Rainforest chic: First Choice to work with Cool Earth, investing in vulnerable land, climate change cited

Cool Earth, co-founded by Johan Eliasch, a wealthy businessman who is chairman and CEO of sporting goods manufacturer Head, aims to protect local communuties in rainforests around the world.

Cool Earth plans to set up an international trust to buy and protect tranches of what Cool Earth calls "the world's lungs". Individuals and businesses will be able to "invest" in saving the rainforest via the non-profit group.

Dermot Blastland, the managing director for mainstream business at First Choice, speaking at the EyeforTravel Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2007 conference, yesterday announced the deal, the details of which have not yet been made public.

Matthew Owen, the incoming managing director of Cool Earth, says First Choice is "forward looking", that the arrangement is "under discussion" and the aim is to "ensure the forest is worth more standing than destroyed".

A quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions come from deforestation, according to Nicholas Stern, the influential UK economist who produced a review of tackling climate change last year.

The idea of buying forest and vulnerable land to protect them is not uncontroversial. US ecology investors have met opposition in Argentina and Chile from locals and politicians, who often say they are holding back development or controlling strategic resources like rivers.

"Green Colonialism" is a term that's been used to describe some schemes. But as the old saying goes, someone has to do something...

Any comment from First Choice (their press office oddly does not reveal a telephone number) will be added here later.