Prince Charles: wartime urgency needed for rainforests

Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 11/09/2008

Prince Charles last night urged business leaders to act with "wartime urgency" to save the rainforests.

Prince Charles said finanical institutions must act now to make a change
In a sumptuous dinner for some of the highest ranking figures in the City the Prince warned a football pitch size of rainforest is destroyed every every four seconds.
But instead of the usual arguments of philanthropy, the Prince used cold hard cash to persuade business leaders to act.
He suggested setting up a new "eco-systems market" to save the rainforests.
Like the financial markets that already exist, the new system would put a value on rainforests in order to protect the benefits they bring such as absorbing carbon emissions, generating fresh water and preserving wildlife.

Traders could then make a healthy profit from buying and selling rainforest as a new asset class.
The idea is already on the agenda for talks in Copenhagen next year that will decide the world's approach to climate change through a new Kyoto Protocol.
But the Prince said finanical institutions must act now to make a change - despite hard times in the City.
He argued trees are worth more dead than alive because they can absorb some of carbon emissions causing climate change.
"I know that we are meeting at time when short term economic problems have become acute. And you might think it extremely odd, let alone mildly eccentric, to be asking the private sector to focus on what may appear to be tomorrow's problem.
"But cost effectiveness is even more important during financial hard times and the whole point about halting deforestation is that, along with improved energy efficiency, it is the most cost effective, and immediate, way to fight climate change."
Bosses from 16 of the world's largest companies attended the dinner for 250 people as well as the chairman of the London Stock Exchange and Sir David Attenborough.
The Prince said it could take more than ten years for the new Kyoto protocol to put in place systems to protect the rain forest.
In contrast, he said the City of London had the ability to set up the markets and provide the necessary funding as soon as possible.
"I often use the analogy of war becaue I fear we are engaged in a battle of survival," he added. "We must mobilise ourselves - indeed the whole world - with that real sense of wartime urgency and resolve to act together."
Greenpeace welcomed the idea but said the the new system must be audited to ensure indigenous peoples are protected and run alongside a "rainforest fund" that pays developing countries to protect forests.
Friends of the Earth said the ability to invest in rainforest should not take away from cutting carbon emissions.