At the climate change conference in Durban, South Africa in December (technically, the 17th Conference of the Parties under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change) one subject on which the parties appeared to make progress was the critical need to protect the Earth’s forests. Forests are now recognized not only as important “sinks” that absorb a substantial share of the world’s carbon emissions, but also as major sources of those emissions when they are burned, commercially logged or simply decompose. In developing countries such as Bolivia, Colombia, Indonesia, Malaysia and even Brazil, total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from deforestation and related land use activities are the principal source of the nation’s climate-warming emissions. Globally, deforestation, related land use and agriculture now account for more than 30 percent of the world’s GHG emissions.
Elimination of forest cover also exacerbates other environmental threats in many developing countries, including soil depletion and desertification, flooding, and habitat loss for biodiversity. Moreover, the new uses that follow on formerly forested lands (typically, commercial logging, large-scale ranching, agro-businesses such as palm oil plantations, precious mineral mining or power plants and associated infrastructure) replace the absorptive capacity of forests with new GHG emissions.
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