Should Obama Send $16 Billion to Bail Out the Amazon?

Depending on how you look at it, Obama’s meeting with Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva this past weekend could be interpreted as either a first step toward cooperating on biofuel trade or a missed opportunity to protect the Amazon rain forest.

In the press conference after their meeting, Presidents Obama and Lula showed that their two countries still disagree over the US’s refusal to drop an import tariff on Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane. Obama waved off the question of dropping the tariff, saying that shared ideas and technologies between Brazil and the US will gradually heal tensions created by the tariff. Lula, on the other hand, suggested that if the US is serious about addressing climate change, it should show more cooperation on importing Brazil’s ethanol. Both agreed that a consensus on biofuels won’t be reached overnight.
Built into the debate over Brazilian ethanol are two related issues that were barely touched upon during the conference: climate change and rain forest conservation. The Brazilian Amazon rain forest is one of the world’s biggest sinks of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). That makes it an attractive target for the carbon offset industry, which can makes money by collecting international investment in removing CO2 from the atmosphere by protecting a certain area of forest. However, Brazil’s national plan on climate change and the Amazon fund, announced at last December’s COP 14 climate meeting in Poland, specifically does not support carbon offsets in the Amazon. With carbon offsets on hold, what role can countries such as the US play in protecting the Amazon?

Rolf Skar, Greenpeace’s Senior Forest Campaigner, has proffered one potential solution: a $16 billion annual bailout from the United States to conserve tropical rain forests. We spoke with Mr. Skar about this idea. He said, “$16 billion is a number that we suggest the US should invest annually to really produce enormous climate benefits around the world– not just in the Amazon, but also in SE Asia and the Congo basin. The debate around how to do this is basically framed around whether people want market based offsets in which green carbon credits are traded with black smokestack carbon, or whether you want some sort of fund based project, or something in the middle.

“In terms of coming back to the Obama and Lula visit, it was a bit of a missed opportunity for Obama because his administration has not yet come down on one side or the other of this issue, and they haven’t found a middle ground either. They haven’t really articulated a position. This would be a great opportunity for Obama to at least hear out Lula on why Brazil has taken this position and then consider ways in which the two countries can work together. I think personally, it’s clear to me that both two men are the most important in the world on the deforestation issue.”

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