Paying for the forest

tauringhuang.

Aug 7th 2008 | SÃO PAULO
From The Economist print edition

Donations welcome, even from foreigners

AP

Tapping the world's conscienceIT IS an unusual prospectus for a new fund. Left-wing government (formerly hostile to private enterprise) seeks investment from governments or individuals to be managed by the national development bank. Returns will beat the market in terms of virtue only, though investors may lay claim to a part in the salvation of the planet. Norway, the most considerate of global citizens, has already pledged $100m. Others may follow.

The Amazon Fund, launched on July 31st by Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leans on an idea that has become accepted wisdom among conservationists: to stop the Amazon rainforest from shrinking, a way must be found to make preserving it more lucrative than slashing and burning it. It is not yet clear who will be eligible for grants from the fund, but early indications are that it will give money to projects proposed by NGOs, scientists or by the governments of the states that are home to the forest. They might include supporting traditional rubber tappers and gatherers of Brazil nuts, or carefully managed forestry.

Brazilian officials have traditionally been suspicious of the involvement of outsiders in the Amazon, which comprises some 40% of the national territory. No sooner was the fund launched than both Lula and his minister for long-term planning, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, felt the need to insist that it did not represent a giveaway of Brazilian sovereignty, and that foreigners who gave money would have no influence on government policy. This seems a strange signal to send to potential investors. In practice some way to take account of donors’ wishes will be found, according to Paulo Adário of Greenpeace, one of the NGOs that proposed such a fund a year ago. But the intended audience was at home.

Touchiness about the Amazon still runs deep. The generals who ruled Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s had a paranoid fear of an invasion of the Amazon. They built roads through the forest, and subsidised companies and people to colonise it. The army is still touchy on the subject. So, surprisingly, is Brazil’s small (Maoist) Communist Party, which supports Lula but frets about foreign capitalists in the Amazon. However hedged about, Lula’s embrace of the idea that the world as a whole has an interest in the Amazon is a sign of his country’s increasing self-confidence.