Think tank reveals plan to manage tropical forests

摘要

A high-profile group of thinkers has come up with a straightforward way to integrate long-term forest management into an international agreement on halting deforestation. It is not clear whether the proposal - released on 18 July by the Terrestrial Carbon Group of international scientists, economists and land-policy experts - has political legs. The idea is to lump together' all of the carbon locked up in tropical forests and then allow all countries to cash in on forest protection by trading carbon credits, regardless of whether logging is currently a problem within their borders. The proposal differs from the leading framework under the current United Nations (UN) proposal, which would establish baseline deforestation rates for each country and then allow them to sell carbon credits into an international market if they can reduce the rate of deforestation.