Between 2007 and 2011, Indonesia lost more than US$7 billion to illegal logging and mismanagement in the forestry sector. That’s the shocking finding of a new report by Human Rights Watch: “The Dark Side of Green Growth: Human Rights Impacts of Weak Governance in Indonesia’s Forestry Sector”.
Tag: Deforestation
Corruption in Tanzania: President’s men took over, Norwegian aid money disappeared
In February 2013, Siri Gedde-Dahl, a journalist with Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper, investigated corruption in a REDD project in Tanzania funded by Norway. In a recent Aftenposten article, Gedde-Dahl reports that Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania, the Tanzanian NGO that was running the project, has collapsed.
Singapore chokes on haze from Sumatra fires. Again. Wasn’t REDD supposed to stop this?
Last week, the pollution from fires in Sumatra set new records. The smoke in Singapore this year is worse than it was in 1997 and 2002, both years of major forest burning in Indonesia.
Unanswered questions about Bai Shan Lin’s big plans for Guyana
Bai Shan Lin, a Chinese logging company, has big plans for Guyana: forest concessions covering 960,000 hectares; a 20-kilometre river gold mining concession; a 500-hectare Guyana-China Timber Industry Economic and Trading Cooperation Park and a 160-hectare real estate development.
Can REDD stop the land grabbing crisis in Laos and Cambodia?
This week, Global Witness released a new report investigating a land grabbing crisis in Laos and Cambodia. The report looks at two Vietnamese “rubber baron” companies, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) and the Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG). Global Witness found that these companies “have leased vast tracts of land for plantations in Laos and Cambodia,…