Split Carbon Costs of Deforestation Between Producers & Consumers to Slow Felling Forests
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY
on 11.20.09
It's probably no great secret to TreeHugger readers at this point that part of the reason carbon emissions in developing nations are rapidly rising is partially because manufacturing of goods for export to the developed world. In fact in China at least one-third of total emissions and about 50% of emissions growth in recent years is directly tied to goods consumer in Europe and the United States.
So when it comes to counting those emissions, shouldn't the national burden be split up differently? The idea's not novel, but a new paper in Environmental Research Letters (via Mongabay) brings the issue to the fore.
The report authors use the example of Brazil, making the point that Brazil is the world's foremost exporter of both beef and soybeans -- both contributing to varying degrees to the nation's ongoing (if slowing) deforestation -- but the countries which consume these goods don't pay anything for the environmental damage, loss of biodiversity, and soaring carbon emissions caused when agriculture replaces rainforests.
































