December 2009

December 22, 2009: At the meeting of European ministers in the Agriculture and Fisheries Council (15 December 2009), a discussion was held on the proposal for the Regulation laying down the obligations of operators who place timber and timber products on the market. The legislation requires all operators placing timber on the EU market for the first time to minimise the risk that it is illegal by undertaking due diligence on their supply chains.

The failure of the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen to produce a strong, binding agreement to cut carbon-dioxide emissions sowed gloom in European carbon markets Monday, with prices for carbon-emissions permits falling more than 8%.

There were also political echoes to the Copenhagen summit's acrimonious conclusion. Some senior officials, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and British climate-change secretary Ed Miliband, criticized the current U.N. framework for addressing climate change, which requires consensus among more than 190 countries.

Primary forest loss

The following section is a quantitative look at primary forest loss.

More than seven million hectares of primary forest were lost on an annual basis between 2000 and 2005, the most recent period for which data is available from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Roughly half this loss occurred in Brazil, which is home to the largest extent of tropical forest in the world: the Amazon.

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The United States has pledged $1 billion as part of a $3.5 billion scheme as initial financing toward slowing deforestation, a major contributor to climate change, a U.S. government statement said on Wednesday.