December 2nd, 2019, by Tim
Radford
Money does grow on trees. The
conservation of a native forest is natural capital, its cash value often
reaching trillions of dollars.
LONDON, 2 December, 2019 – More
than 400 scientists in Brazil have once again established that conservation
pays: landscapes and people are richer for the
native vegetation preserved on rural properties.
They calculate that 270
million hectares (667m acres) of natural forest, scrub, marsh and grassland
contained in Brazil’s legal reserves are worth US$1.5 trillion (£1.7tn) a year
to the nation.
Natural wilderness pays its
way by providing a steady supply of natural crop pollinators and pest controls,
by seamlessly managing rainfall and water run-off, and by maintaining soil
quality, the researchers argue in a new study in the journal Perspectives
in Ecology and Conservation.
“The paper is meant to show
that preserving native vegetation isn’t an obstacle to social and economic
development but part of the solution. It’s one of the drivers of sustainable
development in Brazil and diverges from what was done in Europe 500 years ago,
when the level of environmental awareness was different”, said Jean Paul Metzger, an ecologist at the
University of São Paulo, who leads the signatories.
“Brazil conserves a great
deal, protecting over 60% of its vegetation cover, and has strict legislation.
It’s ranked 30th by the World Bank, behind Sweden and Finland, which protect
approximately 70%. However, we must call attention to the fact that
conservation isn’t bad,” said Professor Metzger.
Protection maintained
Brazilian law requires rural
landowners to leave forest cover untouched on a percentage of their property:
in the Amazon region as much as 80%; in other regions as little as 20%. But
these protected areas shelter a third of the nation’s natural vegetation.
A bill that proposed to weaken
or eliminate the Legal Reserve requirement went before the Brazilian Senate in
2019. Had it passed, it could have led to the loss altogether of 270 million
hectares of native vegetation.
The bill has since been
withdrawn, but a small army of scientists – including 371 researchers in 79
Brazilian laboratories, universities and institutions – have responded with a
study that attempts to set a cash value to simply maintaining the natural
capital of the wilderness.
Brazil is home to one of the
world’s great tropical rainforests, and to one of the world’s richest centres
of biodiversity. The global climate crisis is already
taking its toll of the forest canopy in the form of drought and fire.
But under
new national leadership there have been fears that even
more forest could be at risk.
The cash-value case for
conservation has been made, and made repeatedly. Studies have confirmed that
agribusiness monocultures – vast tracts devoted entirely to one crop and only
one crop – are not sustainable: animal pollinators can make
the best of the flowering season but then have no alternative sources
of food for the rest of the year.
Other researchers have
separately established that the loss of natural forest can be far
more costly and economically damaging than anybody had expected; and that,
conversely, conserved and undisturbed
wilderness actually delivers wealth on a sustained basis for national
and regional economies. But farmers concerned with immediate profits might not
be so conscious of the long-term rewards of conservation.
“It’s an important paper
because it presents sound information that can be used to refute the arguments
of those who want to change the Brazilian Forest Code and do away with the
legal reserve requirement”, said Carlos
Joly of the Sao Paulo Research Foundation, and one of the signatories.
And his colleague Paulo Artaxo said: “Farmers
sometimes take a short-term view that focuses on three or four years of
personal profit, but the nation is left with enormous losses. This mindset
should go. The paper makes that very clear.”
– Climate News Network
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