Barcelona Congress says world loses $2-$5 trillion pa through forest loss

Over 8,000 conservationists are attending the World Conservation Congress at Barcelona just now. Yesterday they heard an economist from Deutche bank assessing the economic impact of climate change. He showed that adding up the cost of alternative ways of providing the services the forests perform, like absorbing carbon dioxide and cleaning the air we breathe would come to between $2 and $5 trillion per annum.

The force of this is that the world is losing less in the current financial crisis caused by the banks than it is each year in the cost of not protecting its forests. Drawing attention to the loss in these terms is a new strategy to persuading policymakers to fund the means of halting the decline in ecosystems and species.