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WWF ends contentious debate, will now support effort to fight climate change by saving rainforests Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com September 24, 2008
Speaking to an audience that included Former Vice President Al Gore; Wangari Maathai, a Nobel Prize-winning environmentalist from Kenya; veteran newscaster Dan Rather; Bharrat Jagdeo, sitting president of the South American country of Guyana; and dozens of executives and high-ranking officials from NGOs and governments around the world, Carter Roberts said Monday that WWF would no longer oppose efforts to include forests in international climate negotiations. “The Amazon, if it were a country, would be in the top seven emitters of greenhouse gases in the world," Carter said. "Unless the world has policies that recognize that value of standing trees and forests, we will have failed.” "In Kyoto, WWF was pivotal in keeping forests out. We have changed our position," he added. The news was welcomed by groups pushing forest conservation as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Tropical deforestation and degradation accounts for a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transportation sector. Some economists say that "avoided deforestation" represents one of the most-effective means for cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases, while many environmentalists see the concept as offering the best hope for saving endangered tropical forests.
WWF's opposition in the face of ongoing forest destruction sparked a bitter rift among environmentalists, but the group last year signaled that it might be having a change of heart when it hosted a public symposium on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (REDD), a proposed avoided deforestation mechanism. Now with his comments at the Avoided Deforestation Partners meeting, Carter has publicly thrown WWF's considerable clout into the campaign to get forests recognized as a critical component of addressing climate change. Roberts said that WWF will now support avoided deforestation as part of a broader set of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"If the cuts are real and deep, that will force cuts across all sectors... [they] can't be superficial," he continued. "There is no silver bullet for resolving the climate crisis. We need a broad effort that targets all sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Tropical deforestation, which accounts for nearly a fifth of global emissions, obviously must be an integral part of a comprehensive climate change strategy.” Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore agreed. "We have to start reducing our pollution and substituting renewable sources of energy," Gore said. "But, we also have to provide the means for stopping deforestation. One of the most effective things we can do in the near term to address the climate crisis is to protect the world’s tropical forests." News index | RSS | News Feed Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing |
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