The Bolivian Amazon Weather Lottery

The weather poses a worrying and growing threat to our communities in Bolivia. Both flooding and droughts are becoming  increasingly unpredictable and severe as is the the cool Surazu wind from the Andes, affecting flowering crops and fuelling forest fires.

Deforestation from slash and burn subsistence farming is a major cause of climate change in the Bolivian Amazon but repairing the damage and establishing viable alternatives is a very long and expensive process.

Global attempts to reduce deforestation through the carbon market have proved to be both problematic and contentious and as a result have so far failed to mobilise anything like the scale of investment needed to tackle the problem.

Many, including Friends of the Earth and the government of Bolivia, argue that attempts to solve climate change and deforestation through a carbon market fail to  account  for the true value of forests and often only a fraction of the sales revenues benefits the forest communities themselves.

• The price of carbon credits can range from less than £1.00 to over £70 a tonne, w
• Some studies suggest that the true cost of a tonne of CO₂ is as much as $220 a tonne! (https://news.stanford.edu/2015/01/12/emissions-social-costs-011215/)
• It is impossible to quantify a tonne of CO₂ equivalence accurately – or whether the reduction in emissions will be effective or permanent
• It is impossible to place a monetary value on all the functions of a rainforest,
• It is difficult to monitor or quantify the wider social and environmental impacts
• Most of the money ends up in the hands of already rich financial intermediaries rather than those most in need

The high risks and long pay-back period over several decades makes investment unattractive and at best, a bit of a gamble!

If you play BAWL with us….

50p in every £1.00 will be donated to the ArBolivia reforestation project, which has been working with settler families in the Bolivian Amazon since 2007. ArBolivia’s families are growing trees as part of a comprehensive and holistic, long term programme of integrated land use, incorporating conservation planting, agroforestry and commercial timber lots with a wide range of native species. Arbolivia’s work is independently certified for its social and environmental impacts, including the sequestration of carbon.

Coincidentally £26.00 (£0.50p a week for one year) is roughly the cost of maintaining 50m² forest plantation over the course of a year, as a share of the total areaof tree lots under management.