Reacting to the government commissioned Eliasch review entitled "Climate Change: Financing Global Forests" Greenpeace head of biodiversity Andy Tait said:

"This report shows a dangerous lack of ambition and vastly underestimates the scale of the action needed to tackle climate change. If Gordon Brown accepts these proposals he will give a green light to companies to use forest protection abroad as a cheap alternative to making the dramatic cuts in the industrial and energy sectors that we need here in the UK.

"We must do both, and allowing forests to become a get out of jail free card for the big polluters would be extremely bad news for the fight against climate change."

Other key points:

• Including forest credits in the EU emissions trading scheme will keep the price of carbon below the level that is needed to drive investments in clean technologies for the industrial and transport sectors. It is not enough to say that it won't lower the price any further, what is now needed is a price that is far higher to drive clean investment in the UK and around the world.
• There is lack of clarity regarding what happens to countries that aren't able to participate in the scheme at an early stage. The danger is that we will simply shift deforestation to these countries, pushing the problem to another part of the world.
• The review talks of the need for further funding being needed to meet climate change objectives for forests, but does not specify where this money would come from or who would administer it.
• The review assumes a target of 50% emissions cuts by 2050. This is simply inadequate. There is a strong possibility that the UK will be legally obliged to make an 80% reduction over this period, and all developed countries will need to hit and possibly exceed this target to effectively tackle climate change.
• Eliasch suggests that deforestation could be reduced by 75% by 2030. Considering the fact that reducing emissions from deforestation is one of the cheapest and easiest ways of meeting our climate change goals, this figure is not ambitious enough.
• The report allows 'net' forest reduction within the scheme, instead of considering 'gross' reductions in forest cover. This means that a country can allow an area of ancient forest to be cut down and replaced with a new plantation, and still be eligible for international funding.
• The report implies that 'sustainable forest management' should attract funding from the scheme, which essentially means paying the timber industry to log forests in the name of preventing emissions from deforestation. This is deeply problematic, as timber extraction causes emissions and opens up the forest to further logging.

For more information, contact the Greenpeace press office on 0207 865 8255.

Greenpeace today launched a landmark proposal for reducing, and ultimately stopping, tropical deforestation.

The initiative was launched at a side event of the Bali Climate Conference, featuring the Governors of Papua and Papua Barat, the provinces with the largest intact tropical forests in Indonesia.

Greenpeace believes that finding solutions to ending deforestation must be a key objective of the conference for the following reasons:

Tropical deforestation accounts for approximately a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than those produced by the world's entire transport sector.

Indonesia and Brazil are the third and fourth largest emitters in the world largely due to deforestation. In order to help prevent dangerous climate change, Greenpeace believes that deforestation should be stopped globally within a decade.

The peat swamp forests of Indonesia alone are responsible for 4 per cent of the world's annual greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigating these emissions represents one of the quickest and easiest ways of tackling climate change.

Since 1997 about 13 million hectares of forest (mostly tropical) have been destroyed per year - an area the size of Greece lost every year.

"We want the issue of deforestation to be a central part of the negotiations here in Bali. The world has the resources to stop this problem - what's needed now is the political will. Governors from Papua and Brazil's Amazonas State have shown that they have the desire to do this, the world's governments in Bali must now follow. No money, no forests, no future," said Greenpeace Brazil's Amazon campaign coordinator, Paulo Adario.

The Greenpeace proposal has the potential to raise funding in the range of several billion US$ per year to finance urgent action to cut emissions from deforestation. The proposal would allow industrialised countries like Britain to meet a percentage of their emissions reduction targets through the purchase of "units" from the scheme. Proceeds from the sale of these units would be used to transfer resources between rich countries and poor ones to prevent deforestation.

In Bali, earlier this year, the Governors of the Papua provinces recognised the need to reduce deforestation and called for the "support of the international community through carbon financing mechanisms and transfer of technology to protect our forests and provide income to local communities". (1)

Bill Hare, Greenpeace political advisor on climate change and co-author of the initiative, said: "Our proposal could lead to real deforestation reductions without shifting deforestation from one place to another. It will also make sure that local communities can share the benefits."

Tropical Deforestation and the Kyoto Protocol: www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/...

For a copy of the proposal contact Greenpeace UK Press Office +44 (0) 207 865 8255 or view online.

Christoph Thies, Greenpeace International Forest campaigner +62 (0) 8133 7949712

Martin Baker, Greenpeace International Communications +62 (0) 81337949714

Notes:

(1) Declaration of the Governors of Aceh, Papua and Papua Barat on Climate Change, April 2007