In my grade school we were asked to donate money to buy part of the rainforest in order to stop it from being cut down. I thought this was a brilliant idea, an

In my grade school we were asked to donate money to buy part of the rainforest in order to stop it from being cut down. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and it wasn't until the first time I visited Brazil (which is, somehow, 20 years ago now) that I learned that it wasn't really helping at all. In part, it's not that easy to "buy part of the rainforest". But more importantly (as the article describes), small-scale miners and loggers don't usually respect those property claims (or designations of areas as protected parkland).