On April 4, representatives of indigenous groups from 11 Latin American countries gathered at a climate change workshop in Manaus, Brazil to approve a carbon-trading plan. The plan concentrates on the reduction of deforestation and the emission of green house gases. Scientists generally agree that tropical deforestation accounts for 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“Trees are like our lungs on this planet,” said Kim Yarbray, former environmental sustainability coordinator, now director of leadership for social change. “It’s in everybody’s best interest to make sure those forests stay put.”
The emissions of green house gases related to deforestation causes rampant climate change that endangers the native people.
“Change is disruptive to us, to animals, and to plants and so in terms of environmental issues it disrupts patterns,” said Bob Williams, professor of economics and director of Honors Program. “In most cases, we don’t like change.”
The World Health Organization has estimated that climate change leads to more than 150,000 deaths every year and at least 5 million cases of illness.
An article in National Geography last September discussed how climate change was fueling the aggressive spread of dengue fever in many South American countries.
“The climate changes are a reality,” said Manoel Cunha, chairman of Brazil’s National Council of Rubber Tappers to The New York Times. “We have rivers that are un-navigable and trees that no longer bear fruit.”
According to the Rights and Resources Initiative, over a billion people depend upon forests for food, fuel, and income. About 350 million indigenous and tribal peoples are at least partly dependent on forests and about 60 million are significantly dependent on forests.
Conflicts occur over the ownership of forest lands. A lack of clear rights of ownership and use has driven millions of forest people into poverty.
The plan relies on wealthy countries, such as the United States and European nations, to offer incentive to developing countries to preserve tropical forests. The goal is to find a way for the money to reach the native people directly, rather than through their governments.
“Because we all exist in a global community, native people are often caught between a rock and a hard place, having governments that control native lands exploit those lands in ways that do not benefit the inhabitants,” Yarbray said.
Brazil, one of the countries represented at the workshop, has vowed to crack down on deforestation. They have also awarded 21 percent of the Amazon forest to native groups.
Carbon trading is an administrative approach to control pollution by providing economic incentives for reductions in emissions of CO2. Carbon-trading is a system in which counties have a limit to what emissions they are allowed. If they exceed that limit, they must buy credit from another country that is below its own limit.
“They’re paying for the rights to do a certain act: pollute,” Williams said. As long as we have a system where people are free to pollute, people are going to do just that. We have to figure out a way to give them financial incentives not to pollute as much.”
Yarbray paraphrases the idea, comparing carbon-trading to paying people to pollute. She believes that carbon trading gives people a “feel-good” feeling without contributing much to the grander problem.
“It allows the polluter to feel good but it doesn’t put the polluter in the position of helping to actually clean up the mess,” Yarbray said.
Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guyana, French Guyana, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Suriname and Panama as well as members of delegations the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia unanimously approved the International Alliance of Forest People.