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The report, Climate, Biodiversity, and Forests: Issues and Opportunities Emerging From the Kyoto Protocol, released jointly by the Washington, DC-based World Resources Institute (WRI), and The World Conservation Union-IUCN, examines why, with so much at stake, the role of forests and land-use change under the Kyoto Protocol remains controversial, and attempts to clarify the issues. Most importantly, the report notes that climate change itself is a major threat to biodiversity, causing species loss and ecosystems destruction, and explains that protecting biological diversity may, in fact, help mitigate other impacts of climate change.

"One of the most important areas yet to be resolved under the Kyoto Protocol, concerns how much of a role forests and land-use change will play. They are both a part of the problem and of the solution of climate change," says Paige Brown, a WRI research analyst and the report's author. She adds that, "Saving or increasing forest cover, particularly of old-growth forests, stores carbon, thus keeping it out of the atmosphere and slowing global warming."

The report stresses that while energy-sector emissions are the predominant contributor of the climate change problem globally, forest conversion and other land-use practices are also significant, contributing some 20 percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions. Over the past 150 years, this has resulted in an estimated 30 percent of the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide. The repercussions are great. Consider the following:

• In much of the world, far more forests (especially tropical), are being lost than protected. With at least 50 percent of the world's approximately 14 million species residing in tropical forests, once the trees are gone, these species too disappear forever.
• The rapid loss of forests is doubly damaging - adding to the global burden of atmospheric carbon dioxide and undermining the world's biological resources, which in turn reduces the resilience of ecosystems faced with a changing climate.
• Some species already on the verge of extinction could be pushed over the edge as their habitats disappear because of climatic changes.
• More droughts and floods that may be influenced by climate change will also make poor communities even more vulnerable.
• When forests are burned or otherwise destroyed, carbon is released into the atmosphere. For every forest or other ecosystem that is spared this fate, carbon is stored and kept out of the atmosphere.

Finally, the report stresses that failing to address one issue will only exacerbate the problems caused by the other and that measures taken to solve climate change can be more effective if undertaken in conjunction with efforts to prevent the loss of global biodiversity.

So the question remains: Can the world community respond to these dire threats to the global environment? Brown argues that it can, but cautions that many important questions remain unanswered about the role of forests and land-use change in meeting obligations to slow global warming. Now, as the Conference of Parties meets to consider such obligations, Climate, Biodiversity, and Forests will be useful in encouraging necessary international commitments and concerted action.

"Without a much stronger commitment to solving climate change and biodiversity loss, we will bequeath to our children and grandchildren an irretrievably impoverished world," WRI President Jonathan Lash and IUCN Director General David McDowell, warn in a joint statement. "Such a fate can be avoided, but it requires a strong international commitment and concerted action."

The World Resources Institute is a Washington, DC-based center for policy research and technical assistance on global environmental and development issues. It provides objective information and practical proposals for policy change that will foster environmentally sound development. WRI works with institutions in more than 50 countries to bring the insights of scientific research, economic analysis and practical experience to political, business and non-governmental organization leaders globally. Climate, Biodiversity and Forests: Issues and Opportunities Emerging From the Kyoto Protocol is a special release that bridges the issues of climate and biodiversity. It is a collaboration between WRI's Climate program and WRI's Frontier Forest Initiative (FFI), a multi-disciplinary effort to promote stewardship in and around the world's last major frontier forests by influencing investment, policy, and public opinion. For additional information, visit WRI's website at "http://www.wri.org/wri/ffi/climate/".

IUCN --The World Conservation Union brings together States, government agencies and non-governmental organizations in a unique partnership. It includes more than 900 member organisations spread across 138 countries. IUCN has offices throughout the world and works with six expert networks grouping more than 12,000 people. IUCN seeks to influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable. Issues of climate change and its relationship to biological diversity are managed through IUCN's office in Washington, DC. For additional information, visit IUCN's website at "http://www.iucn.org".

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