PRIVATISING THE RAINFOREST
by Liam Young
IN
December the World Bank added to it’s so called
Clean Development Mechanism a plan to slow down
deforestation.
The World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility
(FCPF) has been set up to entice poor nations
to include their tropical forests in the international
carbon market after 2012.
This will provide polluters with an opportunity
to avoid reducing emissions in their own countries
by buying cheap credits from poorer nations.
As for the poorer countries with tropical rainforests
they will see the privatisation of forests, the
destruction of local communities and the trashing
of indigenous peoples rights.
The World Bank revealed it’s
true interests in the tropical forests earlier
this year when it spent large sums of money on
cattle ranching and Soya production.
These industries are acknowledged as being two
of the worst threats to the rainforests of the
Amazon.
In one project they donated $9billion dollars
to
This despite an environmental study that had shown
expansion of a single slaughterhouse in Maraba
would lead to 300,000 acres of rainforest being
destroyed.
The Amazon basin is home to one in ten mammals,
15 per cent of all the Earth’s plant-life, and
holds half the world’s fresh water.
All this is threatened by vast tracks of land
being cleared for cattle ranching, Soya production
to grow animal feed and sugar cane production
for bio-fuels.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that the Amazon
could be completely eradicated by fire and drought
by 2030.
The world is losing forests the size of
This process of deforestation accounts for a fifth
of all carbon emissions.
The measure the World Bank is proposing is supposed
to encourage poor countries to conserve their
forests by setting up a carbon trading market
with the industrialized countries.
The plan will work in two ways. Firstly it will
provide tools needed to measure the carbon content
of forests in order to establish their value on
the carbon market.
Secondly the FCPF will offer money to countries
to encourage a series of pilot schemes that will
see countries being compensated for their ‘carbon
reservoirs’.
This will generate pollution rights that the governments
of the poorer nations can sell to northern industries
allowing them to carry on polluting.
The World Bank plan will be organized at a national
government level and will have no participation
from local communities.
Indigenous peoples whose livelihoods and cultures
depend on the forests will be sidelined.
Already there has been lobbying of donor countries
to persuade them to legalize and institutionalise
the global carbon trading markets.
Advocates of the scheme include a number of carbon
finance companies eager to make big money out
of the carbon trade.
Any expansion of the schemes will see governments
rushing for the cash, as there will be hundreds
of millions of dollars up for grabs.
Carbon trading stocks on the international market
will never solve the problem of climate change.
The World Bank is committed to capitalism an economic
system that turns living nature into dead commodities
in order to make a profit.
The FCPF deforestation plan will only lead to
the enclosure of forests as private firms evict
forest dwellers and indigenous communities in
order to make a killing.
This is an example of the World Bank representing
the financial interests of the rich by using land
already supporting the lives of local communities
to create carbon sinks that allow the major industrial
companies to simply buy a license to pollute.
Until the needs of people and communities are
placed before that of companies making profits
then the environment of the planet will continue
to be threatened.