Prince Charles calls for rainforest protection to fight climate change
Prince Charles calls for rainforest protection to fight climate change
mongabay.com
May 15, 2008
Ending the destruction of tropical rainforests is the simplest step to helping address climate change, said Prince Charles in an interview with the BBC.
Speaking on the BBC’s Today program, Charles said he supported the establishment a mechanism that would compensate tropical countries for preserving their forests. He noted that forests provide critical services for humanity.
“When you think [rainforests] release 20 billion tonnes of water vapor into the air every day, and also absorb carbon on a gigantic scale, they are incredibly valuable, and they provide the rainfall we all depend on,” Charles said.
“The trouble is the rainforests are home to something like 1.4 billion of the poorest people in the world. In order to survive there has to be an effort to produce things which tends to be at the expense of the rainforest,” he continued. “What we’ve got to do is try to ensure that those forests are more valuable alive than dead. At the moment there’s more value in them being dead. This is the crazy thing.”
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“Halting deforestation would be the easiest and cheapest way in helping in the battle against climate change,” said Charles, citing the 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change which showed that forest protection could be one of the most cost-effective ways to address greenhouse gas emissions.
The prince called on governments, business, and consumers to demand an end to rainforest destruction.
The prince’s comments come as European and Latin American ministers meet at a summit in Peru. Climate change and deforestation are expected to be hot topics at the discussions.
Advocates for ecosystem services payments have high hopes for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), a proposed policy mechanism that would compensate tropical countries for safeguarding their forests. While REDD was explicitly excluded from the Kyoto Protocol, policymakers meeting at climate talks in Bali last December signaled that forestry would play a role in future emissions mitigation schemes.
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