Peru's Gov. Wants To Use Forests For Carbon Credits As Destructive Gold Rush Gathers Momentum

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Heavily forested Madre de Dios, Peru's top nature tourism destination, is a prime target for carbon-trading schemes such as REDD, or Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, and REDD+, which includes forests not necessarily threatened. But those schemes, which took a step forward in the United Nations climate talks in Cancún in December, are being overtaken by mining and other development.

When Antonio Brack became the country's first environment minister in 2008, he announced a goal of zero net deforestation by 2021 and began seeking funds for forest conservation, touting the ecosystem services they provide and their value as a carbon sink.

The newly paved Interoceanic Highway is stymieing that goal. Satellite images and other data suggest carbon emissions from deforestation rose by more than 60 percent between 2006 and 2010, coinciding with increased mining and the resurfaced highway. The road runs from the Pacific Coast to the Brazilian border, opening Brazil's markets - notably soy beans - to lucrative China trade. The stretch from Madre de Dios to the Andean highlands, virtually impassible in the rainy season just half a dozen years ago, is now a long day trip. Brack downplays the highway's impact, noting that the road has existed for decades and the only change is the asphalt. But satellite images show deforestation increasing along the route. From the air the region looks like a vast, mottled carpet of green, but gaps are opening along the highway as farmers clear land and the mining boom accelerates. The paved highway makes it easier to bring backhoes and bulldozers into the region.

Officials say mining, which now trumps agriculture as the No. 1 cause of deforestation, has led to the clearing of some 150,000 hectares of forest - half the size of New York's Long Island - in the past quarter century. "The future of millions of years of evolution rests in the hands of this land grab and massive development," says Gregory Asner, a tropical ecologist with the Carnegie Institution for Science, who helped the Environment Ministry set up a system to map carbon stocks and deforestation in Madre de Dios.

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http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2011/02/peru-gold-mining