The United Nations U.N.-sponsored climate conference provides for an arrangement, known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, industrial counties that create carbon emissions pay third-world nations to maintain their rainforests by buying pollution allowances from them.

"The fact is the global economy is at a point where it's beginning to internalize the services of a rainforest, and bring it into the transactions of a global economy," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.