The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) has published Incentives to Sustain forest Ecosystem Services – A Review and Lessons for REDD. REDD is an acronym for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation. A detailed UNFCCC web site deals with REDD.

The IIED document suggests that trying to curtail GHG emissions through cash payments to tropical nations in exchange for tree preservation could fail without localized protections. Tropical deforestation is the second-largest source of GHG emissions inn the world—producing nearly 20% of the global total and more than that produced by all of the world’s automobiles, planes, trains, and ships combined.

In the developing world, deforestation is the single largest emissions source in a majority of countries, accounting for roughly 80% of emissions by two of the world’s top emitters, Brazil and Indonesia.