Copenhagen Accord could boost forest protection efforts, though details unclear

Ensuring that forests and the carbon they store are protected, and that the people who live in them benefit from the protection programmes, has just got more complicated. This is the result of an unusual last-minute climate change accord at Copenhagen that recognised forest protection as key to reducing global carbon emissions but provided little guidance on how to go about it, according to experts at Forests, Governance and Climate Change, a conference held at Chatham House on Friday. The so-called "Copenhagen Accord," brokered by the United States and signed by China, India, Brazil and South Africa in the waning hours of the Copenhagen negotiations, specifically supports REDD, an international mechanism aimed at "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation." Under the mechanism, created through U.N. negotiations, developed nations would pay poorer countries to preserve their tropical forests as a means of cutting global carbon emissions...read more