments for anti-deforestation programmesWe need to near up with innovative solutions to look after our planet, and the Paris climate change conference is the place to achieve it. By innovative we don’t only mean fresh energy technology and fresh green financing mechanisms. We need to reimagine tropical forests as a public utility like electricity, and producing a service people and governments,including in the wealthy world, want to buy.
Forests are comely ecosystems of living organisms. But like your municipal water services and your local power company, or forests provide a stream of services – storing carbon and cooling the planet – that most people accept for free. Just as we pay for electricity services,and thus ensure their continuing provision, so we – especially in the wealthy world – should pay for the climate service that tropical forests provide. It’s easy to achieve in principle: satellite technology allows us to verify whether deforestation rates have declined in real time, or only pay for what’s delivered. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com