IF US REPRESENTATIVE Ed Markey of Massachusetts has his way, poor countries in Africa, Asia, and South America will soon send emissaries to far-flung forest hamlets to compensate villagers and sustainable farmers who do not cut down the trees. This is one of the most laudable, if overlooked, goals in the climate bill recently passed by the House, co-authored by Markey and Henry Waxman of California.
The bill sets aside 5 percent of pollution permits to fight deforestation in developing nations. Deforestation, caused by everything from crude charcoal production for the poor to hi-tech global agribusiness, accounts for 20 percent of the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming - “more than all the transportation modes in the world: cars, trucks, trains, airplanes,’’ testified Stuart Eizenstat, the US climate change negotiator for former President Clinton, in a House hearing in March.
Trees are often called the lungs of the planet, recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. But with trees currently more valuable either as fuel or furniture or simply seen as deadwood to developers and farmers, low-income nations are losing forest cover at a rate that will result in massive desertification in this century. The side effects, such as increases in malaria in countries that struggle to control current levels of infectious diseases, are likely to be dreadful.
The House bill will help. Under current estimates, anti-deforestation funds could add up to $65 billion by 2025. “If the US can provide leadership along with Europe to help finance this,’’ Markey said in an interview, “it would not only reduce deforestation, but be profitable for the indigenous peoples of these countries.’’
Markey understands the problem well. The chair of the House’s Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, he last year led a bipartisan congressional delegation to the
The peril of climate change is only one of many reasons to protect forests. Biodiversity is another; earlier this month, a new subspecies of monkey was discovered in the Amazon. In protecting such areas, Markey’s bill would align the interests of heavily forested countries with those of all countries threatened by global warming.
The payments would go to people in countries that devise national climate-change strategies and agree to on-site and satellite monitoring of forests. Eizenstat told the House, “We cannot solve climate change without forests.’’ Credit Markey and the House for proving an old adage wrong: If a tree falls in a far-distant forest, some people on Capitol Hill can still hear the crash.
