Tal Harris is Greenpeace Africa’s International Communications Coordinator. He submitted this Guest Post about the fires in the Amazon, and in the Congo Basin.
Guest Post: Facing a burning crisis
Congo Basin region
There are 11 posts filed in Congo Basin region (this is page 1 of 1).
The Brazzaville Declaration: Words not action on peatland protection in the Congo Basin. And the strange case of the Congo Basin Blue Fund and the Brazzaville Foundation
Last week, the third meeting of the Partners of the Global Peatlands Initiative took place in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. After the meeting, the United Nations Environment Programme, one of the organisers and funder of the meeting, put out a press release announcing that a “historic agreement” had been signed “to protect the world’s largest tropical peatland”.
WWF scandal (part 8): WWF and the loggers in the Congo Basin
“For WWF, partnering with Indigenous Peoples is an essential part of our conservation work.” This sentence comes from WWF’s latest newsletter from its international forest and climate team. The article is written by Jolly Sassa Kiuka and Flory Botamba who work for WWF in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Conservation efforts in the Congo Basin are “mostly failing” says new Rainforest Foundation UK report
“Conservation efforts in the Congo Basin are mostly failing to protect forests and biodiversity, having serious negative impacts on local populations, and for these reasons are probably unsustainable.”
The REDD contradiction: Deforestation and oil palm plantations in the Congo Basin
Since 2009, companies have announced new oil palm plantation projects in the Congo Basin covering a total area of 1.6 million hectares. Projects currently underway cover 500,000 hectares. A new report by Rainforest Foundation UK warns that vast areas of the Congo Basin forests are potentially threatened by the expansion of oil palm plantations.
World Bank management rejects criticisms of industrial logging
The debate about the World Bank’s lending on forests is heating up after the Independent Evaluation Group’s review was leaked last week. The IEG report is very critical of the World Bank’s record in the forestry sector, particularly the fact that the Bank’s involvement in forests has failed to address poverty and has not benefited local communities.
Smoke and Mirrors: A critical assessment of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility
A new report from FERN and the Forest Peoples Programme concludes that the safeguards put in place by the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership (FCPF) are inadequate.
REDD in the Congo – new report from World Rainforest Movement
The forests in the Congo Basin, the second largest area of tropical forest in the world, are receiving increasing interest. Enormous amounts of carbon are stored in these forests, meaning that REDD proponents are increasingly looking at these forests to “offset” continued pollution in the rich countries.
Shift2Neutral’s big REDD deal in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The Australian carbon trading company Shift2Neutral aims to become “the leading neutraliser of carbon emissions in the world”. The company appeared to come closer realising its aim this week when Reuters reported that Shift2Neutral “signed a deal aimed at protecting tropical forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as boosting renewable energy there”.
Two new reports highlight the problems with REDD in the Congo Basin
The Congo Basin forest is the second largest in the world after the Amazon. It accounts for one quarter of the world’s remaining tropical forest and covers an area of 1.8 million square kilometres. Clearly, whatever comes out of Copenhagen on REDD has to work in the Congo Basin.
Forest communities of the Congo Basin speak out on REDD: moving the debate beyond financing
From November 18-20, 2008, over 30 indigenous peoples and civil society representatives from throughout the Congo Basin gathered in Kinshasa to discuss forests, climate change, and proposed mechanisms for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). We report below on the outcomes.