Companies looking to offset their climate-warming emissions can have a bigger impact backing governments’ initiatives to halt forest destruction rather than planting new trees, an environmental group said on Thursday.

Demand is growing for carbon offset credits, prompting some of the world's biggest corporations to announce tree-planting initiatives.

But a policy paper authored by Emergent, a US-based non-profit partnered with organisations including the United Nations Environment Programme, argued that those efforts still fall far short of what is needed.

"Are we trying to solve climate change here or...