A Sporting Promotion for Reforestation

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

LIMA, Dec 9 2002 (IPS) - The Peruvian Olympic Committee is promoting the planting of trees at a large rural cooperative where eroded soils have been transformed into forest. The National Olympic Committee of Peru (CON-Peru) is spearheading a pilot project for reforestation in the northwestern department of Cajamarca, an effort aimed at local development and boosting absorption of the greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, that lead to global warming.

Seen from above, the Porcón Farm, located in an Andean valley 900 km north of Lima, looks like paradise, with pine forests covering the hills alongside carefully planted fields, stables of dairy cows, tanks for fish production and more than 800 deer grazing among the trees, along the rivers, accustomed to the presence of humans.

“But Porcón was not always like this. Until just over 20 years ago, on those hills now covered with forest, there were only barren rocks and soil eroded by rain. We planted trees to protect the soil and we found that it opened numerous economic opportunities, because the climate and the landscape changed,” recounts Alejandro Quispe, one of the pioneers in the farm's reforestation.

Porcón is a cooperatively owned property shared by 1,050 farmers. The land already holds 12 million trees, producing 250 tons of wood each month to supply a paper factory in the city of Trujillo, on the northern coast, and 300 tons of pine are sent each month to a furniture factory in Lima.

The project has improved the standard of living of the area's peasant farmers, who benefit now from land that produced very little in the past.

However, the cooperative's limited financial capacity prevented it from expanding the forested area to the hills within the property that remain bare.

Then CON-Peru arrived on the scene, joining the Porcón Farm in leading a unique fund-raising experiment, which they first presented at the second Olympic Committee World Congress, held in 1999 in Rio de Janeiro.

“It is not about turning Olympic Committee into logging companies. The idea is to take advantage of the Committee's international contacts to collect resources through the sale of certificates of carbon dioxide absorption and of greeting cards made from paper certified as produced from tree farms, not forests,” Mario Suito, former president of CON-Peru and mastermind behind the initiative, explained to Tierramérica.

Big transnational corporations have committed to financing “green” projects, such as the cultivation of greenhouse gas-absorbing crops, in developing countries.

“The most effective approach is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, but in the meantime the corporations are financing the massive planting of trees, because growing forests capture the carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere,” said Suito.

The project, already under way, has the approval of the Pan-American Sports Organization as a model for action by the Olympic Committees of the rest of the Latin American countries. It also has backing from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and technical assessment from two local universities and the Institute for Agrarian Research.

CON-Peru is also urging other Olympic Committee to promote the sales of certified greeting cards, for birthdays, anniversaries and weddings, “as a significant act contributing towards the planting of trees,” said Suito. For each greeting card sold, a tree will be planted on the Porcón Farm.

The Peruvian initiative arises from the decision adopted in 1994 by the International Olympic Committee to incorporate environmental protection among its promotional activities.