Paris: Global carbon markets could generate billions of dollars each year for developing countries that tackle tropical deforestation, a major source of global warming, according to a new study.

Reducing the rate at which Amazonian rain forests are disappearing by only 10 per cent, for example, would yield 1.5 to 9.1 billion euros, depending on world carbon emission prices, researchers calculated.

That money could then be plowed into national conservation efforts that would further mitigate climate change, creating a virtuous circle.

Slow down deforestation by another 20 per cent, and the potential income for the region would top USD 45 billion if carbon prices reached 30 euros per tonne, said the study, one of two dozen scientific papers on the future of the Amazon released on Monday by The Royal Society in Britain.

Reigning in the destruction of the world's tropical forests has become a key focus of climate change efforts.

"The ongoing degradation of Amazonia is a threat to local climate stability and a contributor to the global atmospheric climate change crisis," noted Richard Betts of the Met Hadley Center for climate prediction in Britain.

Deforestation, caused by logging, agriculture and development, in the tropics accounts for up to 20 per cent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, making it the second largest driver of global warming after the burning of fossil fuels.

Amazonia accounts for nearly half of those emissions.

Experts are especially alarmed because the impact cuts both ways: climate change threatens to boost the rate at which the Amazon's delicately balanced rain forest dries up, and could push it to a tipping point beyond which recovery would become difficult or impossible.

Source : PTI