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Cheap REDD isn't the best conservation strategy for biodiversity Rhett Butler, mongabay.com December 03, 2009 Oscar Venter, a doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland, and colleagues, evaluated the prospects for REDD on a global scale and found the cheapest way to reduce deforestation by 20 percent would exclude critical biodiversity hotspots that support a large proportion of the world's endangered species. Looking strictly at the cost-effectiveness of forest conservation, the researchers conclude that most conservation funding would go to the Amazon, where large tracts of unprotected forest can be conserved relatively inexpensively. By comparison, Asia, which houses the bulk of the planet's threatened species and is experiencing large-scale forest destruction by loggers and palm oil producers, would miss out due to its high opportunity cost for conservation. In other words, in Asia the very practices that are driving deforestation increase the cost of REDD implementation. The region's biodiversity could lose out.
"Dollar for dollar, a carbon-focused approach contributes little to slowing biodiversity loss and will save far fewer species than a biodiversity-focused strategy that targets the most imperiled forests," said Venter.
"If we're smart we could combat global warming while saving some of the most endangered wildlife on Earth," added William Laurancee, senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and distinguished professor at James Cook University. "Billions of dollars will be spent on forest-carbon initiatives in the next decade, and this could translate into huge benefits for vanishing species if we focus some of the spending in places where tropical biodiversity is most imperiled." CITATION: Oscar Venter, William F. Laurance, Takuya Iwamura, Kerrie A. Wilson, Richard A. Fuller, Hugh P. Possingham. Harnessing Carbon Payments to Protect Biodiversity. 4 DECEMBER 2009 VOL 326 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
Tags: biodiversity redd avoided deforestation carbon finance carbon conservation asia amazon conservation rainforests forests southeast asia green environment Environmental news index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements:
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