Brazil Opposes UN Forestry Carbon Offsetting Scheme

Brazil opposed the idea that rich countries could offset their carbon emissions by funding tree preservation efforts in underdeveloped countries, its ambassador for climate change, Sergio Serra, announced at the Poznan UN conference on Thursday. The main reason for this refusal was the fact that, on one hand, rich countries would not be pressured in any way to reduce pollution and, on the other hand, land lords in tropical countries could just take the money and do nothing to preserve the trees.

Representatives of the indigenous populations, attending the December 1-12 UN talks in Poland, said that, first of all, international funding should be used to strengthen their ownership of the land, and then to eradicate corruption in areas where deforestation had the highest rate. In Brazil, for instance, despite efforts on the part of federal authorities, the amount of trees that were cut this year went up again, even more than in the last four years, when the trend seemed to level off.

As a counter-proposal, the South American nation proposed the implementation of an international funding program, where each state could deposit money in specially-created accounts that would fuel both the fight against illegal loggers and the existing efforts of preserving the rain forest. As an example, Brazil said that Norway had already pledged to fund its newly-developed Amazon Program with $1 billion, and argued that this example could offer valuable precedents for other countries as well.

"It should be open both for those who want to raise public money and for those who want to go to the (carbon) market. But it has to have the market aspect," Equatorial Guinea representative Deogracias Ikaka Nzamio told Reuters, adding that his country believed that both approaches to saving the forests could be combined, for maximum effects.

Coming to an agreement on the matter is essential for all nations as, each year, a patch of forest the size of Greece is cut down or burnt, a phenomenon that accounts for more than 20 percent of the total amount of greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere by human activities.