College of William and Mary professor J. Timmons Roberts sees a day when a landowner would get paid for the ecological value of leaving his forest stand rather than cutting it down.
In a recent Science magazine article, Roberts pushed the concept for owners of land in the Amazon rain forest. Rain forests act as sponges for carbon dioxide, making them a key component in regulating Earth's climate, but landowners are cutting down swaths of the Amazon to create massive soybean farms and ranches.
To the landowners clearing their piece of rain forest, the deforestation is a matter of economics: Their property is more valuable as productive farmland, no matter the worldwide concern about the ecological value of the Amazon's ecosystem and its role in regulating climate change.
But to Roberts, acting director of the program in Environmental Science and Policy, not clearing the land could also be a matter of economics.
As countries around the globe look more seriously at limiting carbon dioxide emissions to slow global warming, the concept of establishing a market to buy carbon credits continues to surface.
The way Roberts and others see it, as industrialized countries like the U.S. move toward meeting a certain cap on carbon dioxide emissions, they could partially meet their goal by paying to keep the carbon dioxide-absorbing rain forest healthy.
"The concept is basically that wealthy nations would pay for the services provided by an intact rain forest," Roberts said. "In essence, we will be paying for carbon dioxide not released by deforestation, as well as carbon dioxide absorbed by the forest."
One way to do that, Roberts said, would be to pay Amazon landowners not to cut down their forest. The price would have to at least equal what the land would earn as cropland and from timber.
The landowner would not lose out, as might be the case if an environmental policy simply banned rain forest logging. And the countries seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would make some progress by preventing the destruction of an important carbon sink.
This mechanism also provides some balance in the dicey political situation of industrialized nations putting environmental restrictions on developing nations that might constrain economic growth.
The trick, Roberts said, will be to create a system where the money goes to small landowners and not to a corrupt government. Not to mention getting a multitude of countries to agree on how this market would work.
After the international climate change meetings in Bali in December, which Roberts attended, many countries seemed to show more interest in adopting such a system, Roberts said.
"The first obstacle is funding," he said. "This is really where the climate change impasse comes down. Are we willing to pay for what developing countries need to do?"
The system would only be fair, Roberts said, if the money goes to the landowners who are opting not to turn their forest into productive cropland.
"We've got to find ways to make sure money gets to the people who are making decisions on the ground," he said. "This is very tricky. It is going to require a lot of accountability mechanisms."
Roberts' article appeared in the online version of Science in late November. He co-authored the piece with experts from Brazil and the United Kingdom.Daily Press
