Paying for Conservation

The future will see much more activity in the line of financing passivity.

Farmers have already been payed for NOT planting crops in order to raise the price of grain or for tending the landscape.

Fisheries have been subsidised in order to give their catch a chance to recover from over-fishing.

Along similar lines of reasoning, it may become imperative to pay the inhabitants of the Galapagos archipelago for living on fewer tourists in order to save the extraordinary phenomenon of island biodiversity.

Or, one day we may have to pay the governments of Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru billions of dollars for not destroying the Amazon rain forest.

Even these vast sums will be a bargain compared to the costs of "fixing" damages occuring all over the world if the slashing and burning continues at the present rate.

All this will become a neccessity as a last resort, if we do not respond to reason