Joanneum Research, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental de Amazonia (IPAM), Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and The Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) welcome this opportunity to submit ideas to the II Workshop on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation to be held in Cairns, Australia (7-9 March 2007). This submission adds detail, some new policy approaches and data on tropical deforestation to the previous documents2 submitted by our respective organizations to I Workshop held in Rome, Italy, from 30th August to 1st September, 2006.
Tropical forest vegetation stores more than two hundred billion tons of carbon (PgC) globally (IPCC 2001) and deforestation is releasing these stocks into the atmosphere. Although greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the principal cause of global warming, tropical deforestation causes 10 to 25% of annual global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2).