Banana crops on the banks of the Ribeira River, in the middle of Brazil's Mata Atlântica forest. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Report
Click Here to Plant a Tree
By Mario Osava

The wave of ideas for mitigating the impacts of carbon emissions of consumers has its commercial side, but the bottom line is that it mobilizes people to join the fight against climate change.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 1 (Tierramérica).- It has become fashionable in Latin America to pursue initiatives towards "zero carbon", neutralizing the climate-changing greenhouse gases produced by industry, commercial aviation and even the soccer World Cup -- and along with it, atoning for the environmental sins of polluters.

Zero carbon to fight climate change is the motto in most such marketing campaigns, intended to attract consumers, users, spectators or tourists. In exchange is a pledge to plant trees that would capture the same amount of greenhouse gases -- such as carbon dioxide -- as produced in providing the goods or services to the customer.

Frequently the ends are commercial, but they also contribute in some degree towards environmental education and public mobilization to help curb climate change.

Some projects, like Brazil's Clickárvore (ClickTree) and Mexico's Neutralízate (Neutralize yourself), go a step further than a simple attempt to erase some of the ecological footprints made by individuals or companies.

ClickTree dates back to before the current wave of compensating for carbon emissions. The program of the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation, with the support of the non-governmental Vidagua Environmental Institute and the Abril Editorial publishing house, began in 2000 with the goal of recuperating Brazil's devastated Atlantic Forest.

Along an extensive area of Brazil's Atlantic coastline, from the Northeast to the far south, this ecosystem has lost 93 percent of its original coverage, becoming mostly urban and industrial centers, affecting water supplies, creating erosion and devastating the once-rich local biodiversity.

Each click on the www.clickarvore.com.br website means one tree planted in the Atlantic Forest, or "Mata Atlântica" in Portuguese. More than 16 million trees have been planted so far, donated to 930 reforestation projects in 350 municipalities.

The initial goal was environmental education, "to involve communities in the conservation" of the ecosystem, Ludmila Pugliese, forest restoration coordinator at SOS Mata Atlântica, told Tierramérica. It was an attempt to get people to feel good about planting trees and contributing to their own wellbeing and to curbing climate change.

Internet users may click on the site just once a day, and the click leaders each month win visits to SOS or t-shirts. "There was one who did it religiously each day and, when he ended up hospitalized, he called us on the phone so he wouldn't lose his lead," said Pugliese. Donors can see on the web page the areas that have been reforested with "their" trees.

The growing participation led to a "restorative vision, connecting isolated fragments of forests" that helped to recover their lost functions, such as recharging underground water and increasing the native animal populations through biological corridors, said Pugliese, a biologist with a Master's degree in forest resources.

The environmental objectives have incorporated social objectives as well. The millions of tree seedlings needed, as well as expanded private business sector, helped create five community plant nurseries so that non-governmental groups and communities could obtain their own income and employ more workers.

Coordinated directly by five members of SOS, the program grew more complex when it started the web page click project, and involving landowners who wanted to reforest their plots, sponsors who offered seedlings, private and community plant nurseries, and companies that offered technical assistance.

True forest restoration requires a diversity that in some states, like Sao Paulo, means a minimum of 80 different species per hectare. And they have to be trees native to the Atlantic Forest, with fruit trees recommended in order to feed the fauna, said the biologist.

Some landowners began by planting 5,000 trees, enough for three hectares, and "they enjoyed the experience so much that they repeated it several more times," she said.

The expansion led to another program, Forest of the Future, in which specialized companies are hired to develop technical projects, because merely owning land does not mean the owners know how to reforest, especially vast areas that require "investment and effort," explained Pugliese.

Its sponsors are large companies or banks that are interested in compensating for their own greenhouse gas emissions, as well as television programs, rock bands, and even couples who are organizing their weddings, she said.

In Mexico, the environmental group Pronatura has been promoting its "Neutralize Yourself" program since early 2007, creating a voluntary carbon market. Companies, institutions and individuals can compensate for their greenhouse emissions by purchasing vouchers for activities that reduce deforestation and restore ecosystems.

The certifications acquired can be traded on the market. In May, when the initiative was inaugurated, it represented the neutralization of 15,500 tons of carbon dioxide and the payment of 150,000 dollars annually to 10 indigenous communities in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, also helping them to fight poverty.

A portion of the total comes from payment for environmental services, promoted by the government's National Forestry Commission. The goal is to expand the system, and include interested parties from abroad, to achieve "self-sufficiency of the market," and doing away with the government contribution, Pronatura's assistant director for climate change, José Antonio Ordóñez, told Tierramérica.

The initial priority was for poor communities to conserve the "cloud forest" in the mountains, "a vulnerable and emblematic ecosystem" because of its biodiversity, which needs corridors to connect the forest fragments and is important for the watershed, he explained.

The revenues improve the standard of living in these communities, especially for women, and they prevent emigration to the United States, said Ordóñez. Furthermore, recovery of the forest fights another threat. In 2007, the communities killed five jaguars that came too close to their settlements because the animals' habitat was too fragmented to sustain them. This year there have been no cases of residents killings jaguars, he said.

Reforestation initiatives are multiplying in many countries, whether government-led or community based. In Peru, planting began in July of 28 million trees -- one for each person in the country -- in the Amazonian region of Ucayali. The project combines efforts of two non-governmental organizations from Spain, Iberoquipo and Sotermun, as well as various Peruvian groups.

The environmental Internet search engine Ecoogler, which uses technology from Yahoo.com, promises to donate funds to plant one tree in the Amazon for every 10,000 searches using its site. By Aug. 26, there were 2,241 trees planted.

But while the big reforestation projects like these reach thousands of hectares, deforestation in the Amazon jungle alone totals millions of hectares each year.

* With reporting by Emilio Godoy (Mexico) and Milagros Salazar (Lima).