Tanzania’s absence at international conference casts doubts on country’s preparedness

THE failure by the government to send even a single representative in the International Conference on Biofuels Production (Biofuels Markets East Africa) that was last week held here in Dar es Salaam raise doubts over the country’s preparedness in regulating biofuels production in the country.

It was everybody’s expectation that Tanzania being the host would exploit the opportunity to the maximum by sending high-level delegations to represent the country in the discussions over the subject which is currently an issue that draws a lot of attention.

Surprisingly, the conference, which was attended by biofuel industry executives, food security researchers, regional agronomists and government officials from African countries, ended-up without anyone even a watchman to represent the government.

The participants discussed their progress in developing regulations for the industry in respective countries and Tanzania could also borrow a leaf on how to go about it since its biofuel industry is also in its infancy.

It’s unexplainable as to why could this happen in a country where biofuel production is now a hot topic among scientists, environmentalists, members of public, media and even within different government departments.

To date the country doesn’t have a policy to guide biofuel production in the country despite the formation of a Biofuels Task Force some years now.

The Task Force was established to promote development of the sector and develop legislation to stimulate use of biofuels in the country.

It was entrusted with the duties of designing biofuel policies and regulations suitable for Tanzanian conditions, promoting applied research and development of the sector.

The reason given for the failure to send delegations to the conference was that ‘the government was not yet prepared to present its regulations for the biofuels industry’.

The Ministry of Energy and Minerals had originally agreed to send a speaker to the conference, but changed its mind some weeks ago because ‘guidelines being drafted for the biofuel industry’s operation in Tanzania have not yet been finished’.

The conference’s organizers, Green Power Conferences, could not hide their disappointment over the failure by the government to send representatives despite a series of communications for months to the same effect.

Nigel Yeates, Green Power’s spokesperson, said they were in touch with the ministry for months and assumed that a Tanzanian official would attend until recently when they were asked to reschedule the conference to coincide with the completion of the guidelines or cancel it altogether.

Having heard that the conference carried-on as planned despite the ‘request’ by the government, the ministry’s Assistant Commissioner for Alternative Energy and Minerals, and Chair of the Biofuels Task Force, Ngosi Mwihava, felt offended.

“You have to observe the rule of law in a country,” he said as quoted in the media adding: “Every country has got its own priorities. (Biofuels are) a priority, but we have to have a policy first.”

With all due respect, Mwihava should have known that a policy on biofuels production in the country is more than overdue and that such unnecessary delays were nothing other than an imminent threat to the country’s food production and land use patterns.

Why didn’t the allocation of land to potential investors in biofuel production wait for a policy? Several investors, especially from the West have already started looking for huge tracts of land so as to grow crops for biofuel production.

Plans are underway to convert millions of hectares of arable land into biofuels and the justification for the promotion of large scale biofuels is that the country’s demand and price for petroleum products are growing rapidly at a rate of more than 30 percent per year.

Tensions between the potential investors and the local people around the identified areas have started to mount over issues around compensation and allegations that there is a likelihood of grabbing of their arable land that they were depending on for growing food to give way to biofuel production.

For instance, Tanzania Investment Centre says that a Swedish company is now looking for 400,000 hectares of land for sugarcane production along the Wami River basin. About a thousand small scale rice farmers could be evicted if the project goes through.

Many more areas of the country have been identified for the same and such likely effects cannot be overruled.

Now in absence of a policy or guidelines all these lives of the locals could be put at the mercy of the investors who might not be after anything else other than extracting super profits at the expense of the locals.

It is also not known if the biofuel to be produced would be for local consumption so as to cut the heavy dependency on imported fuel or just use the country as a place for growing raw-materials for the international market.

It is only last week when it was reported in Brazil by an international activist group, Friends of the Earth, that the boom in biofuel production in Latin America was benefiting corporations but not local people.

The Amsterdam-based international NGO which is an umbrella group representing more than 5,000 environmental groups around the world, said Latin American nations ‘are scaling up agrofuel production at alarming rates’ to try to cash in on rising demand for fuel at the expense of the local people and environment.

“Increasing the amount of land destined to grow crops for agrofuels means increasing deforestation and wildlife destruction, increased land conflicts, eviction of rural people, poor working conditions and environmental pollution,” the group said in a statement available on its website.

Now, how are Tanzanians guarded against all these developments in absence of a policy document or guidelines for regulating biofuel production in the country?

I reckon the fact that some work is being done over the same in the government but how long will it take.

The other week the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Food Security and Cooperatives, Paniel Lyimo, said that the government was in the final touches of coming up with a policy document to guide biofuel production in the country.

He said that his ministry together with the Ministry of Energy and Minerals were jointly preparing the policy so as to make sure that biofuel production does not cause food insecurity in the country.

The ministry is carefully making follow-up on the types of crops to be grown for the purpose so as to make sure that food production in the country is not negatively affected together with land use.

He was of opinion that production of biofuel should first begin by using leftovers from food and animals such as those produced after the making of sugar (from sugarcane) and sisal ropes and related products (from sisal).

Now, if all these were true how come we ‘avoided’ the conference?

For how long will we continue talking of being in ‘the final touches’ yet the world is running faster than what we can actually imagine.

Fadhili Mbaga, the Executive Secretary of the Tanzania Sugar Producers Association who is a member of the Biofuels Taskforce and who also attended the conference in Dar es Salaam questioned the government’s commitment in coming up with the guidelines.

“Investors came in and nobody was ready in terms of policy or guidelines on biofuels development,” Mbaga said adding:

“It’s taken us a little longer than usual to develop these guidelines. One reason is because there’s no dedicated secretariat for this work.”

It’s upon us to keep on dilly-dallying even on such serious issues that touch millions of lives or come up and face the reality on the ground.

Time is not on our side and the longer it takes us to draw the policy or guidelines the more complex the issues become because pressure from investors and other powerful lobbies is already heavy on our shoulders.

Biofuel production should be carefully regulated

LAST week the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Food Security and Cooperatives, Paniel Lyimo, said that the government was in the final touches of coming up with a policy document to guide biofuel production in the country.

He said that his ministry together with the Ministry of Energy and Minerals were jointly preparing the policy so as to make sure that biofuel production does not cause food insecurity in the country.

The ministry is carefully making follow-up on the types of crops to be grown for the purpose so as to make sure that food production in the country is not negatively affected together with land use.

He was of opinion that production of biofuel should first begin by using leftovers from food and animals such as those produced after the making of sugar (from sugarcane) and sisal ropes and related products (from sisal).

The PS remarks came at a time when there is an ongoing debate in the country and the world in general over the likely implications of biofuel production to food production and land use patterns.

Some sections have associated the current food shortage in the world with biofuel production holding that many of the crops used as raw materials were actually food for human beings.

For instance, a report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) concluded that conversion to biofuels such as ethanol is scarcely helping with energy efficiency and is exacerbating a global food crisis.

“The combination of high petroleum prices and the desire to address environmental issues is currently at the forefront of the rapid expansion of the biofuel sector which in turn affects food prices in the world market,” it says in its March 2008 report available on its website.

Around the world, governments have enthusiastically embraced ethanol and other biofuels in recent years. Fuel from plant sources would, the thinking went, greatly reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and, for some countries, would also reduce reliance on foreign oil.

A number of countries in the world such as Brazil are behind the fast growth of biofuel industry and have put in place national policies that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

Crops like sugarcane, wheat, maize, rapeseed, soybean, palm oil and other oil crops such as sunflower are used as raw materials in the process, FAO says in its World Food Situation report.

As a result, the boosting demand for agricultural crops used as feedstock in the production of alternative energy sources (e.g. biofuels) has resulted into food crisis whose pinch has already started being felt in many parts of the world.

Skeptics have long warned that ethanol is no miracle cure, offering slight energy gains at best. But in country after country, powerful farm lobbies have encouraged government subsidies for ethanol.

Now, however, the pendulum is swinging strongly in the other direction. For instance, recently the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler claimed that it was a ‘crime against humanity’ to divert corn from food to fuel.

This claim is now more vivid because of skyrocketing food prices and resulting unrest around the world. The enormous investment in biofuels in the U.S., the European Union, Canada and elsewhere, we are coming to see, is fuelling a food crisis in many poor countries.
These changes in food prices have not augured well with people in many countries in the world.

There might still be a major use for ethanol some day, and research should continue to see to it that the efforts to preserve the environment don’t negatively impact on the lives of billions of people across the globe.

A country like Brazil, for example, has made some good progress in using non-food plant material such as sugar-cane waste to produce ethanol. This is a very good initiative that other countries could emulate.

It’s true that there are no short-cuts to reducing oil use and greenhouse gas emissions. But appropriate precautions must be taken beforehand.

Being part of the global village, Tanzania has not been left behind in promoting biofuels as an alternative source of energy.

Many companies especially from the west have shown interest in growing crops such as starch crops e.g. grains, maize and tubers like cassava, sugar plants such as sugarcane, cellulose plants (agriculture residues), and oil seed crops (like Jatropha, Oil palm)

The government through the Tanzania Investment Centre, with support from other stakeholders, is on the forefront in encouraging such efforts.

For instance, it has planned to double sugar cane production between 2005 and 2010 and also to use all molasses resulting from the sugar industry’s projected production and the surplus cane for ethanol, among other initiatives.

Plans are underway to convert millions of hectares of arable land into biofuels and the justification for the promotion of large scale biofuels is that the country’s demand and price for petroleum products are growing rapidly at a rate of more than 30 percent per year.

While this is quite a positive move to the improvement of the country’s economy, it’s important to note that there are socio-economic and environmental prices that will be paid as a consequence.

“There are concerns that using land to grow fuel instead of food, rising grain prices, and the displacement of rural communities will lead to greater food insecurity in Tanzania,” says an environmentalist, Abdallah Mkindi.

In his paper titled ‘The Socio-economic and environmental impacts of a biofuels industry in Tanzania’ that he presented in July last year at a meeting in London, he says that forests, peatlands, mangroves and protected areas will be cut down, burned, and converted to farmland hence canceling any environmental benefit arising from biofuels.

Besides, with the National Biosafety Framework in place which allows trials for genetically modified (GM) crops, the GM industry may intend to use this as an opportunity to promote GM biofuels in Tanzania which could also negatively affect the environment and species therein.

He proposes a critical investigation on the socio-economic as well as the environmental impacts that the introduction of a biofuels industry will have in Tanzania before the idea is wholeheartedly embraced.

Most particularly, the impact on biodiversity, agriculture, food security and sovereignty, livelihoods, markets, land and territory with a specific focus on the impact on smallholder farmers and indigenous communities should be critically investigated, Mkindi suggests.

The following are some of the implications of biofuels production in the country;
Biofuels will increase pressure on Tanzania food supplies and further erode food sovereignty and that fact that Tanzania’s agriculture is predominantly rain-fed, with increased food shortages.

Converting the main sites identified as suitable for growing the biofuel crops will reduce land area devoted for food production so eroding local food security and sovereignty and further cause shortages.

Competition for land is also expected to be the outcome of the initiative because so far several investors have shown interest to invest on biofuels in the country.

According to Tanzania Investment Centre a Swedish company is looking for 400,000hectares of land for sugarcane production and Wami River basin has been identified for the purpose. This means that about a thousand small scale rice farmers could be evicted if the project goes through.

In Ruipa River valley, plans are underway to convert the basin into sugarcane plantation and hence over 1000 small scale rice farmers could be affected.

Promotion of Jatropha in the so called degraded land in Engaruka and Manyara and rice production in Usangu basin is forcing out the pastoralists out of their land.

Biofuels production in the country is also expected to cause conflict over water sources. Areas identified suitable for biofuels production are adjacent to rivers which small scale farmers depend on.

Large scale biofuels production will divert most of the water into their plantation, hence depriving small scale farmers’ access to water.

In Usangu basin, a thousand farmers were evicted and the river which is supplying water to their farms was diverted to an investor’s farm.

These, according to Mkindi, are some of the likely consequences of biofuels production and which he thinks thorough investigation is needed so as to ascertain the good and bad of the initiative to the country, people and the environment before it gets into a full swing.

As we have seen examples from other areas in the world, the rush for biofuels so as to save the environment and also the demand for self sufficiency in terms of fuel supplies by countries has turned into a mixed blessing.

Besides the socio-economic and environmental effects, production of biofuel like ethanol has caused more farmers to switch from food to fuel production. This is also likely to happen in Tanzania and the result will definitely be very detrimental.

Again, ample evidence has proved that through the major end result of the switch to biofuels was the protection of the environment, in the long run biofuels production contributes to environmental degradation in terms of large scale monoculture farming, deforestation, and emission of greenhouse gases during farming and processing.

So, all these should make us thing twice about the initiative. Yes we badly need affordable fuel and at the same time protect our environment but this shouldn’t be out of desperation with little attention to the socio-economic and environmental effects of biofuels production.

A policy document could help us control the production biofuels in the country and thereby save the country from such likely negative effects.

Corruption in Water Sector kills Millions

THE taking over by City Water Company of the supply of water in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) in 2003 was regarded by many as a sigh of relief after decades of neglect and underinvestment in the city’s water infrastructure.

This was actually expected to be a turning point as far as reliable water supply was concerned in a city where fewer than a hundred thousand households out of the population of about four million have access to running water.

City Water consortium, which was part of the British Water Supply Company-Biwater, entered into a contract with the Dar es Salaam Water and Sewage Authority (Dawasa) whereby the latter was to continue owning the infrastructure, while the former would operate the system.

The company was tasked to collect revenue from customers, make new connections, and conduct routine maintenance during the ten-year contract, and it had a six-year tax holiday.

However, it took less than two years for all these expectations to go down the drain. Not only was the company unable to meet revenue collection targets agreed in the contract, which were crucial to attain if it was to make a profit, the company was collecting less money than its state-run predecessor (Dawasa). Besides, city dwellers started seeing their water bills rising!

City Water’s defense was that its bid was based on flawed information supplied by Dawasa and stopped paying its monthly fee for leasing Dawasa’s piping and other infrastructure from July 2004, less than a year after the entering into the contract. It also insisted that its operating fee be raised.

But all these complaints were rejected by auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the British engineering consultants-Howard Humphreys and several reports by World Bank and other development partners admitted that City Water had failed its duty.

These failures left the Tanzanian government with no other option other than just terminating the contract on May 13, 2005 the decision which led to legal battles that have been settled in favour of the government.

It’s still unexplainable how did such a company manage to win the contract despite its inexperience in handling such deals.

Writing for The Guardian newspaper (UK) Xan Rice, who closely followed the tendering exercise, raised concerns over Biwater’s experience in undertaking such assignments.

In an article tilted ‘Water Margin’ which was published on August 16, 2007, the Guardian’s East

Africa correspondent said that it’s true that Biwater had really made its name and helped earn its founder Adrian White his fortune during Margaret Thatcher’s (former British Premier) push for privatisation in Britain.

However, he had reservations. “Within the industry the company had a decent reputation for building and running water treatment plants, but had never taken charge of such a huge management operation before,” Rice said.

Despite the flaws in the execution of the contract, Rice wonders as to why did the World Bank’s quality assurance in Washington award the project a ‘highly satisfactory’ ranking-the top score.

“Biwater said later in a statement to the Guardian (UK) that the World Bank approved (City Water’s) bid after an exhaustive financial and technical assessment process lasting several months and also rejected any notion of gaps in its experience,” he said in the article.

The writer also raised some issues of concern over the manner in which the deal, which was competed by three firms (two from France, City Water and a Tanzanian investor-Superdoll), was concluded.

“When the French companies declined to submit a final tender, Biwater’s consortium won the day,” Rice said and quoted a British water consultant, who followed the bid process, as saying that City Water submitted its bid at a rock-bottom price.

“Even if it performed well, making money would be a huge challenge. It was in the crap from day one,” the consultant is quoted to have said.

Rice wondered why the World Bank and International Monetary Fund still thought that the arrangement was the best way forward for the water supply problem in Dar es Salaam.

Actually, they had long made the privatisation of Dawasa’s assets a condition for Tanzania receiving massive debt relief including a USD 143.5m loan package for upgrading the city’s water infrastructure.

No one knows what transpired behind the curtains though possibilities of corruption and undue influence cannot be over ruled in such a scenario.

Try to imagine the fate of millions of people in the city who spend everyday of their lives without reliable supply of safe water as such ‘funny’ games are being played on and on.

It’s worth-noting that the four million plus Dar es Salaam residents’ number is just a fraction of the total number of people going without reliable supply of safe and quality water globally due to similar dubious contracts and poor water governance.

Worldwide the water sector has been tainted by corruption and other forms of mismanagement both of which deny access to safe water to billions of lives.

The 2008 Global Corruption Report by Transparency International (TI) argues that the crisis of water is a crisis of water governance, with corruption as one root cause.

“Corruption in water sector is widespread and makes water undrinkable, inaccessible and unaffordable,” TI says.

The report, which was recently launched in Stockholm Sweden during the World Water Week, demonstrates that corruption is a cause and catalyst for the global water crisis, which is likely to be further exacerbated by climate change.

“Corruption in the water sector puts the lives and livelihoods of billions of people at risk.

Corruption affects all aspects of the water sector, from water resources management to drinking water services, irrigation and hydropower,” the global anti-corruption watchdog says.

According to TI, the onset of climate change and the increasing stress on water supply around the world make the fight against corruption in water more urgent than ever.

In her foreword to the report, the world renowned environmental activist, Prof. Wangari Maathai concluded that the global water crisis is nothing else other than a man-made crisis of governance with ignorance, greed and corruption at its core.

“But the worst of all is corruption. Corruption means power unbound. It gives the powerful the means to work against and around the rules that communities set themselves. This makes corruption in water particularly pernicious,” she says.

This is because, she adds, corruption allows the powerful to break the rules that preserve habitats and ecosystems, to plunder and pollute water resources that entire world regions depend upon and to steal the money that is meant to get water to the poor.
While noting that the problem is global in reach, Prof. Maathai admits that Africa is the hardest hit.

“Nowhere are the global water crises and the havoc that corruption inflicts on the sector more shockingly on display than in Africa,” she admits while suggesting a global approach was a prerequisite for tackling corruption in water sector worldwide.

As the TI report notes, the human consequences of the water crisis, exacerbated by corruption, are devastating and affect the poor and women most of all.

“In developing countries, about eighty percent of health problems can be linked back to inadequate water and sanitation, claiming lives of nearly 1.8 million children every year and leading to the loss of an estimated 443 million school days for the children who suffer from water related ailments,” the report reveals.

TI concludes by calling for increased advocacy to stop corruption in water so as to avoid the imminent high costs to economic and human development, the destruction of vital ecosystems, and the fuelling of social tension or even conflict over this essential resource.

As the 2000 UN Millennium Report pointed-out no single measure would do more to reduce disease and save lives in developing countries than bringing safe water and adequate sanitation.

Hence, there is a dire need of collectively fighting against corruption in the water sector short of which we’ll continue witnessing the loss of all these lives yet the solution is absolutely within our reach.

Of Mount Kilimanjaro Ice Waving Us Good-bye Due to Deforesation

THE recent scientific theory linking the loss of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro to increased deforestation on the mountain’s foothills is more than sad news as far as the welfare of the mountain’s biodiversity is concerned.

The theory is highlighted in a recent study report compiled by two researchers from Britain’s Portsmouth University -Nicholas Pepin and Martin Schaefer, who took eleven days to survey the mountain’s glaciers.

The researchers, who revealed their findings at a news conference in Dar es Salaam recently, said the mountain’s glacier surface had shrunk from 20 kilometres in 1880 to two kilometres in 2000.

They said the development was caused more by local than regional factors, with Pepin suggesting that deforestation mainly due to extensive farming as the major cause.

“Deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the most likely culprit because without forests there is too much evaporation of humidity into outer space. The result is that moisture-laden winds blowing across those forests have become drier and drier,” he explained.

This revelation is another reminder of the catastrophic effects that deforestation can cause to the environment.

Try to imagine the fate of the whole range of biodiversity that depend on flow of water resulting from the normal melting of the mountain’s ice such as forests, animals (both wild and domesticated) and other living organisms.

The mountain is known to be surrounded with huge tracts of land covered by forests which accommodate millions of different forms of life from wild animals in game parks to human beings.

I happen to have grown-up in Moshi, a town that is found right on the slopes of the mountain. It’s sad to notice that many of the rivers that we used to swim in, and whose tributaries originate from the mountain, are now full of exposed rocks with very little water flowing down the stream.

As Pepin revealed, the major factors behind the wanton deforestation is the clearance of forests to give room for farm lands though other factors such as expansion of human settlements into forest lands and industrial activities also have a share in the problem.

This problem facing Mount Kilimanjaro and its rich biodiversity is not unique to Tanzania as many other countries especially the developing ones are also confronted by a similar trend.

Though in this case the melting of ice on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disassociated with global warming, it’s important to note that deforestation has a substantial share in the rise of temperature on the Earth’s surface, among other environmental problems.

This is because every tree that is cut down besides being a loss to biodiversity, also contributes to global warming.

Trees are scientifically known to be capable of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (carbon sinks) and thus check global warming that way.

For instance, writer Bryan Walsh in his contribution to a feature article titled The Global Warming Survival Guide that came out in the TIME magazine early last year, while quoting a number of scientific findings says that a tree can absorb up to a ton of carbon dioxide over its life time.

So he suggests that planting trees most especially in the tropics as the best way for mitigating global warming and climate change.

However, the sad story is that many parts of the world still experience wanton cutting down of trees for various purposes such as clearance of new lands for agriculture, urbanisation, energy supplies, and construction, among many others.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says that deforestation and forest fires that are commonplace in many developing countries of Africa, Latin America and Southern Asia greatly contribute to global warming together with other environmental negative effects.

In fact between 25 and 30 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year (1.6 billion tones) is caused by deforestation, FAO says.

“We are working to solve two of the key environmental issues; deforestation and global warming at the same time,” FAO Senior Forestry Officer, Dieter Schoene, told a meeting on deforestation and global warming in Rome early last year that was attended by about 200 development experts mainly from developing countries.

The meeting was organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and hosted by FAO.

Delegates of the 46 developing countries present at the workshop signaled their readiness to act on deforestation, 80 percent of which is due to increased farmland to feed growing populations. In Africa, for example, shifting cultivation is still a common practice that also involves the use of fire to clear new lands for agriculture.

Part of the solution is to increase agricultural productivity so that there is less demand to convert forests into farmlands. But they also stressed that they needed financial help from the developed world to do the job.

According to FAO, developing nations, alongside the developed ones, have to play a key role in curbing deforestation as one of the ways of fighting against deforestation.

Schoene says that trees are about 50 percent made of carbon and that when they are felled or burned, the carbon dioxide they store escapes back into the air where they create a layer on the atmosphere that blocks heat from escaping into space causing rise in temperature on the earth’s surface.

According to FAO figures, some 13 million hectares of forests worldwide are lost every year, almost entirely in the tropics where deforestation remains to be very high.

While officially launching the FAO’s State of the World’s Forests Report 2007 last year, David Harcharik, FAO Deputy Director-General said though there were some places in the world which recorded positive changes in terms of forest management, the problem remained big in developing countries.

“…countries that are facing the most serious challenges in achieving sustainable forest management are those with the highest rates of poverty and civil conflict,” he said.Global forest cover amounts to just under four billion hectares, covering about 30 percent of the world’s land area and from 1990 to 2005, the world lost three percent of its total forest area, according to FAO data in the report.

For instance, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean are shown in the report as currently being the two regions with the highest losses. Africa, which accounts for about 16 percent of the total global forest area, lost over 9 percent of its forests between 1990 and 2005.

Latin America and the Caribbean, with over 47 percent of the world’s forests saw an increase in the annual net loss between 2000 and 2005, from 0.46 percent to 0.51 percent.

Coming to Tanzania, between 1990 and 2000, the country lost an average of 412,300 hectares of forest per year, which is an average of annual deforestation rate of 0.99 percent. The country’s forest cover stands at 39.9 percent of the total land area, which is equivalent to 35,257,000 hectares.

This means that solutions for curbing deforestation must originate from within the developing countries before looking outside for support.

So developing countries such as Tanzania should now work hard in preserving forest resources and at the same time educate her people about the importance of protecting forests. Besides, people should be encouraged to plant more trees.

On the other hand, wealthy nations could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally by paying landowners in developing nations not to clear forested land for agriculture under the existing environmental instruments such as the Kyoto Protocol.

This proves that the fight against deforestation should have a global approach instead of just leaving the burden on the poor countries whose communities are always compelled to destroy the environment to cater for short term needs.