Who pays for the conservation of the Amazon rainforest?

Claro, aqui está a tradução completa do texto para o inglês:

On Monday, December 4, 2006, Brazil created the world’s largest protected area for the Amazon rainforest.

The world’s hottest tropical forest in the northern part of the Amazon.

Covering 15 million hectares (57,915 square miles) – or approximately more than England – a network of seven new reserves was preserved thanks to environmental protection groups.

The organization that helped in the development of this conservation project, which many people do not associate with forest conservation, was definitively: the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, created by Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel.

And his wife’s foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, are currently the largest private donors for conservation and research in the Amazon, distributing more than $200 million to projects in the region since 2001 (including more than $358 million to the neighboring Andes region).

The sum may represent a quarter of the total funds spent by non-governmental groups in the Amazon basin, according to a November 19 article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The foundation states that its main objective is to achieve “effective management of 370 million hectares of forest land,” necessary to maintain its function of conserving the climate and biodiversity of the Amazon Basin’s reach, spread across all eight major ecoregions and 13 large river basins.

All this for the purpose of protecting the long-term ecological importance of the region.

370 million hectares represent 45% of the 815 million hectares of tropical forest in the region, which is considered the threshold below which the Amazon rainforest ecosystem could undergo radical changes, becoming a variety of dry savannas. The change will have a major impact on the region’s plant and animal life.

The process of allocating funds for Amazon rainforest conservation

This is the basis for preventing this situation by financing projects in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Suriname.

The focus is on research, not on land—a particularly controversial issue in the Amazon where these “land grabbers” are often seen as a threat to national sovereignty. Most of the funds go to groups of scientists working in the area and on conservation.

Much of the Amazon research has generated headlines in recent years in newspapers and magazines. Amazon weather forecasts, importance for indigenous peoples, and reducing deforestation in protected areas are all related to funding selected by the Moore Foundation.

Conservation International, an innovative international organization that combines pioneering biological technology research with a corporate strategy targeting critical conservation goals, was the main beneficiary.

Ultimately, the World Wildlife Fund, the Field Museum, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Amazon Conservation Society, the Woods Hole Research Center, the Brazilian International Education Institute, the Socio-Environmental Institute, and the Amazon Conservation Team also received significant contributions. Since 2001, the Foundation has not accepted unsolicited proposals.

Conclusion

Instead, it relies on a group of researchers and a network of scientific contacts to identify recipients, which may include non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research institutes, and universities.

Like a good financial planner, the foundation uses a “portfolio strategy” to determine how to distribute funds and how often, with a series of grants to “increase the efficiency of the global initiative (and minimize the risk of losing any funding).”

Although there have been some setbacks in the first five years, the foundation faces some obstacles, namely development needs related to conservation, those who oppose economic development, and some environmentalists who think more money should be spent on creating parks instead of funding science.

But for such a large and influential promoter of the conservation of the world’s largest rainforest, some criticism was to be expected.

Source of information: brasil.mongabay.com

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