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Do Trees Grow on Money?
After years of failed attempts to merge market economics with rainforest conservation, the US$60 billion carbon market might finally be the ticket. That is, if money is all it’s going to take.
The long-held orthodoxy about rainforests has taken it as read that they are worth more alive than dead. Worth more not just to science, to the planet’s biodiversity, and to our sense of wonder about nature, but also as cash in hand for the inhabitants of the forests. It is one of the dogmas of the day that good conservation and good economics go hand in hand and that people who destroy their forests are doing themselves, as well as the rest of us, a bad turn. But is it true? And what would it mean if it were not true? What if the world as a whole had a great amount to gain from protecting rainforests but, in terms of cash at least, the inhabitants of the forests did not?
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Conservation magazine is published by the Society for Conservation Biology
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