Keynote, Other
Climate change: can money stop deforestation?
- Global deforestation rates have accelerated significantly over the last century, with the United Nations estimating the loss of approximately 10 million hectares of forest annually (roughly 27 football fields per minute).
- In Costa Rica, forest coverage plummeted from 75% in 1940 to 21% by 1987, driven primarily by the conversion of land to agricultural export markets.
- Between 2019 and 2022, the rate of deforestation in Brazil rose by approximately 50%, drawing international criticism despite the argument that wealthy nations historically achieved wealth through similar economic pathways.
- Pure tree planting schemes have proven less effective for climate mitigation than the conservation of existing forests, though they remain a popular strategy.
- Payments for Environmental Services (PES) incentivize conservation by providing financial rewards to countries or landowners based on forest preservation benchmarks, allowing them to retain funding for every tonne of carbon dioxide avoided.
- Carbon credits, which allow entities to offset emissions elsewhere, are currently an unregulated global market plagued by fraud, including the duplication of credits and the conservation of land not previously under threat.
- The current financial model fails to drive conservation because the rewards for keeping trees standing still lag behind the profits generated by deforestation activities.
- Costa Rica implemented a national PES scheme in the late 1990s, funded by a specific levy on fuel and water consumption rather than the national budget, with a goal of paying landowners to restore or maintain forest.
- Under Costa Rica's PES program, the government pays landowners approximately $80 annually for each hectare of forest restored or protected; the scheme has invested over $500 million in conservation over one generation.
- Costa Rica's forest coverage has increased from 21% in the 1980s to over 50% today, coinciding with a GDP growth rate averaging 4.2% annually since 1987 and the rise of nature-based tourism as a major economic sector.
- While Costa Rica has successfully reversed harmful agricultural subsidies, critics note that global subsidies for activities damaging nature currently amount to $1.8 trillion (12 times the $150 billion spent on protecting nature), far exceeding available conservation budgets.
- Experts argue that without raising the economic value of standing forests to exceed the profits of land clearance, deforestation will persist despite current conservation efforts.
- There is an acknowledged risk that immediate geopolitical and economic crises are causing nature conservation to be deprioritized in the global agenda, despite the non-negotiable timeline of climate change.
- Long-term solutions require both a reduction in industrial emissions to achieve net zero and a fundamental shift in economic metrics that value natural capital alongside traditional GDP growth.