By Tony Juniper, a special adviser with the Prince’s Rainforests Project. To show support for the rainforests go to www.rainforestsos.org (THE TIMES, 09/09/09):

As the world commemorated the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, conservation biologists were scouring a dense area of rainforests in a mountainous part of eastern Papua province on the west side of New Guinea in Indonesia. They made discoveries that reminded us of the somewhat incomplete knowledge we have of the Earth. Their findings generated many headlines this week, with top billing given to the discovery of a new species of giant rat.

This is not the first time this area of rainforests has been in the news. In 2005 a group of scientists visited the same area. In only one month, among many other things, they found 20 “new” species of frog, four butterflies and five palms.

The world’s tropical rainforests are believed to be home to more than half of the world’s terrestrial species. While forest clearance has not yet reached the remote home of the giant rat, elsewhere in Indonesia, for example in Sumatra and Borneo, the destruction has been rapid and on a large scale. On these islands the rainforest clearance is driven principally by logging and expansion of palm oil plantations.

As world demand for natural resources and food grows, so the destruction spreads into ever-more remote areas. Across the tropical forests as a whole it is estimated that about six million hectares is cleared annually. As they are logged and replaced with farms, countless species are disappearing without even being named. And it is not only for the loss of unknown animals and plants that we should be concerned: it is becoming ever more clear how the rainforests are essential for human welfare worldwide.

For one thing the rainforests pump vast quantities of moisture into the atmosphere. This forms many of the clouds that rain down on our crops. For example, the Amazon basin rainforests place about 20 billion tonnes of water into the air every day. This travels to sustain crops as far away as North America, as well as watering the grain baskets to the south in Brazil and Argentina.

Perhaps most important of all is the vast quantities of carbon stored in the trees and soils of tropical forest areas. When they are burnt and cleared this is converted into carbon dioxide, which helps to accelerate climate change. Recent estimates say that about 17 per cent of greenhouse gases come from deforestation. Tropical rainforests are also absorbing about 15 per cent of the carbon dioxide we are releasing. Clearing the rainforests thus creates a double whammy for the climate — it creates a source of emissions, and at the same time removes a vast natural sink.

While the world struggles with emissions from transport, energy and industry, political attention on the tropical forests has been limited. This must change. If we are to meet the target set out by the leading economies at the G8 summit in July to limit global average temperature increase to below two degrees compared with the pre-industrial average, then forest loss must be reduced urgently.

For several decades the international community has wrestled with the complex challenge of deforestation. A new approach is needed to complement the many positive, but evidently insufficient, efforts presently under way. It is necessary to change the economics of deforestation, to make the trees worth more alive than dead. One way to do this is to provide countries with financial incentives through payments made in relation to their performance in cutting deforestation (or not starting it in the first place).

How best to do this is now the subject of negotiations feeding into the climate change summit in Copenhagen later this year. Countries are aiming to forge a deal on how developing nations can be rewarded for the carbon held in the forests — and thus out of the atmosphere.

But even if these talks are successful it will take time to get a fully functioning carbon-based scheme up and running — perhaps ten years. Over this period another 60 million hectares could be lost. This is why some, including the Prince’s Rainforests Project, urge that emergency action to cut deforestation is launched right away.

It has been estimated that as a first step €15-25 billion would be needed between 2010 and 2015 to cut tropical deforestation by a quarter. Money would be paid to countries in direct proportion to how much forest they save. It would provide the kind of concrete incentive that has so far been lacking when rainforest nations choose whether they should keep their forests or liquidate them to earn foreign exchange.

If an emergency mechanism can be set up now, while a longer-term solution is formulated in the light of an agreement reached at the Copenhagen summit, then we can save most of what remains of our planet’s incredible green equatorial lifebelt. It would cost some money, but considering the benefits gained it must surely be the biggest bargain in history.