Valuing rainforests as Global Eco-Utilities: a novel mechanism to pay communities for ecosystem services provided by the Amazon

摘要1.亚马逊河流域是世界上最大的淡水和热带森林生态系统，占所有剩余雨林的一半以上，拥有所有已知物种的十分之一。它在当地和全球提供重要的生态系统服务。土著居民和森林居民直接依赖生态系统提供的丰富服务，而世界其他地区也依赖他们，主要是因为亚马逊拥有非常高的生物多样性，还因为森林通过冷却空气和在很大范围内回收和输送降雨来影响气候系统。2.然而，亚马逊地区是一个局势紧张的地区，因为大规模的商业利益（包括粮食、生物燃料和木材的生产）威胁到该地区的继续运作。土著人民和自给农民的生活方式适应了丰富的自然资源，但他们获得资源的机会越来越少，环境服务的提供也越来越差。推动森林砍伐的大型商业利益集团也依赖森林服务来获得持续的利润。3.虽然自给农有可能是森林的管理者，但没有制度对他们失去的服务和生计进行补偿。这种状况加剧了巴西特有的高度经济不平等。因此，拟议的"将森林视为生态效用"项目打算建立一个多学科国际小组，该小组可以有效地为大规模生态系统服务付费系统提出一个连贯的模式。4.这一知识能力将深入基层，以便森林社区能够就其自然资源提供的生态系统提出权利主张，并根据州和联邦法律加强社区的土地保有权主张。5.虽然城市和城郊贫困人口可能不会直接受到森林砍伐的影响，但大规模减少环境服务供应可能会通过能源价格上涨对他们产生影响，因为巴西70%以上的电力来自水力发电，并通过其他价值链效应。该项目将协助为一个大规模的生态系统服务付费系统奠定必要的基础，该系统有可能促进扶贫政策的制定，并作为该区域政府推动的财富再分配的模式。6.该项目建立在巴西科学家的信念基础上，全球林冠方案在过去三年中帮助促成了这一信念，即亚马逊河的水循环是未来生态系统服务付费系统的一个重大机会。为了设计一个有效的项目，我们进行了广泛的咨询，组建了一个由科学家、经济学家和社区发展专家组成的国际团队。这笔资金将主要用于资助两个大型研讨会，我们相信这将使该集团成为一个有影响力的世界领先的权威机构，并为未来五年更大的项目铺平道路。7.本项目的重点是亚马逊地区，由于巴西科学家在国际研究界的帮助下进行了十年的深入研究，该地区的科学基础特别雄厚，并且拥有高水平的科学专门知识;然而，上述论点相当普遍，可以适用于雨林生物群落的其余部分，为随后的南南转移创造巨大的潜力。

SUMMARY 1. The Amazon basin is the largest fresh water and tropical forest ecosystem in the world, representing over half of all the remaining rainforest and housing one tenth of all the known species. It provides important ecosystem services (ES), both locally and globally. The indigenous and forest dwelling populations are directly dependent on the abundant services provided by the ecosystem, while the rest of the world depends on them too, primarily because the Amazon holds an extraordinarily high biodiversity and also because the forest influences the climate system by cooling the air and recycling and transporting the rainfall over a very large area. 2. However, the Amazon is a region of tension because large-scale commercial interests (including the production of food, biofuel and timber) threaten its continued functioning. Indigenous people and subsistence farmers with lifestyles adapted to abundant natural resource availability face diminishing access to resources and degradation of ES provision. The large commercial interests driving deforestation also depend on forest services for their continued profits. 3. There is no system to compensate the subsistence farmers for the loss of services and livelihoods, although potentially they are the stewards of the forest. This state of affairs exacerbates the high levels of economic inequality that characterize Brazil. The proposed project Valuing Forests as Eco-utilities therefore intends to establish a multidisciplinary international team, which can effectively articulate a coherent model for a large-scale PES system. 4. This knowledge capacity will be embedded at the grass roots level in order that forest communities can claim their rights with respect to the ES that their natural resources provide, as well as reinforcing community land tenure claims in line with State and Federal laws. 5. Whilst the urban and peri-urban poor might not be affected directly by deforestation, a large-scale reduction in ES provision would be likely to impact them through rising energy prices, since more than 70% of electricity in Brazil comes from hydo-electric power, and through other value chain effects. This project will assist in establishing the groundwork necessary for a functional large scale PES system with the potential to contribute to pro-poor policy development, and act as a model for government driven wealth redistribution in the region. 6. This project builds on the belief of Brazilian scientists, which Global Canopy Programme has helped to catalyse over the last three years, that the water cycle of the Amazon represents a major opportunity for future PES systems. In order to design an effective project we have consulted widely, assembling an international team that consists of scientists, economists and experts in community development. The funding will be mostly used to finance two major workshops, which we believe will establish the group as an influential world-leading authority, and pave the way for larger projects over the next five years. 7. We focus on the Amazonian region for this project, where the science base is especially strong as a result of a decade of intensive research by Brazilian scientists aided by the international research community, and where there is a high level of scientific expertise; however, the arguments outlined above are quite general and can be applied to the rest of the rain forest biome creating significant potential for subsequent south-south transfer.