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Debt conversion agreement will protect Brazilian forests
16/08/2010
Three of Brazil's lesser known forestry regions will reap the benefits of a £13.5 million debt conversion agreement with the USA.
The money that Brazil would have spent paying off the debt to the US will now be ploughed into rainforest conservation in the Atlantic coastal rainforest and the Cerrado and Caatinga ecosystems.
All three areas suffer from severe deforestation, but attract far less attention and conservation initiatives than the more famous Amazon rainforest.
Brazil's Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said the deal represented a "qualitative leap" in cooperation with the US.
Brazil will use the money over the next five years to support conservation and boost the livelihoods of people who live in the threatened forest areas. The deal was made under the terms of the US Tropical Forest Conservation Act, introduced in 1998. Similar agreements – worth a total of almost $240m – have already been made with 15 other countries, most of them in Latin America.
The Atlantic forest has lost more than 90 per cent of its area in the last 150 years, but still supports huge biological diversity, including 200 bird species and 21 primates found nowhere else on earth.
The Cerrado is a vast woody savannah in central Brazil that is under threat from encroaching cattle ranching and soya farming, while the north-eastern Caatinga region is a unique semi-arid scrub forest where few areas of the original ecosystem remain.
The money that Brazil would have spent paying off the debt to the US will now be ploughed into rainforest conservation in the Atlantic coastal rainforest and the Cerrado and Caatinga ecosystems.
All three areas suffer from severe deforestation, but attract far less attention and conservation initiatives than the more famous Amazon rainforest.
Brazil's Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said the deal represented a "qualitative leap" in cooperation with the US.
Brazil will use the money over the next five years to support conservation and boost the livelihoods of people who live in the threatened forest areas. The deal was made under the terms of the US Tropical Forest Conservation Act, introduced in 1998. Similar agreements – worth a total of almost $240m – have already been made with 15 other countries, most of them in Latin America.
The Atlantic forest has lost more than 90 per cent of its area in the last 150 years, but still supports huge biological diversity, including 200 bird species and 21 primates found nowhere else on earth.
The Cerrado is a vast woody savannah in central Brazil that is under threat from encroaching cattle ranching and soya farming, while the north-eastern Caatinga region is a unique semi-arid scrub forest where few areas of the original ecosystem remain.
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