Making the rainforest more expensive

Why increase the price of the forests? The answer is quite simple. Forests are currently a very inexpensive source of land for farmers and of timber for loggers, so they get cleared without any regard for the planet’s environment and economies. Indeed the majority of the profit from this land clearing is usually lost to the forest owners. By making the rainforests more valuable through implementing Carbon Credit revenues we can justify a valuation methodology based on revenues.

Logging in the Amazon Rainforest

This means that governments and stakeholders that sell rainforest will be forgoing many years of revenue for a quick sale. This by default will create a market value for the forest land which is far in excess of current prices resulting in the incoming farmer having to pay more for the land. This will have two initial effects: the first is to slow down the land take up and secondly the consideration of options which include semi-intensive farming or land remediation of the land which has just been stripped of its potential through poor farming practices. If this becomes a cheaper option than clearing, then we have a real chance to stop deforestation.

This is our principal goal, to make forest clearing too expensive an option commercially to farmers.

Clearly the availability of information on how to remediate cleared and depleted land as well as alternative but sustainable farming methods is critical, hence the synergy between Governments and senior stakeholders within the programme.