Deforestation accounts for 25 percent of all man-made emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned here on Friday (December 9). As a result, FAO is offering to provide data and technical advice to countries attending the UN climate change conference in Montreal to find ways to create financial incentives for reducing forest loss in the developing world. "FAO's newest data on the role of forests in mitigating climate change, contained in our recently released Global Forestry Resources Assessment (FRA 2005), provides a clear picture of the contribution that forests make to countering global warming – and of how deforestation exacerbates the problem," said Dieter Schoene, of FAO's Forestry Department.