Deforestation action urged

The scale of carbon emissions means that the world is living on "borrowed time" and needs to "take action now", the author of a new government report has warned.

The report, published by the prime minister's special representative on deforestation and clean energy, Johan Eliasch, set out the terms of a "critical" plan to reverse the detrimental effects of clearing huge swathes of forest.

A carbon trading initiative was held up by Eliasch as the best way to tackle slash and burn agriculture practices. This would give developing countries incentives to protect their forests.

Such a scheme would be imposed through global targets being established so that richer governments provide the funding for poorer ones.

Eliasch said: "Without acting on deforestation, avoiding the worst impacts of climate change will be next to impossible. Saving forests is critical for tackling climate change.

"Deforestation will continue as long as cutting down and burning trees is more economic than preserving them.

"With climate change we are living on borrowed time, and if we don't address this issue today, it's going to be much more expensive later on, and that's why we need to take action now."

However, campaign groups were sceptically, with head of biodiversity at Greenpeace Andy Tait claiming the report lacked "clarity".

He said its recommendations "give a green light to companies to use forest protection abroad as a cheap alternative to making the dramatic cuts in the industrial and energy sectors that we need here in the UK".

The report comes four days after new energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband declared that greenhouse gases in Europe could be cut by 20 per cent by 2020.