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How much would you pay for rainfall and carbon sinks?
Posted by tracy on 9 September 2008.
After this summer I would be willing to empty my account for some sunshine, but rainforest are rarely seen has having value beyond the commodities they produce. Last night Panorama looked at the important issue of the value of our rainforests to the planet. Known as ecosystem services, forests "influence weather systems on a vast scale, produce rainfall and capture CO2 from the atmosphere, reducing global warming".
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Environmental effectiveness and loopholes
Under threat - polar bear
In Kyoto in 1997 at the third Conference of the Parties (COP 3), the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. Thirty-eight industrialised countries agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by varying amounts with an overall reduction of 5.2% below 1990 levels by the year 2010. It also provided a series of 'flexible mechanisms' to help them achieve this.
As negotiations have proceeded it has become clear that these 'mechanisms' have become potential loopholes that, if adopted, would allow industrialised countries to do very little or nothing in the way of real emissions reduction and still appear to meet their targets.