Klimaänderung

Expert-Level Meeting of the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE) highlights crucial role of European Forests 
 
FOREST EUROPE: New brand name for the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE) 
 

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.

At 8am on Wednesday 7 October, a smartly dressed fiftysomething Filipino woman took the escalator to the first floor of the UN building in Bangkok and merged into a throng of diplomats, civil servants and environmentalists arriving for the eighth day of the ninth session of the global climate talks. She was met with a few respectful nods.

The EU is reportedly willing to begin its funding next year, although a new global climate deal replacing the Kyoto Protocol is not expected to become effective before 2013. The new EU move is an attempt to signal willingness to reach a global deal at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

According to the web edition of the Danish daily, Politiken, the European Union suggests a global sum of annually five to seven billion euro during the period 2010-2012. EU expects to fund around a third of the total amount.