News
HRH launches The Prince's Rainforest Project at a gala event for the World Wide Fund for Nature
25th October 2007
The Prince of Wales tonight issued a plea to preserve the world's remaining rainforests, describing it as "the biggest single and immediate opportunity" to combat climate change.
In a speech, His Royal Highness announced the launch of The Prince’s Rainforests Project to help conserve this precious but rapidly dwindling resource.
The Prince told a gala dinner for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) that the world had to find a way of putting a price on the rainforests which makes them “more valuable alive than dead”.
His Royal Highness said the world's forests stored carbon, acted as a natural thermostat on the climate, gave moisture to the atmosphere and sustained the lives of 1.4 billion of the poorest people in the world.
But he warned the audience at the dinner at Hampton Court Palace that rainforest destruction was taking place at a "truly terrifying pace".
"Every year 50 million acres, an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland combined, are destroyed or degraded," he said.
His Royal Highness told the WWF event emissions from burning forests were responsible for around 20 per cent of global greenhouse gases, with only the energy sector emitting more.
"The simple fact is that combating deforestation is likely to be one of the quickest and cost effective means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions," he said.
But he warned current mechanisms for controlling emissions such as Kyoto and the European Emissions trading scheme did not provide credits for conserving the world's existing rainforests.
While some rainforest nations were already working to reduce deforestation, developing countries could not solve the problems alone because it was often demand from the developed world for products such as palm oil, beef and soya which drove deforestation.
"It seems to me that the central issue in this whole debate is how we put a true value on standing rainforests to the world community – we simply have to find ways of putting a price on them which makes them more valuable alive than dead."
The Prince announced the creation of The Prince's Rainforests Project, which aims to work with the private sector, governments and environmental experts to find solutions which could be put in place within the next 18 months.
"These solutions need to provide credible incentives to rainforest nations, down to the farmers on the ground, and must 'out-compete' the drivers of rainforest destruction," he said.
The Prince also backed the WWF's new Amazon Initiative, which will work in the nine countries where the South American rainforest grows - Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, Venezuela, Guyana, Ecuador, Suriname and French Guyana.
The charity, which has been operating in the Amazon basin for 40 years, will work to strengthen protected areas, engage with producers to adopt environmental criteria and develop new ways of valuing the forest for its climate protection.
The Prince said: "It must surely be the ethical duty of wealthy nations, which have created the problem of climate change, to find equitable solutions.
"That means working with developing nations - which incidentally will suffer most and soonest from climate change - to find ingenious, innovative ways of paying the appropriate price for the eco-system services provided by the world's remaining great forests."
However, His Royal Highness warned that action had to be taken very fast.
The Prince also used his speech to congratulate Al Gore on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and paid tribute to the "indomitable efforts" of the former US vice-president to raise awareness of climate change.
Before making his speech at the dinner, The Prince met samba dancers and listened to drummers who played traditional Brazilian rhythms.
Click here to read The Prince's speech.
Click here to visit The Prince's Rainforests Project website.