Brazil seeks deforestation plan support

http://news.yahoo.com Tue Oct 17 SAO PAULO, Brazil

Brazil’s environment minister met Tuesday with former Vice President Al Gore and urged him to back a Brazilian proposal to help developing countries obtain aid to prevent destruction of their rain forests.

Brazil is proposing the creation of a fund financed by developed nations that would provide financial incentives for developing countries to keep their rain forests standing.
“The ex-vice president of United States was very sympathetic to the Brazilian proposal,” Environment Minister Marina Silva told reporters after meeting with Gore in Sao Paulo. “He has a public commitment and is a respected activist around the world for this cause. He should analyze it and possibly become an ally” of the proposal.

Gore, who was in Sao Paulo to promote his book “An Inconvenient Truth,” did not speak to reporters following the meeting.

Brazil first proposed the idea in Rome last August at a preparatory meeting for the 12th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Climate Change and said it would make a formal proposal at the conference in Kenya in November. The idea would be to create a voluntary fund that would reward developing countries for how much they reduce deforestation below traditional levels.

The countries then would get paid on the basis of how many tons of carbon the extra forest left standing was able to remove from the atmosphere. Developing countries are not required to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocols.
If the countries deforested more than the preset limit, that amount would be deducted from future credits.

Silva said Brazil intended to reduce the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rain forest by 11 percent this year, the same percentage reduction the government said it achieved between Aug. 2005 and Aug. 2006, when the Amazon lost 6,450 square miles of forest cover.

The largest area of Amazon forest destroyed in a year was 11,200 square miles in 1995.

Environmentalists say deforestation has slowed largely because farmers are cutting down less forest to plant soybeans. The price of soybeans has declined on the international market and Brazil’s currency has strengthened against the dollar, making it much less profitable to cut down the rain forest to plant grain.

Destroying trees through burning contributes to global warming, releasing about 370 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year — about 5 percent of the world total — scientists say. The rain forest covers 60 percent of Brazil. Experts say as much as 20 percent of its 1.6 million square miles already has been destroyed by development, logging and farming.

Brazil tells foreigners Amazon “not for sale”

http://news.yahoo.com Tue Oct 17 – By Andrea Welsh BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters)

Brazil on Tuesday rejected a foreign proposal to buy and preserve land in the endangered Amazon and asked former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to support a home-grown rainforest-protection plan. Al Gore, who has become a prominent green campaigner since leaving office, is in Brazil to promote the Portuguese-language version of his new book on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

“The former vice president will study the proposal and may become a supporter,” Environment Minister Marina Silva said in a statement after meeting Gore in Sao Paulo. Brazil wants international support to help preserve the Amazon, the world’s largest remaining tropical rainforest. Negotiators will present the new conservation plan at a round of global climate talks in Nairobi next month.

Silva and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on Tuesday the Amazon was the heritage of the Brazilian people and was “not for sale.”

Their comments, in a signed article on the opinion page of Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, followed a report in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper two weeks ago that British Environment Secretary David Miliband was promoting a proposal for a global trust to buy and sell trees in the Amazon. The report angered Brazilians, who see themselves as the rightful owners and best caretakers of the jungle, most of which lies in its territory.

“Well-meaning individuals concerned about global warming should dedicate themselves to influencing their own governments,” the ministers said, adding that most greenhouse gases come from rich nations burning fossil fuels like coal and oil.

SWATHE RAZED EVERY YEAR

Deforestation, which releases carbon from trees into the atmosphere, causes about 20 percent of the human greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. A huge swathe of rainforest is razed in Brazil every year, but protecting land is a touchy sovereign issue in a country where nearly a third of all people live in poverty.

The ministers’ article said the proposal Brazil will present in Nairobi would create a global rainforest fund and provide incentives for countries that voluntarily bring deforestation below 1990s levels. “We believe this is an appropriate way for developed countries to support the conservation of tropical forests,” they said.

The current global agreement, known as the Kyoto protocol, exempts developing nations from lowering greenhouse gas emissions, a fact cited by the United States when it refused to sign on. Silva is known as a conservationist but some Brazilians, especially businessmen and farmers, criticize her for wanting to preserve too much land.

When she first came to office in 2004, deforestation surged as global demand for soy and beef tempted farmers and ranchers to clear more land. The export income lifted Brazil’s economy and helped pay debts and fund a program that now provides aid to some 11 million poor families.

Deforestation slowed by a third in 2005 and is expected to slow a further 10 percent this year, owing partly to Silva’s crackdown on illegal logging and partly to waning global demand for soy and beef.

Green Growth

posted on 02 Oct 06 by David Miliband (secretary of state for environment UK)
http://www.davidmiliband.defra.gov.uk

I will be in Mexico Monday to Thursday this week, at the second ‘dialogue’ established at the Gleneagles Meeting of the Group of 8 leading industrialised countries last July.  The dialogue engages the eight biggest economies, plus the next 12 biggest emitters of greemhouse gases, in an informal setting desgined at a minimum to promote understanding and at a maximum a) to create bilateral agreements and b) set the stage for climate change negotiations in the UN framework.

The Mexico meeting will focus on the costs of climate change, with a presentation of the emerging findings of the review by Sir Nicholas Stern; on technology, with information from the International Energy Authority on clean technology; and on finance, with dicussion of the World Bank’s proposed Energy investment Framework.

The key issue is to win the argument in the developed and developing world that green growth is not only necessary, it is possible.  In fact climate change imposes such costs that there is an umbilical link between the environment and the economy (and a link to security, but that is for another day).

In the UK since 1997, Saturday’s Independent reported that greenhouse gas emissions “have fallen by 7 per cent while the economy has grown by 25 per cent”.  It also pointed out that Arnold  Schwarzenegger cited the UK as a model this week as he signed the law which committed California to reduce carbon emissions.

In the UK employment in environmental industries has gone from 175 000 in 2001 to 400 000 in 2004.  This is a direct benefit from the drive to combat climate change.  But the link also arises from the fact that the costs of adaptation to climate change dwarf those of preventing it; that will be at the centre of the Mexico talks.

Miliband promotes plan to buy rainforests

October 20th, 2006 by amazonia

http://www.telegraph.co.uk
By Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor (Filed: 01/10/2006)

Ministers are proposing an extraordinary scheme to tackle climate change in which the Amazon rainforest would be turned into an international trust and its trees sold to individuals and groups.

Plans for the wholesale “privatisation” of the rainforest will be raised by David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, at a summit in Mexico this week.

The scheme, endorsed by Tony Blair, aims to protect the plants and wildlife from logging. About 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost annually to deforestation, according to the Government.

At last year’s meeting of the G8 group of leading industrialised nations, Britain pledged to take a lead on climate-change programmes.

Mr Miliband will set out his plans at a meeting in Monterrey of ministers from 20 of the biggest energy-using nations. The plan is the brainchild of Frank Field, the Labour MP and former minister. It appeals to the Prime Minister and Mr Miliband, according to their officials, because it would “capture the imagination of the world” and “bring the international community together”.

But both emphasise the idea is at an early stage and admit that there would be “sovereignty issues” involving the government of Brazil, which is home to almost all the Amazon rainforest.

Mr Miliband said: “Obviously there are sovereignty issues but deforestation is a massive issue… and any plan, however radical, is worth looking at.” It would involve the creation of an international body to buy the rainforest before setting up a trust to sell trees. The buyers would be “stake-holders” in the rainforest.

A key figure behind the scenes has been Johan Eliasch, the Swedish-born multi-millionaire businessman who is deputy treasurer of the Conservative Party. Earlier this year he bought 400,000 acres in the Amazon rainforest for an estimated £8 million.

Lloyd’s 360 Live Debate – Climate Change

October 20th, 2006 by amazonia

Wednesday 5 July 2006 – London
The Individual View – Johan Eliasch, Chairman & CEO, Head NV, Europe

Introduction – Sir Trevor McDonald

What about the individual’s view? Our next speaker, though, is not just another individual. Johan Eliasch is Chairman & CEO of Head NV, the leading global manufacturer and marketer of premium sports equipment, including some of the most recognisable brands in the sporting world. In addition to his role at Head, he’s also Chairman of the investment group Equity Partners. It’s an investment group which has interests in the media, telecoms, aviation and industrial sectors. Away from business he’s very active in the political arena, where he’s currently Deputy Party Treasurer for the Conservative Party and he’s an accomplished sportsman as well.

 What probably distinguishes him from most of us is that he’s just acquired approximately 400,000 acres of Amazon rainforest and I think (if I’m not mistaken) he’s encouraging the rest of us to do the same.

 Johan, we’re very delighted to have you here.

 Johan Eliasch

 Sir Trevor, thank you very much for that kind introduction.

 Well my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I guess I was invited because of this purchase of rainforest. And you might ask why? Now, when I grew up in Sweden, in Stockholm, I could ski from October through to pretty much April.

Nowadays (I don’t live there anymore) but you’re lucky if you get one or two days skiing outside Stockholm. And the reason why? Well, global warming.

Now, why did I think about the Amazonas?

And taking a slight step back actually, why not think about terrorism, Iraq, Iran, etc.? That is more frightening compared to the devastating effects that global warming might actually have. I’m not going to go through all the statistics of climate, I think we’ve dealt with that, but let’s look at what are the solutions. I thought of the various ways and what is easy and, having analysed it, it was pretty obvious – buy rainforest in the Amazonas with the objective of protecting and preserving it.

So let’s look at what my 400,000 acres do. To put it into context, it preserves about 75 millions tonnes of CO2 emissions, which is about half of UK emissions, annually. It is about 10% of the Kyoto reduction target and it’s about half a percent of all the CO2 emissions annually in the world.

Now, let’s look also a bit at the Amazonas. Why is that region so important? It covers about 800,000,000 hectares which is an area one and a half times the size of Europe. So, it’s a huge area. The biggest country in the region is Brazil. Now, it accounts for about 20% of the global oxygen production and about 30% of the fresh water supply.

And out of all the things and potential devastations, I have heard about here today, one that has not been mentioned that much, which must not be underestimated, is fresh water.

If the sea level rises as much as predicted, it will destroy at least 50% of all fresh water supplies, because salt water will mix with fresh waters.

What happens in the Amazonas each year is that you have illegal burning and logging, to the tune of about 3 and a half million hectares – a land area which is almost the size of Switzerland, so it’s a huge land area.  And that accounts for about 1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions, which is more than the entire Kyoto reduction target over the period, and about 7.5 % of the total CO2 emissions globally. So, if one found a way to stop the illegal burning and logging we would actually deal with, not only the Kyoto reduction target immediately, but we would as well, as scientists concur with, deal with the somewhat exponential development of emissions of carbon dioxide.

Now, looking at the reasons behind this, why do we have all this illegal burning and logging?

It’s actually not companies that go out there and say “ok, we’re going to steal some trees or anything”, it’s poor people. A lot of them are indigenous peoples in the area who don’t have any other means than doing this to feed themselves and their families.

So, poverty (as you pointed out earlier) is very much an interrelated issue. And currently in these regions there are no mechanisms in an organised way to actually protect rainforests.

Mature rainforests are not part of the clean development mechanism, as provided under the Kyoto protocol, so it’s not eligible for carbon credits and that’s something that I believe has to change, as the catalyst to enable these regions to protect the rainforests.

Now a look at the insurance industry – I mean you lost a lot of money last year. I understand £66 billion as has already been said in the introduction. And I believe that the US government pumped in about £150 billion on top of that, so the total losses were £200 – £250 billion.

Now to put that into the context of the Amazon region.

And yes, there are conflicting stories. Does the illegal burning and logging have anything to do with the hurricanes?

And I would say yes, because you can actually see a direct correlation between the degree of deforestation in the Amazonas and the level of cloud cover (due to smoke) in the Gulf of Mexico and this definitely has an impact on weather patterns and the severity of the hurricanes. So, to put this in to context what we can do at prevailing land prices is buy the Amazonas, hypothetically, and the cost of doing that would actually be less – it would be about

£50 Billion at prevailing prices – and that is less than what the insurance industry as a whole paid out last year, so the payback is less than a year.

One of the first people that I mentioned this purchase to was an old friend of mine, who you’ve probably heard of, Hank Greenberg. And Hank said that “this is a no-brainer, count me in whatever you do”. Now, it’s not quite as easy as going there and buying up the rainforest. It is something which is sensitive with the local nations, the local communities and if I were to do an initiative of this sort, it would have to be done taking into account a lot of different constituencies. But I believe that if everybody joined forces in protecting and preserving the rainforest, we could immediately deal with the Kyoto reduction target and we could reduce the insurance industry’s losses significantly.

Now, one important part in global climate change is obviously the Kyoto protocol.

Now, I think that the biggest benefit of the Kyoto protocol, looking at it in a very crass, cynical manner, is that it has increased awareness.
Did it achieve very much? No. Because the reduction targets are in a lot of instances – pathetic.

And the other major issue is that the US never signed up and also India and China have not signed up. So if you want to make a change you need 80 different nations to sign up to that change. So it’s very difficult with taking a protocol which was sort of superficial in many ways, didn’t address a lot of things and move forward with that as the way to solve this issue. So I think it’s very important that the world leaders recognise this and start a new protocol. Not in 2012, but now. Otherwise we’re just deferring the inevitable.

Now, while I have been complaining about the US, China and India, I should also say that it’s been said that the EU has done better than the rest of the world. In fact, when you analyse it, we haven’t done that well. If you take Spain and Italy, for example, CO2 emissions went up 4.8% and 4.9%, respectively. And there are lots of other examples where we have not done very well. Now, I think one can present lots of examples, for instance, the UK.

If the UK spent 12 million pounds, it could buy rainforests in the Amazonas and it could meet its reduction targets under Kyoto, which is not a lot of money. I mean it’s a rounding error, compared to the other measures they are trying to take.

Another thing that you raised here earlier is innovation – yes, but innovation takes time, because coming up with new engines, new technology takes time. But there are lots of stupid things which are going on around us.

Now let me take two examples from the aviation industry.

Whenever you’re flying into Heathrow, chances are you will have to hold, because Heathrow is too busy. There are only two runways and there is a limit to how many planes can land each minute. We’ve been debating a third runway for a long time and it’s taken a very long time to actually get something done about it. The biggest benefit is the reduction in hold time that a third runway generates – it’s equivalent to about 1 Million tonnes of carbon emissions, which is not an insignificant number.

Another good example is, if you fly from London to Rome the actual distance is about 750 nautical miles, but when you fly it is about 950 nautical miles, and why is that? Because we have an air traffic control system in Europe where you fly zigzag, because of the volume of air traffic. And in order to combat that a long time ago we developed new technology and upgraded Avionex equipment that enabled us to stack planes much more effectively. But no one has really changed the APC system, although these investments were completed. I mean every aircraft that flies today above a certain level, has to have this equipment, but we haven’t done anything to take advantage of the benefits.

So, as a finishing remark, I would like to say that it’s a serious problem. It is no longer Iran, Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction – it is about the fight against climate change and that is what we need to put at the forefront of the global agenda. We need action and we need governments, businesses and people working together to achieve a solution.

 Sir Trevor McDonald

Johan, thank you very much. I know you probably thought I would ask you this, but it’s ok for people with money to go off and buy bits of the rainforest.

What about the rest of us and would it not be better to work with governments and local communities, who, after all, must be the most important allies in accomplishing any kind of change, rather than the just going and buying up swathes of their country?

Johan Eliasch

Well, at least what I did stimulated some debate. But what I did, it’s not a solution. It does something and perhaps it’s a start towards a solution. We could develop a programme – as you say – with the communities, with the states, with the people that live in these areas, where we protect and preserve the rainforest.

The man who bought a forest

The Guardian
It’s not easy being the 145th richest man in Britain. Should you buy a chunk of rainforest to help save the planet, or loan a couple of million to the Tories? Johan Eliasch did both. Aida Edemariam meets him

Tuesday April 4, 2006
Johan Eliasch is finding himself in the news a lot these days. Just over a week ago it emerged that this Swedish-born tycoon, who owns the sports equipment company Head and is valued at £355m by the Sunday Times “rich list” (he’s number 145), had bought 400,000 acres of the Amazonian rainforest, an area the size of Greater London. He bought it, he said, to save it, to preserve its plants and wildlife – and, by preserving old-growth forest, to do his bit towards counteracting rising CO2 levels.

Then, last week, Eliasch found himself in the headlines once again. After weeks of speculation about Labour’s high-profile “lenders” – who they were, whether promises of peerages had been made – the Conservative party found itself under pressure to announce the names of those who had loaned it money too. Last weekend’s Sunday papers named Eliasch as one of these lenders, saying he had loaned them £1m to buy back the freehold of their party headquarters. Late last week, under pressure from the Electoral Commission, the Tories confirmed the identities of those who loaned the party nearly £16m (and returned £5m to lenders who refused to be identified). It turned out that Eliasch, who is deputy treasurer of the Conservative party, accounted for £2.6m of it.

The Conservatives are keeping a tight rein on what exactly is said about these loans, and Eliasch will not discuss the terms or timing under which the loan was made, or why this is a loan rather than a donation – he has been making donations since the early 1990s. All he will say is that “the reason for the exercise, naming everybody, is that we want to lay all the cards on the table”.

There are no such restrictions on discussing rainforest. Eliasch’s response to the issue of global warming and the devastation of habitats is unusual, but it is not isolated. Paul van Klissingen, owner of Calor gas, has spent £15m on land in Africa. Kris McDivitt, former head of Patagonia clothing, and her husband Doug Tompkins, co-founder of the North Face, own 2m acres in Chile and Argentina. George Soros and Luciano Benetton own 1m and 2m acres of South America respectively. The idea is to step in where local governments, for whatever reason, have failed, or have more pressing issues to deal with, to buy up the land and lock it down by banning logging, sometimes establishing wildlife parks.

Eliasch has been thinking about environmental issues for a long time, he says. When he was growing up in Stockholm he used to be able to walk out of his front door and ski from late October until April. “Today in Stockholm, you can’t ski at all.” It made him take a closer look at the Kyoto protocol. “I think it’s ridiculous in many respects. For example, at the moment, if you own a forest, you’re incentivised to cut the whole thing down and replant. That way you make money selling off the logs. And [when you replant] you make money from carbon credits. Isn’t that perverse?”

I ask what the land he has bought, for a rumoured £8m, is like. All he will say is: “I have gone to various places and had a look. It’s not that easy to travel through.” He could go down rivers? “I’ve done that in bits. You’d need a month.” What does it feel like to own so much rainforest? A slight laugh. “It’s something very precious. It’s a responsibility, at the same time.” A pause. “It’s not really a personal possession, something you look at on an everyday basis.”

The land, in Amazonas, used to belong to a logging company, who presumably found it precious in a rather different way. “I closed the forestry operation down and laid off 1,000 people.” All Brazilians? “Yes. To protect the forest.” He sees the look on my face. “Now we get to the heart of this problem. It’s an interesting dilemma. You have about eight million people in the Amazonas, 7.99 million of whom are poor. They need the jobs. So how do they get employed? Cutting trees.” But people still have to eat – if you fire them, surely they will log illegally? “No. I have security people to control things, but in all honesty, you can’t do that.” Although he is at pains to point out that the layoffs were done properly, in conversation with local authorities and members of the government who are friends of his, it seems that this is just one of the costs of saving the planet.

It isn’t surprising he knows a lot of politicians; he moves in high political and financial circles; Prince Andrew is also a friend. Technically he was born into money: his grandfather was a wealthy Swedish industrialist who – this is where “technically” comes in – stipulated that no one in his family could inherit until they were 50. Eliasch is now 44. He made his own fortune buying and restructuring companies; when he bought Head it was losing £36m a year. He moved to London in 1985, setting up a private investment fund with some friends; he left it to set up another fund with his friends Charles and Maurice Saatchi. He has always been Conservative – from 1979-82 he was chairman of the Young Conservatives in the only constituency in Sweden that had a Conservative majority; he started donating to the Conservative party in Britain in the early 1990s and increased his involvement after Labour came to power. He was a principal backer of Michael Howard, supporting his bid to replace Iain Duncan Smith as leader; Howard then brought him in as the party’s deputy treasurer.

Head’s central offices are in Austria, and he travels a great deal – he won’t be drawn on where else he owns land, though the list is rumoured to include St Tropez and Marrakesh – “all sorts of places, but it’s not conceptual, it’s just residential, or industrial.” Asking whether his concern for the environment extends to limiting his flying simply elicits a discussion of how to make flying more efficient, so productivity doesn’t fall. Fewer planes should be held above Heathrow. Airplane manufacturers should be held to stricter guidelines. Does he have a private jet? “I’d rather not comment on that.”

At the same time, however, he seems to believe that legislation isn’t really the answer ; that governments cannot be counted on to move fast enough. He is unsure, for example, about Gordon Brown’s proposals in this year’s budget to allocate more money towards cutting carbon dioxide emissions, and to “promote and incentivise” low-energy light bulbs, better insulation and improved central heating. Much simpler and cheaper, he thinks, to aim straight for the trees. “The land prices there are about $30 an acre.” Surely he’s not suggesting that Britain buy up huge swathes of Brazil? Isn’t there already a sense in this project of a kind of latter-day colonialism, rich westerners wading in? “No, no. I’m just trying to put it in global perspective. A very simple way of dealing with the targets would actually be to conserve the rainforests that we have. And it would be much cheaper.”

Having said which, he says he’s surprised that his idiosyncratic attempt to save them has elicited so much interest – not necessarily from the media, but from other affluent people thinking of doing something similar. In fact, he is coming slowly to realise that “what I want to do is expand this, get other people interested in doing the same thing, and eventually preserve as much of the rainforest as possible”.

It’s my rainforest now. No logging

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

The Sunday Times – Britain – March 19, 2006 by Maurice Chittenden

WHEN millionaire businessman Johan Eliasch decides to head for his country estate, it involves a slightly longer trek than a drive to the Cotswolds.

After leaving his office in London’s Mayfair, it is a 12-hour journey by air and road before he can view his 400,000-acre plot in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. The estate is the size of Greater London.

Eliasch, 43, a banker, film producer and chief executive of the Head sports equipment company, has bought it from a logging company to protect the plants and wildlife. He sees himself as a pioneer on the new frontier of climate change.

Eliasch, who is also deputy treasurer of the Conservative party, is part of a growing trend towards “green colonialism”.

Rich people with chequebooks instead of pith helmets, charities and trusts are buying vast swathes of the Third World or “renting” the timber rights to stop trees being cut down. It is a breakaway from the methods that have characterised the international conservation movement for the past 50 years.

The traditional approach relied on agencies and charities cajoling governments in developing countries to set aside state-owned land to create national parks and nature reserves. Now individuals and organisations are taking direct responsibility for the land.

Eliasch, who is valued at £355m in The Sunday Times Rich List, is believed to have paid about £8m for his jungle park in Brazil. He plans to visit again next month.

“The Amazon is the lung of the world,” he said last week. “It provides 20% of the world’s oxygen and 30% of the fresh water.” He is now lobbying insurance companies to follow his lead with billions of dollars of their own money.

“In theory you can perhaps buy the Amazon for $50 billion [£28.5 billion],” he said. “It would be a very quick payback because a hurricane like Katrina will cost them a similar amount in payouts.

“You can plot a direct correlation between cutting down trees which absorb carbon dioxide and the global warming and extreme conditions which lead to hurricanes like Katrina.”

He is campaigning for conservationists like himself to be given carbon credits for preserving trees, similar to the financial grants made to timber companies to plant saplings after they have cut down acres of forest. He will use any such money to buy more forest.

Eliasch, the son of a Swedish industrialist, has invited scientists to search his segment of the Amazon for wildlife and plants that may have beneficial extracts for medicine.

His estate lies 1,600 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro. It is just north of the Madeira river, an Amazon tributary, where dolphins swim alongside piranhas. Two species of squirrel-sized marmoset monkeys were discovered in the region six years ago. “The biodiversity is amazing,” said Eliasch.

Across the Atlantic, Paul van Vlissingen, 65, the owner of Calor Gas who is worth £1.1 billion and owns an 81,000-acre estate in Ross-shire, has spent £15m buying or leasing land in four African countries to preserve as wildlife parks.

Van Vlissingen, who is terminally ill, said in a statement earlier this year: “There is so much more to be done if the great natural museums of Africa are to be saved and restored.”

Bill Adams, a professor of conservation at Cambridge University, said: “It is an interesting development. If there is an ethical motive for buying the land, it is likely to be effective.

“But I do not know about encouraging insurance companies to buy up the rainforest. I don’t think their business managers will go for that.”

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