13.7 Billion Years: Trade Carbon, Save Orangutans

Monday, June 8, 2009

Trade Carbon, Save Orangutans

Carbon trading schemes that reduce greenhouse gas emissions may help save endangered wildlife too

A fifth of the world's global warming emissions are caused by the deforestation of rainforests due to agriculture, logging and human encroachment.

The United Nation's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plan (REDD) is a carbon trading scheme designed to protect these carbon-storing rainforests by having wealthy nations (that is, the world's big carbon emitters) pay native people of developing countries a certain amount for every hectare of rainforest that is not cut down.

Now, according to a ScienceDaily.com story, a new study by researchers at the University of Queensland has found that this payment scheme can also protect endangered wildlife such as Indonesia's orangutans and pygmy elephants.

"Countries with tropical forests, such as Indonesia, are pushing hard to develop. Part of this development involves clearing forests to make room for agriculture," said the study's lead author Oscar Venter.

"To them this makes sense, standing forests have had no value in the past, you can't sell orangutans and elephants on conservation markets, they don't exist. But carbon markets do exist and they traded US $126 billion in 2008."

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