A London investment firm and the government of Guyana will agree to place a monetary value on preserving a segment of one of the world's last four intact rainforests, securing one million acres of tropical rainforest.
Hylton Murray-Philipson is the director of Canopy Capital:
“How can it be that Google’s services are worth billions but those from all the world’s rainforests amount to nothing?" he said.
More from clinically unnoticed British newspaper The Independent.
Striking and stunning. We now know deforestation is the second highest cause of CO2 emissions. The scale of slaughter has intensified in fifteen years. For all of Brazil's mixed progress, Indonesia's is the other greatest of eminent rainforest, and it's been clear cut with no tomorrow. Haiti is 98 or 99% percent deforested, and now the country has massive mudslides every year, just like the Philippines, just like Appalachia.
We will lose and suffer so greatly if this continues. Green capitalism is a dangerous, risky game, and I don't feel qualified writing about it at the moment. But this has always been a dangerous thing, and people lose their lives defending rainforest every year. The loggers and ranchers use thugs with machine guns to accomplish their goals.
And the most oppressed people on the planet, the Indigenous, are hanging on by a thread on the islands of the Indian Ocean, literally or culturally. The natives of Diego Garcia, the Indians of the Klamath River in the wake of the greatest salmon kill, the Garifuna of Central America who are quickly becoming servants at the luxury made-to-order homes of American aristocrats on the shores where black children used to play. And the Indians of South America.
There are no rainforests that are not a home for people, except where the people have been forcibly removed here in this country. Even then there's always someone who has that land in their traditions and heritage.
Not to mention our human heritage, our right to survive. We need rainforests to survive.
Note from this lowly "global citizen": Guyana is a fascinating country, tucked north of Brazil on the southern shores of the Caribbean. Actually an English colony. 80% of its population lives on the coastal plain and are a mixture of European, black, South Asian peoples. Almost half the population lives just in the disproportionately small province around Georgetown, the capital. The interior is sparse but was increasingly developing as boom towns and ranching spread form the costal plains. The Iwokrama Rainforest deal is a desperately needed short term solution.
Rainforests also draw the rain as well as protect our atmosphere. As rain is becoming scarce in some areas but first and foremost is drinkable, potable water becoming scarce and a commodity, we must replant the world. We must weed the invasive plants ad animals that ferociously colonize disturbed sites. Weeds and aliens which account for up to 1/3rd of all extinctions.
The damaged rainforests can be healed. Haiti can be replanted. Indonesia can be saved. Brazil can be turned. Permaculture shows us that whatever damage is done to a land, it can be healed and replanted to some capacity.
If you're not mad, you're not paying attention!