Scientists find a low-cost and effective solution to combat deforestation

With each passing, the reduction of carbon emissions becomes more urgent. The good news is that our efforts are getting quite positive - especially the results found in the rainforest.

Forests are a good carbon sink, because they store more carbon in the trees than they discharge it into the environment. And the trees in the rainforest grow very well, which has great significance for our increasingly polluted living environment and also for the people living around the forest. For them, cutting down trees makes their lives better: having wood for sale, and deforestation will have more land for other uses. This is not unexpected, in many parts of the world, protecting forests is a very difficult task.

And how to solve this problem is to pay people in such areas so that they do not cut trees. You have to provide enough for them to cover the fees, maybe this is not feasible in richer areas but for the poor, financial support may bring results.

In many parts of the world, protecting forests is a difficult task.

A group of researchers from the US, Netherlands and Belgium recently tested the plan in a forested area of ​​Uganda. They randomly divided 121 villages in the area into two groups. Staff from the local charity Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust went to the villages of a group and provided landowners with a $ 28 exchange for 1 hectare of forest. After checking to make sure they will not cut trees in the committed area, the household owners agree to receive the money. Researchers also tightened inspection with the help of satellite images to ensure people did not cheat.

Researchers and staff did not contact villages of the second group.

Results published in Science show that villages belonging to non-forest exchange groups lost 9.1% of their area during the study period, while those that agreed with the contract only lost 4.2%. The researchers calculated that where they paid, more than 180 tons of carbon emissions were blocked, if divided, the amount they paid for 1 ton of carbon was only $ 0.46. A price is 10 to 20 times cheaper than carbon reduction that you can buy from commercial services such as Cool Effect or Carbon Fund.

There are many ways to store carbon . Mainly, converting carbon dioxide into plant nutrients. Some of these nutrients will be kept in the skin and roots, until the tree is cut off. Others go into buried leaves in the soil and it will keep carbon. When trees are cut down, carbon will be released through burning fuel, natural degradation, and carbon in the soil around the felled tree will also be released.

There are many ways to store carbon .Mainly, converting carbon dioxide into plant nutrients.

But even if the people who participated in the final study still cut trees that had previously been committed to not being tight, the amount of carbon released was still slow and less, perfectly suited to the cost. As a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide absorbs and retains heat from the sun. Therefore, its impact on climate change is not only calculated by the absolute amount of CO ₂ in the atmosphere and also the amount of heat accumulated in the gas. This figure is given to measure the negative effects of global warming on emissions, in other words, it is the social cost of carbon.

In Uganda's study, the researchers calculated that the value obtained from delaying carbon release was about 2.4 times the cost to keep carbon for longer. So, have we found a comprehensive solution in the long term to protect the forest?