The great green land grab

Down in Patagonia, which stretches across southern Chile and Argentina, an estimated 300 wealthy north Americans have bought - mostly for little more than GBP 30 [USD $58] an acre - very many millions of the wildest, remotest and most stunning acres in the world in the name of wilderness preservation. Their near neighbours are the founder of CNN, Ted Turner, the financier George Soros, the fashion tycoons Luciano and Carlo Benetton, and the actors Sharon Stone and Christopher Lambert. Last year Turner became the largest landowner in Argentina, now owning 2m acres of Patagonia, which, he says, will be farmed "ecologically".

Because forests lock up nearly one eighth of all the world's carbon, US hedge funds, financiers, governments, the World Bank, private companies and many conservation charities see the chance to make potentially enormous amounts of money by stopping trees being felled. The big new climate change idea, now snowballing around the world, is for rich countries to pay poor ones not to cut down trees in return for carbon credits. One plan is to give communities or countries cash; another is for a global system of carbon trading where poor countries sell the carbon locked up in their trees to allow rich countries to continue polluting as usual.

It sounds good for the climate and the communities, but the reality on the ground is it could be disastrous. "Once you get big carbon money going to the world's forests you get questions about who actually owns the trees," says Dr Tom Griffiths, who works with Forest Peoples Programme. The carbon rush, he says, could turn conservation back to the bad old days of fences and guns and guards, with increasing control by governments and big international conservation groups over vast areas of land.

- I have alluded to this earlier, that there might be a war coming to a forest near you : bio-fuels merchants versus carbon-credits eco-warriors. Billions of dollars, tons of carbon, and the health of the global climate are at stake. There are reports that some of the shooting has already started. Tree Wars, anyone?

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