Keynote, Other
Climate change: can money stop deforestation?
- Humans face financial extinction without a fundamental shift in monetary movement, requiring nature conservation to become profitable to halt deforestation, though current subsidies driving land clearance are so large that even doubling government protection funds would remain insufficient to counter them.
- Carbon markets are expected to struggle to reach full potential unless offset prices compete with profits from other land uses, a challenge compounded by the difficulty of establishing global rules and standards under the Paris Agreement and the persistence of bad actors engaging in dirty tricks like duplicating credits.
- Future trends predict increased demand for carbon credits as a transition strategy, with wealthy nations incentivizing developing countries through financial rewards for offsetting emissions, yet many tree planting schemes may yield fewer benefits than conserving existing forests.
- Specific regional developments in Costa Rica, where GDP has grown at an average of 4.2% annually since 1987, show ongoing success in Payments for Environmental Services and nature-based tourism as job sources, challenging the preservation-development dichotomy, though this model faces scrutiny regarding whether other countries can effectively reverse harmful subsidies.
- Critics warn that economic thinking is not changing rapidly enough to address the climate crisis, with nature conservation often demoted in priority amidst other global crises, necessitating an urgent reduction in industrial emissions and economic decarbonization rather than relying on tree services as a silver solution.