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A proposal aimed at saving the world's tropical forests suffered
a setback last weekend, when negotiators at the UN climate
talks ditched plans for faster action on the problem because
of concerns that rich countries aren't willing to finance
it.
Destruction of forests - burning or cutting trees to clear
land for plantations or cattle ranches - is thought to account
for about 20 percent of global emissions. That's as much carbon
dioxide as all the world's cars, trucks, trains, planes and
ships combined.
Accordingly, a deal on deforestation is considered a key
component of a larger pact on climate change being negotiated
in Copenhagen.
Lat weekend, language calling for reducing deforestation
50 percent by 2020 was struck from the text being considered.
In addition, the document only mentions financing without
saying how much would go to the more than 40 developing nations
in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
The Europeans want to put in a shorter-term goal "and the
rain forest nations are saying that we are happy to have a
goal as long as it's balanced by appropriate funding ... which
is missing from the text," said Federica Bietta, the deputy
director of the Coalition for Rain Forest Nations. The group
represents most of the countries that could take part in a
forest scheme.
Antonio Gabriel La Vina, the lead negotiator in the forest
talks and author of the latest draft, downplayed the changes
and said it was a compromise between those who wanted hard
targets and those who didn't.
Environmentalists, earlier this month, hailed the forest
talks as one area where negotiations were progressing and
some suggested they could serve as a catalyst to inking a
larger climate deal here in Copenhagen.
However, they have fallen victim to the same bickering between
rich and poor nations which has slowed progress on the wider
agreement. There are still no firm figures on financing or
cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the larger agreement.
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