REDD+

A great deal has been learned over the past 15 years about how to reduce carbon emissions from tropical deforestation in ways that benefit local people and the global environment.

This month, the journal Nature Geoscience published a study calculating that deforestation is responsible for about 15% of global carbon emissions, down from earlier estimates of 20% or more. Most of the world's deforestation is concentrated in a few tropical nations, like Brazil and Indonesia where trees are disappearing fast — when these trees die or are burned, they release into the atmosphere all the carbon they've sucked up while they were alive. According to the Nature Geoscience study, the problem of deforestation is becoming a lot less dire than previously thought.

Norway will provide up to $250 million to Guyana as part of the South American country's effort to avoid emissions from deforestation.

A major private-sector project to reduce carbon emissions through forest management in Bolivia is a ‘scam’, environmental group Greenpeace said in a report released earlier this month. The NGO claims that the environmental and social benefits of the initiative have been grossly oversold, although the project sponsors - along with some other green groups - insist that the efforts have been worthwhile.

A new climate treaty could provide a highly effective way to reduce carbon emissions by paying people to not cut down forests