Annual greenhouse gas emissions from forests drop by a quarter, U.N. says

By Chris Arsenault ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Yearly carbon emissions from the world’s forests have dropped by more than 25 percent in the last 15 years, a U.N. agency said on Friday. The decrease in annual emissions, which cause global warming, is largely due to slowing rates of global deforestation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported. “Deforestation and forest degradation increase the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but forest and tree growth absorbs carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emissions,” FAO director-general Jose Graziano da Silva said in a statement.