The family money that now goes into preserving forests came, long ago, from cutting them down.
There is no single strategy for fighting AIDS, or preserving forests or combating malaria.
It will also announce goals for using renewable energy, preserving forests and conserving water — and it will specify how it will attain them.
The delegates have agreed on a method for essentially paying countries and communities for preserving forests, through a system of carbon credits.
Gordon Brown, Britain's prime minister, has said a deal at Copenhagen should include transfers of $100 billion a year to the developing world, which would include funds for preserving forests.
Given that the basic principle of REDD is to establish a financial link between those who will benefit from preserving forests and those who must ensure the forests' survival, it is an economically sound idea.
Meanwhile, the assembled delegates listened to opening remarks and prepared to hunker down and sort out things like beach erosion, targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, payments to developing countries for preserving forests and other thorny issues.
COPENHAGEN — Negotiators have all but completed a sweeping deal that would compensate countries for preserving forests, and in some cases, other natural landscapes like peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change.
"We should not think there's any optimal form for preserving forests," says Elinor Ostrom, an American political scientist who won last year's Nobel prize for economics for her work on common property and collective action.
