Old-growth forests hold vast amounts of carbon from centuries of growth, and this carbon would be released into the atmosphere if the trees were cut down. That much has been known for a long time, which is why Environmental Defense Fund so strongly advocates a plan to reduce deforestation in developing countries.

But new research shows that old-growth forests are even more important than previously thought. According to a new study in Nature, old-growth forests aren’t just standing there maintaining the status quo. They still actively take up CO₂ from the atmosphere.

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Another UN climate negotiating session has come and gone, the banners and tents swiftly dismantled, the delegates again scattered to the world's four corners. Most leave with a sense of progress - incremental, to be sure, but the meetings are slowly transforming into real negotiations. When the United States' new team hits the ground in January, the pace of negotiations will grow furious as we count down to the Copenhagen talks in December.

Here are the highlights from a week packed with negotiations, side events and planning sessions.

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Even if every industrialized country were to reduce its emissions to zero by 2050, atmospheric carbon levels would still be above what scientists tell us is dangerous.

That's a pretty powerful statement, and it leads to the question: How do we convince developing countries to set limits on their emissions? A possible answer to that challenge brought me to Ghana this week.

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This post is by Gustavo Silva-Chávez, an international policy analyst in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.

Early this week, the team from Environmental Defense Fund started boarding planes for Accra, Ghana to attend the international Climate Change Talks. The official first day was Thursday, but Wednesday was busy with pre-meeting workshops.

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This post is by Gustavo Silva-Chávez, an international policy analyst in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.

Last December, a team from Environmental Defense Fund attended climate change negotiations in Bali - an annual meeting of some 190 countries. Next week, we're headed to Accra, Ghana for another round of talks. These meetings, along with other talks this year and next, are part of an international negotiation process that will conclude in Copenhagen in late 2009.

The goal is to put the world on a path to avoid dangerous climate change. As part of this effort, EDF is working to encourage full participation of the United States, all other developed countries, and all major developing countries. The findings, recommendations and negotiated text coming out of these interim meetings will form the basic structure of the Copenhagen deal.

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This post is by Peter Goldmark, Program Director, Climate and Air, Environmental Defense.

The high and mighty are gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), and right there in the center of the conversation, confabulation and champagne is our own Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense.

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This post is by Peter Goldmark, Program Director, Climate and Air, Environmental Defense. Also see his previous dispatch from Bali and background on the meetings.

As I reported in my last bulletin from Bali, after much sturm und drang, countries finally agreed to a two-year process that can lead to the next international climate change treaty in 2009 - the "Bali Roadmap".

Deforestation was a major topic at the Bali conference, and ended up being one of the most positive components of the Bali Roadmap. Environmental Defense helped lead the way there.

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This post is by Peter Goldmark, Program Director, Climate and Air, Environmental Defense. Also see his previous dispatch from Bali and background on the meetings.

As I prepare to send this account to New York by email, we know how it all ended.

But I had to suffer through 40 hours of nearly sleepless sturm, drang, chaos and emotional suspense to find out. I’ll take you through some of that, too.

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This post is by Peter Goldmark, Program Director, Climate and Air, Environmental Defense. Also see his previous dispatch from Bali

The ministers have arrived - environmental ministers, energy ministers, finance ministers, ministers ordinary and plenipotentiary, and ministers who will one day wind up in the penitentiary. They are driving to and fro in limos with police escorts, blaring their horns at those of us on bicycles.

What this means is that we are entering the last 72 hours of the conference. The nights are getting longer, and the strokes shorter.

But measured even against the background experience that large international conferences frequently undergo a moment of dark despair before dawn brings some sort of last-minute agreement, the last two nights of discord have been dismaying.

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This post is by Peter Goldmark, Program Director, Climate and Air, Environmental Defense. Click here for his previous dispatch from Bali.

In the second and final week of climate talks here in Bali, wisps and patches of a larger fabric are beginning to appear.

An informal non-group, with unofficial non-co-chairs from South Africa and Australia, has given birth semi-anonymously to a text which issued from an informal non-meeting and has been widely circulated as a non-paper. It addresses tentatively, with conflicting opinions on some key points, the major open issues facing this conference. These include the touchy questions of what the developing countries should be expected to do, and how to advance the talks on incorporating deforestation into the broader climate framework from which they were excluded a decade ago.

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