The United Arab Emirates' takeover of African forests

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2023/12/10/the-united-arab-emirates-takeover-of-african-forests_6328426_124.html

by geox • 3 years ago

89 61 3 years ago

lemonde.fr

josh_fyi• 3 years ago

That's great! Liberia can't afford to protect its forest, and this deal allows that.

__s• 3 years ago

Agreed. This is the kind of agreements that are needed for Brazilian rain forests

The Simple Economics of Saving the Amazon Rain Forest: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-simple-economics-of-sav...

But it's a bit complicated because if you just buy plots then cattle farming will buy different plots. So you need to setup an incentive structure to pay dividends for sitting on undeveloped rain forest

coffeebeqn3• 3 years ago

Easiest would be for Brazil to become more stable and act in its own long term interest

givemeethekeys• 3 years ago

NGO's hate it when a bigger player with more resources eats their cake. Their only recourse, it seems, is to complain about the semantics of how the new kid is punching wrong.

darth_avocado• 3 years ago

Im sorry but isn’t this actually good? As Africa, parts of Asia and South America become more populated and strive for better quality of life, the last of the big forests are already at risk. If these places are incentivized to protect them, it is a net good for everyone.

mrpopo3• 3 years ago

It's better than doing nothing, but the UAE has more than enough homework regarding carbon emissions reduction. Its per capita footprint is 25t CO2, 75% more than the USA, which itself is 2.5x that of the EU.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

Plus the UAE is ~10% citizens, 90% migrant foreigners. I'm not sure how per capita footprint of the UAE accounts for that (is a UAE citizen carbon footprint actually 250t CO2...?)

fakedang2• 3 years ago

Plus the UAE is ~10% citizens, 90% migrant foreigners. I'm not sure how per capita footprint of the UAE accounts for that (is a UAE citizen carbon footprint actually 250t CO2...?)

It's close. Electricity is practically free for citizens, which is why their large homes are key peretualy cool and thoroughly well-lit, like what you'd see in a real estate marketing brochure.

uluyol• 3 years ago

These stats can be misleading for other reasons as well.

The US and EU have a lot of existing infrastructure, construction of which required enormous amounts of CO2 emissions. Countries that are still building out their infrastructure should be expected to expend more CO2 per capita to catch up. (Modern equipment is more effecient, but still).

cat_plus_plus3• 3 years ago

That's how we tell the difference between rational environmentalists concerned about future human well being and zealots who just hate the idea of human succeeding above other animals or currently wealthy countries succeeding above other countries. Because if you are the former, you are absolutely in favor of carbon credits, sequestration, geoengineering, nuclear power plants, migrating from coal/oil to natural gas etc. Of course, you would want evidence of safety and effectiveness, but not "it's colonialism" knee jerk reactions.

It could well be that the other alternative for these forests was logging or slash and burn agriculture, in which case the program is working exactly as intended. Or if not, we can criticize it for being ineffective without woke moralizing. Someone needs to make a bid to preserve the forest, and this company made a bid that is apparently higher than alternatives. As carbon credit economy takes off, there will be competition and prices will rise, in turn exposing the limits of carbon offsets and forcing reductions in actual emissions.

OfSanguineFire• 3 years ago

When I first saw reporting of these UAE ventures some days ago, it was about suspicion that the owners would eventually exploit the forest or the minerals underneath. It is a frequent phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar that land is first restricted and named a protected reserve, but after ribbon-cutting ceremonies are over and attention moves elsewhere, logging is done with wood being sold to e.g. China’s furniture industry, or the local population’s slash-and-burn practices encroach regardless.

hulitu• 3 years ago

I bet you didn't heard about Norvegians cutting forrests in the Amazonas. /s

Barrin92• 3 years ago

This completely misses the point, intentionally I suppose given this sentence:

" or currently wealthy countries succeeding above other countries"

This isn't about protecting forests. It's about a rich country offsetting its emissions by buying another countries industrial capacity in the form of carbon credits. It's taking a bribe from another country to stay poor. It's as if the United States started to pay China to turn factories off so they can turn more on. It's not just metaphorically colonial, it's literally the colonial economic model, capturing a resource, bringing the industry home (to Paris/London/Moscow in the olden days) and selling the produce back to the periphery. The only difference is the resource and land captured here is synthetic ("green credits"). There is nothing environmental about this, the emissions are constant. The planet does not care if you produce oil in Nigeria or Saudi Arabia.

renewiltord• 3 years ago

Yeah, an environmentalist friend of mine told me this about my Terrapass offsets - which cost a fortune to take me to net zero. He said that I was just bribing someone so I could go on holiday. Most people agreed with him so I kinda went with it and stopped.

It's way cheaper to go on vacation now. I care about the environment and stuff but not enough to have a bunch of people tell me I'm bribing someone. And tbh, this is better. No one actually lectures you for going on vacation now.

cat_plus_plus3• 3 years ago

If there is no way to build industry except through fossil fuels, we are doomed already. Otherwise poor countries can take money from carbon credits and build clean industry to start with, which is easier than rebuilding all the existing industry. Plus residents get many other important benefits from preserved forests and cleaner environment.

catlover762• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what's "irrational" about thinking humans are a blight and scourge upon the earth. Being "concerned about future human well being" is not inherently more rational.

They are just different values people might hold.

nolongerthere• 3 years ago

It’s always hilarious to see people say stuff like this, if you truly believed it you’d start with yourself. Or else you’d be planning mass extermination campaigns to destroy the scourge. Anything else is simply irrational or outright hypocrisy.

rexpop• 3 years ago

humans are a blight and scourge upon the earth

We call this ideology "ecofascism."

The prioritization of a white supremacist conceptualization of a pristine and dichotomous “Nature” [note: ie "the earth"] over the wellbeing of people, particularly people of color, coupled with a failure to acknowledge the differential responsibility of predominately white corporate polluters.[0]
For tens of thousands of years, people have lived in balance with our natural environment. Even early agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry was minimally destructive on a global scale... The burden of environmental destruction can’t be placed equally at the feet of all people. As a matter of fact, the wealthiest 10% of people contribute half of global greenhouse gas emissions! [1]

0. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2021.1982744 1. https://www.bard.edu/cep/blog/?p=11973

8note• 3 years ago

It's good that the forest is being protected, but it shouldnt be counted as a sequestration project.

The net of not getting rid of the forest means it's starting at carbon neutral for the world as a whole.

Slash and burn would make it carbon positive for a bit, and regrowing it carbon negative for a bit, but all our base measurements include that forest already.

If you trade keeping the forest as it is against burning a bunch of oil, your still carbon positive by that amount of oil

cat_plus_plus3• 3 years ago

If the forest would be otherwise cut down, you are offsetting from that alternative status quo. Or you could do sustainable logging and use wood for durable construction that keeps carbon locked in. I agree that preserving and regrowing forests will not offset current level of emissions, but it's a low hanging fruit to address first, please forests have other benefits for environment and humans.

tru3_power• 3 years ago

This is good. Eventually doing this will probably be too expensive and most players probably will have to find ways to lower emissions (I assume?) and forest remaining forest will become more valuable than the timer that can be extracted from them.

mahmoudhossam2• 3 years ago

It's a bit hypocritical from Le Monde to talk about African forests as if the French haven't colonized and looted Africa for the better part of a century.

micwag• 3 years ago

None of the countries in the article were ever colonized by France.

mahmoudhossam2• 3 years ago

True, but they're highlighting the NGOs calling colonialism on what the UAE is doing (admittedly a horrible regime) as if France never engaged (and probably still is) in such behavior.

treprinum• 3 years ago

Next: Look at how much of Eastern European forests was clear-cut in the past 5 years due to "battling insects"... Satellite imagery is showing Brazil-like deforestation.

zdragnar• 3 years ago

No need for the sarcastic scare quotes. The trees were dead or dying and a fire hazard.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-centraleurope-environment...

The studies I saw didn't agree with the climate change angle, but bark beetles of various species are absolutely brutal to trees.

What's more, depending on the species, the wood is useless for anything but biomass. The larvae can and will burrow tunnels deep into the trunk which makes the wood unappealing for most uses... So it's not like it is a convenient excuse for loggers to go in and clear cut.

friend_and_foe2• 3 years ago

Isn't this just rainforest conservation done right? I fail to see the problem here.

situationista2• 3 years ago

Rainforest conservation can hardly be described as being "done right" when it is paid for by selling/burning more fossil fuels elsewhere.

friend_and_foe2• 3 years ago

I don't really think so. I think they're separate issues. If anything, increased warmth, carbon dioxide and water vapor will increase the density of rainforests, ignoring any other emgstive consequences elsewhere around the world. Rainforest conservation and climate change are separate issues, though they overlap in specific ways and circumstances.

Ignoring the source of the funds used for this conservation effort, actively incentivizing rainforest conservation so that real capital is used to that end is a fantastic thing.

whatshisface2• 3 years ago

Absolutely nothing that happens anywhere, to anyone, is paid for without selling or burning fossil fuels. Even solar plants reduce the price of electricity, which gives people buying fossil fuel energy the ability to buy more of it.

gosub100• 3 years ago

So if an acre of rainforest were slated to be "developed" but burning, say, 1 55-gal drum of your favorite hydrocarbon would prevent it, and instead preserve that acre for 5 years, you would be against doing so, because it involves burning fossil fuels? If no, then your statement is untrue.

yetanother12345• 3 years ago

Let me get this right...

You buy some piece of land, or (as per TFA) lease it for 30 years. Then, you do nothing with it.

On the basis of you having the potential of doing something with it, you calculate a hypothetical difference in "potential scope of hypothetical activity" somehow denominated in the CO2 unit. The exact procedure for doing this is neither known, reproducible, nor audited?

This purely fictional "measure" (for lack of a better term) is then renamed to "credits" and converted to some monetary unit, like, say USD. The exchange rate is then what? And why?

Last, you sell - as in actually sell - this purely fictional nothingness to states and big corporations who all have multiple economists and/or scientists employed. Plus ample access to external specialists if their own capacities should somehow need a reality check...

Is it me, or does this seem a bit weird (to put it politely)?

Swizec2• 3 years ago

Yes this is weird and also may be exactly what we need to do.

Here’s a few politicians from various countries explaining, basically, ”Look we need to develop. If you need us not to cut down the jungle, you should pay. The economic activity needs to come from somewhere. We can’t live in poverty forever”

https://time.com/6233998/brazil-indonesia-rainforests-climat...

https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/where-is-the-money-brazil-...

Think of it as money paid for conservation. Then it all makes sense.

alistairSH• 3 years ago

Except the Western nations/companies who buy the credits no longer have to reduce their emissions.

It’s great that Liberia has an incentive to conserve its forest. It’s not so great that doing so gives the rest of the world a license to pollute.

pyrale3• 3 years ago

Think of it as money paid for conservation. Then it all makes sense.

...And this payment can be used by the buyers to justify destroying the climate elsewhere, in a more efficient way.

ssss11• 3 years ago

…and people think crypto doesn’t make sense lol!!

matheusmoreira• 3 years ago

I'm from Brazil, a developing country. Sometimes I express here on HN the fact I'd burn down the entire Amazon jungle if doing that would give us enough industrial strength to rival the USA and China. That jungle just doesn't matter to me. If you handed me a button that burned down the entire Amazon and told me Brazil would be the most prosperous nation on earth if I pushed it, I wouldn't even think twice.

Usually I just get downvoted until my post is white but someone once replied with an interesting proposition: paying me not to do it. I just laughed it off because it seemed completely insane to me. Why would they pay off a developing country not to develop itself?

And now I come across this thread and it seems these people are doing exactly that. Why our president isn't jumping at that chance is beyond me.

nojvek• 3 years ago

At the end of the day, we like all other species have our root loop as self preservation and procreation.

In our modern society, money is inherently tied to survival as it can be traded with resources that helps further the root loop.

We humans, and every other living thing are a competing distributed system because of a limited resource environment.

So if you light up Amazon, Congo and Daintree rainforests to get a massive economic boost. Go for it!

However the question is how much you care about your great great grandchildren? Because they’ll be getting a very shit deal.

If we had another backup planet, I’d be all down for setting shit on fire.

Earth is all we got in the entire 100B light year observable universe as far as we know.

If all of Amazon is lit on fire, that likely explains why we can’t find any intelligent anywhere.

simonebrunozzi• 3 years ago

You shouldn't be downvoted, IMHO. In fact, you pose a really interesting question, and also challenge, to the rest of the world.

Your country has a resource, it could monetize it, the rest of the world should incentivize you to NOT cut down the forest, in order to have a better Earth.

rngname22• 3 years ago

And I'm sure somewhere else, there's a person in their 60s in the US who'd push a button that made all life on earth that uses sexual reproduction infertile and unable to continue past the current generation if it meant they got to live a rich western life for their remaining years.

I don't think the notion that humans are self-interested is particular surprising. It's more notable when we are not.

moltar• 3 years ago

Carbon credits were created to tax developing nations by those who have already developed on said carbon. So the whole thing is a bit con.

smfjaw• 3 years ago

Cambridge did a great study on how 'real' these credits are https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/carbon-credits-hot-air

situationista2• 3 years ago

Just to make sure it's clear to everyone who's commenting about how great this is - in return for UAE paying to protect Liberia's forests, it gets to burn more fossil fuels while claiming to be reducing its carbon output. Not sure whether this is bad news from a climate perspective, but it certainly isn't good news.

politelemon• 3 years ago

Basically a perfect example of Goodhart's Law taken to capitalist extremes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Loughla• 3 years ago

I mean, if the forest was going to be developed, and this stops that, it has to be worth something, correct?

pyrale3• 3 years ago

if the forest was going to be developed

That's a nice euphemism.

rldjbpin• 3 years ago

this to me is a lazier way to buy credits. such kind of assistance should just come directly imo.

The United Arab Emirates' takeover of African forests

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