Carbon credits could help save Amazon, blunt warming: study

Terra Daily, via Agence France-Presse: Global carbon markets could generate billions of dollars each year for developing countries that tackle tropical deforestation, a major source of global warming, according to a new study. Reducing the rate at which Amazonian rain forests are disappearing by only 10 percent, for example, would yield 1.5 to 9.1 billion euros (2.2 to 13.5 billion dollars), depending on world carbon emission prices, researchers calculated.

That money could then be plowed into national conservation efforts that would further mitigate climate change, creating a virtuous circle. Slow down deforestation by another 20 percent, and the potential income for the region would top 45 billion dollars if carbon prices reached 30 euros per tonne, said the study, one of two dozen scientific papers on the future of the Amazon released Monday by The Royal Society in Britain. Reigning in the destruction of the world's tropical forests has become a key focus of climate change efforts….

Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, USAID, Wikimedia Commons