Separately, a report showed that protecting forests could be easier and have bigger effects than parallel drives to curb industrial emissions from factories, power plants and cars. Reducing deforestation “is commonly seen as a significant, cheap, quick and win-win way to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions,” the report by the Center for International Forestry Research said. “The cost estimates vary, from $7 billion to $28 billion per year for halving deforestation,” it said, adding that even the upper estimates compared favorably with industrial curbs.

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At the same time, groups like The Center for International Forestry Research, or Cifor, say that a properly designed system could help with alleviating poverty, improving governance, and protecting biodiversity and other environmental services. “REDD also has the potential to achieve significant co-benefits, over and above reducing carbon emissions,” said Frances Seymour, the director general of the center, which released a new report on Friday Moving ahead with REDD: Issues, options and implications, which details ways that paying people to maintain forests could be a success.

REDD innebär en möjlighet att överföra finansiella resurser till u-länder, att användas som styrmedel för att förändra såväl nationell politik som enskilda markägares beslut, förklarar Frances Seymour, som är chef för Cifor, ett internationellt skogsforskningsinstitut med huvudkontor i Bogor Barat i Indonesien. Men Seymour påpekar att det inte lär bli “en storlek för alla” vad gäller REDD; förutsättningarna är så olika i olika regnskogsländer. Man kan skapa fonder i FN:s eller Världsbankens regi: i-länderna fyller på och u-länderna ansöker om pengar. Man kan också skapa frivilliga marknader där banker, företag och investerare får köpa särskilda REDD-/kolkrediter. Då skulle privat kapital från de rika länderna kanaliseras till regnskogsprojekt. I praktiken kommer det att bli en blandning av de två, tror experterna.

“Conserving the existing forests is not only good for the climate as the emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced, but also generates additional benefits, such as biodiversity protection,” said Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso of the Indonesia based Centre for International Forestry (CIFOR).

Forests are extremely vulnerable to climate change that is set to bring more wildfires and floods and quick action is needed to aid millions of poor people who depend on forests, a study said on Thursday. The report, by the Jakarta-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), urged delegates at a U.N. climate meeting in Poznan, Poland, from Dec. 1-12 to work out new ways to safeguard forests in developing nations.

Climate change could have a devastating impact on nearly one billion people living in and depending on forests unless immediate action was taken, researchers from the Bogor based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) warned. The warning is made in the CIFOR report Facing an Uncertain Future: How Forests and People can Adapt to Climate Change, which will be launched during the Poznan conference. The report sets out adaptive measures aimed to reduce the vulnerability of forests and forest-dependent communities. “The first (measure) is to buffer ecosystems against climate-related disturbances like improving fire management to reduce the risk of uncontrolled wildfires or the control of invasive species,” said Bruno Locatelli, a CIFOR scientist and lead author of the report. “The second would help forests to evolve toward new states better suited to the altered climate. In this way we evolve with the changing climate rather than resist it.”

Une réunion de l’ONU consacrée au climat se déroule à Poznan (Pologne), du 1er au 12 décembre. Le Centre pour la recherche internationale sur les forêts (Cifor) a attiré l’attention de délégués sur les effets du changement climatique dans les milieux forestiers en termes d’incendies (sécheresse dans les régions montagneuses d’Amérique centrale) et d’inondations (submersion des mangroves en Asie, due à l’élévation du niveau des mers). Un milliard de personnes sont potentiellement concernées, estime le Cifor, qui préconise la sélection d’espèces d’arbres adaptées au changement, la lutte contre de nouveaux insectes parasites et le maintien de couloirs pour permettre aux animaux et aux plantes de migrer.

But a new report by the Center for International Forestry Research being released this week makes a new case: that the forests themselves, and about 1 billion people who rely on them, are imperiled by global warming. “Forests will experience an unprecedented combination of flooding, drought, wildfire, and other effects of a warming climate over at least the next 100 years,” as an Environmental News Service report put it.