Reality in forests. Even after Copenhagen Talk.

So, now that Copenhagen Climate Talk is over, some of you might be wondering on what actually is happening and hopefully changing in tropical forests now. Not much it seems. Forests remain under threat for all the same reasons that we’ve historically cut them down—illegal logging, industrial agriculture expansion, and destructive “development” projects. At least for one more year, business as usual is certainly going to continue and tropical forests will probably continue to be lost at the shocking rate of 1 acre/second.

But the most depressing fail for the forests out of Copenhagen is the lack of binding targets to reduce fossil fuel emissions and start to halt climate change. If global temperatures rise above 2 degrees C, most scientists predict that tropical forests will be profoundly affected, experiencing extreme droughts, increased forest fires and other catastrophic weather events. Even if a separate deal to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries had been agreed upon, the lack of commitment to deep fossil fuel emissions in a legally binding climate change agreement would continue to threaten the world’s forests.

We can’t save the forests if we don’t save the climate. And that means that REDD without a larger climate deal is no deal at all.