By Chris Lang Andrew Skeene and Omari Bowers, former directors of Global Forestry Investments, last week pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. In 2019, following an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, Skeene and Bowers were arrested and charged with three offences of conspiracy to defraud, four offences of forgery, one offence of misconduct in…
Tag: Plantations
Pakistan’s tree planting programmes: Corruption, exclusion and marginalisation
By Chris Lang At the end of April 2020, Thomson Reuters Foundation reported that Pakistan was employing people who had lost their jobs because of the coronavirus to plant trees. The article quoted Malik Amin Aslam Khan, climate change advisor to the prime minister, as saying that, “This tragic crisis provided an opportunity and we…
Our Nature is Not Your Solution!
By Chris Lang 22 May is the International Day for Biological Diversity. The UN General Assembly launched World Biodiversity Day in 1993. This year’s theme, chosen by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is “Our solutions are in nature”. The CBD tells us that the theme, “emphasises hope, solidarity and the importance of working together…
The trouble with trees: The African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative is based on a “profound misreading of Africa’s grassy biomes”
By Chris Lang The African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) aims “to bring 100 million hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030”. AFR100 is an offshoot of the Bonn Challenge. The Bonn Challenge aims to “restore forest landscapes” over an area of 350 million hectares by 2030.
Greenpeace rejects the one trillion trees campaign: “Treewashing the climate crisis with promises of large tree plantations”
By Chris Lang “Planting trees is now advocated by a wide range of stake-holders, often in the form of large-scale, monoculture tree plantations. In the current form, these will aggravate, not improve, the climate and biodiversity crises.” That’s from a new briefing by Greenpeace rejecting the one trillion trees campaign that was launched last month…