By David Fogarty for The Straits Times

PARIS – If you want to fight climate change, plant a tree. Or stop one being chopped down, particularly in tropical rainforests.

With carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels, bushfires and deforestation accumulating in the atmosphere, tropical forests are a good way to soak the stuff out of the air. But we keep chopping them down, millions of hectares every year.

Tropical forests, such as those in the Amazon, South-east Asia and central Africa, help regulate the climate by taking up large amounts of CO2 and storing it away.

In a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday (Dec 7), scientists have estimated that reducing tropical deforestation, expanding the tropical forest area and restoring degraded tropical forests could cut net carbon emissions by more than 18 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, the equivalent of nearly half of current annual global CO2 emissions.