Arnold Schwarzenegger's bid to save the rainforest

uploaded by danesller0127 November 22, 2008 at 03:19 pm
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Arnold Schwarzenegger's bid to save the rainforest by danesller0127

It takes one state to start the process. The Global Climate Summit came and went, with not much press coverage. It didn't involve the G8, the superpowers, the movers and shakers. It started with California saying they wanted to do something about climate change.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger welcomed hundreds of attendees from more than 50 states, provinces and countries to the Governors' Global Climate Summit.

Schwarzenegger opened the summit by telling attendees from around the world that they can balance environmental protection with economic growth...

Tropical forest countries are given the chance to earn carbon credits.

Schwarzenegger signed an agreement that could see carbon credits earned from forest protection in Indonesia or Brazil incorporated into US emissions trading schemes.

Partly, this is significant simply because there haven't been very many large-scale international efforts to protect the world's dwindling rainforests – despite the huge climate change impact of tropical deforestation. Mainly, though, this deal is significant because it's the first time ...that carbon credits earned by protecting existing forests could be incorporated into large-scale emissions trading schemes. It means, in the simplest possible terms, that Indonesian or Brazilian forestry schemes will be able to get funded by American companies who want to produce carbon dioxide.

This could be the first step towards forest-protection carbon credits – known as REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) – becoming tradeable in forthcoming US-wide climate laws and even the follow-up to the Kyoto protocol.