Trading system seen to aid forest conservation

A study published this month in the scientific journal PLOS ONE highlights the positive market potential of a trading system in which Brazilian landowners in violation of government land-clearing limits can legalize their property by buying credits from those who conserve more than the required minimum. The land clearing restrictions that guide the new trading system were set down in Brazil’s Forest Code, a 1965 law that was revised in 2012. The revised law retains a longstanding requirement that landowners keep a portion of their land uncut—80% in the Amazon, 35% in the north-central woodland savannah known as the Cerrado, which is on the periphery of the Amazon Basin, and 20% in the rest of the Cerrado and elsewhere. Landowners who fail... [Log in to read more]

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