Protecting the world's remaining tropical forests
will play a vital role in preventing dangerous
climate change in the future, says Peter
Seligmann. In this week's Green Room, he calls
for a global system that offers nations an
economic incentive to halt the destruction of the
Earth's "lungs".

  Liberia's greenhouse gas emissions are roughly
250,000 times lower than those of the US, yet its
remaining forests store approximately four
billion tonnes of carbon dioxide
   As Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf met
US President George Bush at the White House last
week, an expert from Liberia's Forestry
Development Authority was across the river in a
hi-tech laboratory, working on his country's
potential involvement in a global strategy to
confront climate change.

Augustine Johnson has been looking at ways to map
and assess Liberia's remaining tropical forest
and the carbon it stores.

If all goes according to plan, that carbon and
the forest's ability to store it will become a
valuable economic asset capable of bringing new
revenue to the African country in desperate need
of help to recover from civil war. The forests
are already a valuable environmental asset for
the whole planet.

Fifteen years have passed since Liberia and the
US were among 190 countries that signed the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) at the Rio Earth Summit.

Since then, Liberia has emerged from its long
civil conflict, but economic recovery and
widespread unemployment remain daunting
challenges.

Untapped asset

Climate change poses another major threat to
Liberia and other developing countries. The
anticipated impacts, such as rising sea levels
and more severe droughts, will cause the most
harm to the world's poorest people living in
nations that lack the resources to help them
adapt.

Nations such as Liberia have high levels of people living in poverty
Liberia's greenhouse gas emissions are roughly
250,000 times lower than those of the US, yet its
remaining forests store approximately four
billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2),
equivalent to the amount emitted by 57 million
cars over 10 years.

Original forests are universally recognised as
one of our planet's greatest natural resources
because they provide jobs and sustenance for
hundreds of millions of people.

They are nature's pharmacies and raw material
factories, with unmatched biological diversity.
They cleanse and restore water supplies, and they
help prevent the spread of certain tropical
diseases.

However, the amount of tropical forest our planet
loses each year is one-and-a-half times the size
of Liberia, releasing almost 20% of total
greenhouse gas emissions - more than all the
world's cars, trucks and planes combined.

Protect and preserve

Regulated carbon markets, recognised by the
UNFCCC and mediated by Kyoto Protocol processes
such as the Clean Development Mechanism, offer
incentives to reduce methane from farming and
landfill sites.

The markets also have programmes that reduce
greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial
sectors of emerging economies such as China and
India.

Yet they lack any mechanism to reduce the
emissions from cutting and burning the valuable
tropical forests of developing countries.

At December's UN climate change conference in
Bali, Indonesia, leaders from all countries can
find common ground to ensure forest protection is
included as a valid, direct and immediate action
that generates measurable carbon credits.

President Johnson-Sirleaf has demonstrated
Liberia is a serious partner. A year ago, her
newly elected government enacted the Forest
Reform Law as a bold step to manage these natural
forest resources.

The legislation established 30% of its remaining
forests as national protected areas. These
biologically rich and unique forests comprise the
most extensive forest coverage in West Africa,
providing resources depended on by a large
percentage of the nation's people.

However, rampant poverty poses a serious threat
to the government's ambitious policy. Many people
have little choice but to earn a living by
logging or mining, sometimes within the forests
that are protected by law.

Liberia and other developing countries should be
able to benefit economically from protecting
their forests for the long-term global good,
rather than sacrificing them for short-term
survival.

But this will require reliable and consistent
economic incentives from many different financing
sources, including carbon credits and economic
development assistance.

It will also require political will from
developed nations such as the US, Japan and EU
member states. Investment will be needed to
quantify the carbon savings from forestry
protection, and to build technical capacity and
expertise in the forestry programmes of
developing countries.

And the corporate sector that buys carbon credits
would have to be engaged and receptive to the
concept.

Like many developing countries in tropical
Africa, Latin America and Asia, Liberia possesses
a vast wealth of biologically rich and globally
important forests, despite its difficult economic
circumstances.

By supporting this promising and courageous
democracy with the right economic tools and
technical assistance to protect these forests, we
will not only be helping Liberia, but a global
community facing the unprecedented challenge of
climate change.

Peter A Seligmann is chairman and chief executive of Conservation
International

The Green Room is a series of opinion pieces on
environmental topics running weekly on the BBC
News website

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