Climate change

A number of issues still need to be resolved, but the scheme on reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) is likely to make progress at the climate conference, says the chairman of the REDD talks within the UN climate negotiations. The potential is an agreement on a carbon trading scheme worth billions of dollars a year from 2013.
"I think it's a foregone conclusion that REDD will be part of the new agreement. Ironically it's actually the most advanced now," says Tony La Vina, chair of the REDD negotiations, to Reuters.

For years there has been a strong divide between those that believe mankind is causing global warming and those that don't.

Tourism is considered to be a highly climate-sensitive economic sector similar to agriculture. This has encouraged industry players to look at new ways to respond effectively to these problems.

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.