Ecuador auctions off Amazon to Chinese oil firms
Indigenous groups claim they have not consented to oil projects, as politicians visit Beijing to publicise bidding process
(The Guardian) Ecuador plans to auction off more than three million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, angering indigenous groups and underlining the global environmental toll of China’s insatiable thirst for energy.
On Monday morning a group of Ecuadorean politicians pitched bidding contracts to representatives of Chinese oil companies at a Hilton hotel in central Beijing, on the fourth leg of a roadshow to publicise the bidding process. Previous meetings in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, and in Houston and Paris were each confronted with protests by indigenous groups.
19 February
Landmark moment in bid to save Indonesia forests
Asia Pulp & Paper Co. has agreed to stop using timber harvested from natural forests. The move could represent what observers say is a landmark success by a market-based campaign to save Indonesia’s rain forests. The Christian Science Monitor (2/19)

2012

Illegal logging besets half of Liberia’s forests
More than half of Liberia’s forests, much of it virgin rainforest — have been given over to logging companies in deals that violate local laws and could re-ignite conflict, according to the international nongovernmental organization Global Witness. Revenue from logging is seen as essential for financing the rebuilding of infrastructure after 14 years of civil war. The Guardian (London) (7/5)
Is the Brazilian forest law a missed opportunity?
The revised Brazilian forest code tries to do many things at once, including halting deforestation, regulating land use and easing the ways farmers conduct commerce. The law is seen by many observers as flawed and has led to criticism of the environmental record of President Dilma Rousseff in the run-up to the Rio+20 summit. The Economist (6/2), The Guardian (London) (6/1), The Christian Science Monitor (5/31)
Environmental law in Brazil — Compromise or deadlock?
The president’s effort to balance the claims of forests and farms has satisfied few. An opportunity to promote sustainable farming may be missed
(The Economist) The result is legally complex, perhaps inevitably (see table for a summary). The code is trying to do too many different things: to regulate land use, and to halt deforestation in the Amazon while freeing farmers elsewhere to carry out their business. The original Forest Code was pioneering in some ways. Requiring farmers to set aside part of their land for natural vegetation looks odd to foreign eyes, used to governments holding pristine land as national parks and letting private owners do as they wish. But allowing settlers to open up some land in return for protecting more had its merits in a vast country with limited state resources.
25 May
In Brazil, a showdown over rainforest deforestation
Brazil’s president is scheduled to sign a reform package today that could retroactively legalize the deforestation of millions of acres in the Amazon.
(CSM) Later today, President Dilma Roussef is expected to sign part of the “amnesty” bill into law, though she’s signaled that some amendments will be made in response to environmental concerns. But whether they go far enough to mollify an angry movement of citizens and environmental activists remains to be seen.
13 April
Indigenous Brazilian group certified to trade carbon credits
(SciDevNet) Brazil’s Paiter Suruí community has become the first indigenous group in the country to receive international certification to sell carbon credits in return for protecting and restoring forests in their Amazonian territory.
Clampdown on illegal logging in Cameroon
Cameroon has suspended the licenses of 27 companies found to be in violation of logging laws put into place after more than 13% of the country’s forest cover was lost between 1990 and 2005 due to commercial logging, agriculture and the search for fuel. Illegal logging is rife, and the head of one of the companies that lost its license says a corrupt licensing process shares part of the blame. AlertNet (3/5)
Charcoal trade harms Uganda’s forests
The indiscriminate felling of trees in northern Uganda for the production of charcoal — the “black gold” on which, with wood, some 95% of Ugandans depend — is decimating annually more than 73,000 hectares of private forest and more than 7,000 hectares of protected forest reserves. The timber and charcoal trade are seen by many as ways out of poverty. IRINNews.org (2/7)
Will new land-use rules threaten the Amazon?
The considerable gains made by Brazil in reducing deforestation in the Amazon are increasingly seen as at risk of reversal under President Dilma Rousseff, whose government has negotiated a bill seeking to overhaul the 47-year-old Forest Code, the latest in a series of measures that empower the president to cut land already marked for preservation, grant more flexibility for large infrastructure projects and give Congress veto power over designation of indigenous territories. The New York Times (tiered subscription model) (1/24)

2011

7 December
Brazil forest code reignites Amazon fears
(FT) Brazil has made strides to reduce the destruction of the Amazon, seen as one of the world’s main bulwarks against climate change, with deforestation falling to its lowest levels since state monitoring began in 1988 in the 12 months until the end of July.
But environmentalists warn that the forest faces multiple threats, ranging from logging, ranching and degradation from fires to climate change itself in the form of higher frequencies of floods and droughts.
25 November
Like a Fish Belongs to Water, the Ogiek Belong to the Mau Forest
(IPS) – The resettlement of evictees from Kenya’s Mau Forest remains a humanitarian and environmental concern for the country as more than 25,000 people continue to live in camps around the forest. The Mau Forest complex in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province is home to the indigenous Ogiek, and settler communities like the Kipsigis and Maasai.
The arrival of non-indigenous inhabitants to the Mau Forest began when former President Daniel arap Moi (1978-2002) encouraged the deforestation of the Mau in order to provide a place to resettle victims of the 1990s land clashes. However, communities in the Mau Forest, the largest in the country stretching across 400,000 hectares, were forcefully evicted by the government in 2009 in order to stop the massive deforestation occurring here. For the last two years they have been living on the outskirts of the forest in tents with a lack of basic services, like sanitation.
The Mau is the country’s largest carbon reservoir and largest water tower. The forest is also responsible for flood mitigation and water storage, and reduces soil erosion.
19 October
“The Man Who Stopped the Desert”
(IPS) Yacouba Sawadogo, a peasant farmer from Burkina Faso, is known as the “man who stopped the desert.” But when he first tried to save his arid land from desertification by planting the trees that have since grown into a 15-hectare forest, people in his village thought he was mad.
15 July
Study Shows Forests Have Bigger Role In Slowing Climate Change
(Reuters/Planet Ark) The world’s forests can play an even greater role in fighting climate change than previously thought, scientists say in the most comprehensive study yet on how much carbon dioxide forests absorb from the air.
Trees need large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) to grow, locking away the carbon in the trunks and roots.
But scientists have struggled to figure out exactly how much CO2 forests soak up in different parts of the world and a global total for how much is released when forests are cut down and burned.
The study released on Friday in the latest issue of the U.S. journal Science details for the first time the volumes of CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere by tropical, temperate and boreal forests. The researchers found that forests soak up more than 10 percent of carbon dioxide from human activities such as burning coal, even after taking into account all of the global emissions from deforestation.
8 July
Johann Hari: Would you trust a management consultant with the world’s rainforests?
Our protests stopped David Cameron handing UK forests over to corporations. Now the rainforests are being handed to management consultants
The two most dreaded words in any office are the same – management consultants. Their arrival rumbles through a workplace like the approaching thwump-thwump of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, rattling our desks and making us all fear we will be picked up and gored at random. We’re right to be afraid – and scornful. According to “Rip Off”, a report on management consultants by David Craig, 170 organisations who used management consultants were studied in the 1990s by the Cranfield School of Management, and only 36 per cent of clients thought they had brought any value. We all know now that management consultants were threaded through the banksters and hedge funders who just crashed the global economy.
But now management consultancy has been taken to a whole new level, according to a startling new report by Greenpeace entitled: “Bad Influence: How McKinsey-inspired plans lead to rainforest destruction.” Management consultants have, in effect, been tasked with setting the future of the world’s rainforests – and facing accusations that they are using our money to draw up plans that will result in their more rapid destruction. Instead of stopping the loggers and miners, the report suggests they are aiding them.
29 June
Politicians Out of Sync with Public Sentiment on the Environment
(IPS) Policymakers in Brazil … have yet to catch the tide of popular sentiment in the country that recognises the need to protect the environment, Mario Osava reports.This widening disconnect is especially apparent in the current controversy over the country’s Forest Code.

Senegal farmers use trees to fight climate change
Senegalese farmers in Khatre Sy have joined together to zone off sections of land where trees are allowed to flourish in a bid to restore fertility to the area’s soil and fight off the effects of climate change. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is supporting acacia tree-planting initiatives in 44 Senegalese villages to help ensure sustainable livelihoods for residents and combat desertification. AlertNet (6/22)

Slow progress on forests at UN climate talks
Diplomats say UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, are making little headway toward ensuring the protection of forests as part of a global treaty intended to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. Envoys approved the text of the so-called REDD-plus mechanism, which is designed to provide extra benefits along with emissions savings from forests, but a Kenyan negotiator said talks were not progressing quickly enough. Bloomberg (6/17)
2 June
Destruction Of World’s Biggest Rainforests Down 25 Percent: FAO
(Reuters/Planet Ark) … compared with the previous one, but remains alarmingly high in some countries, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said.
A report entitled The State of the Forests in the Amazon Basin, Congo Basin and South East Asia, was released to coincide with a summit in the Congo Republic bringing together delegates from 35 countries occupying those forests, with a view to reaching a global deal on management and conservation.
26 May
Chopping down the Amazon
Making sense of the numbers on the Brazilian Amazon (with graph)
(The Economist) It will probably be a couple of years before it is possible to tell for sure whether the government’s proposal to regularise land tenure in the Amazon region is resulting in more active chainsaws there.
16 May
New Forest Code Could Hinder Climate Goals
(Tierramérica) – The adoption of a new Forest Code in Brazil could threaten efforts to curb Amazon deforestation, which was reduced 70 percent between 2004 and 2010. … In addition to reducing the so-called permanent preservation areas that must be reforested if cleared, it establishes an amnesty for landholders who have illegally cleared forests on their properties. Under the current legislation, they are subject to fines.
UN: Forests are experiencing growth in Asia
A UN report says that forests in China, India, Vietnam and the Philippines have been increasing in size because of a greater emphasis on planting over felling, representing a net gain over the prior decade. Forests were growing, too, in Europe and North America, but suffering losses in parts of Africa and Latin America due to greater demands for food and firewood, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. BBC (2/2)
7 January
Indonesia Divided Over Forest Moratorium
(Reuters/Planet Ark) Indonesia’s government is still trying to thrash out the details of a two-year moratorium on forest clearing under a $1 billion climate deal with Norway, leading it to miss a planned January 1 start and continued uncertainty for plantation firms.

2010

11 December
Emissions Punted to Durban, Breakthrough Seen on Forests
By Stephen Leahy*
CANCÚN, Mexico, Dec 11, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) … Tropical forest protection may be the big breakthrough coming out of Cancún. Delegates adopted a decision that establishes a three-phase process for tropical countries to reduce deforestation and receive compensation from developed countries, and it includes protections for forest peoples and biodiversity. Deforestation presently contributes 15 to 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
… Loopholes have been closed and good progress made on tackling the drivers of deforestation, she said. Much work is left to do to strengthen safeguards and work out the details for a new financial tool called REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).
REDD remains very controversial. It is widely touted as a way to mobilise $10 to $30 billion annually to protect forests by selling carbon credits to industries in lieu of reductions in emissions.
Many Indigenous and civil society groups reject REDD outright if it allows developed countries to avoid real emission reductions by offsetting their emissions.
10 December
Forests of the will
(The Economist) With a much better atmosphere than Copenhagen, and some hard but productive negotiating sessions, there’s a sense that, while hurdles remain, there is a real chance of leaving with a result. And the result most on people’s minds, from the president of Mexico on down, is a deal on forests.
… A REDD deal would be a good thing both for the world and the UN climate process, which sorely needs an achievement. Deforestation, which continues at the rate of a football field a second, according to almost everyone who speaks on the subject, is a huge source of greenhouse gases. Plausible reductions in emissions from avoiding deforestation are far larger than the sort of reductions which can easily be made by slowing the industrial production of carbon dioxide in the short run. And reducing deforestation removes a threat to the livelihoods and cultures of indigenous people, as well as preserving a lot of doubtless delightful wildlife. A deal which helped secure and accelerate recent advances on the issue would be worth some trumpeting.
… Getting a REDD deal in Cancún should help the fight against deforestation in many places, as long as the deal is sensibly and sensitively fleshed out over the coming months and years. Some areas are as yet vague, and others, including perhaps the details of how things should be financed, may be vagued up yet further in order to get through the conference’s final plenary session. This is probably to the good; easier to get the details right, including important ones on the vexed question of how to stop demand for wood from simply being displaced from protected places to unprotected ones, away from the pressure of deadlined negotiations.
But though such a deal would be good, it would be a recipe for action, not action itself. And everything will grind to a halt pretty quickly if the subsequent action doesn’t yield real results. For many observers of climate negotiation, political will is needed at the beginning of the process, invoked simplistically as something which might take negotiations from where they are to where people want them to be. Mr Jagdeo [Guyana’s president] sees things differently. For him political will comes before negotiations. And it fades if not fed with results.
Indonesia seeks payout for forest destruction
A report by Greenpeace claims that the Indonesian government is planning by 2030 to fell some 60 million hectares of forest — an area five times the size of England — for production of palm oil and biofuels. Moreover, the country could be eligible for climate aid that, ironically, would pay for the destruction and replanting of the forests, the report shows. The Guardian (London) (11/23)
Indians in Mexico mix forest preservation with profit
Zapotec Indians in Oaxaca, Mexico, are showing how communal ownership and management of forests can create jobs, as well as preserve woodlands. One member says the secret is “pure simple socialism, which is what the communities have, and an idea of capitalism, where we say, ‘You know what? We have to be profitable.’ ” The New York Times (free registration) (11/22)
12 October
Brazil Eyes Microchips In Trees For Forest Management
(Reuters/Planet Ark) It could be just another of the thousands of trees felled each year in Brazil’s portion of the world’s largest forest except for one detail: a microchip attached to its base holding data about its location, size and who cut it down.
Chinese scientists predicted dire results from deforestation
In a study published 13 years ago, two Chinese scientists predicted that aggressive deforestation in Gansu province would lead to landslides due to soil erosion. Government-run timber companies cut more than 300,000 acres of forest along the mountainous slopes of Zhouqu county between 1952 and 1990, exposing the slopes to soil erosion. Landslides after heavy rains in the area have claimed more than 1,000 lives since last weekend. The Christian Science Monitor (8/12)
20 July
A Worried View of the Amazon From Within its Forest
This region [MAP] used to be considered as the “end of the road” because it literally was. But with modernization and infrastructure development — bridges, roads, rural electrification, Internet and more — contact and globalization have set human and wild nature on an ugly collision course.
The post [Can the Amazon Thrive in the 21st Century?] doesn’t mention the new road to the Pacific or the ethanol plant and sugarcane plantations; or the planned road from Cruzeiro do Sul, Brazil to Pulcallpa, Peru and the multiple big hydro-energy dam constructions it will support; or the new Peruvian oil leases in indigenous reserves; or the BR$35 million worth of oil exploration in the Juruá watershed in Acre; or the Madeira River complex of big hydroelectric projects in Rondonia near Bolivia. Basically, wherever I look I see that development — including both its promises and problems — is in the driver seat.
Apparently, much the same is happening across the Amazon basin in a rushed effort to provide an energy and transportation infrastructure that can keep pace with Brazil’s spectacular economic growth
16 July
Deforestation in the Amazon
Between May 2000 and August 2006, Brazil lost nearly 150,000 square kilometers of forest—an area larger than Greece—and since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed.

Deforestation — for arable land, pasture, urban use or logging — has led to the loss of about half of all tropical forests, affecting biodiversity, water and nutrient cycling, climate change and sources of income. (SciDevNet topics: deforestation)

The World’s Ongoing Ecological Disasters
(Foreign Policy) While it’s probably still too soon to celebrate, BP appears to finally be getting the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico under control. But many of the world’s greatest environmental catastrophes continue, with no end in sight.
Deforestation
Going on since: 1492
Damage done: Haiti and the Dominican Republic share an island, as well as similar geographic and climate conditions. So why do severe storms and hurricanes — not to mention earthquakes — only cause horrific human tragedy on the Haitian side? One large reason is the almost complete destruction of Haiti’s trees. Without roots to hold the soil together, hurricanes and earthquakes are much more likely to case deadly landslides. The erosion of high-quality topsoil has also devastated Haiti’s agricultural sector, exacerbating its endemic poverty.
14 July
Kashmir fears forests will disappear through ‘timber smuggling’
Environmental catastrophe looms as corruption hinders moves to halt illegal trade fuelled by construction boom
(The Guardian) … the real problem in Kharg, and more broadly in Kashmir, is recent. The insurgency that has wracked the region for two decades is at a low ebb and an economic boom, in part fuelled by cash poured in by central government to win hearts and minds, has meant a voracious appetite for wood for new homes, hotels and other construction.

Although there is officially licensed government wood available, a huge black market of “timber smuggling” has sprung up as a result. “The problem is both substantial and widespread,” said Dr Shaqil Rumshoo, an expert at Kashmir University, Srinagar. “There are all sorts of different players.”
23 June
Save the Trees, Save the Planet
(Truthdig) DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania—What would the wealthy nations of the West (and their rising rivals in the East) do if they actually wanted to prevent catastrophic warming? Here in Africa, the obvious answer is that they would find the ways and means to discourage deforestation—the ruinous practice of clear-cutting for timber, charcoal and arable land that accounts for at least 20 percent of the atmospheric carbon burden. Save the trees, and you might just save the planet.
In theory, this ought to be a simple enough task to accomplish, with sufficient motivation and money. But in practice, the incentives created by Western policy are so perverse, according to Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete, that they reward clear-cutting not once but twice over.
16 April
Brazil Amazon Dam Creates Headache For Lula
(Reuters/Planet Ark) Brazil’s plan to build the world’s third-largest hydroelectric dam in the Amazon is drawing scathing criticism from a rare combination of investors and environmentalists, creating a potential political headache for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
… activists and indigenous groups, including Hollywood director James Cameron, say the dam will destroy parts of the Amazon and displace up to 20,000 people, while financial analysts call the project a politically driven money-loser. “The dam will have a terrible social and ecological impact,” said Lucio Flavio Pinto, an environmental activist who lives in the Amazon city of Belem. “But the worst part is it’s a white elephant, it’s not economically viable.”
During the dry season, the water flow will fall so much that the dam will generate less than 10 percent of capacity. Still, supporters say it will help balance power generation because dams in southern Brazil have lower output just as Belo Monte would be generating at full steam. Tribes of Amazon Find an Ally Out of ‘Avatar’
04 April
Forests growing back in U.S. face man-made tests
The United States can now hit “reset” on one of its greatest environmental mistakes: the destruction of the enormous woodland that once canopied the continent from Maine to east Texas. By the late 1800s, much of it had been cut down for agriculture and timber.
Then, farms were abandoned. Old seeds sprouted. Unlike many other environmental mistakes, this one began to fix itself: The forest grew back, though burdened with too many deer, too little fire, and armies of invasive bugs.
Now, new forests are a test, a practical exam for American environmentalism 40 years into the Earth Day era. In some places, scientists are trying to fix man-made flaws that could eventually destroy forest ecosystems. In others, the test is whether the government and private interests can save the forest from becoming suburbs and strip malls.
FAO: Global deforestation rates are dropping, but concerns remain
Aggressive planting programs have help to drop the global rate of deforestation over the past decade, according to a new report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The countries that lost the most forest since 2000 are Brazil, Indonesia and Australia, FAO says.
BBC (3/25); Google/The Associated Press (3/25); New York Times/AP (3/25)
10 March
Manish Bapna: Forests, climate change and the challenge of REDD
To combat global warming, forests must be part of the solution. How can we make good forest stewardship a reality?
2010 is a crucial year for forests. In March, major donor countries and forest-rich countries will meet in Paris, Nairobi and Manila, each grappling with the same question: how can efforts to reduce deforestation also help tackle climate change?
Their decisions, and those following in the next six to twelve months, could channel substantial amounts of money to protect forests.
Manish Bapna is executive vice president and managing director of the World Resources Institute. His interests and expertise are in international development with a particular focus on rural poverty and natural resources.
2009
22 December
Les grands pays forestiers s’unissent contre la déforestation
(AFP) Le premier ministre norvégien Jens Stoltenberg a annoncé mardi la création d’un groupe des principaux pays forestiers en vue de lutter contre la déforestation.
Regroupant les pays abritant la majeure partie des forêts tropicales (Brésil, Indonésie, Guyana, Gabon, Papouasie Nouvelle-Guinée), ce groupe visera à coordonner et promouvoir les mesures contre la déforestation dans la perspective de la réunion sur le climat à Mexico fin 2010. «La déforestation dans les pays en développement compte pour 17% des émissions mondiales de gaz à effet de serre», a déclaré M. Stoltenberg, dans un communiqué de presse.
21 December
Climate accord offers some grounds for hope, say analysts
(SciDev.Net) In the area of forests, experts were vexed that their progress finalising texts relating to REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) was thwarted by the lack of a legally binding way to drive them forward.
20 December
Clear-Cutting the Truth About Trees
Bernd Heinrich, emeritus professor at the University of Vermont and author of the forthcoming “Nesting Season.”
(NYT Op-Ed) More than anything, carbon offsets will allow rich countries to burn ever more fossil fuels under the “clean development mechanism” of the Kyoto Protocol, the system that sets the values, in terms of tons of carbon equivalent, of emission-reduction efforts. … the Kyoto delegates decided that there would be no carbon-reduction credits for saving existing forests. Since planting new trees does get one credits, Kyoto actually created a rationale for clear-cutting old growth.
… The world’s forests are a key to our survival, and that of millions of other species. Not only are they critical to providing us with building material, paper, food, recreation and oxygen, they also ground us spiritually and connect us to our primal past. Never before in earth’s history have our forests been under such attack. And the global-warming folks at Copenhagen seem oblivious, buying into the corporate view of forests as an exploitable resource.
A forest is an ecosystem. It is not something planted. A forest grows on its own. There are many kinds of forests that will grow practically anywhere, each under its own special local conditions. When a tree falls, the race is on immediately to replace it. In the forests I study, there so many seeds and seedlings that if a square foot of ground space opens up, more than a hundred trees of many different species compete to grow there.
17 December
Climate change and forests: Touch wood
Everyone agrees on the need to save trees, but the details are still tricky
(The Economist) Impressive as it was, the rich nations’ offer did not settle the questions that need resolving in any global forest deal. One was whether or not to include timetables and targets. The most ambitious proposals called for a 50% reduction in deforestation by 2020 and a complete halt by 2030. But forested nations were unwilling to accept those ideas until they saw what the rich world was offering.
The other question was how so much money will be ladled out, how it will be raised and who would receive it: national governments, regional authorities or local people, including the indigenous. Any plan that did not give local people cause to keep their trees standing would surely fail. But some have argued that doling out cash to forest-dwellers is too crude an approach; it may be better to help non-forest areas yield more crops, or to concentrate on restoring marginal land to farming. Advocates of national approaches—involving entire countries, not small areas—say local efforts cause “leakage” as felling is stopped in one place but shifts to another.
16 December
(Globe & Mail) On Wednesday the United States, Australia, France, Japan, Norway and Britain agreed to dedicate $3.5-billion (U.S.) of public financing to the REDD program – Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Whether the amount was new money, or money diverted from the proposed Quick Start fund, was not immediately clear.
Haiti turning garbage into energy
A recycling program that provides an alternative fuel source to charcoal is winning fans in Haiti, and around the globe.
(Miami Herald) With 20 million trees chopped down each year in Haiti, an over-reliance on charcoal has created a barren nation with less than 2 percent of tree cover.
15 December
Climate Talks Near Deal on Preservation of Forests
Negotiators have all but completed a sweeping deal that would compensate countries for preserving forests, and in some cases, other natural landscapes like peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change.
The agreement for the program, if signed as expected, may turn out to be the most significant achievement to come out of the Copenhagen climate talks, providing a system through which countries can be paid for conserving disappearing natural assets based on their contribution to reducing emissions.
14 December
Dispatch from Copenhagen: The Hon. Paul Martin on Climate Change
(Canada’s World Blog) Mr.Martin had just returned from discussions with environmental ministers of the Congo-basin African countries regarding climate change. These are countries with both enormous resources and enormous poverty. An interesting point: Mr. Martin believes that if given a choice between the resources of the Congo and the resources of Canada – one would choose the Congo, yet there is an enormous gap between the two countries economically.
There is tremendous opportunity to benefit from these resources in more ways than simple deforestation. Currently however, without a carbon market these trees are worth more dead than alive. Charcoal, wood, etc. are the primary resources these trees are currently used for through ’slash and burn’ methods. A carbon market can actually create opportunity both for developed and developing nations – credits purchased from developing nations give value to these forested areas. Carbon sequestration is just one of the many benefits a preserved and sustainability forest can bring to the Congo-basin.
10 December
Copenhagen: Barack Obama backs Norway-Brazil forest protection plan
US president endorses scheme proposed by Norway and Brazil that would protect the world’s rainforests with funding from rich countries which cannot cut their emissions at home
The president is not due at the conference for another week but his intervention comes at a critical time in the summit where negotiations on deforestation are moving rapidly. The scheme is seen as attractive because pilot studies have shown it to be effective and [it] has the backing of Prince Charles’ Rainforest Project.
Breakthrough in Monitoring Tropical Deforestation Announced in Copenhagen
New technology, developed by a team of scientists at Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology, is revolutionizing forest monitoring by marrying free satellite imagery and powerful analytical methods in an easy-to-use, desktop software package called CLASlite.
Thus far, 70 government, non-government, and academic organizations in five countries have adopted the technology, with more on the horizon.
9 December
Deforestation a main topic in Copenhagen
On Wednesday, the third day of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, one issue that is high on the agenda is deforestation, as the United Nations works on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD), especially concerning to delegates from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the second-largest rainforest in the world.
5 December
Copenhagen climate summit: Ending deforestation key to stopping global warming
Protecting rainforests will be a central part of any climate change deal at Copenhagen.
(Telegraph, U.K.) Deforestation causes around fifth of greenhouse gas emissions every year, more than all the forms of air and surface transport combined.
20 November
Deforestation deal could brighten Copenhagen gloom
The simple reality is this: an interim financing mechanism of around 20 billion euros would reduce levels of deforestation by 25% by 2015. And that would mean a net saving of 23 billion tonnes of CO2 through to 2020.
It’s still just possible that Copenhagen will do a deal on that (as part of the REDD discussions – Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), even if it doesn’t do the whole deal in terms of a new legally binding agreement as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
15 November
On the Copenhagen Agenda, Saving Forests May Still Work
(TIME) This month, the journal Nature Geoscience published a study calculating that deforestation is responsible for about 15% of global carbon emissions, down from earlier estimates of 20% or more. Most of the world’s deforestation is concentrated in a few tropical nations, like Brazil and Indonesia where trees are disappearing fast — when these trees die or are burned, they release into the atmosphere all the carbon they’ve sucked up while they were alive. According to the Nature Geoscience study, the problem of deforestation is becoming a lot less dire than previously thought.
Unfortunately, the study’s findings couldn’t be further from the truth. The authors’ recalculation had less to do with a reduction in deforestation than with an unexpected increase in emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
24 September
Q&A: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd)
Redd could be the cornerstone of a Copenhagen deal, putting forests at the frontline of tackling climate change for the first time
What is Redd?
It’s a way of paying poor countries to protect their forests. Global deforestation accounts for nearly 20% of all CO2 emissions and all previous attempts to curb it have failed. Redd — “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation” would allow countries that can reduce emissions from deforestation to be paid for doing so.
Where did the idea come from?
Papua New Guinea along with nine other countries proposed it in 2005 at a UN climate meeting. It has gained ground and is now likely to be one of the cornerstones of any agreement at the Copenhagen climate conference in December. It would not start until 2013, and could eventually channel tens of billions of dollars a year from rich to poor countries.
8 July
The promise and peril of REDD
Reducing deforestation is crucial to mitigate climate change, but it mustn’t be used as an excuse to continue polluting, says Roman Czebiniak of Greenpeace.
(SciDevNet) World leaders are discussing whether and how to include tropical forests in the next agreement on climate change. A decision on financing Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD) is expected at the Copenhagen climate negotiations at the end of this year.
Forests will be used to either bring the world closer to, or further away from, avoiding catastrophic climate change. Developing countries have the most to gain from a good deal, and the most to lose from a bad one.
Scientists have warned that a global temperature rise above two degrees Celsius would cause catastrophic damage to human livelihoods and the environment. A recent study in Nature examined a thousand different emission pathways to keeping us below this tipping point. All came to a singular conclusion: there are no shortcuts — we need to save every ounce of carbon we can.
Enter tropical deforestation, responsible for about 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than that from all the cars, planes, and trains in the world. After China and the United States, Indonesia and Brazil are the world’s third and fourth largest emitters — largely due to deforestation.
Reducing forest emissions: Facts and figures
19 March
U.N. Approves Program to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation
Yesterday, the U.N. announced it would spend $18 million in five pilot countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation while supporting local populations. The project — known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) — will be launched in Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania and Vietnam in advance of the Copenhagen climate summit taking place in December of this year.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that the forestry sector now accounts for about 17% of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. The REDD pilot participants hope to reduce greenhouse gas emissions both by using forest vegetation as a “carbon sink” to absorb excess amounts of carbon dioxide and by avoiding pollutants released during “slash and burn” clearing fires used to create fields for agriculture or livestock. The countries plan to employ local residents to monitor the forests’ health, thus providing economic benefits to the communities involved. Once an accounting method is agreed upon to determine how much carbon is being saved, REDD projects may be able to sell carbon credits to polluting nations to offset their emissions.

14 May 2007
Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming
In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. So why are global leaders turning a blind eye to this crisis? The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth’s equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories.