UN climate talks: Save the forests -- but how?
Deforestation, one of the main drivers of global warming, has barged its way to the heart of UN climate talks, which resumed in Bonn this week.
But which makes the better incentive for saving the carbon-absorbing tropical woodlands: market mechanisms or public funding?
This question has split nations, divided green groups and tossed in yet another factor to bedevil efforts to agree a pact by year's end for tackling climate change.
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation -- an effort known as REDD -- emerged last year as a key element in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations.
It owes its rise to scientists' warnings that destruction of tropical forests cannot be ignored by policymakers, for it now accounts for a fifth of all greenhouse-gas emissions.
Logging and ground clearance are especially concentrated in Brazil and Indonesia. They each account for about one third of forest-related emissions, making them the world's top carbon polluters after China and the United States.
"There is broad consensus now that the post-2012 agreement will include some sort of incentives for tropical countries to reduce their deforestation," said Steve Schwartzman of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group based in Washington.
"The issue is, what kind of mechanism? And that is where the polemics start," he told AFP.
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