§ 2431. Findings and purposes
(a)
Findings
The Congress finds the following:
(1)
It is the established policy of the United States to support and seek protection of tropical forests around the world.
(2)
Tropical forests provide a wide range of benefits to humankind by—
(A)
harboring a major share of the Earth’s biological and terrestrial resources, which are the basis for developing pharmaceutical products and revitalizing agricultural crops;
(3)
International negotiations and assistance programs to conserve forest resources have proliferated over the past decade, but the rapid rate of tropical deforestation continues unabated.
(4)
Developing countries with urgent needs for investment and capital for development have allocated a significant amount of their forests to logging concessions.
(5)
Poverty and economic pressures on the populations of developing countries have, over time, resulted in clearing of vast areas of forest for conversion to agriculture, which is often unsustainable in the poor soils underlying tropical forests.
(b)
Purposes
The purposes of this subchapter are—
(2)
to facilitate greater protection of tropical forests (and to give priority to protecting tropical forests with the highest levels of biodiversity and under the most severe threat) by providing for the alleviation of debt in countries where tropical forests are located, thus allowing the use of additional resources to protect these critical resources and reduce economic pressures that have led to deforestation;