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Rainforests and Logging

My Lords, I express my grateful thanks to my noble friend for providing us with the opportunity to discuss this hugely important subject today. I also thank him for his fascinating introduction. All the statistics that he gave were extremely profound. It is always an honour to follow the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich. Everyone in the House knows of his great experience in these matters. As has been said, these unique ecosystems are in great peril. Their demise is not just a tragedy for those of us who are romantic conservationists, if I may use that term, and who value them for the aesthetic benefits they bring to the world; more importantly, the loss of rainforests is a disaster because they are part of the natural engine which maintains the natural processes of life on which we—mankind—rely for our very survival. These forests not only provide timber and non-forest products, but are critical in maintaining water cycles and soil fertility and soaking up the carbon dioxide that we produce. It is not only rainforests that have these important functions. I have been astonished to realise the common role that many of our wild places around the world share with rainforests. My particular interest is heather moorlands, and I declare an interest as owning land in the north of England, where managing that particular ecosystem is part of what we do. These peaty lands play an equally important role in providing soil stability, regulating water flow and sequestering and storing carbon dioxide. So why, if rainforests are not only valuable to our survival but a stimulant to our collective soul, are they under such a threat? The answer, I am afraid, is that we have completely failed to incorporate that worth and potential into the local and global economies. Through charities, we have spent millions of pounds on rainforest conservation, but we have tended only to increase the fiscal incentives behind their destruction and have completely failed to create a value and trade in the products and services that will ensure their survival. I fear that the loss of our natural areas—upland and wetland, as well as forests—in the UK is a symptom of that same disease. Experience across the world—in rainforests, savannahs, moorland and tundra—has shown that the most effective way to prevent damage, encroachment and unsustainable poaching is to ensure that the local communities obtain, through economic activity and trading, more than they would benefit from exploitation. That seems to me to be the key. Indeed, it is the ethos of a rather remarkable organisation called the African Parks Foundation, which, after only three years, manages more than 500,000 hectares of public national parks in four African countries. It is reversing extensive conservation and ecological damage by making these places the economic engines of local communities, and showing that transparent business and employment opportunities that stem from them can be greater from sound environmental management than from the poaching and extraction of timber. This new approach to conservation is being used by a number of other organisations and, indeed, governments around the world with, I am glad to say, much success. However, the economic potential for wilderness is huge. It is a benefit that we currently take for free and we actively resist creating a trade, whereas we happily pay for the products which can most lucratively be obtained from destruction. Examples are numerous: soil fertility; clean water; biodiversity; and, perhaps most pertinently for these times, carbon dioxide. There can be little doubt that we are all feeling the effects of climate change and that dangerous change is being driven by our overproduction of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide. Reducing emissions must be the mainstay of our concerted global action, but it must be supplemented to a significant degree by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by our natural areas—our forests, moorlands and wetlands—and by mitigating future rises in emissions from the destruction of these natural areas. Interestingly enough, a typical hectare of riverine forest in the Amazon basin absorbs 20 to 30 tonnes of carbon per hectare each year. An African savannah woodland will absorb 25 to 50 tonnes of carbon per hectare each year. This activity really has a value and we should be enabling a trade in that commodity so that we can provide a fiscal incentive to rehabilitate and maintain these areas at home and abroad. What can be done? While we ask the poor of Africa to adopt new technologies to reduce their emissions and to reforest their degraded lands, we explicitly prohibit the trade of such carbon credits in Europe as part of our drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—primarily carbon dioxide—into the atmosphere. This is an unhelpful state of affairs. The poorest of the world poor at last have a legitimate product which, it is hoped, can be exploited to their advantage. While we set emission targets and permit that trade of credits between companies within Europe, and we allow credits that result from technological change originating from our own research patents, we have banned the trade of carbon credits that originate from reforestation in the developing world. That is not only unfair but misguided. It is anti-competitive and counterproductive. There is a huge opportunity to be gained from our rainforests and other wild places in the world. I am interested to see that in Costa Rica steps have been taken in this direction where, by the simple expedient of paying for carbon sequestration and charging for clear and consistent water, a government organisation, Fundecor, has increased the area covered by rainforest, ensured the continued production of ecosystem goods and services required for future growth, and brought the rural poor into the economic mainstream. If it is done in Costa Rica, it could be done elsewhere. This is an important issue, as my noble friend Lord Eden said. In highlighting the plight of rainforests, he has given us the opportunity of touching on a potential solution for wilderness generally. I hope that in the near future we will have the opportunity in this House of debating the whole issue of ecosystem services. These natural services are the key to life and their current demise could be the cause of our extinction. I cannot think of a more important matter on which we should focus. Finally, I draw to the attention of the noble Baroness the Lord President of the Council the fact that, in my capacity as a member of European Union Sub-Committee D, I asked the Secretary of State, Margaret Beckett, when she gave evidence to the committee on the UK’s EU presidency priorities, what opportunities she saw in opening up the carbon emissions trading scheme to other continents. She gave me some encouragement. In response to me, she said,"““but I would also say that there is a very strong willingness in the Commission and among member states . . . to try to draw in and to work with people in developing countries””." I hope that the noble Baroness can confirm that that is the case and that the UK Government will extend the emissions trading scheme to incorporate other continents and so benefit the people who are suffering, as my noble friend so ably described.