印尼的热带雨林：经济学人上的金合欢大道

印尼的热带雨林：经济学人上的金合欢大道印尼雨林中的日子。 http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14391374

Sep 10th 2009

Indonesia’s logging of its rainforests has long been identified as a big contributor to the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), and hence to global warming. This is one reason for the shocking statistic that Indonesia trails only China and America as an emitter of carbon. But now attention is also turning to the soil beneath the trees, and especially to peat. Al Gore, a former American vice-president and a vigorous climate-change campaigner, has pointed to evidence that the top two metres of soil contain three times as much carbon as the entire vegetation on the planet, and that soil degradation, such as the burning of peatland, is the main cause of Indonesia’s high level of emissions.

Simba 2009-9-16 15:13

Mr Sulistyanto hopes Sinar Mas’s biosphere in Riau may yet bring the firm some income from an initiative known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). This is an idea that sounds almost too sensible to have gained currency. Since developed countries have become rich partly by cutting down their trees, and since old forests are better at storing carbon than new ones, it seems fair for the rich world to pay the poor world to stop logging (rather than, as at present, merely to plant new trees, under the so-called Clean Development Mechanism). There is a lot to preserve. More than half of Indonesia is still covered in forest. Sumatra may be a lost cause, like much of Kalimantan. But there is still, for example, Papua.