[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 20]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 29616]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



 PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 3196, FOREIGN OPERATIONS, EXPORT 
        FINANCING, AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2000

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                            HON. ROB PORTMAN

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, November 5, 1999

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that the FY 2000 Foreign 
Operations Appropriations bill, H.R. 3196, earmarks at least $13 
million to carry out the provisions of the Tropical Forest Conservation 
Act, which I introduced with John Kasich and Lee Hamilton and was 
signed into law last year.
  The Tropical Forest Conservation Act expands President Bush's 
Enterprise for the Americas Initiative--EAI--and provides a creative 
market-oriented approach to protect the world's most threatened 
tropical forests on a sustained basis.
  Tropical forests provide a wide range of benefits, literally 
affecting the air we breathe, the food we eat, and medicines that cure 
diseases. They harbor 50-90 percent of the Earth's terrestrial 
biodiversity. They act as ``carbon sinks'', absorbing massive 
quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby reducing 
greenhouse gases. They regulate rainfall on which agriculture and 
coastal resources depend, which is of great importance to regional and 
global climate. And, they are the breeding grounds for new drugs that 
can cure disease.
  The Tropical Forest Conservation Act builds on the EAI's successes in 
the early 1990's, and links two significant facts of life. First, 
important tropical forests are disappearing at a rapid rate between 
1980 and 1990, 30 million acres of tropical forests--an area larger 
than the State of Pennsylvania--were lost every year. Second, these 
forests are located in less developed countries that have a hard time 
repaying their debts to the United States. In fact, about 50 percent of 
the world's tropical forests are located in four countries--Indonesia, 
Peru, Brazil, and the Congo--and these countries have in the aggregate 
over $5 billion of U.S. debt outstanding.
  The Tropical Forest Conservation Act gives the President authority to 
reduce or cancel U.S. A.I.D. and/or P.L. 480 debt owed by any eligible 
country in the world to protect its globally or regionally important 
tropical forests. These ``debt-for-nature'' exchanges achieve two 
important goals. They relieve some of the economic pressure that is 
fueling deforestation, and they provide funds for conservation efforts 
in the eligible country. There is also the power of leveraging--one 
dollar of debt reduction in many cases buys two or more dollars in 
environmental conservation. In other words, the local government will 
pay substantially more in local currency to protect the forest than the 
cost of the debt reduction to the U.S. Government.
  For any country to qualify, it must meet the same criteria 
established by Congress under the EAI, including that the government 
has to be democratically elected, cooperating on international 
narcotics control matters, and not supporting terrorism or violating 
internationally recognized human rights. Furthermore, to ensure the 
eligible country meets minimum financial criteria to meet its new 
obligations under the restricted terms, it must meet the EAI criteria 
requiring progress on economic reforms.
  The Tropical Forest Conservation Act is a cost-effective way to 
respond to the global crisis in tropical forests, and the groups that 
have the most experience preserving tropical forests agree. It is 
strongly supported by The Nature Conservancy, Conservation 
International, the World Wildlife Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund 
and others. Many of these organizations have worked with us very 
closely over the last two years to produce a good bipartisan 
initiative.
  I am delighted that H.R. 3196 includes these funds that will be used 
to preserve and protect millions of acres of important tropical forests 
worldwide in a fiscally responsible fashion.

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