Launched five years ago, the New York Declaration on Forests included a commitment “to cut natural forest loss in half by 2020, and strive to end it by 2030”. But the pledges made by governments, multinational companies, NGOs, and indigenous peoples organisations have utterly failed to address deforestation.
Last week, REDD-Monitor wrote about the US$65 million that the Central African Forest Initiative is giving to the Republic of Congo, supposedly to stop deforestation.
REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
Last week, the President of the Republic of Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, flew to Paris in a hired Boeing 787 Dreamliner, one of the most luxurious planes in the world. Le Figaro estimates that a one-way flight from Brazzaville to Paris would cost about US$500,000. Needless to say, Sassou Nguesso’s wife, Antoinette, travelled with him.
The Somicongo REDD+ concession in Mai Ndombe province, in the Democratic Republic of Congo was, until early 2018, a logging concession covering an area of almost 300,000 hectares. As Global Witness pointed out in a 2015 report about the logging industry in the DRC, the contract, management plan, and social agreement for the logging concession were unpublished or inaccessible – in breach of DRC’s legal framework.
Two weeks ago, REDD-Monitor wrote about a new report by the Oakland Institute. The report is the third by the Oakland Institute about a Norwegian company called Green Resources, and the destructive impacts of its monoculture tree plantations on local communities in Uganda.
REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
Alexandre de Juniac is a worried man. He’s head of the International Air Transport Association. And it’s not just the downturn in the global economy that’s got him worried. It’s the “flight shame” movement, which started in Sweden where it’s called flygskam, which De Juniac describes as the biggest threat to the airline industry in Europe.
This post is based on a presentation given by Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester. Anderson gave the presentation in January 2018. It remains as relevant as it was 18 months ago, perhaps more so.
California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) is set to consider an updated Tropical Forest Standard at a public meeting on 19 September 2019. CARB invited comments. Larry Lohmann of The Corner House sent in a comment that explores the “bottomless cesspit of intellectual corruption” that is today’s world of climate change politics:
REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
The Oakland Institute has released a new report about the impact of Green Resources’ plantations in Uganda on local communities: “Evicted for Carbon Credits: Norway, Sweden and Finland displace Ugandan farmers for carbon traders”. The report is the Oakland Institute’s third about Green Resources, exposing the destructive impact the company’s plantations have had on local communities.
Lauren Gifford, PhD is a human-environment geographer who has studied REDD+, climate policy and forest conservation in the Amazon and beyond since 2007. She submitted this guest post looking at the implications of the fires in the Amazon rainforest for REDD.
So far this year, more than 72,000 forest fires have started (or been set by cattle ranchers) in Brazil’s rain forest. That’s an 80% increase over the same period last year. But the amount of CO2 emitted from the fires is lower than in 2010 and significantly lower than in the early 2000s.
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REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, climate change, and REDD. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
