[Editor's Note: This podcast from Marc Gunther was published in tandem with "Making It More Profitable to Leave a Tree Alone Than to Cut It Down" a profile of Jeff Horowitz and Avoided Deforestation Partners.]

Jeff Horowitz, co-founder of Avoided Deforestation Partners, speaks to GreenBiz.com Senior Writer Marc Gunther about his hope of making it more profitable to preserve forests rather than chop them down. 

Avoided Deforestation Partners is a coalition of environmental groups and companies working to find market-driven solutions to save the world's tropical forests and address climate change. Its members represent a range of business interests, from heavy emitters that include American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Pacific Gas and Electric, and El Paso Corp., to consumer-facing companies such as Starbucks, Marriott and Disney.

Environmental groups include Sierra Club, Conservation International and Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Working together we found a common way of moving forward and arriving at positions that we could all support," Horowitz said.

Marc Gunther: This is Marc Gunther for GreenBiz.com. I'm joined by Jeff Horowitz. Jeff is the founder of Avoided Deforestation Partners. That's a coalition of environmental groups and businesses that are working essentially to help save the world's tropical forests, but do so in a market-friendly way. So Jeff, first just tell me what ADP is, how long it's been around, why you started it, and then we'll dig into the issue a little bit.

Jeff Horowitz: Well, thank you for the introduction, and thank you for the opportunity to talk about something that we believe is one of the most important solutions to climate change. Avoided Deforestation Partners was founded three years ago by myself and a group of dedicated environmentalists, people who work in both the for- and non-profit sector, all concerned about the fact that we don't have a framework or policy that would allow for considering reductions from emissions by way of reducing deforestation as part of a serious solution to climate change.

Our group has been meeting with a lot of high-profile people and basically getting both the for- and non-profit communities engaged and actively used as ambassadors for this cause. We --

MG: And who are some of your business and nonprofit members?

JH: Well, our leading for-profit business interests include those people who are the largest emitters in the United States: American Electric Power, Duke Energy, PG&E, El Paso Gas, and several other businesses on that level. We also have businesses that don't have an emissions problem per se but also feel very strongly about the need to reduce global pollution and to try to solve climate change. For example, Marriott and Starbucks and Disney are also signers to our agreement, along with a number of organizations or businesses of that kind.

MG: And the NGO partners?

JH: The NGO partners include the Sierra Club, NRDC, the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International -- groups, as many of our friends would say, would typically be suing the power companies for not doing a good job. We found that working together, we found a common way of moving forward and arriving at positions that we could all support.