Some suspect that in Copenhagen, rich countries might agree to pay poor countries to stop cutting forests. (Photo by John J. Mosesso, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)
World leaders are meeting in Copenhagen,
Denmark next month to begin dealing with
global climate change. A firm treaty is
off the table for now, but one idea they’re
thinking through is to preserve forests
and have them absorb heat-trapping carbon
dioxide. Shawn Allee reports,
some scientists want all this forest talk
to include animals, not just trees:
Transcript
World leaders are meeting in Copenhagen,
Denmark next month to begin dealing with
global climate change. A firm treaty is
off the table for now, but one idea they’re
thinking through is to preserve forests
and have them absorb heat-trapping carbon
dioxide. Shawn Allee reports,
some scientists want all this forest talk
to include animals, not just trees:
Stuart Pimm is a biologist at Duke University. He says in Copenhagen, rich countries might agree to pay poor countries to stop cutting forests. Pimm says that’s great but not all forests are equal.
“Some forests have more carbon in them than others, and some forests have more species in them than others.”
Pimm and other biologists say carbon pricing alone might mean carbon-poor forests get cut – even if they’re home to lots of animal species. They want negotiators to somehow tweak any climate agreement.
“So we should be encouraging countries not to burn their forests, but we should encourage them not to burn the forests that are so biologically rich.”
Climate negotiators could take up Pimm’s idea next month in Copenhagen.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.