Indigenous groups around the world stand to benefit from emerging carbon markets, but only if they have clear legal rights to carbon income and know how to harness those rights.  Two new studies highlight both the potential for gain and the lack of knowledge about how to take advantage of it.  The focus is Canada, but the lessons are universal.

As UN negotiators scramble to develop a global mechanism for generating carbon credits by saving rainforests, individual countries are moving ahead with their own plans.  Research published last year, however, shows that most of those plans are woefully out of synch with each other – a fact that could have dire consequences for the development of a truly global carbon market.

No one expects a major breakthrough at global climate talks in Cancun, but talks on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming and forestry are progressing rapidly. The decrease in deforesation in recent years, as one climate and forest expert put it, is “really one of the few bright spots in an otherwise gloomy picture, as far as global warming is concerned.”  Experts shared their opinions on what to expect on REDD from Cancun.

The front lines of environmental defense are many, and most of them aren't manned by protesters and khaki-clad revolutionaries.  Today, the battle is being waged by an interdisciplinary phalanx of foresters, botanists, lawyers and economists who aim to make sure the laws of man recognize both the laws of nature and the laws of supply and demand.  They do, however, wear khaki.