Rainforest

We often think — wrongly — of ecological systems as linear. Adding a certain amount of CO2 to the atmosphere means a certain amount of warming. Twice that amount, twice the warming. Losing 10 percent of a forest means 10 percent less forest. Twice that amount of deforestation means twenty percent less forest. Stuff like that.

But that’s not how ecological systems operate. They’re integrated. Their components rely on one another to function properly.

Reporting from Copenhagen

A deal is on the table at UN climate talks that would require poor nations to halt deforestation completely by 2030 on the condition that wealthy nations fork over $22 billion to $37 billion to jump start the plan, according to new text leaked today in Copenhagen.

"There's money in there for the first time," Peg Putt of the Wilderness Society told SolveClimate in an interview. That alone is "quite significant," she said.

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• Stacy Feldman's blog
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Reporting from Copenhagen

UN climate talks on ending deforestation hit a new low on Saturday after a leaked document revealed that immediate targets to halt forest loss had been cut out of a draft agreement.

Poorer forested countries had been willing to accept deforestation targets, but only with financial assistance. They wanted rich countries to commit to providing billions of dollars for the effort before they agreed to bind themselves to any goals.

Currently, there are no dollar commitments on the table.

The Amazon jungle is metaphorically referred to as the lungs of the world: CO2 in, O2 out, transformed through a dense emerald mass. It's an irreplaceable treasure, in many spots still unmapped, and a biological preserve filled with species that we likely haven’t even seen.

So it’s quite welcome that author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is paying attention to what happens to the Amazon.

What’s not welcome are the misdirections Friedman takes while discussing how to protect the remaining 80 percent of the Amazon that has not yet been clear-cut and transformed into cattle ranches and soy plantations.

When you want to quit smoking, do you call a tobacco company? That in essence is what civil society groups were wondering when they met last week to evaluate the climate-friendly announcements coming out of the World Bank.

World Bank leaders had convened in Washington DC -- abloom with cherry blossoms -- for their annual spring meeting, and announced plans to launch two new climate-change funds. One new pot of Bank money is focused on the development of clean technology, and the other pot earmarked for ‘resilience’—helping countries adapt to rising sea levels, increased intensity of storms, drought, and other economic harms resulting from climate change.

These two new funds are in addition to the Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), launched last year to put a bounty on ‘avoided deforestation’ in tropical rainforest nations.

Sound like good ideas, right? Clean technology, adaptation funds, valuing standing forests—what’s not to like?

Plenty, as it turns out, because the Bank has another face – as an institution that simultaneously exacerbates the problem of global climate change. The Bank, you see, isn’t working to dampen rising temperatures; rather, it’s fanning the flames, despite these latest announcements.