Prince Charles and Greenpeace address tropical forest emergency

It might seem unlikely to have Greenpeace and Prince Charles working towards the same goals, but when it comes to preserving rainforests new alliances have been forged as the Prince has used his royal mojo to assemble world leaders, business dignitaries and NGOs to come up with a plan to halt tropical deforestation.

At the moment, there's no global agreement in place to prevent tropical deforestation, and as a result we're losing rainforests at an alarming rate. While in the past rainforests have been cleared because of pressure to provide land for logging and subsistence farming, now deforestation is being accelerated by rapidly increasing demand for land to farm commercial crops like soya, palm oil, and cattle.

Greenpeace forest campaigners have been helping the Foundation figure out what an urgent programme to try and reduce tropical deforestation might look like - a scheme designed to have an effect within the next few years. The resulting report - an ‘emergency package for tropical forests,' suggests creating agreements between rich countries and ‘rainforest countries' to halt deforestation.

The plan is to make it in the financial and developmental interests of rainforest countries to preserve forests rather than cut them down. Rich countries will financially support countries with rainforests, paying them to manage this global resource, and helping to free them from the poverty and pursuit of short-term profit which is driving deforestation. The aim is to help them fund alternative and more sustainable ways to develop which don't jeopardise forests.

The plans leave options open as to how rich countries raise the funds. Money could come directly from government budgets, or from new levies on carbon or commodities like soya, cattle, beef and leather which drive deforestation. The Prince's Rainforest Trust are also suggesting that the creation of new ‘rainforest bonds' could let people invest money into preserving forests. By getting rich governments to back the bonds, which would provide opportunities for secure investment at a time when investors are crying out for safe places to put their money, the scheme could be well placed to quickly raise some serious cash to fund forest stewardship.

There are lots of good reasons to preserve rainforests - they support biodiversity, regulate rainfall patterns which keep crops growing and rivers running, and support local communities with a wealth of resources. There are also good climate change-related reasons to preserve them. Tropical rainforests store huge amounts of carbon, which is released as deforestation occurs. Globally, the forest sector accounts for almost a fifth of human emissions - more than from transport, and more than from either the US or China. There is more carbon stored in the rainforests than there is in the atmosphere. If the scale of emissions coming from deforestation wasn't bad enough, as rainforests disappear the planet's capacity to re-absorb carbon from the atmosphere is threatened - leading to even more climate change.

All of which makes it so vitally important to halt deforestation, if for no other reason than it's unlikely that we'll be able to make the kinds of ambitious cuts in carbon emissions that are being talked about if we don't. Luckily, it's generally agreed that stopping deforestation is (on the scale of things) one of the cheapest and easiest ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow down climate change. And that's why it's good to see HRH addressing the issue with some ambitious time frames. It's particularly important that we get something in place quickly, because any commitments to preserve forests agreed in December at Copenhagen wouldn't start working until 2012 at the earliest.

You can download the report here, or take a look at the Prince's Rainforest Foundation website here. Both are full of Daniel Beltra's award winning Greenpeace images, so worth a look.