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Amazon sold online — to protect it

How do you save the Amazon rainforest? Easy. All you need is a bit of cash and a computer. Then go to the site of Cool Earth and, with a click of the mouse, you can “add to cart” half an acre of endangered rainforest for just £35. Cool Earth claims this will keep locked up 130 tonnes of carbon dioxide and protect 400 unique species. So far, the site says, more than 31,000 acres have been saved.

One of Cool Earth’s main supporters is Johan Eliasch, the Swedish-born businessman chosen by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to be his forest adviser, with the task of looking at mechanisms that stimulate “deforestation avoidance.” Besides selling the odd half-acre on the website, Mr. Eliasch says he is persuading fellow millionaires to follow his example by buying chunks of rainforest.

But is this really the best way to save the rainforest? Brazilians, especially the military, have always been touchy about foreign designs on the Amazon. And news that foreigners are buying up large swathes of their rainforest, for whatever reason, has infuriated Amazonians. In Manaus, the capital of Amazonas State, the director of one NGO involved with small-scale sustainable development projects says: “Johan Eliasch is not welcome here.”

The problem with Mr. Eliasch’s “green colonialism” is the implication that Brazilians are not capable of saving the rainforest from destruction, and ignoring the many organisations already in the field, particularly those of the original inhabitants of the rainforest. Yanomami Indian leader Davi Kopenawa, on a visit to Britain to raise support for indigenous health needs, said the forest could not be bought. “It is our life; we have always protected it.”

He is not alone. The Alliance of Forest Peoples, which represents indigenous groups and the many communities that live sustainably from the forest, says the way to save the forest is to protect the indigenous and extractive reserves, where satellite data show deforestation has largely been held at bay so far. Indigenous reserves alone cover a fifth of the Brazilian Amazon.

For the many environmental organisations with years of experience in Amazon campaigning, the answer is to stop all deforestation. Nine of the biggest green NGOs and leading Brazilian organisations have put forward a seven-year plan to reduce deforestation to zero by 2015. An area the size of France — almost a fifth of Brazil’s Amazon region — has been deforested, mostly in the last 40 years.

Zero deforestation would bring a huge reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions that make Brazil one of the top five climate polluters in the world, and stop the loss of biodiversity. The NGOs believe the key is economic, so that standing forest has more value than what may replace it. They want the government’s generous financial incentives, historically channelled into destructive practices such as cattle ranching and crops, to be redirected to “environmental services” — a plan that is supported by three of the nine state governors of the Amazon region.

Of course, the key player is the Brazilian government, and the problem is that it speaks with many voices. Rainfall in Brazil’s major agricultural regions is influenced by the rainforest. Destroying the Amazon could trigger drought in other regions and seriously affect crops. That vital connection is about to be made clear — with discreet but vital support from the U.K. Government — in a report called the Economics of Climate Change. “It will be a sort of Brazilian version of the Stern report,” says an informed insider.

Almost 20 per cent of the Amazon rainforest has already been cleared, and scientists believe that 40 per cent is the tipping point. The race against time to find ways of stopping deforestation has begun.

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