Rapid deforestation poses warming threat

TARAPOTO, Peru --
Brown, denuded hillsides dot the landscape, cleared by poor farmers to grow coca or food crops where dense jungle once stood in subtropical north-central Peru.

Boulders stand bare. Topsoil, having lost its protection, washes away under the assault of heavy rain.

Deforestation in Latin America and the Caribbean is accelerating, a new report shows, and the implications are growing more ominous every year.

Scientists say deforestation, almost always to facilitate planting crops and raising cattle, accounts for about 20 percent of the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. Environmentalists are pushing to allow countries and companies to offset their emissions by paying to preserve forests elsewhere, such as in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Group of Eight nations, meeting in Germany earlier this month, pledged to help poor countries reduce deforestation to provide ``a significant and cost-effective contribution toward mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.''

These calls come amid the release of an annual report published last month by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization showing that from 2000 to 2005, the rate of destruction of forest in Latin America and the Caribbean had risen to 0.51 percent of overall land, up from 0.46 percent during the 1990s. Forests accounted for 51 percent of the overall land in Latin America and the Caribbean in 1990, but only 47 percent in 2005.

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