The United Nations General Assembly must take the strongest stand in its power to help avert an irreversible climate catastrophe when it holds its annual gathering this week. Top of that agenda should be to use its influential voice to stop the wholesale burning of the world's tropical forests. These blazes are not a country-specific issue; they inflict enormous transboundary and global damage.

The UN should consider the burning of forests a crime against humanity, name the perpetrators, demand action from national leaders and financially support measures to combat these blazes.