Tropical forests are an undervalued asset in meeting the greatest global challenges of our time — averting climate change and promoting sustainable development. Despite their importance, tropical forests and their ecosystems are being destroyed at a high and even increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. The good news is that the science, economics, and politics are aligned to support a major international effort to reverse tropical deforestation.

Why Forests? Why Now? a new book by Frances Seymour and Jonah Busch, synthesizes the latest research on the importance of tropical forests in a way that is accessible to anyone interested in climate change and development and to readers already familiar with the problem of deforestation. It makes the case to decision-makers in rich countries that rewarding developing countries for protecting their forests is urgent, affordable, and achievable.

This event was co-hosted by the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, the ANU Indonesia Project and the Development Policy Centre.

Jonah Busch is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD). He is an environmental economist whose research focuses on climate change and tropical deforestation. He is a research fellow at the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the College of Environmental and Resource Sciences of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. Prior to joining CGD Busch was the Climate and Forest Economist at Conservation International.

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