The forests which could make someone rich

But now a group of dealers in the United States is proposing to get rich and save trees at the same time.

The catalyst has been the deal to cut down greenhouse gases, which was agreed by the world's industrialised nations in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997.

An acre absorbes a tonne of carbon

Part of the agreement was to cut carbon dioxide pollution by about 5%. Because trees soak up carbon dioxide, some Western companies are hoping to buy up forests in developing countries as their contribution to the clean-up.

One group of New York commodity brokers is already thinking about selling this pollution cure to heavy industry in the United States.

Jack Cogen of Natsource Energy Brokers, says: "It's a way of capitalism cleaning up the world, making money while doing something good for the world. You can make money and sleep well at night."

The scheme, audited by a Swiss financial institution, is to buy up forests' capacity to soak up the excess carbon pollution from American firms.

Christopher Upton, of Societe General de Surveillance, says the idea is rooted in economic theory.

"Industrialised economies have grown on the basis of having free access to many of the world's resources, like air, water or fisheries. We have to start building the costs of those resources into what we do."

The forests involved will have to meet strict scientific, economic and social standards to be laid down at a world summit this November.

The Costa Rican Government has already spotted the gap in the market and allowed one of its forests, which had been cleared for farming and timber, to re-grow.

It has set up over a million and a quarter acres of forest - each acre absorbs a tonne or more of carbon from the world's atmosphere every year.

If the plan goes ahead, trees would become the basis of a new international commodity market worth billions of dollars a year.

The problem is, to soak up all the carbon pollution that the industrial world has agreed to would mean doubling the world's existing forests - but with large amounts of money at stake such a scheme could spark a rush to plant trees.