The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has become the latest tropical rainforest rich, yet materially poor, nation to embrace payments for “avoided deforestation”. The DRC joins Ecuador [more | more2] and Papua New Guinea (PNG) in making substantive offers to the international community to protect (note, not conserve or sustainabiy manage, but preserve intact) large areas of primary rainforests in exchange for payments which may include carbon market credits, development grants and/or debt relief.

A workable solution to tropical rainforest destruction and diminishment is within reach, and protecting the world’s last large ancient primary forests is also a relatively easy way to dramatically and quickly cut back on carbon emissions (~25% of which are from land conversion including deforestation and diminishment). Whether this opportunity to fully protect the world’s remaining ancient and holy primary forest temples — critically essential for planetary operation and human well-being — is seized upon depends upon the details of course. The main potential obstacles I see in poorly designed payments for maintaining ancient forests as carbon sinks includes primarily a concern that there will be allowances for “well managed” forestry in these carbon sinks. Any industrial development, from certified forestry to hydroelectric dams to utility lines would need to be absolutely banned. Essentially this would require shutting down the industrial scaled ancient primary forest logging business; and what of the World Bank’s, WWF’s and Greenpeace’s desire to see more certified logging?