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There's an initiative in Guatemala where land owners are paid an amount of money every year for each acre of their land that they reforest. Naturally, land own
by nathancahill 7y ago
There's an initiative in Guatemala where land owners are paid an amount of money every year for each acre of their land that they reforest.
Naturally, land owners immediately started clear-cutting virgin rainforest, selling the lumber, and then collecting a payout from the government for planting pine trees that they'll raise for 10 years before they'll cut them down for lumber too.
- yojo 7y agoSounds like another example of the cobra effect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
- kebman 7y agoThat's a really interesting effect! Thank you for making me aware of it! However it should be noted that the reason it backfired, was because people exploited a weakness in the system, so to speak. It could even be that they did something illegal and fraudulent, since the bounties were obviously for animals that weren't bred in captivity, and for wild animals that were properly killed so they wouldn't be able to procreate. Thus the question remains on whether the measures had effective ways of dealing with such fraud, or whether that would make the whole thing more expensive than other measures.