Governing the global commons: Linking carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation in tropical forests

Abstract

Biodiversity loss will be among the major impacts from climate change. Separate international political processes address climate change and biodiversity, yet the scientific evidence strongly links the two. For conservation groups, addressing climate change is increasingly necessary to protect biodiversity. Protecting tropical forests as biodiversity habitat is important as well to mitigating climate change, as deforestation and forest degradation represent a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, discussions currently underway on the political and technical feasibility of rewarding countries and their inhabitants financially for protecting their standing forests as carbon sinks are of vital interest to conservation groups.