Introduction change in the air: past efforts to save tropical forests have largely failed. The world community, prompted by rising concerns about climate change, is finally considering a solution that might work.

• Author: Stone, Roger D.
• Position: SPECIAL REPORT

It is a well-known fact that China and the United States are the two most prolific emitters of carbon into the atmosphere, and hence the world's biggest contributors to global warming. Less well known, and perhaps more surprising, is the country that ranks third on the list: Indonesia. The Southeast Asian archipelago nation has earned this dubious distinction nowhere nearly so much from industrialization as from deforestation. Since 1950, when the country was down near the bottom of the list, Indonesia has lost a staggering 40 percent of its tropical forests to logging, agriculture, and other commercial ventures. Deforestation there continues to accelerate.

We tend to think of climate change as just a matter of what comes out of smokestacks and tailpipes--an energy issue. In fact, according to the World Resources Institute's careful tabulations, tropical deforestation accounts for 20 percent or more of all carbon emissions into the atmosphere. That, says the World Wildlife Fund, is "more than the combined emissions of every car, truck, ship, plane or train on the planet." The reason is not hard to understand. Plants remove carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere and turn it, via photosynthesis, into organic matter: leaves, bark, roots, and so on. This "fixing" process is most intense in dense tropical forests, which cover only 7 percent of the earth's dry land but store (in the plants themselves and in the rich soils below) about 45 percent of all terrestrial carbon. Chopping down the rainforests removes this carbon-absorbing buffer while releasing vast amounts of stored carbon into the air as the brush is burned off.

The alarming role that deforestation plays in climate change, and what might be done about it, is the subject of this special report. In particular, the report addresses the quest for financial systems in which the owners and residents of tropical forest properties can make more money from the standing forest than from its removal, which may be our best hope for reining in deforestation and its contribution to climate change. The term of art for this concept is REDD--Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. REDD encompasses a variety of ways in which substantial funds to protect tropical forests and stimulate sustainable development might be generated, either through carbon market mechanisms or direct payments from public and private sources.

The REDD concept is gaining traction among...