Climate negotiations were dealt a bombshell at the weekend when
ecologists reported that carbon emissions from the destruction
of tropical forests are probably only half previous estimates.
If we are emitting less carbon dioxide from deforestation that's
got to be good news, surely. The trouble is the findings
seriously question the only success so far of the UN
negotiations on curbing climate change under way in Cancún,
Mexico. If cutting down trees emits far less CO2 than we
thought, where's the incentive to stop chopping? This is a
dismaying thought when negotiators feel they are close to a deal
on compensating tropical countries for curbing deforestation.
Four years ago, the UN's Intergovernmental panel on Climate
Change estimated that deforestation was responsible for up to 20
per cent of CO2 emissions. A more recent study by Richard
Houghton of Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth,
Massachusetts, revised that down to 15 per cent for the period
2000 to 2005. Both estimates relied on national declaratio