English to French Science General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters Nature

The degradation of land in one area of Brazil can proceed apace with little concern, as payments for offset certificates - the conservation of an "equivalent" piece of land elsewhere in the country - simply become the cost of doing business. There are even reports of purely speculative certificate purchases where corporations buy up remote Amazonian land in order to sell forest conservation certificates to conserve land and forests that would never have been disrupted anyway [4].