RFUK welcomes Prince of Wales call to fight deforestation
As rainforests hit the headlines with Prince Charles underlining his commitment to fighting deforestation, the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) is arguing that any bid to save rainforests must put local people first.
The BBC devoted the whole of Thursday to debating “the struggle between the needs of local people to exploit the rainforest and the global need to preserve the rainforests.”
While the Prince of Wales announced that if we do not tackle deforestation now we will have to answer to future generations and called on businesses and politicians to come together in search of a solution.
Speaking on the BBC Today show, RFUK director Simon Counsell welcomed Prince Charles’ renewed efforts to protect rainforests, and argued that it is vital that any measures put the interests of local people first.
Earlier he said: "Business has an important role to play in tackling deforestation and finding new ways of financing rainforest protection. But a big challenge is the lack of political willing in some tropical countries. We hope that His Highness can galvanise a new determination to tackle the underlying causes of deforestation, such as unequal and insecure rights to land, and poverty amongst the many millions of people living in and around the forests. The evidence shows that the best way to protect rainforests is to put them in the hands of the people that have always lived in them."
Tropical rainforests contain many billions of tonnes of carbon, which is released into the atmosphere when forests are destroyed. Since Sir Nicholas Stern argued that tackling the destruction of the rainforests may be one of the quickest and most cost effective means of reducing emissions in the short term, momentum has been building around fighting climate change by saving rainforests.
But Counsell is doubtful about some of the schemes proposed for ‘compensation payments’ to try and prevent deforestation by keeping the carbon locked up in forests.
He said: "We believe there are dangers of bringing ‘avoided deforestation’ credits into the global carbon markets, as this could flood the market with credits, drive down the price of carbon, and potentially make pollution abatement in industrialised countries uneconomic.
"There are also serious doubts as to who exactly would receive carbon credit payments, especially when most people who are responsible for either destroying or protecting rainforests have no legal claim to the forest.
"Decision makers should also be wary of backing schemes that trade in eco-system services or in the carbon that is stored in them. Rather than relying on exotic and complicated new international carbon trading schemes, we believe that the best way of protecting forests is to give local people stronger rights over the environment they depend on, and encouraging them with aid and loans to develop new enterprises and livelihoods based on sustainable forest management."
