There are 266 posts tagged Deforestation (this is page 3 of 18).
In 2014, Brazil’s deforestation rate was reported to be about 75% below the average for 1996 to 2005. But in recent years, Brazil’s deforestation rate has been going back up, despite the fact that the country is going through its worst recession in decades.
In July 2016, the Walt Disney Company agreed to hand over US$2.6 million for carbon credits from the Seima REDD project in Cambodia. REDD-Monitor wrote about the project in September 2016. The post included some questions for Tom Evans at Wildlife Conservation Society, the organisation running the project together with the Cambodia’s Forestry Administration. You can read Evans’ response here.
The Surui REDD project is under attack. Despite the fact that the Surui’s forest is an Indian Reservation (and a REDD project), hundreds of miners and loggers are invading the land, leaving destruction in their wake.
This week, Benedict Bengioushuye Ayade, the governor of Nigeria’s Cross River State, will be in Guadalajara, Mexico taking part in the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force Annual Meeting. The aim of the GCF is to link states and provinces running REDD programmes with carbon markets in the rich countries.
The Borneo Case is a new film that documents the destruction of more than 90% of Sarawak’s forests and investigates where the profits from the destruction went. As the Bruno Manser Fund notes, “Vast illicit assets have been acquired by the former Chief Minister and current Governor of Sarawak, Abdul Taib Mahmud, and his closest family members.”
According to NASA, the Amazon is drier at the start of this year’s dry season than any year since 2002. The reason is reduced rainfall during the wet season because of El Niño. The result could be intense fires in the Amazon later this year.
In April 2016, indigenous leaders travelled from Colombia, Indonesia, Liberia, and Peru to Europe, calling for action on human rights violations and land grabbing associated with the expansion of oil palm plantations in their countries.
A new report by the Forest Peoples Programme finds that “Deforestation and forest degradation have increased in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) despite the government’s commitment to safeguard its forests”.
Last year, local elections took place in Indonesia. The vote for the governor of Central Kalimantan was delayed, and took place in January 2016. Sugianto Sabran, the candidate with the closest ties to the palm oil industry won – by a very narrow margin.
In recent years, Papua New Guinea has handed out 5.5 million hectares of land as Special Agriculture and Business Leases. In addition, the government has issued 10 million hectares in logging concessions. The totally predictable result has been an increase in deforestation, and serious human rights abuses.
A few weeks ago, REDD-Monitor took a look at how the Asian Development Bank appears to have changed its tune on REDD. In 2010, the ADB was promoting the region’s “huge potential to benefit from REDD+”, but by 2015 the ADB acknowledged the “considerable uncertainty about the actual contribution that REDD will make”.
On 5 February 2013, Asia Pulp and Paper announced a Forest Conservation Policy. This included an immediate stop to clearing forest in any concessions controlled by APP and its suppliers. It was a dramatic change in policy for a company that is responsible for destroying vast areas of forest in Indonesia.
“We have to reduce emissions from deforestation if we’re to prevent catastrophic climate change,” WWF argues on its website. At a first glance, it seems like a no-brainer. Forests store an awful lot of carbon. When forests are cleared for cattle ranching, or to make way for oil palm plantations, the carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere.
