For calloused earth watchers, the latest word on the state of global forests was all too familiar. In the annual Global Monitoring Report 2008, released on April 8, the World Bank concluded that the planet's woodlands are still vanishing at an alarming rate. Between 2000 and 2005, according to the most up-to-date numbers, an average of 73,000 square kilometers of forests fell annually. That is to say, a swath of forest the size of Panama tumbles every year to the loggers' chainsaws, the planters' bulldozer, and the settlers cocktail of kerosene and a match.

More than provoking another round of handwringing, the report is sure to add wood to the already inflamed political row over who is to blame for the worsening assault on the earth's climate. Thanks to the rich world's addiction to fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal, developing nations have often been portrayed as innocents in the tale of dangerous climate change. That is no longer the case. The felling of forests accounts for about 20 percent of all the carbon that humans pour into the skies every year, worsening the planetary greenhouse effect and driving unpredictable climate change. Leading the plunder are the developing nations, with top honors going to Brazil and Indonesia, which together (see chart, page 206) destroy nearly 50 million kilometers of woodlands a year. So whether it's burning gasoline or torching rainforests, no society has a monopoly on fouling the earth's atmosphere.

But there are some surprises in the dismal forest tally. First, while the assault against woodlands is a global one, some countries have been quietly getiing greener.  In fact, many woodlands are growing back at a pace that has taken the scientific world by surprise, starting with the richest nations. Thanks to a combination of aggressive reforestation, preservation, falling population, and removing marginal farm land from cultivation, countries from Japan to Germany have seen their forests flourish in recent years. In Spain, Ukraine and Finland, tree farming for timber and pulp and paper has clothed once barren plots. Japan has denser forests today than it did before World War II. All told, 22 of the world's most forested nations had become greener between 1990 and 2005, according to a study of international specialists coordinated by the University of Helsinki.

By 2005, according to the World Bank, high income countries boasted close to 1 hectare of forest per person, three times the green space per capita (.29 hectares) in the poorest nation. The gains were particularly startling in Europe, where new forests are helping literally to clear the air, sopping up 126 million tons of atmospheric carbon a year, equal to 10 percent of all EU smokestack and tailpipe emissions.

More remarkably, two of the biggest and fastest developing nations are also reversing the deforestation curse, challenging the notion that development with preservation is an oxymoron. India and China have recorded some of the fastest gains in forest cover on the planet. Indeed, if Brazil is the all too familiar portrait of forests in peril then China has become the unlikely poster child of preservation. China's green thumb arose from environmental disaster. As it happened, predatory wood cutters and farmers had so depleted the stands of trees girdling the lowlands that in 1998 disaster struck; torrential rains swelled the Yangtze river, causing devastating floods that  claimed more than 3,000 lives.

Since then Beijing cracked down on bootleg loggers and exhorted the nation to sow the nation with fast growing poplar, eucalyptus and pine. By some count the Chinese plant 5 billion trees a year. Though the new forests are a thin filter for the megatons of greenhouse gases hurled into the skies by China's breakneck development, replanted areas already take up more carbon than the amount released by annual tree felling. (Planted forests in India are drinking up nearly as much carbon as the country's woodcutters and developers can release.)

Environmental purists may argue, with reason, that the soldierly rows of eucalyptus for pulp and paper or exotic pine for construction are poor stand-ins for the majestic old growth forests that once crowned the planet. But in a world choking on the consequences of decades of environmental plunder, the fact that the planet is a little greener is already a breath of fresh of air.