Recent global environmental and social changes have created a set of "wicked problems" for which there are no optimal solutions. In this article, we illustrate the wicked nature of such problems by describing the effects of global warming on the wildfire regime and indigenous communities in Alaska, and we suggest an approach for minimizing negative impacts and maximizing positive outcomes. Warming has led to an increase in the areal extent of wildfire in Alaska, which increases fire risk to rural indigenous communities and reduces short-term subsistence opportunities. Continuing the current fire suppression policy would minimize these negative impacts, but it would also create secondary problems near communities associated with fuel buildup and contribute to a continuing decline in subsistence opportunities. Collaborations between communities and agencies to harvest flammable fuels for heating and electrical power generation near communities, and to use wildland fire for habitat enhancement in surrounding forests, could reduce community vulnerability to both the direct and the indirect effects of global climate change.

Climate change is projected to have adverse impacts on public health. Cobenefits may be possible from more upstream mitigation of greenhouse gases causing climate change. To help measure such cobenefits alongside averted disease-specific risks, a health impact assessment (HIA) framework can more comprehensively serve as a decision support tool. HIA also considers health equity, clearly part of the climate change problem. New choices for energy must be made carefully considering such effects as additional pressure on the world's forests through large-scale expansion of soybean and oil palm plantations, leading to forest clearing, biodiversity loss and disease emergence, expulsion of subsistence farmers, and potential increases in food prices and emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Investigators must consider the full range of policy options, supported by more comprehensive, flexible, and transparent assessment methods.

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.

This is the story of a powerful historical pathway of structural transformation that is experienced by all successful developing countries; of highly important and diverse approaches to coping with the political pressures generated along that pathway; and of policy mechanisms available to keep the poor from falling off the pathway altogether.  This structural transformation involves four main features: a falling share of agriculture in economic output and employment, a rising share of urban economic activity in industry and modern services, migration of rural workers to urban settings, and a demographic transition in birth and death rates that always leads to a spurt in population growth before a new equilibrium is reached.

At one level, the story is easy to tell because the statistical picture presented, both graphically and econometrically, is, well, telling.  In their broad sweep and relevance, these are very robust results that have very deep historical roots.  Challenging them is like challenging the tides.

At another level, the complexity of national diversity asserts itself in very important ways.  This finding does not alter the pathways themselves, but rather their consequences for income distribution and the gap in labor productivity between urban and rural economies.  We learn a lot about the possibilities for narrowing this gap during the process of structural transformation by comparing the historical experience of rapidly growing Asia with the rest of the world.  Individual country experience is revealing as well.  The stress placed on this productivity gap, how it changes during the structural transformation, and potential policy interventions to narrow it, is the major contribution of this monograph.

Making sure the poor are connected to both the structural transformation and to the policy initiatives designed to ameliorate the distributional consequences of rapid transformation has turned out to be a major challenge for policy makers over the past half century.  There are successes and failures, and the historical record illuminates what works and what does not.  Trying to stop the structural transformation does not work, at least for the poor.  Investing in the capacity of the poor to cope with change and to participate in its benefits through better education and health does seem to work.  Such investments typically require significant public sector resources and policy support, and thus depend on political processes that are themselves conditioned by the pressures generated by the structural transformation.