That is why many believe that there is an urgent need to bring forests onto the global financial balance sheet.
That, and the world's realisation that without addressing deforestation, mitigating climate change will be exceedingly difficult, has brought forests to the fore.Even on deforestation, though, there will not be a concrete agreement.
Except for the most heavily deforested regions, relatively modest annual rates of habitat restoration could bring forest cover back above the extinction threshold by the year 2050.
A global gathering in Copenhagen at the end of the year will probably put that right by bringing standing forests into the climate-change game, and into the global carbon-trading system.Whether for ethical reasons, or to get a toehold in what will soon be a vast global market, institutions and individuals have started investing in "voluntary" efforts to keep trees intact, outside the UN framework.
For the past two years, Ford and his colleagues have been bringing the forest back to life.
Woodland generation is playing a major role in regenerating brownfield sites and bringing fresh forest closer to urban areas, yet only around 10% of the population have access to local woodland within 500 metres of their home.
At the very least, he is entirely too interested in bringing the forest back to his bedroom.
The spread of the deer tick since federal Lyme data collection began in the 1990s can be traced in part to a decline in agriculture that has brought back forests while suburbia has sprawled to the woods' edges, creating the perfect habitat for tick hosts.
The idea that North America was covered with an untouched primal forest is a myth, but archeology and mythology, as well as actual accounts, help to bring these forests alive in the mind.
Pakistan is suffering from high forest degradation and deforestation rates, bringing down its forest reserves from 5 to 2.5%.
Largely because of reforestation initiatives of the 20th century, Kentucky was able to bring its forest cover back up to about 50 percent by the early 21st century.
