EDF’s International Project helped to draft and enact pathbreaking legislation that requires the Treasury Department and U.S. members of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to explore and promote “debt for conservation” swaps. These mechanisms enable developing nations to reduce parts of their foreign debt in exchange for local investments in conservation of tropical forests and other endangered resources.
The bill is a major breakthrough, since it involves in such swaps the only institutions — the World Bank and IMF — capable of dealing simultaneously and on a large scale with the issues of Third World debt and conservation of endangered tropical resources.
“The Third World debt problem, as bleak as it seems, may provide a context large enough to deal with the destruction of rainforests,” said EDF Executive Director Frederic D. Krupp. “Tropical forests serve every nation on earth by helping to
