Kutai National Park in East Kalimantan made the headlines in 2009 as a conservation area in danger of being split apart for its enormous deposits of high-grade coal.

Tropical countries that seek a share of billions of dollars of climate finance in return for protecting their forests risk creating strategies that fail to bring social and environmental benefits.

Investing just 0.034 per cent of global GDP could transform the world's forestry sector, halving deforestation rates, slashing carbon emissions and creating up to five million new jobs by the middle of the century.That is the conclusion of a major new report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which argues that investing an average of $40bn a year in forest protection would allow forests to absorb 28 per cent more carbon from the atmosphere than they do now.

If clearing tropical forests for agriculture is a major cause of the ongoing catastrophic decline in biodiversity, conventional thinking would have us believe that reducing the number of farms and allowing the forests to expand should help reverse that decline, at least locally.

At Najjembe roadside market, in the heart of Uganda’s rainforest, Sanyu Nakato offers the bright yellow bananas in her basket to hungry passengers on the long-distance coach to neighbouring Kenya, who snap up her wares.

Norway has been accused of climate hypocrisy in Indonesia, where it has won plaudits for financing forest protection even as its state pension fund allegedly secures even greater revenues from logging, plantations, mining and other environmentally destructive practices.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 13, 2011 (IPS) - Brazil aims to meet its climate change targets in agriculture by stimulating techniques that have been proven to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – but which may increase the use of toxic agrochemicals, activists say.

Direct seeding, restoration of grasslands, crop-livestock-forest integration, biological nitrogen fixation, commercial reforestation, and biogas production from animal waste are practices that can be financed by a soft credit line available since August.

Mr Mike Hammah, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, on Tuesday expressed concern about the rate at which the country’s forest was depleting and said Government needed to update laws on forest and natural resources.

Developing countries (including China) are expected to account for more than 90% of global energy growth in the next 30 years.

In its latest report, the Indian government has attributed the declining forest cover in India to forest clearance by Maoist guerrillas. The statistics, however, say the contrary.

An interactive web tool has been developed to improve the accuracy and extent of global land use and forest cover information. The new 'Geo-Wiki' uses Google Earth and information provided by a global network of volunteers to fill in 'data gaps' and to verify existing land cover information.

23 March 2012: The UNFCCC Secretariat has released the submissions by parties on issues identified in decision 1/CP.16, paragraph 72 and appendix II, in particular on how to address drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, and on robust and transparent national forest monitoring systems a

Going by the latest report on deforestation in India, we have lost forest area equivalent to more than half of New Delhi or as big as a tier two city between 2007 and 2009 alone.

The carbon emissions from cutting down tropical forests may be about one third of the level previously estimated, according to an article in the journal Science

The effects of deforestation on the Earth are massive. Land is routinely cleared and degraded for agriculture and the production of wood and paper products.