When it comes to global warming and the regeneration of land, trees have enormous value. Yet, short-term challenges force many people in the developing world to cut down trees. Would it work to pay landowners to leave their land alone? Critics have argued that such a policy would simply make the landowners shift their land use to places not covered by the payments. However, a two-year study in Uganda shows that tree cover declined by about half as much in villages where payments were offered compared to the villages where they weren’t, and it found no evidence that landowners who were paid to preserve their land shifted their deforestation to nearby land.
Fighting deforestation by paying people not to cut down trees works
More of Today's Solutions
Scientists build first fully human bone marrow model to revolutionize blood d...
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a transformative leap for regenerative medicine, scientists have developed the first entirely human-engineered bone marrow system. This ...
Read More7 cold and flu season mistakes doctors want you to quit making
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM You’ve heard the warnings: cold and flu season is no joke. But despite our best intentions (and fully ...
Read MoreThree ways we can repurpose closed department stores
40 percent of US department stores have closed their doors in the past five years, but the question remains: what do we do with ...
Read MoreHubble takes beautiful image of galaxies “dancing”
The Hubble Space Telescope ventured into space over three decades ago in 1990, and has observed around 50,000 celestial bodies to date. During this ...
Read More
