The Economist: Deforestation

Paying to save trees
Last gasp for the forest

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14492973

Sep 24th 2009
From The Economist print edition
A new climate treaty could provide a highly effective way to reduce carbon emissions by paying people to not cut down forests

IN THE south-eastern corner of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, in the municipality of Novo Aripuanã, there is thick forest cover—for now. But as new, paved highways are driven into the trees, illegal loggers inevitably follow. At the current rate of deforestation, around one-third of the forest in Amazonas will have been lost by 2050, releasing a colossal 3.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Novo Aripuanã is the site of a novel response to this threat: the Juma Sustainable Development Reserve, an area of 600,000 hectares (1.2m acres) bordered by two highways. This is a nature reserve with an unusual twist: local people will be paid to prevent the trees from being cut down. Each family in the area has been issued with a debit card. Regular inspections will ensure that the trees are still standing: as long as they are, families will have 50 reais ($28) a month credited to their accounts.

These funds come from the rich world, where governments and companies that cannot reduce their own emissions cheaply are prepared to pay others to reduce emissions on their behalf (as “carbon offsets”). Not cutting down trees in endangered areas prevents emissions that would otherwise have occurred, which gives untouched forest huge financial value—and provides people who live in the forest with an incentive to preserve it.
Still Pictures

This idea is known as “avoided deforestation” or “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation” (REDD). At the moment REDD is not so much a plan as a collection of proposals and some working schemes, like Juma. The fate of the forests in Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines (pictured above) and elsewhere around the world could hang on the success of this approach. But there will need to be substantial international commitments to reduce global emissions to create demand for the carbon offsets that REDD schemes can provide. This means a lot hangs on a deal being struck in December in Copenhagen, where countries will meet to negotiate a new climate treaty.
Burning problems

Amid concern that progress towards a new treaty is slipping, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, hosted a summit in New York this week to encourage nations to agree to carbon-reducing policies. REDD was high on the agenda, and governments and the private sector were urged to start investing in such schemes. There has also been talk of wrapping up carbon offsets into “forest bonds” to interest pension funds.

Preventing deforestation is potentially one of the simplest ways to reduce global emissions. At the moment, carbon emissions from deforestation account for some 18% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, more than all the world’s trains, cars, lorries, aeroplanes and ships combined. Reducing deforestation and land-degradation will be vital if temperature increases are to be kept to within safe levels (generally assumed to mean no more than about a 2°C increase). Some argue it would be a quicker and cheaper way of reducing emissions than many alternatives, such as weaning the world’s vehicle fleet off fossil fuels, forcing people to cut back on energy use or switching to low-carbon forms of power generation, such as wind farms and nuclear power. All those things will be necessary too, but they will take a long time, will require new technologies and cause controversies of their own.

Paying people to not chop down trees looks easy by comparison. It does not depend on any elaborate or costly new technology and is likely to be able to garner the required political support. Achim Steiner, the head of the UN’s environment programme, thinks avoided deforestation should be an easy thing to sell. As well as reducing carbon emissions, keeping forests standing also protects soil from erosion, improves the quality of water, helps regulate rainfall and ensures biodiversity. “How on earth can we not afford to make this work?” he asks.
Still Pictures Learning in the forest

But if it is to work, REDD must address the failings of the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which forms part of the Kyoto protocol, the 1997 treaty that aims to curb greenhouse gases. Since 2006, the CDM has allowed developing countries to sell carbon offsets, known as credits, for adopting green technology: switching an entire village to energy-saving light bulbs, for example, or planting lots of trees. The CDM has been criticised, however, for allowing countries to sell credits even for dubious things like building dams. There are also concerns about enforcement. And the Kyoto rules do not allow countries to sell offsets from avoided-deforestation schemes. Planting new trees qualified, but refraining from cutting down existing ones did not.

REDD raises further concerns of its own. One of the main criticisms of it is that some rich countries might, in effect, outsource the tricky business of reducing carbon emissions to the developing world, by buying carbon offsets and continuing with business as usual at home. Some also wonder if the promised amount of carbon reduction could be so large. Gilberto Câmara, head of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (which monitors deforestation from space), thinks that REDD’s capacity to deliver global emissions cuts is being oversold. Based on his analysis of Brazil, which accounts for 40% of the world’s deforestation, he says there is no way the world can cut 18% or so of emissions through avoided deforestation. This figure is based on outdated estimates of the rate of deforestation, which has fallen dramatically in Brazil in recent years, he says.

This highlights another problem with REDD: it is hard to say how much deforestation there would have been anyway. Benchmarking REDD schemes against existing data, which can be out of date with higher rates of attrition, would give an exaggerated impression of their effectiveness, overstating the volume of emissions that had been prevented and causing rich countries to pay too much.

Nicholas Stern, a British economist and author of a report for the British government which put avoided deforestation on the climate agenda in 2007, says the exact amount by which emissions can be reduced is not terribly important. “It actually doesn’t matter whether it is 15% or 20%—the point is that it is big,” he says. What if Dr Câmara is right and avoided deforestation can reduce emissions only by, say, 10%? “I suspect it is not that low, but 10% is still a big slice,” says Lord Stern. “The point is to get the mechanisms going and the funding at a serious level.”

A further difficulty is that countries that have already taken effective action to prevent deforestation, such as Costa Rica, will be unable to benefit from a REDD scheme; it would, paradoxically, end up rewarding the worst offenders, since they would have the greatest scope to mend their ways, and get paid to do so. Various proposals have been put forward to pay retrospective rewards to such well-behaved countries.

Provided these problems can be overcome, what would REDD cost? Again, hard and fast figures are difficult to come by. The cost of setting up and running REDD schemes is unclear, and successful efforts to reduce deforestation would probably drive up timber prices, which might then make it necessary to pay more to prevent deforestation. Estimates for the cost of halving the rate of deforestation (and therefore reducing global emissions by as much as 9%) range from $7 billion to $28 billion a year. These costs do not include the initial set-up process, during which appropriate enforcement mechanisms would need to be put in place in leafy-but-dodgy countries.

If avoided deforestation is to work on a global scale, it will need to involve Indonesia and Congo, countries where corruption and mass deforestation go hand in hand. So REDD projects will require reporting, auditing and monitoring mechanisms. The advent of low-cost satellite imagery will help, but all this will still be expensive.
Seeing the wood

Assuming world leaders cut emissions by 20-40% relative to 1990 levels, however, the scale of the investments required would be about right, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development. This British think-tank says the global carbon market will be worth $118 billion a year, so if 10% of the reduction in emissions was achieved by purchasing REDD offsets, forest-carbon credits will be worth $11.8 billion a year.

The world has rallied around the idea of REDD with remarkable speed. The UN, the World Bank and governments in several countries, including Australia, Britain and particularly Norway, have already stumped up around $800m over the past two years to get REDD projects going. Benoit Bosquet, head of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, says early funding is important to allow organisers to get started in anticipation of a new global climate agreement.

Even if the world fails to reach a deal in Copenhagen, REDD schemes like the one in Juma will not grind to a halt. Many countries, notably America, are expected to rely heavily on the purchase of forest-carbon credits as part of their efforts to reduce emissions.

One way to do this is for governments and companies in particular countries to fund REDD projects in other countries directly. The drawback of this approach is that instead of bringing into being a truly international market for carbon credits, it looks rather more like traditional bilateral aid. Such projects would also be vulnerable to political manipulation. For example, if America started bilaterally financing REDD projects it is easy to imagine that the State Department would insist on having a say over which countries should receive funds and which should not. The result could be a kind of arboreal Washington consensus, with an approved set of tree-related economic-policy prescriptions

Another disadvantage is that different schemes will end up being subject to different rules, regulations and standards, so it will be difficult to compare them. If private-sector investors are to provide capital for REDD schemes, they would much prefer an international trading scheme where credits are fungible across the entire market. Abyd Karmali, head of carbon emissions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says such a scheme would set a harmonised standard for forest-carbon credits and might include rules for profit-sharing with indigenous communities or local landowners, monitoring and verifying credits and protecting biodiversity. Without such standards, he says, the result could be “sustainability arbitrage”, where project developers and companies flock towards less sustainable schemes that offer cheaper credits.

There are also concerns about market-based schemes. Even though markets could provide much-needed finance for REDD schemes, many people are uncomfortable that they could also yield big profits for investors and landowners. In China, a market-based scheme to encourage companies to phase out a powerful greenhouse gas, HFC-23, produced such enormous windfall profits for some companies that the government felt it necessary to impose a 65% tax, with the proceeds invested in green development projects.

It seems likely, however, that REDD will start off as a series of funded projects, with a market in forest-carbon credits emerging in a few years’ time, depending on what happens at the Copenhagen meeting. Many people expect that ultimately both approaches will co-exist.

However they end up working, REDD schemes will still face the question of how to distribute the money they produce. Governments could launch national initiatives to prevent deforestation, selling credits and directing the proceeds to the activities it believes are effective. One advantage of this country-level approach is that any “leakage” of deforestation (where a forest protected in one area shifts deforestation to another) would be easier to control. But governments will need to distribute some of the money on the ground—especially if the locals feel they have every right to cut down their trees.

In Juma, in addition to the payments made directly to local people, proceeds from the scheme also support investment in schools, hospitals, transport, communications and helping people find new, sustainable sources of income. All of this makes REDD look very much like traditional development aid. But Mr Karmali says he would not want to get involved with any REDD project that did not involve local communities and environmental groups. “We can’t make the mistake of thinking we have all the answers,” he says.
Watching carefully

Preventing deforestation does not simply involve close monitoring of forests themselves. Mr Bosquet of the World Bank thinks the forces driving deforestation “are mostly outside the forest sector and are the big challenge for REDD.” Dr Câmara points out that in Brazil 90% of deforestation is illegal encroachment driven by the desire to make money from timber and agricultural products grown on cleared land, such as soyabeans. Rather than paying money to criminals, he says, international traders should refuse to buy timber, soyabeans and beef from deforested land. A number of schemes try to certify that products such as timber or palm oil have been produced without causing deforestation. But so far the results have been disappointing: European consumers are reluctant to pay premium prices for goods made from certified timber, for example.

Palm oil, much of which is produced on land that was once virgin rainforest in Indonesia, is a particular problem. According to a report by McKinsey, a consultancy, if the present rate of deforestation continues, Indonesia will lose 1.1m hectares of forest every year until 2030. A plan to certify palm oil seems unlikely to help. The idea that air travel has environmental consequences is now widely understood, but the environmental consequences of palm-oil-based toiletries are not. Even a big multinational such as Unilever says it can do little to insist that its suppliers do not use palm oil from deforested land, since the power in the market rests with the sellers.

Deforestation is an integrated and multidisciplinary problem, says Mr Bosquet. That means preventing it may involve adopting different strategies in different countries. In some parts of the world, such as Indonesia, this might mean launching efforts to increase agricultural productivity and the use of marginal land in order to reduce the pressure for forest conversion. In other parts of the world it might involve certification or helping people find alternative ways to earn a living.
AFP Last one standing

Land tenure is another big flashpoint for REDD. There are fears that putting a value on forests will lead to land-grabs in areas where property rights are poorly defined and not well protected. In Africa, for example, governments claim ownership of 98% of the forest, but making REDD work will involve recognising the rights of those who live in the forest too. If that does not happen, there is every reason to fear large-scale corruption and human-rights abuses, because it will be far cheaper and quicker to clear people from the forests than to work out a sustainable way for them to stay.

Even though governments have yet to introduce legislation to govern the trade in forest-carbon credits, some private-sector investors have not been content to wait. This impatience brings risks. In Papua New Guinea, landowners have been hoodwinked into paying to get involved in non-existent deals that promised huge returns from “sky money”. The local World Wildlife Fund office has even been asked by landowners how the carbon from burning trees will be captured and transported to the capital. International negotiators decry the behaviour of “carbon cowboys”, but they have to recognise that private capital can move a lot faster than plodding national and international legislation.

Overshadowing all these discussions is the spectre of the CDM, which has been bedevilled by its lack of transparency and the difficulty of proving that its carbon offsets are genuine. REDD is a big idea that will work only if all these smaller problems are sorted out. It probably will help to prevent deforestation and to reduce carbon emissions, though perhaps by less than some people hope. But it has the potential to tackle such a big chunk of global emissions, and deliver so many other environmental benefits, that it is worth trying.
Making it work

There are risks for forest dwellers, who must rely on outsiders both to ensure that their rights are protected and to provide an alternative path for economic development. But although REDD poses risks, the alternative—in which deforestation continues as usual—presents even greater long-term environmental and economic dangers, because the world’s poor will bear the brunt of climate change.

Doing nothing, in short, would be more dangerous than giving REDD a try. Kevin Conrad, Papua New Guinea’s climate ambassador, says financial systems must begin to take account of environmental values “if our economies are to survive”. Given that the basic principle of REDD is to establish a financial link between those who will benefit from preserving forests and those who must ensure the forests’ survival, it is an economically sound idea. The question is whether the world has the determination to create a system that will work. Some, like the UN’s Mr Steiner, say that it isn’t rocket science. Others, though, wish it were that simple.

URLS: Cool Manipulation Project

http://www.beauty-and-the-bath.com/mens-1950s-haircuts.html
○ Explains trend
○ Hairstyles are coming back today

http://coolmenshairstyles.com/pompadour-hairstyle-for-1950s.html
○ Pompadour style
○ Promoted by rockabilly artists and actors
○ Explains how vintage culture has been adapted now

http://www.elvispresleynews.com/Elvis-Hairstyle.html
○ Elvis trademark: Hair
○ Hairstyle became "cool" because of him
○ Elvis adapted it from Tony Curtis

http://www.loti.com/fifties_fashion/Mens_Hair_Style_In_the_Fifties.htm
○ Inspired by movie stars like James Dean, Troy Donahue, Elvis Presley
○ History of men's hairstyles

http://www.elvis-postcards.com/Elvis-HairFashion.html
○ More Elvis (iconic hairstyle)
§ Brut shampoo
§ Clariol Hair Dye Blue-Black

http://coolmenshair.com/2007/07/elvis-presleys-hairstyle.html
○ Rockabilly look
○ "Cool men's hair"
○ James Dean, Elvis Presley

http://crofty-blog.blogspot.com/2007/08/elvis-man-and-marketing.html
○ How Elvis was marketed

http://www.fiftiesweb.com/fashion/ducktail.htm
○ Ducktail haircut
○ 50s fashion



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iUMIq_uwwQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5xkFXZzcS8&feature=related

1950s Hairstyle (Grease)

Movie link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oWeaujOWXc

Websites:

• http://home.att.net/~boomers.fifties.teenmag/1950s_fashion.html
• http://www.simplyhairstyles.com/1950s-hairstyles.html
• http://www.buzzle.com/articles/1950s-hairstyles.html
  

Compare and contrast ideas of youth culture in Merchants of Cool and No Logo chapter 3

In the last decade, corporations and the youth culture have merged to deal with the same thing. The Merchants of Cool and No Logo both agree that corporations have conquered the youth culture in determining cool. The one vital difference between these two facets of society is where they come from and what they represent. The youth culture is determined by what is “cool” in a period of time, that cool thing being off the mainstream. The Merchants of Cool show that teenagers will go as far as rage rock, music with shocking lyrics that allows the rebellious teens to point the middle finger at mainstream, feeling they need to ensure their authenticity. Teens hope that by engaging in something that the rest of society finds repelling, they can escape the “giant feedback loop”. The feedback loop is a tool for corporations to reach their aim by copying the teenage life-style, then selling it back to them making as much profit as possible. By attempting cultural resistance by avoiding mainstream, teens show that they try to oppose the corporation’s marketing strategies that limit their freedom in expression, but fail because of the way society is centered around media, which influences teens at all times. No Logo describes the Woodstock festival of 1996, where media tried to sell “the mood” that should remind of the original Woodstock, by selling all sorts of merchandise. This, again, shows how corporations take the image of 1970s teenagers that are now considered cool, and sell it to modern teens. The fact that the cool was sold using the feedback loop, contradicts the idea of the personal freedom that was experienced at the first festival. Youth culture originates from the natural individuality that teens get as they approach adulthood, which corporations exploit in trying to control the trend of the changing “cool”.

Corporations, through their marketing and advertisement, have an uncontrollable power over the trends that teens think are theirs and therefore follow. The Merchants of Cool and No Logo, through explaining the youth culture and their relationship to corporations seeking teens as a target group, agree that even though kids try to rebel, their activity is sponsored and sold back to them, with a force (supported by media), against which teens are powerless. However, the sources disagree when discussing where the youth culture gets its always changing cool from. In The Merchants of Cool it says that the new trend is spread by 20% of the teens (trend-setters), who influence their friends to wear a certain style of clothing or listen to a particular type of music. These trends are discovered by “cool-hunters” employed by corporations. This would allow “cool” to originate from any region or cultural background, just that 20% of the teen population would have major role in identifying what exactly the youth culture is. No Logo, on the other hand, believes that all “cool” comes from the ghetto of the African-American population, whose style, attitude, and imagery is then taken from corporations such as Nike and Hilfiger with a system called “bro-ing” to then sell it to the large market group of the middle class teen. The Merchant of Cool’s view on where cool originates allows there to be a greater diversity and therefore more possibilities for alternative trends, than No Logo’s belief that everything that is deemed as “ghetto” automatically becomes cool. Regardless of the origin, both texts explain that whatever this teenage phenomenon may be at the moment, corporations will grasp it and, against the teen’s will, make profit out of their culture.

Internal Synergy

Media Giant: Sony

Annual sales: $78.9 billion

Sony’s principal U.S. businesses include:

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (Film)

Production/Distribution
Sony Pictures Entertainment
-Columbia Pictures
-Sony Pictures Classics
-Screen Gems
TriStar Pictures
Columbia TriStar Films (U.K.)
Columbia TriStar Film Distributors
Sony Pictures Imageworks (animation)
Sony Pictures Studios

Merchandise
Sony Pictures Consumer Products

Sony Music Entertainment (Music)

Record labels
Columbia Records
Epic Records
Harmony Records
Legacy Recordings
Loud Records
Sony Music Soundtracks
Monument and Lucky Dog
Soho Square
Mambo
Rubenstein
Dragnet
Squatt
Sony Classical
Arc of Light
Masterworks
Sony Broadway
SEON
Vivarte

Sony Electronics Inc. & Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. (TV, play-station, computer)

Production/Distribution
Columbia TriStar Domestic Television
Columbia TriStar International Television
Sony Pictures Family Entertainment
Telemundo Group (partial ownership)

What is Globalization?

One thing is sure about globalization: it is happening now.

Globalization is:

· T The process of increasing interconnectedness

· T The growing integration of economies and societies around the world

· A An ongoing process by which regional economies, societies and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of exchange

· T The integration of national economies into the international economy

o Through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and technology

Globalization can also refer to the transnational spread of ideas, languages, and popular culture.

Globalization has both positive and negative impacts on development.

McDonalds and Disney

Discuss the relationship between McDonalds and Disney as discussed in Fast Food Nation, and compare with similar relationships in Merchants of Cool

The McDonald’s Corporation is very similar to the Walt Disney Company, whose founders, Ray Kroc and Walt Disney had very similar paths to success. Even the McDonald’s corporate headquarters seem like a small Disneyworld. Both entrepreneurs had the same vision of America and were masterful salesmen. Early on, Ray Kroc saw an opportunity for profit in the Disneyland production, and he asked Disney if he could open a McDonalds in the new Disneyland. This request was rejected by Disney, because McDonald was not yet popular enough. With their similarities in customers and policies, both companies were waiting for the marketing strategy now known as synergy to be pioneered by Walt Disney himself. When, in 1996, a ten-year global marketing agreement was signed by the two corporations, a fast food company was linked with a Hollywood studio, granting McDonald’s exclusive rights to Disney’s output of films. Disney characters were depicted on McDonald’s merchandise, and McDonalds began to open stores at Disney’s theme parks. “It is about the integration of [the] two brands, long-term”.

In the Merchants of Cool two companies are similarly benefiting from each other, by helping each other in attracting the same group of customers. When Sprite changed its marketing strategy, and began advertising for teenagers, it caught on to the “life-style” that MTV was selling, rather than just selling Sprite as a drink. Like Disney and McDonald are focusing on children, Sprite and MTV are focusing on teenagers as potential customers. Sprite and MTV are now partners in, on one side, promoting the soft drink, on the other, promoting hip-hop music, but together, in promoting the teen life-style.

Neal H. Moritz

Neal Moritz is a film producer born in 1959. He started a company that made purses, but abandoned this business short after to attend film school at USC. His dream was to “open [his] own thing”, which he did with starting Original Film, which is now recognized as one of the most exclusive production companies.

Movies he produced include:

o I Know What you did last summer

o Urban Legend

o Cruel Intentions

o The Fast and The Furious

Sources: http://stumpedmagazine.com/Articles/neal-moritz-article.html

“Merchants of Cool”

Chapter Notes

Chapter 2: Under-the-Radar Marketing

o Kids see marketers as the enemy (because they’re old)

· Market to kids without seeming to do so/ become cool themselves

o Hip-Hop became the connection between Sprite and teenagers

· Selling a life-style, not the product

o Marketing firm “Corner stone” –> under-the-radar marketing

o Hires teens to promote their products

o Hip-hop artists to smuggle their message into the world of the teens

o ‘cute campaigns’ don’t work anymore

o Get involved in what their culture is

o Understand where they’re coming from

o Think how they think

o Youth culture used to be an active expression, not a consumption

o Multi-national media corporations are now the true merchants of cool

o Viacom

o Disney

o Sony

o News Corp

o Bertelsmann

Chapter 3: The MTV machine

o MTV

o Commercial concept: Use record companies promotional music videos as creative programming

o Is now a youth marketing empire

o Everything on MTV is a commercial

o Violates the first rule of cool: Don’t let your marketing show

o Cool does not come with MTV, it belongs to kids –> kids change

· MTV has to change with them

o MTV conducted researched on teenagers

o On some shows, gave the viewers control on what would be showed

o MTV must understand where teen culture is moving

o MTV’s techniques:

· Ifnography study –> MTV market researchers visit a typical fan in his home

Understanding the teens as costumers, not as persons

–> so MTV can give them what it wants them to have

o Mook: crude, loud, obnoxious, in your face

o Created by Viacom

o Designed to capitalize on the testosterone driven madness of adolescence

o “grabs them below the belt, and then reaches for their wallets”

o Pressure on commercial culture providers (MTV) because of fewer owners but more choices

o To find things that ‘click’ right away

Chapter 4: The Midriff

o Multi national companies competing

· Will drag standards down

o Media machine has created the stereotype “Midriff”

· Pre-maturely adult

· Consumed by appearances

· Sex

· “I am a sexual object, but I’m proud of it”

· Ex. Britney Spears

· Not only pleasing young boys, but delivering a message to girls

o International Model and Talent Association

· New vacancies for Midriffs everyday

Chapter 5: The Giant Feedback Loop

o TV shows (7th Heaven) new approach

· Keep it clean

· American families can watch TV together

o Had to compete against radical shows (90210)

o WB changed plan: show about sex-obsessed high-schoolers

· Made Headlines

o Tremendous revenue coming in through sex and violence

o Teens are confronted with sex through television & advertisement

· Media is just a mirror to teenagers lives

o MTV has made Spring Break into a staged performance

o Real life and TV life have begun to blur

o Giant Feedback loop: media watches kids and then sells them an image of themselves. Teens watch those images and aspire to be the Mook or Midriff

Chapter 6: Teen Rebellion: Just Another Product

o Can you escape the feedback loop?

· Rage rock (shock lyrics, make fun of women and gays)

· Middle finger to the main stream

· Hate is directed at commercialism (against MTV)

o An extreme teens go to ensure their authenticity (Cultural resistance)

1. Find a controversial band

2. Package them for the main stream

3. Claim to just respond to demand

o “Cool hunt” ends: teen rebellion becoming just another product

o Advertising world view:

· Parents are creeps

· Teachers are idiots

· Authority figures are laughable

o No one can understand kids except the corporate sponsor

o Is there room for kids to create a culture of their own?

· Even when they rebel, it is sponsored and sold back to them