What should be done about the fires in the Amazon (and elsewhere)?

My mum ranted on at me about the Amazon the other day and I wanted to jot a note here. She was putting forward all the standard arguments of ‘well - we should just stop them’ or ‘we should send more money’. Having learnt a lot about carbon and the means to reduce it in our atmosphere I thought I’d share my thoughts and ask if you have any yourselves.

My view is that we should start paying for Land Use and Land Use Change (LULUC) or Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) as a means to tackle global warming. These method have been on the agenda for over a decade as means to tackle global carbon emissions but the UN and countries to decide upon the approach haven’t come up with something that suits everyone. The problem is that it’s really hard to measure emission reductions from land use, how much is absorbs and mitigates for is very difficult.

The bottom line is that we’ve got to provide a regular flow of money to these countries that are preserving their forests for the benefits of carbon mitigation and sequestration, and we’ve got to agree on a methodology for how much carbon it helps mitigate for NOW. The amount of money has to equal or exceed the money governments may receive in benefits from deforestation or agriculture from that land area. I think it’s really the only fair way. We can easily monitor whether land is still being used in the way it was paid to be used and can turn off the tap of money if the government doesn’t achieve the approach.

The solution sounds simple but it’s far from it. It just seems that giving lump sums to third world countries as a means to tackle these issues is not the way.

Would be great to get other people’s opinions?