Liberia is to become the first nation in Africa to completely stop cutting down its trees in return for development aid.
Norway will pay the impoverished West African country $150m (£91.4m) to stop deforestation by 2020.
There have been fears that the Ebola crisis would see increased logging in a country desperate for cash.
Norwegian officials confirmed details of the deal to the BBC at the UN climate summit in New York.
Liberia’s forests are not as big as other countries but the country is home to a significant part of West Africa’s remaining rainforest, with about 43% of the Upper Guinean forest.
It is also a global diversity hotspot, home to the last remaining viable populations of species including western chimpanzees, forest elephants and leopards.
But since the civil war ended in 2003, illegal logging has become rife.
In 2012, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf attracted international criticism when she handed out licences to companies to cut down 58% of all the primary rainforest left in the country. After protests many of those permits were cancelled.
Some researchers have connected the current outbreak of Ebola with the widespread destruction of the forests, bringing people into contact with natural reservoirs of the virus.
Now the Norwegians and the Liberian government have signed a deal that they both believe will protect the forests into the future.
“We hope Liberia will be able to cut emissions and reduce poverty at the same time,” said Jens Frolich Holte, a political adviser to the Norwegian government, speaking to the BBC on the sidelines of the UN climate summit in New York.
