The best way to save the rainforest?

08 June 2012

In recent years a plethora of projects have appeared to save the rainforest from destruction. It is possible to buy a section of forest or pay landowners a sum of money not to chop it down. But how effective are these methods in stopping global warming when the real villain of the piece is the Western world’s excessive consumption? Torsten Krause, a doctoral student in sustainability science, has posed these questions. He is studying a ‘save the rainforest’ project in Ecuador.

In Ecuador, the Government has been running the Socio Bosque project for the past three years. The idea is that those who own the rainforest, often the indigenous population, receive money from the Government in return for a commitment not to touch the forest for 20 years. It is an extensive project. The aim is for it to cover 15 per cent of the country, affecting 1 million people.

Torsten Krause has spent two years travelling to and from Ecuador to interview the population in various villages out in the rainforest.
“It is particularly interesting to study what consequences a project of this type has for the indigenous people”, he says.

As no two communities are alike, there is no one universal answer. Whether or not the government funding benefits the population depends on the leaders of the village or community. In some cases the village has made a collective decision to take part in Socio Bosque and the compensation for not cutting down the rainforest benefits everyone. In other villages there is widespread corruption and the villagers do not understand the point of the project.

Another problem is that young villagers who want to continue using the rainforest in a traditional manner are prevented from doing so because they are not allowed to clear any new ground.
Torsten Krause conducts his research in close collaboration with the Ecuadorian Government. As a doctoral student in sustainability science, he tries to both study the project and guide it in the right direction.

“Sometimes the project managers get annoyed when I criticise what they do, but it is also easier for someone coming in from outside to gain a hearing for new ideas”, he says.

The ‘save the rainforest’ projects really took off after the UN climate change conference in 2005. The aim was to put a price tag on the huge quantities of carbon dioxide that are stored in the rainforest. It was argued that if developing countries were to reduce logging, financial incentives were needed.

“This type of project became very popular because it was seen as a good, cheap way to reduce the greenhouse effect”, says Torsten Krause.

Now, many drawbacks are emerging. One problem is that money is paid to ‘the bad guys’, i.e. to those responsible for the destruction, to make them stop.

This can create an incentive for those who do not destroy the rainforest to start doing so. Another problem is that many projects do not take biodiversity into account. The express target is the forest’s carbon dioxide storage and the projects often make no distinction between whether it is stored in fast-growing energy forest or in natural rainforest.

Nevertheless, the greatest problem, in the view of Torsten Krause, is the failure to consider that it is Western consumption which is the main villain of the piece.

“As long as demand in the West remains insatiable, the destruction of the rainforests will continue. If one country stops cutting down its forests, another country will simply increase its logging. The result will be a rise in temperatures.”
Ulrika Oredsson

Footnote
Torsten Krause and political scientist Tobias Dan Nielsen presented research about how a global environmental policy could influence local reality at a major social sciences environmental conference at Lund University in April. The conference was organised by the Earth System Governance project, a 10-year research programme coordinated by Lund University.

Torsten Krause has spent two years travelling to and from Ecuador to interview the population in various villages out in the rainforest.