Conservation and banking groups team up for rainforest project

Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 24 Jun 08;

The world's oldest conservation group has teamed up with a major banking group in a rainforest protection project.

Fauna and Flora International (FFI) have set up a task force with the Macquarie Group which will invest in the management of tropical rainforests and produce carbon credits for sale.

They say they will be involved in the protection of six forests at risk of deforestation over the next three years.

They are looking at rainforests in South East Asia, South America and Africa and will work with local forest communities and governments to ensure the forests survive.

Macquarie Group will provide capital and financial services for the forest projects making sure they meet carbon standards and will then sell them on the international market.

FFI will provide the expertise and contacts built up since it as established more than a century ago to push the projects to completion.

Carbon credits from the rainforests will be sold to commercial customers wanting to offset their own carbon emissions. The carbon projects will show measureable and long-term carbon reduction.

FFI chief executive officer, Mark Rose, said: "Tropical forests cover a small part of the planet, but they are home to half the world's plant and animal species.

"Forests play a vital and varied role in sustaining life on earth, but the value of that role has not been recognised. By partnering with Macquarie Group, we hope to access carbon markets in order to demonstrate the importance of forests and create an incentive for the conservation of more of the world's tropical forests."

Oliver Yates, Head of Macquarie Group's Climate Change Investments, said: "Rainforests are a natural store of carbon and important environmental infrastructure. They also have an economic value because of the carbon they store."

Every year about 13 million hectares of the world's forests are cleared and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated that deforestation contributes 17 per cent of total global carbon emissions.

Sir Nicholas Stern and Professor Ross Garnaut have reported that reducing deforestation is essential to reaching deep reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Paying to avert deforestation is not yet recognised in carbon markets under the Kyoto Protocol but voluntary market demand for high-grade validated carbon credits is high.

Support is growing for the inclusion of avoided deforestation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, with a new emissions reduction agreement due to take effect from 2012.