In the latest issue of World Wildlife,World Wildlife Fund describes a innovative process for saving the entire Amazon Basin from exploitation and eventual destruction. Brazil, working in partnership with NGOs, has launched the largest conservation effort in history known as Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA). The goal is turn 150 million acres of rainforest--more than all the US national parks combined--into sustainable use and no use protected zones. The project has been underway for a decade, and so far pieces of the Amazon about the size of California in total are protected under the program.
ARPA draws upon project funding developed, US Person is loath to say, on Wall Street. Profit is not the bottom line in this undertaking, however; saving a living organism vital to life on the planet is. Still the project has not achieved permanent financial stability, something no conservation of scale has ever achieved. The financial target of $215 million is being raised from private donor partners and placed in a transition fund from which payments are made for a period of twenty-five years to pay for land and park operations. All the fancy financing is contingent on the long-term cooperation of the Brazilian government. It must increase its contributions over time until it is fully responsible for the continued existence of the program. ARPA is in essence a huge bet on the people of Brazil and their government.
WWF has been working to preserve the Amazon rainforest for forty years. In the late 90's less than 3% of the basin benefited from protection. WWF brought together conservationists led by Garo Batmanian, head of WWF's Brazil office, to convince the country's then President Fernando Cardozo to protect just 10% of his nation's forest. Even this small conservation policy adopted by a rapidly developing country would have worldwide ramifications. In 1997 President Cardozo pledged the Brazilian government would set aside 10% of forest ecosystems for protection. ARPA was born when Larry Linden, a retiring Goldman-Sachs banker, decided to become a conservationist when WWF called. ARPA is an ambitious attempt to flip the usual conservation efforts from reactive to proactive. Instead of reacting to exploitation threats in a process that never appears to end, ARPA protects priority areas of forest forever. US Person is pleased to know of this life commitment from so many global partners in conservation. His one criticism: the goal of 150 million acres is too small. Fully one-third of the lungs of the world--forests--must be saved from the cancer of unsustainable human exploitation. Then humans can all breath a lot easier.