planetary formulas
The United Nations, the
World Bank and many international conservation organizations advocate for
making the world’s forests economically equivalent with industrial activity.
The theory is that by putting a price on carbon, the global economy could preserve the world's forests, balancing global industrial pollution with the “carbon services” provided by ecosystems.
The planet is thus visualized as a continuous economic
system, in which carbon becomes a currency.
When did our planet become an economist?
When did our planet become an economist?
natural capital??
carbon finance?
Viewed in economic terms, carbon finance is not based on the
value of forests that are actually standing, but on the “baseline,” or the
value over time of the carbon in forests that have already been cut down.
To produce carbon credits, models use the difference between a baseline and a reduced rate of deforestation, sometimes called “additionality.”
The number of credits that can be made becomes a matter of working out property arrangement on this “lesser negative."
So carbon credits only represent the value land use conversion from forests to pasture or to plantations.
temporalities to consider
The Amazon forest evolved into what it is today over millions of years. But much of the Amazon, in less than one hundred years, could become a savannah. The Sahara desert, just thousands of years ago, was a savannah itself.
The Amazon forest evolved into what it is today over millions of years. But much of the Amazon, in less than one hundred years, could become a savannah. The Sahara desert, just thousands of years ago, was a savannah itself.
thin air vs. factories on four legs
To exist, carbon credits need satellites, GIS technicians, carbon modelers, conservation organizations, international contacts, lawyers, and state regulatory and industrial agencies.
In other words, it is so costly to finance carbon that only projects that are able to demonstrate “carbon credits” in very large quantities bother to try.
Meanwhile, bank financing for cattle ranches and plantations in Mato Grosso reaches upward of a billion dollars each year.
On larger ranches in the Amazon, the cattle industry is financed through bank issued loans at easy interest. Cattle are easy to account for in financial terms.
caught between scales
Many families moved to the Amazon less then twenty years ago, under
the sponsorship of the federal government, which authorized the distribution of small plots of land for
poor families migrating to the interior.
On remote forest frontiers, they struggle to maintain a livelihood. Cattle are the least risk commodity to produce.
International conservation and media organizations tend to
perceive settlers as an environmental scourge, confusing their presence with a
larger deforestation dynamic driven by banks, large ranches and plantations.
Some farmers have been able to maintain forest gardens producing many products at once: heart of palm, coffee, cacao, açai fruit, and teak wood.
Some farmers have been able to maintain forest gardens producing many products at once: heart of palm, coffee, cacao, açai fruit, and teak wood.
what the satellites can't see
With institutional help, a settlement can work out alternative ways to make a living.
Over the course of a decade, technical attention helped this settlement build its own cooperative factory for producing oil, flour, pasta and cookies from Brazil nuts.
Brazil nuts are harvested from the settlement’s collective forest reserve, or are purchased from indigenous communities in the region who arrive by the Juruena river.
The oil is sold to the Natura cosmetics company in São Paolo, thousands of kilometers away.
Pasta, flour and cookies are sold to a federal school lunch program.
Today, California’s cap and trade market has the highest price for carbon in the world.
In 2009, Mato Grosso and California entered into a memorandum of understanding in order to trade of carbon credits between sub-national states.
In the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil, cattle ranching has expanded into the Amazon rainforest more rapidly than anywhere else in the country.
Recently, however, the rate of deforestation has dropped, and today the state of Mato Grosso and conservation organizations are hoping to capitalize on the decreased rate of deforestation as a carbon credit.
Mato Grosso's politics are dominated by large ranches and plantations, and many property owners hope to participate in carbon trades between the two states.
