Carbon Ranching?

IN an op-ed piece in the NY Times, Sat, June 16th, Willam Powerss and Gelnn Hurowitz write about the need for "Carbon Ranching" and the economic value of land conservation. In their words:

"Its survival is the fruit of one of the first experiments in carbon ranching: allowing polluters to make up for their greenhouse gas emissions by paying third world countries like Madagascar to preserve their tropical forests.

Programs like this represent the world’s best hope to save vanishing tropical forests and avert global climate catastrophe.

Reversing tropical deforestation could be surprisingly cheap and easy because it can be driven by simple economics. Right now, it’s worth more to a logging company or a peasant to convert the rainforest to stumps or soybeans than it is to leave that rainforest intact. One hectare (about 2.5 acres) of forest cleared and converted to ranchland or crops produces a piece of land worth, on average, $200 to $500. But that’s nothing compared to the value of preserving the rainforest as a sponge for carbon dioxide.

On European markets, the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide trades today at more than $20. With each hectare of intact rainforest storing around 500 tons of carbon dioxide, that means that each hectare has a value of $10,000 as carbon dioxide storage, far more than the value of even the most productive tea or soy plantation.

As a recent World Bank report put it, “Farmers are destroying a $10,000 asset to create one worth $200.” To the farmer or agribusiness corporation, of course, that makes perfect sense, because that $10,000 is all theoretical. It can’t put food on the table or deliver dividends to shareholders."

Amen brothers.