What does REDD+ cost? At least since the influential Stern Review was published in 2006, many have argued that REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) is one of the cheapest options to mitigate climate change. Others see the REDD+ mechanism as a costly effort with unpredictable results for the climate and forest peoples of the world. Who is right?

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (15 June, 2011)_Driving along a narrow country road leading towards the Rubeho mountains in Central Tanzania’s Kilosa district, we come across bicycle after bicycle loaded with sacks of charcoal, heading towards sprawling urban centres.

LONDON (June 15, 2011) _ Income from forests and other natural environments makes a significant contribution to the livelihoods of millions of people in developing countries, according to a six-year global study that has documented for the first time on such a scale the role that the environment plays in poverty alleviation.

THE AMAZON, Brazil _ Looking down from a tiny plane above the Amazon, a blanket of patchy green stretches to the horizon, broken only by occasional ribbons of brown as rivers slice through the rainforest. Its enormity makes it look indestructible.

Nairobi, Montreal, Geneva, 10 June 2011 – A growing and lucrative illegal international commercial trade in the meat and other parts of wild mammals, birds and reptiles ('bushmeat') is causing widespread loss of biodiversity, imperilling the livelihoods of communities around the world, and destabilising fragile tropical forest ecosystems.

NAIROBI, Kenya (10 June, 2011)_Finding consensus to one of the greatest threats to biodiversity—the exploitation of wild animals for food—has drawn both determined protectors of endangered wildlife and passionate defenders of the right of indigenous people to live by hunting to a stone-walled conference room in Nairobi this week.