Mark Tercek is the president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. This post was originally published for the The Huffington Post.

As we watch the world debate how best to address climate change, and as carbon emissions continue to soar, at least one climate strategy strikes me as a “no-brainer.” We should do everything we can to save the world’s forests.

There are many good reasons for protecting forests, from their intrinsic beauty to their ecologic and economic values. Tropical forests are storehouses of biodiversity, harboring more than one-half of the Earth’s known plants and animal species. And nearly 1 billion people worldwide directly depend on forest resources — fiber, fuel, food and clean water — for their livelihoods and well-being.

Forest destruction produces about 15 percent of the world’s manmade global carbon emissions — more carbon pollution than the entire global transportation sector. It is the primary source of emissions in two of the top five carbon-emitting countries: Brazil and Indonesia. Forests function as a natural air conditioner, pulling carbon from the atmosphere while cleaning and cooling our air. Yet each year more than 32 million acres of the world’s forests are destroyed — an area about the size of New York state.

The figures speak for themselves. When done right, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (known as “REDD+” in policymakers’ jargon) can be a triple win for nature, people and our world’s climate.

But REDD+ does have its critics. As head of The Nature Conservancy, it’s easy for me to explain why my organization wants to reduce deforestation. However, some question why we support another part of the REDD+ equation–improving forest management for the sustainable harvesting of wood. Why create incentives for cutting down trees?

Again, let’s turn to the numbers. Destructive logging practices, many of them illegal, are one of the most serious drivers of forest loss and resulting emissions. Research has shown that that transitioning from destructive logging to low impact harvesting practices can reduce damage to forests and lower carbon emissions by 30-50% while delivering the same supply of timber. Simply put, better forestry can be good for our climate.

In addition, encouraging smart replanting where logging has already occurred is an important part of keeping forests viable in the long term — for local communities, forest-dwelling species and future generations.

Finally, we also recognize that forestry activities today sustain millions of jobs around the world and provide people with wood and paper products. Recycling and development of non-timber alternatives can — and should — reduce demand for these goods, but well-managed forests and plantations also play an important role. They can provide a reliable, sustainable supply of paper and wood while diverting pressure away from pristine lands that contain the highest amount of carbon and serve as homes for endangered species and indigenous communities. And many of the world’s best-quality forests are managed by indigenous communities, who tend their land in low-impact ways while relying on its bounty for their livelihoods.

“Well-managed” is the operative phrase. Robust and transparent standards, accounting rules and independent verification must protect against converting primary forests to plantations under REDD+ programs that allow for planting and managing forests for the sustainable harvesting of wood. In fact, the Cancun Agreements adopted by 194 countries at the December 2010 UN climate convention require that REDD+ actions be “consistent with the conservation of natural forests and biological diversity, ensuring that the actions … of this decision are not used for the conversion of natural forests.”

Based on our 60 years of experience conserving forests around the world, The Nature Conservancy is committed to demonstrating how REDD+ can work to provide benefits for forests, local people and the global climate. For example, in Indonesia, we are partnering with the government in the district of Berau to protect its tropical forest and reduce carbon pollution by two million tons annually — which is like removing roughly 400,000 cars from the road each year. In this 5 million-acre area, we are also boosting economic progress by providing guidance on smarter, more sustainable farming and logging techniques. And we’re doing on-the-ground research to understand how much carbon pollution we’re preventing from going into the atmosphere.

REDD+ alone will not solve the climate change challenge — we must urgently address carbon pollution from all sources. But REDD+ is a critical piece of the puzzle in addressing this global challenge, and it has the potential to be transformative in benefiting communities, ecosystems, biodiversity and the global climate.

(Image: Rainforest in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Image credit: ©Jez O’Hare)

Jack Hurd is the director of the Asia-Pacific Forest Program for The Nature Conservancy.

When I arrived in Bangkok in 1988, freshly armed with a bachelor’s degree in economics and what my parents felt was a misguided notion that I might find employment in Southeast Asia, I didn’t know anything about Burma. However, almost immediately, two events sparked my curiosity.

In August of that year, the military government in Burma launched an aggressive crackdown on students and workers demonstrating in the capital city of Rangoon for greater political freedom and enhanced economic opportunity. Over the following months, thousands of people streamed to the border with Thailand seeking safety from the long arm of an oppressive regime, providing new energy to a civil war that had been waged by ethnic minorities since 1948.

Then, in November, massive flooding in southern Thailand put an end to logging the country’s natural forests. Thai businessmen and their enablers in the military began to seek out timber in neighboring countries, and truckloads of ancient Teak trees crossed the border from Burma at unprecedented rates, leaving in their wake a deteriorating natural environment and worsening civil conflict.

While there were plenty of other things going on in the region at this time, the stories that emerged along the Thai-Burma border — both tragic and hopeful — seemed to dominate the news cycle for years. The social, political, economic and environmental dimensions of these issues hooked me as I embarked on a career in sustainable forestry.

Over the following 20-plus years, I read extensively about the country and its culture, its politics and its people, its natural resources and its historical record. I visited the capital on several occasions, traveled around the country a bit and joined Burma-focused events in Bangkok, Washington D.C. and Seattle.

While my engagement with Burmese affairs waxed and waned, a single question remained in my mind, and in the minds of countless others in the region and around the world: when will events conspire to let the country reassert its natural position in the heart of Asia? Interestingly, that time may be now.

The last year has seen rapid changes taking place across the country. Elections were held in 2010 and, while widely condemned as a sham, they signaled willingness on the part of the generals who ruled the country to trade in their khaki uniforms for business suits. First, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was released from the house arrest she had endured on and off since 1989, and her political party, the National League for Democracy, indicated a willingness to re-engage in the political process, having boycotted the 2010 elections.

Not long ago, construction on the massive and massively controversial Myitsone Dam in the northern state of Kachin — which was being built by Chinese-backed firms in order to provide electricity to that country’s Yunnan Province — was suspended in the wake of significant national and international protest.

Additionally, a series of high-ranking officials from Europe and North America visited the country to hold talks with the new leaders. That group included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the highest-ranked U.S. official to visit in more than 50 years.

And finally, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — a 10-country club to which Myanmar (as Burma is now known) belonged but was not universally welcomed — expressed its support for Myanmar to assume the association’s rotating presidency in 2014. These are all significant developments that pave the way for greater engagement with international businesses, UN Specialized Agencies, international financial institutions like the World Bank, and NGOs.

Significant international attention for Myanmar has been a long time coming, and it remains unclear if this is yet another false summit. But, if outside support for Myanmar is prolonged, it could reshape the future for a long-suffering people, a stagnant economy and the country’s abundant natural resources. More about that soon.

(Image: Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Burma. Source: WikiMedia Commons.)

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a bit like a family, and its General Assembly — which just convened and is held every three years — is like a big holiday dinner with all your relatives. (See my video from the meeting.)

It’s something that you want to join despite the fact that you could do without the predictable opinions of that one distant relative. You know it may be messy, but you also wouldn’t want to miss it and you even look forward to the next one. (And, thankfully, that’s a few years down the road, anyhow.)

Let me explain.

From the boreal forests of Canada to the tropical forests of Borneo, the FSC is the standard for good forest management. FSC certification has become a globally recognized indicator that a product’s wood comes from a forest that has been managed to protect social, environmental and economic needs.

Protecting that balance is crucial in the global marketplace, where “sustainability” is becoming an increasingly important buzzword. It’s why the FSC tree-and-checkmark logo is popping up on furniture, decking material, copy paper and even diapers.

The FSC is not your normal organization with a well-oiled and hierarchical decision-making machine. Rather, the Board of Directors, the membership, issue-based working groups and every other entity or process associated with the FSC seeks balanced representation from the economic, social and environmental communities. These groups must also include representation from both the “north” and the “south,” or from both developed and developing economies. In other words, the FSC is designed to ensure that the interests and perspectives of its diverse stakeholders are adequately considered at every step of the process.

Is this slow, cumbersome, complicated, frustrating and contentious? Yes, at times. Is it necessary? Absolutely. It works for two principle reasons.

The first is that while people may not approach many of the issues from the same perspective, they are in pursuit of a shared objective — forest management that adequately balances multiple values — and know that they must find ways to make things work to achieve the greatest good.

The second reason? Generally speaking, the members respect, are impressed by and often even admire each other.

This year’s General Assembly was held in Kota Kinabalu from June 25th to July 1st. Kota Kinabalu lies in the state of Sabah, located on Malaysian Borneo, and it was a strategic choice.

Sabah has a 40-year-history of bad forest management, which the charismatic Director General of the Sabah Forestry Department (SFD), Sam Mannan, openly admits. But it also has the world’s first FSC-certified lowland tropical forest, the Deramakot Forest Reserve, and it has committed to bringing all of its forests under independent third-party certification by 2014.

Just last week, the SFD and FSC announced the certification of another 300,000 hectares of prime habitat for orangutans and pygmy elephants, as well as hundreds of lesser known species comprising Borneo’s rich biological wealth. This means that the forest will continue to generate timber to feed an increasingly hungry global market, but will also preserve the other values that lie within.

That’s the type of balance that FSC seeks to achieve. And it is through the General Assembly, for all its controlled chaos, that the FSC will be able to get there.

(Image: Orangutan. Image credit:©TNC. Video: How was the Forest Stewardship Council’s recent General Assembly like a big family dinner? And how did it help save forests? The Conservancy’s Asia Pacific forest program director Jack Hurd has the answers. )

1. San Francisco teenagers are suing the government for failure to protect the Earth for future generations. (NY Times)
2. Speaking of which: the latest predictions for world population growth could amount to serious environmental challenges. (Green)
3. Forest protection takes one step forward in Indonesia, two steps back in Brazil. (EarthWatch)
4. Take your lawn to a whole new level this year: go organic! (The Daily Green)
5. Electronic medical records could cut 1.7 million tons of carbon emissions. (EcoGeek) 

1. The Conservancy’s work with fishermen in California makes headlines. (Triple Pundit) 
2. American consumers are lazy, habitual and confused about how to go green–do you agree? (Green Biz) 
3. What will Richard Branson find at the bottom of the sea? (BBC)
4. The disaster in Japan could result in more logging of Indonesia’s rainforests. (Mongabay)
5. Oil will run out in 50 years… then what? (Treehugger)

1. The future is carbon capture and sequestration, or “tucking carbon into the ground.” (The New York Times)
2. Why have 7 major companies dropped their support of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative? (Green Biz)
3. In case you missed Obama’s energy speech yesterday, here’s the re-hash. (Treehugger)
4. Demand is up, but supply is down for the Toyota Prius. (LA Times)
5. The best way to reduce your exposure to BPA? Stop eating canned foods. (The Daily Green)

When you watch The Nature Conservancy’s conservation highlights video and read the 2010 Annual Report, you should be very impressed. The imagery is beautiful. The accomplishments are tangible. The statistics are remarkable. All hallmarks of The Nature Conservancy’s work around the world.

But why does it matter? What does it mean? Where does it point to for the future?

As one of the Conservancy’s senior scientists, I’ve had the privilege to see and learn about our global conservation efforts first hand, including making friends with that baby rhino at 0:14 in the video. And as lead author of The Atlas of Global Conservation, I’ve studied the global trends that are changing the planet. Here are my takes on what the Conservancy’s 2010 accomplishments really mean.

The video voice-over and the Annual Report tell you what we did. I was genuinely impressed by the scope and scale of the Conservancy’s accomplishments in 2010. Literally millions of acres protected across North America, South America, East Asia, Australia, the Pacific Islands and Africa.

But watch the video with the sound off and see how you react to what you see.

When I did that, my imagination filled in the sounds of nature—a gibbon calling in the Borneo rainforest, the roar of a waterfall, the stillness of a frozen lake. I was reminded of why I got involved in conservation—to see and experience the spectacle of nature, and to do my part to save it from destruction.

I also saw more than just wildlife and wild places. I saw clean water and healthy food (did you see the size of that lobster!?) that we all depend on. And I saw people like Maasai herders in Kenya and indigenous clans in Australia for whom conservation is something profoundly deeper than just a feel-good activity—it is a celebration and reinforcement of their cultural and spiritual ties to the lands and waters where they have lived for thousands of years.

To me, these connections between people and place are the heart and soul of conservation. They are also how the real importance of the Conservancy’s work starts to show.

Sure, the Conservancy saved many great places by protecting natural habitats. But we also helped safeguard clean water supplies for thirsty people by protecting Independence Lake in California and establishing municipal water funds to protect watersheds in Latin America. We helped to feed a hungry world by protecting vital marine habitats in Peru that produce 15 percent of the world’s fish catch. We helped secure a more sustainable supply of wood and other natural resources by reaching agreements with timber companies, environmental groups and indigenous peoples to better manage Canada’s vast boreal forests.

This is where I see the Conservancy’s biggest accomplishments of 2010, and its most important promise for the future of conservation. The Conservancy is no longer just in the business of spending bucks to conserve acres and calling it good. It is investing in nature for the benefit of people.

Habitat protection remains as a foundation. But we are applying science, forming new partnerships, and developing innovative strategies to help overcome the world’s biggest environmental challenges—like making sure that nature will be able to provide clean water and healthy food for the 9 billion people projected to live in the world’s cities and villages by 2050.

Each of the accomplishments featured in the video and Annual Report demonstrate an innovative and important step forward on this long, uphill climb. And there are more promising projects happening all around the Conservancy. You’ve only been given a teaser. The Atlas of Global Conservation is one place to start learning more.

1. The Northeast is the new Artic. Brrrr. (The New York Times)
2. Dow’s collaboration with the Conservancy is “a small step for a company, a giant leap for critters of all kinds,” says Joel Makower. (Green Biz)
3. Cyber-thieves hack the Czech carbon registry and make off with $38 million in carbon credits. (Mongabay)
4. REDD needs to focus on the needs of local people, says a new report. (Conservation Journal Watch)
5. One of Obama’s top climate and energy advisers is stepping down–what impact will her departure have? (Grist)

1. Eating green goes beyond organic, local and vegetarian–this year, try a plate of invasive species.  (The New York Times)
2. And here’s a really good reason to: new research shows invasive species trigger mass extinctions. (National Science Foundation)
3. Why 2010 was a good year for sharks. (Earth Watch)
4. Erosion by deforestation and hurricanes could have triggered Haiti’s devasting 2010 earthquake. (Mongabay)
5. The guest bedroom as metaphor for excess and unsustainability. (Treehugger) 

Swiss parents have no qualms about giving their young children chocolate, even before bedtime. Why? It’s not that they are genetically programmed to process the stuff without getting hyper. No, it’s more a matter of purity, as the Swiss have long known. The higher the content of cacao in a piece of chocolate, the lower the sugar content. So the next time you’re wandering in the candy isle of your local grocery store, you might want to take a good look at the percentage of cacao listed on the package and make your decision accordingly.

Something else you might want to consider is the source of the product and the conditions under which the cacao was produced. The FairTrade label, increasingly seen on higher-value products, might also help you to sleep well at night. And thanks to a decade of work, The Nature Conservancy is helping to give you more options to make a responsible purchase.

FairTrade certification lets buyers know that the beans used to make their chocolate have been cultivated, harvested, dried and roasted to meet rigorous standards for environmental quality and social equity. In exchange, growers are provided with a “price floor,” or a guaranteed minimum purchase price for their products.

Throughout the tropics Fairtrade is altering the traditional terms of exchange between producers and processors of cacao, enabling growers to retain a greater proportion of the revenue ultimately created by their crops. According to a confectionery trade publication, products with Fairtrade and organic certification are the fastest growing segment of the multi-billion dollar chocolate market. Good news for discriminating chocolate lovers.

Most Fairtrade products come from the Caribbean and Central or South America. That may soon begin to change. The Adelberts Cooperative Society in Papua New Guinea recently received its Fairtrade certificate for its cacao beans, marking the culmination of a 10-year relationship between The Nature Conservancy and 23 communities. The Conservancy provided the communities with training and technical assistance throughout the long and laborious process of developing a sustainable land use plan. That plan — a foundational element in the Fairtrade certification process — has now enabled the communities to chart a new path to economic development. It’s an approach that doesn’t rely on overexploitation of the natural environment, but rather one that makes sustainable land management profitable for in the long-term.

Interestingly, enhancing the economic opportunities of rural communities such as those in the Adelberts is taking on increased significance in a climate-conscious world. At last week’s climate conference in Cancun, delegates came closer to integrating a mechanism called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)+ into a legally binding global agreement. REDD+ will essentially compensate tropical forested countries for making measureable reductions in their deforestation rates and the carbon dioxide emissions that are associated with land clearing.

For this to work, new development strategies that adequately balance economic, social and environmental objectives will be required. In Papua New Guinea, a country that stands to gain significantly from REDD+, FairTrade-certified cacao and other responsibly harvested products — such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified timber — may be an increasingly important part of its future.

Through our purchasing preferences, consumers have an important role to play in shaping land management practices and rewarding innovative producers, such as the Adelberts communities. Shortly, I expect to see cacao from the Adelberts Cooperative Society on the shelf in my local grocery store, and I’ll be able to express my preference for a 72% cacao, Fairtrade-certified chocolate bar.

(Image: A local villager examines Cocoa pods hanging from a tree in the Adelbert Mountain Range of Papua New Guinea’s Madang Province. The seeds from the Cocoa pod are used to produce chocolate and growing them is an increasingly important source of revenue for small villages in the Adelbert Mountain range. The Nature Conservancy has developed strong relationships with local landowners, the Provincial Government and non-governmental organizations in the Adelbert Mountain area to secure lasting conservation of Papua New Guinea’s tropical forests. Image Credit: Mark Godfrey/TNC)