I've been to many UN climate sessions but I've rarely seen anything like this weekend when a whole roomful of delegates stood up, one after another, to speak out about a shared concern. Compared to how UN sessions usually go, it was like watching a popular uprising overrun the palace.
So what was the issue that brought everyone together? Tropical forests. Delegates from dozens of nations from all regions of the world took the floor to say that forests must be part of a global climate deal, and many called for a special time and place to discuss it.
I literally felt a rush of adrenaline, (not a common feeling in a UN session), watching so many nations speak up and agree. First was Brazil, speaking for the G77 nations, and then Papua New Guinea, Panama and Peru, Norway, Gabon, India, China and the U.S. Even Switzerland spoke up.
It's rare to see so many countries share a common concern. But in this case it's obvious to everyone that a climate deal has to account for forest protection. Clearing of tropical forests alone causes about 20 percent of global warming.
Forest nations have wrestled with this for years. They need to offer citizens some kind of decent economic alternative because millions of people, usually poor, make a living from the forest. But now industrial nations are joining the battle to demand that the next global climate agreement create a mechanism to compensate countries who show they've lowered deforestation.
In the words of the Papua New Guinea delegate, Why is ExxonMobil valued at $400 billion while tropical forests are valued at zero? If ExxonMobil disappeared, most people wouldn't even notice, but if tropical forests disappeared, almost everyone on earth would be affected.
I've thought the same thing many times, but it was a thrill to see so many nations urge that this issue take center stage at Copenhagen. They are realizing we have to protect forests to stop global warming, and also that it's one of the best and most cost effective ways to stop it faster.
We still have a lot of work to do to value forests and forest protection, but we have less than one year until the Copenhagen climate summit in December. Forest protection has been on the climate sidelines for years. It's about time delegates got fed up.
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[...] direction if we are going to get a strong agreement. It can be done as this meeting witnessed a large number of countries stand up for the world's tropical forests and demand that efforts to reduce these emissions are included in the Copenhagen agreement [...]