Seven questions that keep physicists up at night

• 23:58 23 October 2009 by Ivan Semeniuk, Waterloo
• For similar stories, visit the Quantum World Topic Guide

It's not your average confession show: a panel of leading physicists spilling the beans about what keeps them tossing and turning in the wee hours.

That was the scene a few days ago in front of a packed auditorium at the Perimeter Institute, in Waterloo, Canada, when a panel of physicists was asked to respond to a single question: "What keeps you awake at night?"

The discussion was part of "Quantum to Cosmos", a 10-day physics extravaganza, which ends on Sunday.

While most panelists professed to sleep very soundly, here are seven key conundrums that emerged during the session, which can be viewed here.

Why this universe?

In their pursuit of nature's fundamental laws, physicists have essentially been working under a long standing paradigm: demonstrating why the universe must be as we see it. But if other laws can be thought of, why can't the universes they describe exist in some other place? "Maybe we'll find there's no other alternative to the universe we know," says Sean Carroll of Caltech. "But I suspect that's not right." Carroll finds it easy to imagine that nature allows for different kinds of universes with different laws. "So in our universe, the question becomes why these laws and not some other laws?"

What is everything made of?

It's now clear that ordinary matter – atoms, stars and galaxies – accounts for a paltry 4 per cent of the universe's total energy budget. It's the other 96 per cent that keeps University of Michigan physicist Katherine Freese engaged. Freese is excited that one part of the problem, the nature of dark matter, may be nearing resolution. She points to new data from experiments like NASA's Fermi satellite that are consistent with the notion that dark matter particles in our own galaxy are annihilating with one another at a measurable rate, which in turn could reveal their properties. But the discovery of dark energy, which appears to be speeding up the expansion of the universe, has created a vast new set of puzzles for which there are no immediate answers in sight. This includes the nature of the dark energy itself and the question of why it has a value that is so extraordinarily small, allowing for the formation of galaxies, stars and the emergence of life.

How does complexity happen?

From the unpredictable behaviour of financial markets to the rise of life from inert matter, Leo Kadananoff, physicist and applied mathematician at the University of Chicago, finds the most engaging questions deal with the rise of complex systems. Kadanoff worries that particle physicists and cosmologists are missing an important trick if they only focus on the very small and the very large. "We still don't know how ordinary window glass works and keeps it shape," says Kadanoff. "The investigation of familiar things is just as important in the search for understanding." Life itself, he says, will only be truly understood by decoding how simple constituents with simple interactions can lead to complex phenomena.

Will string theory ever be proved correct?

Cambridge physicist David Tong is passionate about the mathematical beauty of string theory – the idea that the fundamental particles we observe are not point-like dots, but rather tiny strings. But he admits it once brought him to a philosophical crisis when he realised he might live his entire life not knowing whether it actually constitutes a description of all reality. Even experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider and the Planck satellite, while well positioned to reveal new physics, are unlikely to say anything definitive about strings. Tong finds solace in knowing that the methods of string theory can be brought to bear on less fundamental problems, such as the behaviour of quarks and exotic metals. "It is a useful theory," he says, "so I'm trying to concentrate on that."

What is the singularity?

For cosmologist and Perimeter Institute director Neil Turok, the biggest mystery is the one that started it all, the big bang. Conventional theory points back to an infinitely hot and dense state at the beginning of the universe, where the known laws of physics break down. "We don't know how to describe it," says Turok. "How can anyone claim to have a theory of everything without that?" Turok is hopeful that string theory and a related development known as the "holographic principle", which shows that a singularity in three dimensions can be translated into a mathematically more manageable entity in two dimensions (which may imply that the third dimension and gravity itself are illusory). "These tools are giving us new ways of thinking about the problem, which are deeply satisfying in a mathematical sense," he says.

What is reality really?

The material world may, at some level, lie beyond comprehension, but Anton Zeilinger, professor of physics at the University of Vienna, is profoundly hopeful that physicists have merely scratched the surface of something much bigger. Zeilinger specialises in quantum experiments that demonstrate the apparent influence of observers in the shaping of reality. "Maybe the real breakthrough will come when we start to realise the connections between reality, knowledge and our actions," he says. The concept is mind-bending, but it is well established in practice. Zeilinger and others have shown that particles that are widely separated can somehow have quantum states that are linked, so that observing one affects the outcome of the other. No one has yet fathomed how the universe seems to know when it is being watched.

How far can physics take us?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether the process of inquiry that has revealed so much about the universe since the time of Galileo and Kepler is nearing the end of the line. "I worry whether we've come to the limits of empirical science," says Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University. Specifically, Krauss wonders if it will require knowledge of other universes, such as those posed by Carroll, to understand why our universe is the way it is. If such knowledge is impossible to access, it may spell the end for deepening our understanding any further.

Turok says that's exactly why the Perimeter Institute exists, to harness the thinking of the world's brightest young minds in an unrestrained environment. By optimising conditions for creative thinking, it may be possible to avoid such an impasse.

"We're used to thinking of theoretical physics as accidental," says Turok. "We need to ask whether there's a more strategic way to speed up understanding and discovery."

Perhaps then all those troubled physicists can finally get some rest – or at least switch to more mundane worries.

The "Quantum to Cosmos" festival can be viewed online

Our Global Ponzi Economy

October 07, 2009

Lester R. Brown

Our mismanaged world economy today has many of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme takes payments from a broad base of investors and uses these to pay off returns. It creates the illusion that it is providing a highly attractive rate of return on investment as a result of savvy investment decisions when in fact these irresistibly high earnings are in part the result of consuming the asset base itself. A Ponzi scheme investment fund can last only as long as the flow of new investments is sufficient to sustain the high rates of return paid out to previous investors. When this is no longer possible, the scheme collapses—just as Bernard Madoff’s $65-billion investment fund did in December 2008.

Although the functioning of the global economy and a Ponzi investment scheme are not entirely analogous, there are some disturbing parallels. As recently as 1950 or so, the world economy was living more or less within its means, consuming only the sustai nable yield, the interest of the natural systems that support it. But then as the economy doubled, and doubled again, and yet again, multiplying eightfold, it began to outrun sustainable yields and to consume the asset base itself.

In a 2002 study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists concluded that humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. As of 2009 global demands on natural systems exceed their sustainable yield capacity by nearly 30 percent. This means we are meeting current demands in part by consuming the earth’s natural assets, setting the stage for an eventual Ponzi-type collapse when these assets are depleted.

As of mid-2009, nearly all the world’s major aquifers were being overpumped. We have more irrigation water than before the overpumping began, in true Ponzi fashion. We get the feeling that we’re doing very well in agriculture—but the realit y is that an estimated 400 million people are today being fed by overpumping, a process that is by definition short-term. With aquifers being depleted, this water-based food bubble is about to burst.

A similar situation exists with the melting of mountain glaciers. When glaciers first start to melt, flows in the rivers and the irrigation canals they feed are larger than before the melting started. But after a point, as smaller glaciers disappear and larger ones shrink, the amount of ice melt declines and the river flow diminishes. Thus we have two water-based Ponzi schemes running in parallel in agriculture.

And there are more such schemes. As human and livestock populations grow more or less apace, the rising demand for forage eventually exceeds the sustainable yield of grasslands. As a result, the grass deteriorates, leaving the land bare, allowing it to turn to desert. In this Ponzi scheme, herders are forced to rely on food aid or they migrate to cities.

Three fourths of oceanic fisheries are now being fished at or beyond capacity or are recovering from overexploitation. If we continue with business as usual, many of these fisheries will collapse. Overfishing, simply defined, means we are taking fish from the oceans faster than they can reproduce. The cod fishery off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada is a prime example of what can happen. Long one of the world’s most productive fisheries, it collapsed in the early 1990s and may never recover.

Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest, puts it well: “At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation.” The larger question is, If we continue with business as usual— with overpumping, overgrazing, overplowing, overfishing, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide—how long will it be before the Ponzi economy unravels and collapses? No one knows. Our industrial civilization has not been here before.

Unlike Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which was set up with the knowledge that it would eventually fall apart, our global Ponzi economy was not intended to collapse. It is on a collision path because of market forces, perverse incentives, and poorly chosen measures of progress.

In addition to consuming our asset base, we have devised some clever techniques for leaving costs off the books—much like the disgraced and bankrupt Texas-based energy company Enron did some years ago. For example, when we use electricity from a coal-fired power plant we get a monthly bill from the local utility. It includes the cost of mining coal, transporting it to the power plant, burning it, generating the electricity, and d elivering electricity to our homes. It does not, however, include any costs of the climate change caused by burning coal. That bill will come later—and it will likely be delivered to our children. Unfortunately for them, their bill for our coal use will be even larger than ours.

When Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, released his groundbreaking 2006 study on the future costs of climate change, he talked about a massive market failure. He was referring to the failure of the market to incorporate the costs of climate change in the price of fossil fuels. According to Stern, the costs are measured in the trillions of dollars. The difference between the market prices for fossil fuels and an honest price that also incorporates their environmental costs to society is huge.

As economic decisionmakers we all depend on the market for information to guide us, but the market is giving us incomplete information, and as a result we are m aking bad decisions. One of the best examples of this can be seen in the United States, where the gasoline pump price was around $3 per gallon in mid-2009. This reflects only the cost of finding the oil, pumping it to the surface, refining it into gasoline, and delivering the gas to service stations. It overlooks the costs of climate change as well as the costs of tax subsidies to the oil industry, the burgeoning military costs of protecting access to oil in the politically unstable Middle East, and the health care costs of treating respiratory illnesses caused by breathing polluted air. These indirect costs now total some $12 per gallon. In reality, burning gasoline is very costly, but the market tells us it is cheap.

The market also does not respect the carrying capacity of natural systems. For example, if a fishery is being continuously overfished, the catch eventually will begin to shrink and prices will rise, encouraging even more investment in fishing trawle rs. The inevitable result is a precipitous decline in the catch and the collapse of the fishery.

Today we need a realistic view about the relationship between the economy and the environment. We also need, more than ever before, political leaders who can see the big picture. And since the principal advisors to government are economists, we need either economists who can think like ecologists or more ecological advisors. Otherwise, market behavior—including its failure to include the indirect costs of goods and services, to value nature’s services, and to respect sustainable-yield thresholds—will cause the destruction of the economy’s natural support systems, and our global Ponzi scheme will fall apart.

Last gasp for the forest

Paying to save trees

Sep 24th 2009
From The Economist print edition

A new climate treaty could provide a highly effective way to reduce carbon emissions by paying people to not cut down forests

IN THE south-eastern corner of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, in the municipality of Novo Aripuanã, there is thick forest cover—for now. But as new, paved highways are driven into the trees, illegal loggers inevitably follow. At the current rate of deforestation, around one-third of the forest in Amazonas will have been lost by 2050, releasing a colossal 3.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Novo Aripuanã is the site of a novel response to this threat: the Juma Sustainable Development Reserve, an area of 600,000 hectares (1.2m acres) bordered by two highways. This is a nature reserve with an unusual twist: local people will be paid to prevent the trees from being cut down. Each family in the area has been issued with a debit card. Regular inspections will ensure that the trees are still standing: as long as they are, families will have 50 reais ($28) a month credited to their accounts.

These funds come from the rich world, where governments and companies that cannot reduce their own emissions cheaply are prepared to pay others to reduce emissions on their behalf (as “carbon offsets”). Not cutting down trees in endangered areas prevents emissions that would otherwise have occurred, which gives untouched forest huge financial value—and provides people who live in the forest with an incentive to preserve it.

Still Pictures

This idea is known as “avoided deforestation” or “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation” (REDD). At the moment REDD is not so much a plan as a collection of proposals and some working schemes, like Juma. The fate of the forests in Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines (pictured above) and elsewhere around the world could hang on the success of this approach. But there will need to be substantial international commitments to reduce global emissions to create demand for the carbon offsets that REDD schemes can provide. This means a lot hangs on a deal being struck in December in Copenhagen, where countries will meet to negotiate a new climate treaty.

Burning problems

Amid concern that progress towards a new treaty is slipping, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, hosted a summit in New York this week to encourage nations to agree to carbon-reducing policies. REDD was high on the agenda, and governments and the private sector were urged to start investing in such schemes. There has also been talk of wrapping up carbon offsets into “forest bonds” to interest pension funds.

Preventing deforestation is potentially one of the simplest ways to reduce global emissions. At the moment, carbon emissions from deforestation account for some 18% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, more than all the world’s trains, cars, lorries, aeroplanes and ships combined. Reducing deforestation and land-degradation will be vital if temperature increases are to be kept to within safe levels (generally assumed to mean no more than about a 2°C increase). Some argue it would be a quicker and cheaper way of reducing emissions than many alternatives, such as weaning the world’s vehicle fleet off fossil fuels, forcing people to cut back on energy use or switching to low-carbon forms of power generation, such as wind farms and nuclear power. All those things will be necessary too, but they will take a long time, will require new technologies and cause controversies of their own.

Paying people to not chop down trees looks easy by comparison. It does not depend on any elaborate or costly new technology and is likely to be able to garner the required political support. Achim Steiner, the head of the UN’s environment programme, thinks avoided deforestation should be an easy thing to sell. As well as reducing carbon emissions, keeping forests standing also protects soil from erosion, improves the quality of water, helps regulate rainfall and ensures biodiversity. “How on earth can we not afford to make this work?” he asks.

Still PicturesLearning in the forest

But if it is to work, REDD must address the failings of the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which forms part of the Kyoto protocol, the 1997 treaty that aims to curb greenhouse gases. Since 2006, the CDM has allowed developing countries to sell carbon offsets, known as credits, for adopting green technology: switching an entire village to energy-saving light bulbs, for example, or planting lots of trees. The CDM has been criticised, however, for allowing countries to sell credits even for dubious things like building dams. There are also concerns about enforcement. And the Kyoto rules do not allow countries to sell offsets from avoided-deforestation schemes. Planting new trees qualified, but refraining from cutting down existing ones did not.

REDD raises further concerns of its own. One of the main criticisms of it is that some rich countries might, in effect, outsource the tricky business of reducing carbon emissions to the developing world, by buying carbon offsets and continuing with business as usual at home. Some also wonder if the promised amount of carbon reduction could be so large. Gilberto Câmara, head of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (which monitors deforestation from space), thinks that REDD’s capacity to deliver global emissions cuts is being oversold. Based on his analysis of Brazil, which accounts for 40% of the world’s deforestation, he says there is no way the world can cut 18% or so of emissions through avoided deforestation. This figure is based on outdated estimates of the rate of deforestation, which has fallen dramatically in Brazil in recent years, he says.

This highlights another problem with REDD: it is hard to say how much deforestation there would have been anyway. Benchmarking REDD schemes against existing data, which can be out of date with higher rates of attrition, would give an exaggerated impression of their effectiveness, overstating the volume of emissions that had been prevented and causing rich countries to pay too much.

Nicholas Stern, a British economist and author of a report for the British government which put avoided deforestation on the climate agenda in 2007, says the exact amount by which emissions can be reduced is not terribly important. “It actually doesn’t matter whether it is 15% or 20%—the point is that it is big,” he says. What if Dr Câmara is right and avoided deforestation can reduce emissions only by, say, 10%? “I suspect it is not that low, but 10% is still a big slice,” says Lord Stern. “The point is to get the mechanisms going and the funding at a serious level.”

A further difficulty is that countries that have already taken effective action to prevent deforestation, such as Costa Rica, will be unable to benefit from a REDD scheme; it would, paradoxically, end up rewarding the worst offenders, since they would have the greatest scope to mend their ways, and get paid to do so. Various proposals have been put forward to pay retrospective rewards to such well-behaved countries.

Provided these problems can be overcome, what would REDD cost? Again, hard and fast figures are difficult to come by. The cost of setting up and running REDD schemes is unclear, and successful efforts to reduce deforestation would probably drive up timber prices, which might then make it necessary to pay more to prevent deforestation. Estimates for the cost of halving the rate of deforestation (and therefore reducing global emissions by as much as 9%) range from $7 billion to $28 billion a year. These costs do not include the initial set-up process, during which appropriate enforcement mechanisms would need to be put in place in leafy-but-dodgy countries.

If avoided deforestation is to work on a global scale, it will need to involve Indonesia and Congo, countries where corruption and mass deforestation go hand in hand. So REDD projects will require reporting, auditing and monitoring mechanisms. The advent of low-cost satellite imagery will help, but all this will still be expensive.

Seeing the wood

Assuming world leaders cut emissions by 20-40% relative to 1990 levels, however, the scale of the investments required would be about right, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development. This British think-tank says the global carbon market will be worth $118 billion a year, so if 10% of the reduction in emissions was achieved by purchasing REDD offsets, forest-carbon credits will be worth $11.8 billion a year.

The world has rallied around the idea of REDD with remarkable speed. The UN, the World Bank and governments in several countries, including Australia, Britain and particularly Norway, have already stumped up around $800m over the past two years to get REDD projects going. Benoit Bosquet, head of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, says early funding is important to allow organisers to get started in anticipation of a new global climate agreement.

Even if the world fails to reach a deal in Copenhagen, REDD schemes like the one in Juma will not grind to a halt. Many countries, notably America, are expected to rely heavily on the purchase of forest-carbon credits as part of their efforts to reduce emissions.

One way to do this is for governments and companies in particular countries to fund REDD projects in other countries directly. The drawback of this approach is that instead of bringing into being a truly international market for carbon credits, it looks rather more like traditional bilateral aid. Such projects would also be vulnerable to political manipulation. For example, if America started bilaterally financing REDD projects it is easy to imagine that the State Department would insist on having a say over which countries should receive funds and which should not. The result could be a kind of arboreal Washington consensus, with an approved set of tree-related economic-policy prescriptions

Another disadvantage is that different schemes will end up being subject to different rules, regulations and standards, so it will be difficult to compare them. If private-sector investors are to provide capital for REDD schemes, they would much prefer an international trading scheme where credits are fungible across the entire market. Abyd Karmali, head of carbon emissions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says such a scheme would set a harmonised standard for forest-carbon credits and might include rules for profit-sharing with indigenous communities or local landowners, monitoring and verifying credits and protecting biodiversity. Without such standards, he says, the result could be “sustainability arbitrage”, where project developers and companies flock towards less sustainable schemes that offer cheaper credits.

There are also concerns about market-based schemes. Even though markets could provide much-needed finance for REDD schemes, many people are uncomfortable that they could also yield big profits for investors and landowners. In China, a market-based scheme to encourage companies to phase out a powerful greenhouse gas, HFC-23, produced such enormous windfall profits for some companies that the government felt it necessary to impose a 65% tax, with the proceeds invested in green development projects.

It seems likely, however, that REDD will start off as a series of funded projects, with a market in forest-carbon credits emerging in a few years’ time, depending on what happens at the Copenhagen meeting. Many people expect that ultimately both approaches will co-exist.

However they end up working, REDD schemes will still face the question of how to distribute the money they produce. Governments could launch national initiatives to prevent deforestation, selling credits and directing the proceeds to the activities it believes are effective. One advantage of this country-level approach is that any “leakage” of deforestation (where a forest protected in one area shifts deforestation to another) would be easier to control. But governments will need to distribute some of the money on the ground—especially if the locals feel they have every right to cut down their trees.

In Juma, in addition to the payments made directly to local people, proceeds from the scheme also support investment in schools, hospitals, transport, communications and helping people find new, sustainable sources of income. All of this makes REDD look very much like traditional development aid. But Mr Karmali says he would not want to get involved with any REDD project that did not involve local communities and environmental groups. “We can’t make the mistake of thinking we have all the answers,” he says.

Watching carefully

Preventing deforestation does not simply involve close monitoring of forests themselves. Mr Bosquet of the World Bank thinks the forces driving deforestation “are mostly outside the forest sector and are the big challenge for REDD.” Dr Câmara points out that in Brazil 90% of deforestation is illegal encroachment driven by the desire to make money from timber and agricultural products grown on cleared land, such as soyabeans. Rather than paying money to criminals, he says, international traders should refuse to buy timber, soyabeans and beef from deforested land. A number of schemes try to certify that products such as timber or palm oil have been produced without causing deforestation. But so far the results have been disappointing: European consumers are reluctant to pay premium prices for goods made from certified timber, for example.

Palm oil, much of which is produced on land that was once virgin rainforest in Indonesia, is a particular problem. According to a report by McKinsey, a consultancy, if the present rate of deforestation continues, Indonesia will lose 1.1m hectares of forest every year until 2030. A plan to certify palm oil seems unlikely to help. The idea that air travel has environmental consequences is now widely understood, but the environmental consequences of palm-oil-based toiletries are not. Even a big multinational such as Unilever says it can do little to insist that its suppliers do not use palm oil from deforested land, since the power in the market rests with the sellers.

Deforestation is an integrated and multidisciplinary problem, says Mr Bosquet. That means preventing it may involve adopting different strategies in different countries. In some parts of the world, such as Indonesia, this might mean launching efforts to increase agricultural productivity and the use of marginal land in order to reduce the pressure for forest conversion. In other parts of the world it might involve certification or helping people find alternative ways to earn a living.

AFPLast one standing

Land tenure is another big flashpoint for REDD. There are fears that putting a value on forests will lead to land-grabs in areas where property rights are poorly defined and not well protected. In Africa, for example, governments claim ownership of 98% of the forest, but making REDD work will involve recognising the rights of those who live in the forest too. If that does not happen, there is every reason to fear large-scale corruption and human-rights abuses, because it will be far cheaper and quicker to clear people from the forests than to work out a sustainable way for them to stay.

Even though governments have yet to introduce legislation to govern the trade in forest-carbon credits, some private-sector investors have not been content to wait. This impatience brings risks. In Papua New Guinea, landowners have been hoodwinked into paying to get involved in non-existent deals that promised huge returns from “sky money”. The local World Wildlife Fund office has even been asked by landowners how the carbon from burning trees will be captured and transported to the capital. International negotiators decry the behaviour of “carbon cowboys”, but they have to recognise that private capital can move a lot faster than plodding national and international legislation.

Overshadowing all these discussions is the spectre of the CDM, which has been bedevilled by its lack of transparency and the difficulty of proving that its carbon offsets are genuine. REDD is a big idea that will work only if all these smaller problems are sorted out. It probably will help to prevent deforestation and to reduce carbon emissions, though perhaps by less than some people hope. But it has the potential to tackle such a big chunk of global emissions, and deliver so many other environmental benefits, that it is worth trying.

Making it work

There are risks for forest dwellers, who must rely on outsiders both to ensure that their rights are protected and to provide an alternative path for economic development. But although REDD poses risks, the alternative—in which deforestation continues as usual—presents even greater long-term environmental and economic dangers, because the world’s poor will bear the brunt of climate change.

Doing nothing, in short, would be more dangerous than giving REDD a try. Kevin Conrad, Papua New Guinea’s climate ambassador, says financial systems must begin to take account of environmental values “if our economies are to survive”. Given that the basic principle of REDD is to establish a financial link between those who will benefit from preserving forests and those who must ensure the forests’ survival, it is an economically sound idea. The question is whether the world has the determination to create a system that will work. Some, like the UN’s Mr Steiner, say that it isn’t rocket science. Others, though, wish it were that simple.

Scientist warns of 'last chance' on warming

SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON — The Associated Press Last updated on Monday, Mar. 30, 2009 03:53PM EDT

Exactly 20 years after warning the United States about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has got so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action.

James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world long ago passed the “dangerous level” for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

“We're toast if we don't get on a very different path,” Mr. Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. “This is the last chance.”

Mr. Hansen brought global warming home to the public in June 1988 during a Washington heat wave, telling a Senate hearing that global warming was already here. To mark the anniversary, he testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming where he was called a prophet, and addressed a luncheon at the National Press Club where he was called a hero by former Democratic senator Tim Wirth, who headed the 1988 hearing.

To cut emissions, Mr. Hansen said, coal-fired power plants that do not capture carbon-dioxide emissions should not be used in the United States after 2025 and should be eliminated in the rest of the world by 2030. That carbon-capture technology is still being developed and not yet cost efficient for power plants.

Burning fossil fuels such as coal is the chief cause of man-made greenhouse gases. Mr. Hansen said Earth's atmosphere has to get back to a level of 350 parts of carbon dioxide per million. Last month, it was 10 per cent above that: 386.7 parts per million.

Hansen said he will testify on behalf of British protesters against new coal-fired power plants. Protesters have chained themselves to gates and equipment at sites of several proposed coal plants in England.

“The thing that I think is most important is to block coal-fired power plants,” Mr. Hansen told the luncheon. “I'm not yet at the point of chaining myself, but we somehow have to draw attention to this.”

Frank Maisano, a spokesman for many U.S. utilities, including those trying to build new coal plants, said while Mr. Hansen has shown foresight as a scientist, his “stop them all approach is very simplistic” and shows that he is beyond his level of expertise.

The year of Mr. Hansen's original testimony was the world's hottest year on record at the time. Since then, however, 14 years have been hotter, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Two decades later, Mr. Hansen spent his time on the question of whether it is too late to do anything about it. His answer: There's still time to stop the worst, but not much time.

“We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes,” Mr. Hansen told the AP before the luncheon. “The Arctic is the first tipping point, and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would.”

Mr. Hansen, echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer.

Longtime global warming skeptic Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe, citing a recent poll, said in a statement: “Hansen, (former U.S. vice-president) Gore and the media have been trumpeting man-made climate doom since the 1980s. But Americans are not buying it.”

Representative Ed Markey, a Massassachusetts Democrat who is the committee's chairman, said, “Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate prophet.”

Big REDD

Right now, there’s more money to be made cutting tropical forests down than leaving them standing. Environmental policymakers are trying to reverse that equation. By Rhett Butler ntil forty years ago, the Surui people spent their days roaming the Brazilian Amazon with bows and arrows, hunting monkeys and wild pigs. Their only contact with the outside world was with the rubber tappers who occasionally ventured through their territory. Then, beginning in the late 1960s, the Brazilian government laid a 2,000-mile highway through the heart of the jungle. Lured by the promise of cheap, fertile land, thousands of poor farmers boarded buses, rickety pickups, and horse-drawn wagons and bore deep into Surui tribal lands. The results were catastrophic. First the tribe was decimated by disease. Then unscrupulous speculators started hawking fraudulent titles to the land, spawning bloody turf wars between the tribe and settlers. Within a few years, the Surui population dwindled from roughly 2,000 to fewer than 200. Amid the onslaught, neighboring tribes scattered, died off, or sold out to loggers and ranchers. But the bitter suffering and long odds only seemed to sharpen the Suruis’ resolve and fighting instincts. After ten years of struggle, in 1982, the tribe rose up, armed with clubs and poison arrows, and drove the settlers from their land. Since then, the Surui have been battling to keep new incursions at bay. The tribe has split into four groups, each living in a different corner of their 600,000-acre territory, so they can better guard their turf. They regularly throw chains over logging roads, chase miners out of pits and rivers, and take the government to task for failing to rein in the destruction. So far, their tenacity has paid off: even as development has eaten away at the surrounding landscape, the tribe has managed to preserve their forests and their way of life. Viewed by satellite, their territory is a lone patch of green amid stretches of barren, ocher earth. But the struggle is relentless. In the last decade, the Surui and neighboring tribes have seen eleven tribal elders assassinated. At one point their chief, Almir Surui, was evacuated by helicopter to the United States because of threats to his life. Behind the brutality is simple economics: in rural Brazil, grinding poverty is the norm, and there is ample money to be made from plundering the forests. Logging alone supports at least thirty timber mills and more than 4,000 jobs in the areas surrounding the Surui territory. This means that, for every trespasser the tribe fends off, thousands more lie in wait. Despite the admonitions of tribal elders, even some members of the Surui tribe have given in and opened their land to loggers in return for cash. Almir Surui is well aware that, given the forces he’s up against, poison arrows won’t be enough to keep intruders at bay forever. In recent years, the plucky young chief, who wears a traditional feather headdress even when visiting Washington or Rio de Janeiro, has embraced a variety of new tools that would have boggled the minds of his ancestors. The one-room schoolhouse in his village has been outfitted with broadband Internet and computer terminals that run a high-resolution version of Google Earth, which the Surui use to monitor illegal logging. Working with environmental groups, including Forest Trends and the Amazon Conservation Team, the tribe is also exploring ways to tap into global carbon markets. As a first step, they have hired the heavyweight law firm Baker and McKenzie to parse their claim to the carbon dioxide stored in their part of the Amazon, which, like all tropical forests, absorbs large quantities of this heat-trapping gas. They have also begun laying out methods for measuring the carbon stock, most likely through a combination of high-resolution satellites and on-the-ground observation. In the meantime, an anthropologist has been dispatched to explain to the tribe’s rank-and-file what exactly carbon is. The aim is to get businesses and governments in the developed world to pay the Surui to preserve their forest as part of the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The money would go toward a rigorous, independently certified monitoring and enforcement system, as well as toward building schools and health clinics and reforesting the areas of their land that have been ravaged by loggers. The Surui also plan to use some of the funds to set up sustainable industries, such as shade-grown-coffee plantations and small-scale furniture factories, which would allow them—and, eventually, the surrounding communities—to make a living from standing forests, thereby helping to alleviate the poverty that has fed constant assaults on their territory. The project is part of a bold experiment, called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, which is being piloted in countries around the globe. Though REDD can take many forms, the key idea is that businesses or governments in wealthy countries compensate those in the developing world for preserving their forests, either by paying into a fund or by purchasing credits on carbon markets. Though the concept is not entirely new, it is rapidly gaining traction as the international community comes to grips with the crucial role forests play in regulating greenhouse gases. Not only do our forests absorb and store vast quantities of carbon dioxide in their vegetation through photosynthesis; when they’re destroyed, they also release the gas into the atmosphere. Roughly one-fifth of the world’s carbon emissions stems from deforestation and forest degradation. Scientists warn that without measures to keep forests intact, we will stand no chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. REDD is expected to play a key role in the new global climate treaty to take effect after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Similarly, the landmark Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which as of this writing is moving through Congress, would allow polluters to offset a portion of their emissions by sinking money into REDD projects. Although support for these proposals is growing in many quarters, they remain deeply controversial. Backers say they could deliver the same benefits as cutting emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks while improving the lives of poor rural people and protecting vital ecosystems and watersheds. Critics counter that the policy will be costly and complicated to monitor and could undermine the transparency, simplicity, and predictability of carbon markets, dealing a critical blow to the global battle against climate change. he idea of protecting tropical forests as a way of mitigating climate change is by no means new. During negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol, President Bill Clinton established a system of incentives, including grants and tax credits, to encourage U.S. businesses to voluntarily reduce their carbon output before mandatory caps were set. Polluters could also get credit for "offsetting" emissions by investing in projects to prevent deforestation, with the result that U.S. power companies poured millions of dollars into protecting at-risk forests in Latin America. For instance, the Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, a preserve of nearly four million acres in the Bolivian Amazon, was established in 1997 using $11 million from U.S. energy companies, such as American Electric Power and BP Amoco. The project is administered by the Bolivian government and environmental groups, including the Nature Conservancy, which uses tree counters and satellite data to keep tabs on the health of the forest. So far, it has been a success. Even as logging and agriculture have eaten away at forests elsewhere in Latin America, including those that are nominally protected, Noel Kempff’s ecosystem has remained pristine. It is estimated that more than twenty-five million tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be avoided as a result of the project. But these types of forestry projects were relegated to the sidelines with the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the first and only global climate treaty, in December 1997. Though some signatories supported the idea of allowing developing countries to sell credits from forest-preservation projects on the emerging global carbon market, the majority held that large-scale monitoring and verification would be difficult, if not impossible, with existing technical tools. Critics also noted that discrete projects to protect against deforestation couldn’t be counted on to reduce overall carbon emissions, since the loggers and ranchers who chop down the forest for their livelihood could shift their activities to nonprotected areas, a phenomenon known as "leakage." Moreover, they argued, there was no way to guarantee that forests set aside as carbon sinks would continue to store heat-trapping gases in the long term, since drought or fire could cause the foliage in protected areas to die back and release stored carbon into the atmosphere. Perhaps more importantly, many environmental groups believed that credits from forest-preservation projects could swamp the carbon market, driving down the price of carbon and allowing polluting industries to continue emitting greenhouse gases without consequence. The few environmentalists who expressed support for REDD during the Kyoto talks became mired in bitter shouting matches with their peers. "It was a pretty lonely battle," recalls Tia Nelson, a longtime REDD supporter and the daughter of the late Senator Gaylord Nelson, who founded Earth Day. Ultimately, REDD was excluded from Kyoto, though parties to the agreement could earn carbon offsets by funding reforestation projects (or projects to plant new forests where none existed) in the developing world. However, due to technical stumbling blocks, few of these projects got off the ground. In the absence of meaningful incentives to protect or restore forests, development ate away at these lush ecosystems, including millions of acres of primary forests, which are the richest biologically, the most carbon dense, and the hardest to replace. Nowhere was the devastation more evident than in Brazil and Indonesia, two of the countries with the most extensive tropical forest cover. Between 1997 and 2004, Brazil’s deforestation rates increased dramatically, peaking at 10,600 square miles a year, an area the size of Massachusetts. In Indonesia, the collapse of the Suharto regime in 1998 ushered in a period of chaos, resulting in unprecedented destruction of forests. Loggers and oil palm plantation developers cleared and burned vast areas, and the damage was worsened by one of the strongest el Niño events on record. When the smoke cleared, more than 25,000 square miles had burned in Indonesian Borneo alone, unleashing upward of two billion tons of carbon. All told, since Kyoto’s exclusion, Brazil and Indonesia have lost more than 160,000 square miles of forest—an area nearly the size of California—with the result that billions of tons of carbon have been released into the atmosphere. In fact, due to deforestation these two countries, which have relatively modest industrial emission, rank just right behind the United States and China as the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gases. Faced with this devastation, scientists and environmental groups began working to solve the technical, political, and ideological woes that have prevented the widespread adoption of REDD. In 2005, six leading Brazilian and American researchers published an essay titled "Tropical Deforestation and the Kyoto Protocol" in the journal Climatic Change, which concluded that it would be impossible to curb global warming without protecting forests. The authors proposed solutions to some of the technical problems surrounding REDD. Most critically, they suggested that countries participating in REDD schemes commit to reducing deforestation on a national rather than project level, thus addressing the pressing concern about leakage. Meanwhile, new guidelines were emerging, among them the Climate, Community, and Biodiversity Standards and Voluntary Carbon Standards, which laid out rules for ensuring that REDD projects delivered on promised carbon reductions. At the same time, tools for monitoring deforestation, such as GPS and computer mapping, were becoming cheaper and more ubiquitous. New technologies were also surfacing, among them applications for analyzing high-resolution satellite data, which could spot small gaps in the rainforest canopy and pinpoint areas where even a handful of trees had been felled by loggers. Similarly, Lidar, a laser-based remote-sensing technology, could penetrate the dense layers of foliage, allowing researchers to create three-dimensional maps. In addition to making it easier to monitor deforestation, these developments simplified the process of estimating how much carbon forests were storing, something that previously required venturing into the woods on foot and measuring the girth of tree trunks and the depth of the leaf litter. Another crucial development was the emergence of a negotiation bloc, led by Papua New Guinea. At the time, the tiny island nation was under pressure from the international community to quit felling its tropical forests, but its leaders feared that ferreting out the loggers would devastate its already fragile economy. The dilemma caught the attention of a Columbia University MBA student named Kevin Conrad, who had grown up deep in the Papua New Guinea rainforest. He decided to form an organization to push for a mechanism by which developing countries could be compensated for preserving their forests. Called the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, it came to include more than a dozen tropical countries, among them Costa Rica, a country lauded by the international community for transforming itself from a high deforester to a model of conservation. The coalition made its public debut in December 2005 at the United Nations Climate Change Convention in Montreal, where Conrad offered a proposal for including REDD in the post-Kyoto climate treaty, partly as a means of encouraging poor countries to contribute to the global fight against climate change. Previously, developing nations had refused to commit to targets for cutting their greenhouse gas emissions because, they argued, it would stifle economic growth—a fact that had emerged as a key sticking point in past negotiations. According to Conrad, the proposal initially met opposition from the United States, which feared that if developing countries committed to robust and meaningful reductions of heat-trapping gases, the U.S. would no longer be able to cite their lack of participation as an excuse not to take action. But the United States eventually backed down, and, to the surprise of many observers, the parties agreed to study the proposal—a first step toward its inclusion in a future climate accord. Two years later, representatives from more than 180 nations descended on Bali for another UN climate conference, this one focused on hashing out a road map for negotiating a post-Kyoto climate treaty. When, after twelve days, the parties finally reached an agreement, the United States attempted to block its passage. Conrad issued a direct challenge: "We ask for your leadership, but if for some reason you’re not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way." Minutes later the U.S. delegation capitulated, paving the way for the Bali Action Plan, which recognized the critical role tropical forests play in regulating climate and established REDD as a likely component of the post-Kyoto regime. Soon after the meeting, money began pouring into voluntary REDD programs. Norway unveiled its International Climate and Forests Initiative, a plan to commit some $500 million per year to rainforest conservation, while the World Bank announced a $385 million Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) to jumpstart REDD in developing countries, in part by helping them develop the tools and expertise they’ll need to administer the program. More recently, Britain and Norway put $160 million toward the Congo Basin Forest Fund to finance forest conservation activities in Central Africa. Britain’s Prince Charles has made saving rainforests his signature cause by developing the Prince’s Rainforest Project to bring business and political leaders around to supporting conservation. His efforts culminated in a historic meeting between heads of state, in advance of the G20 summit in April 2009, to discuss rainforest conservation. Developing countries have also gotten involved, including Brazil, which in 2008 announced the formation of a $21 billion fund to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 70 percent within ten years. The project is expected to cut the nation’s carbon emissions by 4.8 billion tons by 2017. (For more information, see Marcelo Leite, "The Brazilian Dilemma.") Meanwhile, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill includes a REDD component. Specifically, the measure would allow U.S. companies to offset six billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions by investing in forest conservation projects between now and 2025. These developments are part of a surge of support for REDD, which extends even to once-skeptical environmental groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club, and the growing momentum toward its inclusion in the post-Kyoto climate treaty, the final details of which are meant to be hammered out in Copenhagen this December. Stuart Eizenstat, who led the U.S. delegation in Kyoto, summed up the evolving attitudes of many environmentalists and diplomats in testimony before Congress last year, when he said that continuing to exclude tropical forests from the global efforts to fight climate change "makes no sense scientifically, and it makes no sense politically or economically." espite this outpouring of enthusiasm, REDD remains controversial. Critics, including some European countries, argue that even with new technologies it will be complicated to monitor. Some environmental groups maintain that allowing polluters to offset their emissions by investing in forestry projects will undermine low-carbon technologies without meaningfully reducing emissions (something REDD supporters say can be avoided by setting strong emissions caps). There are also deep divisions over how to finance REDD projects. Some countries, most notably Brazil, argue that instead of integrating forest-preservation projects into international carbon markets, wealthy nations should reward developing countries that curb deforestation by paying into funds that the developing countries themselves control. Their reasons have partly to do with sovereignty concerns—Brazil doesn’t fancy international monitors descending on its forests or weighing in on its land-management policies—and partly to do with the belief that allowing forests into carbon markets would let developed nations off the hook when it comes to cutting their own emissions. "Brazil is not interested in giving industrialized countries cheap carbon credits from protecting the Amazon if they are not going to stop building coal-fired power plants," says William Boyd, a professor of law at the University of Colorado who has worked extensively on REDD policy issues. But some REDD advocates hold that a fund-based system will be subject to political whims of donor nations and won’t generate the kind of money needed to reduce deforestation at the scale and pace necessary to meet emission-reduction targets. Another contentious issue is how to measure a nation’s progress toward curbing deforestation. The most straightforward approach is to compare current or future deforestation rates to historical ones. But this method favors nations with a history of slash and burn, something countries like Costa Rica, which have taken pains to preserve their forests, argue is deeply unfair. This idea is also troubling to the Surui, who fear their REDD project could fail because they’ve kept their forests so pristine. To solve this quandary, some rainforest advocates, including Kevin Conrad, have proposed giving nations with a track record of good stewardship credit for early action. "If we don’t provide incentives for countries that have so far maintained their forests, but otherwise have land suitable for conversion, then those forests are going to fall," Conrad explains. But the idea of giving credit for past successes raises eyebrows among those concerned about the integrity of carbon markets. Similarly, for REDD to work, at least some of the money that is generated will have to go to agents of deforestation, such as commercial logging operations. Otherwise, there is no incentive for them to stop destroying forests. But this idea doesn’t sit well with many environmentalists. There is also the question of what REDD will mean for the well-being of indigenous people. Despite having occupied lands for years or generations, many forest-dwelling communities still lack formal titles, or even basic rights, to land and resources. Indigenous advocates fear that as REDD makes forests increasingly valuable, even more rights are likely to be wrested from native inhabitants. Groups like the Global Forest Coalition and the World Rainforest Movement paint a nightmare scenario of forced displacement at the hands of carbon speculators. "REDD projects do not help indigenous peoples and forest peoples," says Jihan Gearon of the Indigenous Environmental Network. "In fact they hurt these communities and take away access and rights to forests, traditional territories, and medicines." REDD’s supporters counter that, if well designed, the mechanism could actually benefit forest dwellers, by providing funding for services such as health care and education as well as by focusing fresh attention on the plight of indigenous people and their territories. "For decades, capitalists, socialists, private companies, governments, and local operators have blasted into tropical communities, razed forests, and moved on with little concern for the fact that they denuded the land," says John O. Niles, a REDD expert with the Tropical Forest Group, a forest policy think tank. "REDD will put a microscope on these issues. I think a UN-driven system of incentives for keeping forests—a system of oversight with some transparency—and the strong voice of critical observers will lead to more positive outcomes more of the time." Certainly, some voluntary REDD projects have benefited forest dwellers. Among them is the Juma Sustainable Development Reserve, which encompasses 1.4 million acres of rainforest in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, an area that until a few years ago was plagued by illegal logging. Foreign businesses or governments can purchase offset credits on the voluntary carbon market, with funds going toward protecting the reserve’s lush ecosystem, in part by compensating 6,000 Juma families for preserving their forests. Each family is given a monthly stipend and their villages are provided with solar panels, computers, and money for community services, such as schools and clinics. Monitoring is done by satellite. If the forest is damaged or destroyed, the family that owns the land is dropped from the program and their village put on warning. The project is still in the early stages, but if successful it could prevent the release of 190 million tons of carbon between now and 2050. To some degree, REDD’s effect on forest dwellers will depend on how the policy is structured. Some parties to the UN climate talks have proposed building protections for indigenous people into the REDD program in the post-Kyoto climate treaty. But the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have blocked this provision, a fact that has spawned outrage. Indigenous groups have turned out at UN climate conferences with placards reading, "No Rights, No REDD!" iven the myriad obstacles, will REDD designers be able to develop a workable framework? Many people involved in REDD discussions think so. "I think the chances are very strong that if we get a climate agreement in Copenhagen REDD will be a part of it," says Tracy Johns of the Woods Hole Research Center, a scientific think tank that has researched REDD extensively. "All of the stakeholders that have been involved in the REDD process in recent years—governments, NGOs, the private sector, indigenous peoples—have done a lot of work and made a lot of progress on the issues and challenges. I think in many ways the REDD negotiation process is more advanced than many of the other lines of negotiation that are under way for Copenhagen." This is not to say that the parties to the negotiation, and the civil society groups weighing in from the sidelines, are unaware of the challenges. Even REDD’s strongest supporters admit that trying to fulfill all the hopes invested in the policy, while avoiding the possible pitfalls, is a risky proposition. But they support it just the same. "REDD is being asked to do a lot of things—improving governance, promoting sustainable development, and mitigating climate change—but the potential benefits are so great, it’s a chance worth taking," explains Stephan Schwartzman of the Environmental Defense Fund. This is because REDD is the only existing mechanism that promises to make preserving living forests more lucrative than cutting them down—and only by accomplishing that feat can we hope to stem the tide of deforestation. Put another way, despite its shortcomings, REDD may be our last, best hope of saving the tropical forests, which are so essential to the future health of our planet. 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The Brazilian Dilemma

A nation struggles not to exploit its own greatest resource.

By Marcelo Leite

een from the height of 36,000 feet aboard a Brazilian Air Force jet, the Amazon rainforest looks tranquil as we approach our destination, the town of Tabatinga, a jungle outpost in the state of Amazonas where Brazil meets Colombia and Peru. A dark green velvet blankets the land as far as we can see through the fluffy clouds below us. The monotone is free of vehicle tracks, broken only by muddy threads of rivers flowing into the Upper Solimões, as the main branch of the mighty Amazon River is called where it enters the country on its 4,000-mile descent from the Peruvian Andes to the Atlantic.

But if this five-hour flight from São Paulo offers a glimpse of a vast and untouched Amazon, it also highlights the checkerboarding created by recent development. To reach the wilderness from the south, we first fly over countless towns, coffee and sugar cane plantations, and processing plants covering the state of São Paulo. Then the flight continues northward over immense cattle areas that lay siege to the unique, biologically diverse floodplain called the Pantanal, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Passing over Rondônia state, an hour or so before we land, we see how soybean plantations—prominent newer stars in the country’s growing array of exports—have replaced whole swaths of Amazon rainforest.

In sum, the flight gives the passenger a quick snapshot of a massive ecological dilemma. Of the original 1.5 million square miles of Brazilian Amazon forest, far and away the world’s largest, some 82 percent remains intact. This entire area, roughly the size of India, is home to only twenty-four million people and is endowed with incredible biodiversity of global significance. But it continues to give way to logging, cattle, and soy plantations.

The big question is whether this southern giant will follow the development path favored by many Brazilians, once again plundering Amazonia’s natural capital and suffering the severe consequences of deforestation. Or will it learn from unsustainable prior experience along its Atlantic coast, and resist dragging the Amazon rainforest into the same trap?

The recent news has been good. According to satellite photos taken by Brazil’s highly regarded National Institute for Space Research, deforestation rates have been dropping steadily since 2004. That was the year that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, responding to increasing pressure from the international community and a growing contingent of ecologically minded Brazilian voters, revealed the Amazon Deforestation Action Plan. The plan involves tighter controls over loggers and ranchers, including fines and even imprisonment, and the refusal of credit by official banks to farmers who are not able to document that they abide by environmental regulations. Chief among these is the Forestry Code, which requires the preservation of at least 80 percent of forest cover on Amazonian properties.

Another piece of good news is Brazil’s Amazon Fund, an innovative idea first announced by former Environment Minister Marina Silva at the United Nations climate conference in Bali in 2007. The fund, newly operational this year, collects voluntary contributions from other nations, companies, and even individuals: the government of Norway has pledged $1 billion to it, of which a first installment of $110 million was deposited at the end of March. Another $18 million is expected to come from Germany soon. Fund officials working at the National Economic and Social Development Bank, a federal agency, then channel these funds to conservation groups and projects—but only after a country-wide reduction in deforestation has been achieved and documented.

The emergence of this government-run fund, a spinoff from international discussions about Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), constitutes an advance in several important ways. First, by retaining Brazilian control over how the money is spent, the fund’s structure counters nationalist objections to receiving foreign funds in exchange for forest conservation and the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Control over the national patrimony has been a strongly valued concept in Brazil ever since the bad old days of the mid-twentieth century, when foreign interests owned local electric power and oil companies. Dreams of Amazonian prosperity arouse similar feelings. Second, for the first time after decades of resistance, the fund commits Brazil to deforestation targets. The goal is to achieve an 80 percent reduction in Amazon deforestation by 2020. Third, the willingness of Norway and other countries to hand over substantial monies to Brazil, for projects chosen by Brazil only, reflects growing international confidence in the country’s ability to measure deforestation rates and select anti-
deforestation controls.

But even as Brazil pursues policies to slow deforestation, it advances others that could speed it up. In particular is the government’s $328 billion Accelerated Development Plan, an ambitious long-term national effort to strengthen Brazilian infrastructure and ties with neighboring countries by means of new highways, bridges, airfields, and electric power installations. Support for such initiatives comes from powerful farming and mining interests. Each new mile of road in the Amazon creates new opportunities to exploit the forests. Meanwhile, agribusiness leaders and sympathetic members of Congress have launched an offensive against the Forestry Code and some of its more restrictive provisions. They are, for example, trying to restore the 80 percent reserve rule in the Amazon to the 50 percent level previously required.

The bottom line: the battle is far from over when it comes to balancing Amazonian economic growth and conservation, and in Brasilia the tug of war continues. The severe effects of Amazonian deforestation on regional weather and the global climate are becoming ever better understood. The forest’s biodiversity remains impressive, and there are still countless plant and animal species yet to be analyzed for their possible benefits to all of us. Still, the reality is that if Brazilians were forced to choose today between forest and development, many would favor the latter, matching the amount of forest that has already been lost and abandoning another 18 percent or more to development, exports, and short-term prosperity for some. Most would gladly retrace the path the nation followed along the coast while eradicating the no less diverse Atlantic forest—thus replicating the fate of most of the temperate forests in the developed world.

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Amazon bill controversy in Brazil

By Gary Duffy BBC News, Sao Paulo

Brazil's disappearing rainforests have long been of concern

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is due this week to make one of the most keenly awaited decisions about land ownership in the Amazon rainforest.

The president has to decide by 25 June whether to veto parts of a bill that is due to transfer an area of public land - estimated to be around 670,000 square kilometres (259,000 square miles) - into private hands.

The government originally introduced what is called "Provisional Measure 458" as a way of bringing security to small farm owners in the Amazon region.

But critics say the proposal amounts to an amnesty for land-grabbers, and that the original measure has been altered by Congress in a way that will only serve to encourage deforestation.

Uncertainty over land ownership has long been a cause of violent conflict in the Amazon region, and presented an enormous obstacle for the authorities in their efforts to prevent illegal deforestation.

It was in order to tackle this issue the government introduced the proposal to transfer a vast area of land, roughly the size of France, into private hands.

'Huge pressure'

The so-called "provisional measure" was meant to settle the question of ownership of hundreds of thousands of properties where those who occupied the land before 2004 had never been formally granted legal title.

This bill will be a major signal indicating to the people who enjoy impunity that it worth committing a crime in the Amazon Marcelo Furtado, Executive Director of Greenpeace in Brazil

The smallest areas, of less than 100 hectares (247 acres), would be handed over for free; medium-sized territory would be sold for a symbolic value, while larger estates of up to 1,500 hectares (3,707 acres) would be auctioned at market prices, but with 20 years allowed to make a repayment.

However, changes to the law mean the largest areas could then be sold on after a period of three years instead of 10, and critics fear this will lead to further exploitation of the rainforest.

Environmental groups have also complained that the law may allow lands to be registered by companies or by frontmen acting on behalf of large landowners.

What we exactly want to do is to guarantee that people have ownership of land, to see if we can end the violence in this country Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

Greenpeace says it was expecting the decision last week, but the fact that it did not come is a sign of division within government, and an indication of the huge pressure on President Lula, who it says is receiving thousands of phonecalls and e-mails on the issue.

"We know that within his government there is a lot of tension between the ministries of agriculture and environment, land reform and strategic studies," Marcelo Furtado, executive director of Greenpeace in Brazil, told the BBC News website.

"If he did not decide on any of the vetoes last week, our reading is that it is a bad indication that eventually the big landowners are actually having an impact on his approach."

"We are extremely concerned."

Mr Furtado says the bill, as it was originally presented, was already deeply flawed "in terms of the areas that would be privatised, in terms of who would have access to the land, in terms of lack of verification from any government authority on the status of the land".

"The problem is what we are finding in the Amazon is either the attitude of 'I am not going do anything because I am sure we will win this fight and change the law and make all the deforestation I have legal'," he said.

"Or the other attitude is that because there is so little governance here, because the government is so absent the truth is that we can just keep cutting down the forest and nothing will happen to us."

"This bill will be a major signal indicating to the people who enjoy impunity that it is worth committing a crime in the Amazon."

Divided society

Not surprisingly, supporters of the measure dispute this assessment, and point as well to other initiatives that are under way in the Amazon.

The Amazon rainforest Largest continuous tropical forest Shared by nine countries 65% Brazilian territory Covers 6.6m sq km in total Pop: 30m - 23.5m are in Brazil Delicate balance

On Friday, the Brazilian government announced its so-called "Green Arch" proposal in which it will pay small farmers up to $51 (£31) per month to reforest degraded lands in 43 municipal areas where deforestation is a major issue.

The government has also set a target to reduce deforestation by some 70% by 2018, and says the indications from recent months are that it will be at its lowest level in two decades, due in part to an increase in policing measures.

President Lula says non-governmental organisations are "not telling the truth" when they say that the provisional measure will encourage land grabbers.

"What we exactly want to do is to guarantee that people have ownership of land, to see if we can end the violence in this country," he said last week.

"This is what we want to do, and this is what we are going to do," the president insisted.

There is a consensus that the issue of land ownership badly needs to be sorted out in the Amazon - but it seems this bill has not built on that common ground.

The heated debate over the measure has once again highlighted the divide in Brazilian society between a strong agricultural lobby keen to promote development, and environmental groups who fear for the future of the Amazon.

Whatever decision President Lula takes, it is unlikely to be free from controversy.