Reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries is of central importance in efforts to combat climate change. Key scientific challenges must be addressed to prevent any policy roadblocks. Foremost among the challenges is quantifying nations' carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, which requires information on forest clearing and carbon storage. Here we review a range of methods available to estimate national-level forest carbon stocks in developing countries. While there are no practical methods to directly measure all forest carbon stocks across a country, both ground-based and remote-sensing measurements of forest attributes can be converted into estimates of national carbon stocks using allometric relationships. Here we synthesize, map and update prominent forest biomass carbon databases to create the first complete set of national-level forest carbon stock estimates. These forest carbon estimates expand on the default values recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Guidelines and provide a range of globally consistent estimates.

Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation have long been recognized as a key component of the global carbon budget, and more recently of our global climate system. Tropical forest clearing accounts for roughly 20% of anthropogenic carbon emissions and destroys globally significant carbon sinks (IPCC 2007). Global climate policy initiatives are now being proposed to address these emissions and to more actively include developing countries in greenhouse gas mitigation (e.g. Santilli et al 2005, Gullison et al 2007). In 2005, at the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Montreal, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) launched a new initiative to assess the scientific and technical methods and issues for developing policy approaches and incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in developing countries (Gullison et al 2007).

Over the last two years the methods and tools needed to estimate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation have quickly evolved, as the scientific community responded to the UNFCCC policy needs. This focus issue highlights those advancements, covering some of the most important technical issues for measuring and monitoring emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and emphasizing immediately available methods and data, as well as future challenges.

Elements for effective long-term implementation of a REDD mechanism related to both environmental and political concerns are discussed in Mollicone et al. Herold and Johns synthesize viewpoints of national parties to the UNFCCC on REDD and expand upon key issues for linking policy requirements and forest monitoring capabilities. In response to these expressed policy needs, they discuss a remote-sensing-based observation framework to start REDD implementation activities and build historical deforestation databases on the national level. Achard et al offer an assessment of remote sensing measurements across the world's tropical forests that can provide key consistency and prioritization for national-level efforts. Gibbs et al calculate a range of national-level forest carbon stock estimates that can be used immediately, and also review ground-based and remote sensing approaches to estimate national-level tropical carbon stocks with increased accuracy.

These papers help illustrate that methodologies and tools are indeed available to estimate emissions from deforestation. Clearly, important technical challenges remain (e.g. quantifying degradation, assessing uncertainty, verification procedures, capacity building, and Landsat data continuity) but we now have a sufficient technical base to support REDD early actions and readiness mechanisms for building national monitoring systems.

Thus, we enter the COP 13 in Bali, Indonesia with great hope for a more inclusive climate policy encompassing all countries and emissions sources from both land-use and energy sectors. Our understanding of tropical deforestation and carbon emissions is improving and with that, opportunities to conserve tropical forests and the host of ecosystem services they provide while also increasing revenue streams in developing countries through economic incentives to avoid deforestation and degradation.

Several impacts of climate change may depend more on changes in mean daily minimum (Tmin) or maximum (Tmax) temperatures than daily averages. To evaluate uncertainties in these variables, we compared projections of Tmin and Tmax changes by 2046-2065 for 12 climate models under an A2 emission scenario. Average modeled changes in Tmin were similar to those for Tmax, with slightly greater increases in Tmin consistent with historical trends exhibiting a reduction in diurnal temperature ranges. In contrast, the inter-model variability of Tmin and Tmax projections exhibited substantial differences. For example, inter-model standard deviations of June-August Tmax changes were more than 50% greater than for Tmin throughout much of North America, Europe, and Asia. Model differences in cloud changes, which exert relatively greater influence on Tmax during summer and Tmin during winter, were identified as the main source of uncertainty disparities. These results highlight the importance of considering separately projections for Tmax and Tmin when assessing climate change impacts, even in cases where average projected changes are similar. In addition, impacts that are most sensitive to summertime Tmin or wintertime Tmax may be more predictable than suggested by analyses using only projections of daily average temperatures.

Climate change, as an environmental hazard operating at the global scale, poses a unique and "involuntary exposure" to many societies, and therefore represents possibly the largest health inequity of our time. According to statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), regions or populations already experiencing the most increase in diseases attributable to temperature rise in the past 30 years ironically contain those populations least responsible for causing greenhouse gas warming of the planet. Average global carbon emissions approximate one metric ton per year (tC/yr) per person. In 2004, United States per capita emissions neared 6 tC/yr (with Canada and Australia not far behind), and Japan and Western European countries range from 2 to 5 tC/yr per capita. Yet developing countries' per capita emissions approximate 0.6 tC/yr, and more than 50 countries are below 0.2 tC/yr (or 30-fold less than an average American). This imbalance between populations suffering from an increase in climate-sensitive diseases versus those nations producing greenhouse gases that cause global warming can be quantified using a "natural debt" index, which is the cumulative depleted CO2 emissions per capita. This is a better representation of the responsibility for current warming than a single year's emissions. By this measure, for example, the relative responsibilities of the U.S. in relation to those of India or China is nearly double that using an index of current emissions, although it does not greatly change the relationship between India and China. Rich countries like the U.S. have caused much more of today's warming than poor ones, which have not been emitting at significant levels for many years yet, no matter what current emissions indicate. Along with taking necessary measures to reduce the extent of global warming and the associated impacts, society also needs to pursue equitable solutions that first protect the most vulnerable population groups; be they defined by demographics, income, or location. For example, according to the WHO, 88% of the disease burden attributable to climate change afflicts children under age 5 (obviously an innocent and "nonconsenting" segment of the population), presenting another major axis of inequity. Not only is the health burden from climate change itself greatest among the world's poor, but some of the major mitigation approaches to reduce the degree of warming may produce negative side effects disproportionately among the poor, for example, competition for land from biofuels creating pressure on food prices. Of course, in today's globalized world, eventually all nations will share some risk, but underserved populations will suffer first and most strongly from climate change. Moreover, growing recognition that society faces a nonlinear and potentially irreversible threat has deep ethical implications about humanity's stewardship of the planet that affect both rich and poor.