Prince Charles: wartime urgency needed for rainforests - Telegraph

He suggested setting up a new "eco-systems market" to save the rainforests.

Like the financial markets that already exist, the new system would put a value on rainforests in order to protect the benefits they bring such as absorbing carbon emissions, generating fresh water and preserving wildlife.

Traders could then make a healthy profit from buying and selling rainforest as a new asset class.

The idea is already on the agenda for talks in Copenhagen next year that will decide the world's approach to climate change through a new Kyoto Protocol.

But the Prince said finanical institutions must act now to make a change - despite hard times in the City.

He argued trees are worth more dead than alive because they can absorb some of carbon emissions causing climate change.

"I know that we are meeting at time when short term economic problems have become acute. And you might think it extremely odd, let alone mildly eccentric, to be asking the private sector to focus on what may appear to be tomorrow's problem.

"But cost effectiveness is even more important during financial hard times and the whole point about halting deforestation is that, along with improved energy efficiency, it is the most cost effective, and immediate, way to fight climate change."

Bosses from 16 of the world's largest companies attended the dinner for 250 people as well as the chairman of the London Stock Exchange and Sir David Attenborough.