The Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) and Amazon Institute for Environmental Research (IPAM) welcome this opportunity to make recommendations to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the Workshop II on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries to be held in Cairns, Australia (7-9 March 2007). This submission adds some new approaches and data on tropical deforestation to the previous documents submitted by WHRC and IPAM to Workshop I held in Rome, Italy (30 August-1 September 2006).
WHRC and IPAM are convinced that there is now a consensus in the international community that to avoid “dangerous interference” in the global climate system (the primary objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, Article 2), tropical deforestation should be greatly reduced, as also recommended by two important reports prepared since Workshop I: the Stern Review and the Fourth Assessment of the IPCC.