Germany Pledges Billions for Rainforest Protection

Germany will spend billions of euros protecting tropical rainforests in an effort to halt global warming. Chancellor Angela Merkel said today at the United Nations' biodiversity conference that Germany will increase its funding for the conservation of rainforests from $330 million to $1.1 billion in the next three years and an additional $785 million per year after that.

Berlin expects to generate the revenue by selling CO2 certificates. Destruction of tropical forests accounts for 20% of the world's carbon monoxide emissions, and rainforests are key to fighting global warming because they absorb large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere. (More Angela Merkel stories.)