In global discussions over climate change and the policy interventions needed to address it, the role of land use – including forests – is often overlooked. Given its unique role as both a potential source of emissions – as well as storage – for carbon, the land use sector may play a crucial role in the world’s success or failure in avoiding dangerous levels of climate change over this century. Nowhere is the pivotal role of land use more apparent than in tropical forests, which have gone from serving as sinks for global carbon emissions to being a source of them amid rampant deforestation. Southeast Asia has witnessed some of the world’s most significant tropical deforestation over the past several decades, and is currently a significant contributor to the roughly eight percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions that tropical deforestation represents.
