Abholzung

In Brazil’s Amazon basin, farmers have long sought out a special form of fertiliser – a locally sourced compost-like substance prized for its amazing qualities of reviving poor or exhausted soils. They buy it in sacks or dig it out of the earth from patches that are sometimes as much as 6ft deep. Spread on fields, it retains its fertile qualities for long periods.

As they do every year, Greenpeace and nongovernmental organizations like “Eyes on the Forest,” which is supported by the WWF and other western environmental groups, have squarely blamed the plantation industry for the seasonal fires in Sumatra.

This generates sympathy for the anti-forestry campaign NGOs have been waging in Indonesia for many years, which pits economic development against the environment.

But this perspective is simplistic and wrong.

How much pollution can a tree absorb? The question is at the center of a high-stakes fight over how much it will cost to curb climate change -- and who will foot the bill.

Trees are nature's antidote to smokestacks and tailpipes. Factories and cars cough out carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced when fossil fuel is burned. Trees inhale it. They store the carbon in their roots, trunks and leaves, and they send the oxygen back into the air.

New NASA research shows a sharp decline in the amount of smoke over the Amazon during the 2008 burning season, coinciding with a drop in deforestation reported last week by Carlos Minc, Brazil's Environment Minister.

June 29, 2009: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva last week signed a controversial law granting 67.4 million hectares (166 million acres) of Amazon rainforest land to more than 1 million illegal settlers, reports Reuters.