Of course, the peasant and I don't live on the same river. But we do live on the same planet, so if I want to make it worth his while to leave the rainforest alone to soak up carbon out of the atmosphere, I'd better hire him to take care of the rainforest for me. If I want China to not pump so much greenhouse gas into the sky, I'd better pay them for that, too. The Kyoto solution of ignoring what poor countries do doesn't work as well.
There's actually a working example or two of this. There's a bunch of peasants in Indonesia who are getting paid by some NGO to protect part of an orangutan habitat. They get paid collectively, and only if zero trees get cut down. They also don't get paid if orangutan meat or babies ("pets") show up in a local marketplace.
The result has been that there's been very effective cooperation within the community. No one wants to be the guy who had any forest cut down near his home. No one wants to be the guy who let poachers in, or out. Where there had been essentially no enforcement of poaching laws, soon any poachers who go near the forest mysteriously turned up dead. All the remaining poachers seem to have moved to some other line of work.
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winterfish
hey
Date: 2004-08-18 05:04 am (UTC)Of course, the peasant and I don't live on the same river. But we do live on the same planet, so if I want to make it worth his while to leave the rainforest alone to soak up carbon out of the atmosphere, I'd better hire him to take care of the rainforest for me. If I want China to not pump so much greenhouse gas into the sky, I'd better pay them for that, too. The Kyoto solution of ignoring what poor countries do doesn't work as well.
There's actually a working example or two of this. There's a bunch of peasants in Indonesia who are getting paid by some NGO to protect part of an orangutan habitat. They get paid collectively, and only if zero trees get cut down. They also don't get paid if orangutan meat or babies ("pets") show up in a local marketplace.
The result has been that there's been very effective cooperation within the community. No one wants to be the guy who had any forest cut down near his home. No one wants to be the guy who let poachers in, or out. Where there had been essentially no enforcement of poaching laws, soon any poachers who go near the forest mysteriously turned up dead. All the remaining poachers seem to have moved to some other line of work.