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The REDD+ scheme of the United Nations intends to offer developing countries financial incentives to reduce the rates of deforestation and forest degradation for reducing global CO2 emissions. This is combined with building carbon stocks in existing wooded ecosystems and fostering other soil, biodiversity and water conservation objectives. Successful application of REDD+ to the Xylophone Triangle of West Africa faces substantial challenges and risks to both meeting REDD+ objectives and to the local people's rights and livelihoods. The transnationality of the culturally coherent area requires collaboration of three national governments. The opportunities, however, are great to capitalize on the region's biodiversity, the well-developed traditional ecological knowledge and the use of local medicinal plants as an integral part of the agro-ecosystem. Possibilities open to, not only sequester carbon, but also to increase the resilience of the ecosystem and of independent rural livelihoods in the face of climate change and globalization.

We have obtained 15 HIV-2 isolates from the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of 24 HIV-2-infected west African people. The frequency of virus isolation correlated with the severity of HIV-2 infection; only three isolates were obtained from 11 asymptomatic individuals, whereas virus was isolated from nearly all (12 of 13) individuals with symptoms. The HIV-2 isolates showed distinct replicative and cytopathic characteristics and, similarly to HIV-1 isolates, could be divided into two major groups: rapid/high and slow/low. Rapid/high isolates, i.e. isolates with the ability to replicate in tumour cell lines, were obtained from individuals with symptomatic HIV-2 infection and CD4+ lymphocyte counts less than 360/microliters blood; these isolates induced syncytia in PBMC cultures. HIV-2 isolates unable to replicate continuously in tumour cell lines (slow/low isolates) induced small syncytia, cell death, or no cytopathic effect at all. All HIV-2 isolates obtained from asymptomatic individuals showed a slow/low replication pattern.