British Airways announces new green initiative

British Airways has launched a new carbon offset scheme initiative this week which will see the airline backing deforestation prevention in Brazil and research into the effects of aircraft’s non-carbon emissions. The carrier’s new initiative is UN certified and will help to finance clean energy projects in developing countries.

Monetary funds offered by customers off setting flight emissions will be supporting a new windfarm in one of the poorest regions of China, as well as river run hydro electric plants in China and Brazil.

British Airways’ offset scheme will also soon be accompanied by further projects to reduce carbon emissions, including projects to help protect the Brazilian rainforest and working with Cambridge University which will aim to establish scientific understanding of the non-C02 effects of aviation by 2012.

“We were the first airline to offer carbon offsets, and we intend to remain at the forefront in this area,” said Silla Maizey, head of corporate responsibility.

“We need a broad response to climate change: controlling our emissions with cleaner aircraft, the inclusion of aviation in emissions trading and the setting of tough international emissions targets...Offsetting is closely related to emissions trading. It is valuable in itself and improves general understanding of how carbon trading works.”

http://www.etravelblackboard.com/index.asp?id=73731&nav=130

Pressures build on Amazon jungle

The Amazon is not just a precious resource for Brazil but for the entire world, and the year ahead seems likely to produce important indications of what the future holds for this vast rainforest.

The scale of the challenge is widely acknowledged.

In the past 40 years, close to 20% of the Amazon has been cut down.

Land cleared for cattle is the leading cause of deforestation, while the growth in soya bean production is becoming increasingly significant. Illegal logging is also a factor.

Deforestation and forest fires are now responsible for nearly 75% of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions.

In the past three years the Brazilian government has celebrated a 59% cut in the rate of deforestation, but there are now signs of problems ahead.

Fines

In December, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said there had been a 10% increase in deforestation between August and November 2007 and announced a range of measures to try to stem this.

The president signed a decree imposing fines for buying or trading goods such as beef or soya planted illegally on deforested properties.

Several hundred federal police are to be sent to the area to help combat environmental destruction, joining more than 1,600 inspectors already there.

In recent years the government says it has carried out numerous inspections, seized more than one million cubic metres of wood, cancelled thousands of land registrations and arrested hundreds of people, as well as creating large conservation areas.

At the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, last month, Brazil also announced the creation of a voluntary fund to protect the Amazon, due to be launched in 2008.

Growing concern

On a broader international front, it was also agreed at Bali that forest conservation would be included in discussions about a future agreement on global warming.

The new measures may be a sign of growing government concern, and it will only become clear in the months ahead just how effective they will prove to be in the struggle to protect the Amazon.

Environmental groups, while welcoming the government's efforts, say the response is simply not good enough.

Critics had already warned that recent falls in deforestation could be explained by a drop in market prices for products such as soya and meat, and that once these rose again land clearance would start to increase.

"We have a national plan to fight deforestation that, historically, was a good plan on paper but lacked implementation both due to political will and due to resources," said Marcelo Furtado, campaigns director for Greenpeace in Brazil.

"Although the government could celebrate in recent years a decrease in deforestation, the fact is that structurally this didn't change.

"The environment ministry still lacks funding. You still have situations where the police don't have a helicopter to fly over a certain area or there is no fuel in the truck to go to verify if an area is being deforested or not. You still have a problem with availability of maps," Mr Furtado said.

"The tools to decrease deforestation and monitor implementation of the law are still not good enough."

Frontier mentality

That concern is reflected by John Carter, director of Alianca da Terra, a group that promotes environmental awareness in land management.

Mr Carter, however, has a different perspective on the causes and how the problem needs to be addressed.

"Most of the environmental groups are concentrating on the law and why the law is not being upheld and they mysteriously forget this is a frontier and no-one ever upheld the law in any frontier in Europe or the United States, anywhere," he says.

He believes giving producers incentives to reduce the impact on the forest will prove more effective than traditional conservation methods.

The results of failure can be seen in the thick smoke of forest fires being used to clear land.

"I would easily say [2007] was one of the worst years I have seen in 11 years living here," said Mr Carter, who was born in the US but moved here with his Brazilian wife.

"I flew with several different people at several different times in September and October and I couldn't see the end of my wings, I couldn't see the ground.

"I tried to land in the Xingu park [in Mato Grosso]... I couldn't... I couldn't see the runway. I was flying 300 ft (91m) above the forest and couldn't even see it."

Responsibility

Andre Lima, a senior official at the environment ministry with responsibility for the Amazon says it will be difficult to keep deforestation in 2008 down to the level achieved in 2007, especially given the growing market pressures.

But he believes the presidential decree will force a wider range of people to address these concerns.

"What is important to do is to share out responsibility for illegal deforestation," he says.

"The responsibility is not only with the farmers involved at the forefront, but it is the chain of production that buys from them as well. The big soya companies, the meat storage plants that have set up there and know there is no authorisation for deforestation in the area.

"They have to assume a share of the responsibility."

The next few months will be a test of that resolve, but there seems to be a growing recognition on all sides that the Amazon faces another testing period.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7186776.stm

Amazon deforestation surging due to oil, soy prices

A Brazilian scientist has confirmed that forest clearing in the Amazon rainforest has surged in recent months, according to Reuters.

Carlos Nobre, a scientist with Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, which tracks Amazon deforestation, told a seminar in Washington that deforestation "is going to be much higher than 2007."

Nobre said that 2,300 square miles of forest had been cleared in the past four months, compared with 3,700 square miles in the 12 months ended this past July 31. The Brazilian government had championed the 2006-2007 numbers — the lowest annual forest loss since the 1970s — as a sign that enforcement efforts were working in the region, but scientists said the decline was more likely a temporary one tied to slowing global commodity prices. As soy and cattle prices have risen in recent months, the number of fires and apparent forest clearing have also increased.

Brazilian satellite data show a marked increase in the number of fires and deforestation in the region. The states of Para and Mato Grosso -- the heart of Brazil's booming agricultural frontier -- both experienced a 50 percent or more increase in forest loss over the same period last year coupled with a large jump in burning: a 39-85 percent jump in the number of fires in Para during the July-September burning period and 100-127 percent rise in Mato Grosso, depending on the satellite. More broadly, the 50,729 fires recorded by the Terra satellite and 72,329 measured by the AQUA satellite across the Brazilian Amazon are the highest on record based on available data going back to 2003 (the NMODIS-01D satellite suggests 2005 burning was higher but still shows a 54 percent jump since last year). Reports from the ground indicated that burning was indeed very last fall.

Satellite imagery from NASA indicates that much of the burning late last year was concentrated around two major Amazon roads: Trans-Amazon highway in the state of Amazonas, and the unpaved portion of the BR-163 Highway in the state of Pará. Scientists have long warned that the roads would drive deforestation in the area by encouraging settlement and development.

"Infrastructure is associated with aggressive and progressive land use change," said Nobre, noting that 90 percent of Amazon deforestation occurred within 30 miles of roads, according to Reuters.

Nobre also said that high oil prices would create further pressure on the Amazon for biofuel production.

"If oil prices keep increasing there will be an explosion of biofuel production in the Amazon," he said.

Nobre's comments come shortly after Brazilian Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes told Reuters that Brazil would need at least a decade before it could stop deforestation resulting from its fast-growing agriculture business.

"Today Brazil has the conscience not to cut down trees to increase its production," he was quoted as saying. "The government has decided -- no more deforestation. Now, it will be at least a decade before the policies are in place and working."

Stephanes told Reuters that Brazilian agriculture would grow by recovering 50 million hectares (124 million acres) of degraded pasture land as well as converting 50 million hectares of cerrado, a grassland ecosystem bordering the Amazon rainforest. Critics say that landowners often bribe officials to classify forest land as cerrado so they can clear it for pasture and soy farms.

http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0117-amazon.html

Blacklist for main perpetrators of Amazon deforestation

Ibama, Brazil’s national environmental protection agency, has stated that a process is underway to identify the perpetrators of the greatest amount of deforestation in the Amazon region and place them on a 'blacklist' similar to one created for companies that have used forced labour.

Ibama’s environmental protection director, Flávio Montiel, revealed that the fifty worst offenders in Pará, Mato Grosso and Rondônia (the three states that account for more than 80% of Amazon deforestation) have already been identified. As well as entering the blacklist, which will be released during the first half of 2008, they will receive ‘administrative, penal and civil’ sanctions.

The blacklist is being compiled by the Permanent Group for Environmental Responsibility, created by President Lula in December last year and co-ordinated by the Ministry of the Environment.

Ibama’s strategy against Amazon deforestation includes seventeen monitoring stations using geoprocessing technology with satellite images.

Montiel also stressed the government’s commitment to fostering sustainable productive activities in the Amazon region by offering low-interest credit.

Source: Agência Brasil and Embassy of Brazil in London

Royal support for rainforest effort

Britain's Prince Charles has offered to team up with Norway in projects to save forests around the world.

The Prince of Wales's offer to Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg followed Norway's announcement earlier this month that it aimed to provide about NOK 3 billion (USD 541.2 million) per year to prevent deforestation in developing countries.

Charles, who has said saving the world's rainforests is key to combating global warming, sent a letter to Stoltenberg suggesting that his Rainforests Project send representatives to Norway to discuss ways to cooperate, a spokesman at the prime minister's office said.

Stoltenberg said Norway would be glad to receive them and is willing to work with all who want to put systems and regulations in place to halt deforestation.

Norway has said that fighting deforestation is a quick and low-cost way to achieve cuts in greenhouse gas emissions blamed by scientists for global warming, in addition to maintaining biodiversity and securing people's livelihoods.

Norway has said that commitments to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing nations should be included in a global climate change regime from 2012 and that it will work to develop funding and certification systems to promote the effort.

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2168603.ece

More than half of Amazon will be lost by 2030, report warns

Climate change could speed up the large-scale destruction of the Amazon rainforest and bring the "point of no return" much closer than previously thought, conservationists warned today.

Almost 60% of the region's forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030, as a result of climate change and deforestation, according to a report published today by WWF.

The damage could release somewhere between 55.5bn-96.9bn tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the Amazon's forests and speed up global warming, according to the report, Amazon's Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire.

Trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging could severely damage 55% of the Amazon rainforest by 2030, the report says. And, in turn, climate change could speed up the process of destruction by reducing rainfall by as much as 10% by 2030, damaging an extra 4% of the forests during that time.

By the end of the century, global warming is likely to reduce rainfall by 20% in eastern Amazonia, pushing up temperatures by more than 2C and causing forest fires, the report said.

Destroying almost 60% of tropical rainforest by 2030 would do away with one of the key stabilisers of the global climate system, it warned.

Such damage could have a knock-on effect on rainfall in places such as central America and India, and would also destroy livelihoods for indigenous people and some 80% of habitats for animal species in the region.

The "point of no return", in which extensive degradation of the rainforest occurs and conservation prospects are greatly reduced, is just 15-25 years away - much sooner than some models suggest, the report warns.

Releasing the report at the UN conference in Bali, which aims to begin negotiations on a new international climate change deal, the WWF called for a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and stop deforestation.

Beatrix Richards, the head of forests at WWF-UK, said: "The Amazon is on a knife-edge due to the dual threats of deforestation and climate change.

"Developed countries have a key role to play in throwing a lifeline to forest around the world. At the international negotiations currently underway in Bali governments must agree a process which results in ambitious global emission reduction targets beyond the current phase of Kyoto which ends in 2012.

"Crucially this must include a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and help break the cycle of deforestation."

The report's author, Dan Nepstead, senior scientist at the Woods Hole research centre in Massachusetts, said: "The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature but such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that it's a massive store of carbon."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/06/conservation.endangeredhabitats

Brazil cracks down on illegal soy, cattle production in the Amazon

The Brazilian government launched a new initiative to slow deforestation in the Amazon, setting the stage for the country to potentially earn billions from carbon trading schemes set in motion two weeks ago at the U.N. climate meeting in Bali.

Last Friday Brazil announced a ban on the sale of farm products from illegally deforested areas in the Amazon in an attempt to slow deforestation and forest fires that have increased in recent months due to surging commodity prices fueled by American corn ethanol subsidies and rising demand from China and other emerging markets for livestock feed. The presidential decree imposes fines and threatens credit access to landowners for buying or trading soy, beef, and other products produced on illegally deforested lands, according to Reuters.

To support the effort, Brazil said it will create a landholder registry and send 700 more federal police to the region, parts of which have seen violent disputes over land. Land owners who fail to register for the new program will no longer be eligible for government loans and other benefits, according to the Associated Press (AP).

"This registry will permit us to create a common database which will permit us to identify the rural areas which require action against deforestation," the AP quoted Environment Minister Marina Silva as saying at a news conference in Brasilia.

Brazil has some of the toughest environmental regulations in the world — by law 80 percent of a landowner's property must be left forested — but they are haphazardly enforced in the Amazon. A slow approvals process--for permits ranging from scientific research to development--has been blamed for fueling endemic corruption and a "Wild West" mentality in the region.

The reasons for land-clearing in the Amazon are compelling: cheap land, low labor costs, and booming demand for commodities. These factors, combined with an improved variety of soybean and financial stability, have helped Brazil become an agricultural superpower — the world’s largest exporter of beef, cotton, and sugar, among other products — in less than a generation. Amazon landowners have seen their land values double every 4-5 years in areas that just a decade ago were pristine rainforests.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by more than 60 percent between 2004 and 2007.

Given this landscape some believe the only way to address deforestation is through market mechanisms, like those proposed by the Brazilian government Friday.

John Cain Carter, founder of Aliança da Terra, a pioneering conservation organization working in Mato Grosso in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon's agricultural frontier, says that by giving producers incentives to reduce their impact on the forest, the market can succeed where traditional conservation efforts have failed.

"Aliança da Terra is based on the concept of market acceptance for sustainable agricultural production in the Brazilian Amazon. We're presently focused on beef, which is the largest driver of deforestation in the Amazon, though we're also working with other products including soy," Carter told mongabay.com. "We're setting up an accrediting mechanism that will help responsible landowners gain access to markets and get the best price for their products... The landowners like our system because they have a say in the creation of standards and a vested interest in making it economically viable."

New source of funding for rainforest conservation

Brazil's efforts to reduce deforestation could pay off in the international carbon trading market. December 14th, delegates at the U.N. COP-13 climate meeting in Bali, Indonesia agreed to support Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanisms for fighting climate change. By some estimates the scheme could send tropical countries tens of billions of dollars per year for forest conservation efforts.

http://news.mongabay.com/2007/1224-brazil.html