Amazon deforestation to fall 30% in 2009
Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.comSeptember 02, 2009
In conserving its forests while its growing export-oriented wood products industry, Vietnam outsources deforestation to Laos, Cambodia, and China.
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"We'll have the lowest deforestation in 21 years," Minc said at a news conference in Brasilia, according to Reuters.
Minc's estimates are based on a preliminary report by Brazil's National Institute of Space Studies (INPE), which showed a 46 percent reduction in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the year ended in July. Minc attributed "90 percent" of the reduction to increased enforcement effort, although analysts suggest that falling commodity prices have had a significant impact in the trend. Agricultural production is an increasingly important driver of forest clearing and conversion in the Amazon.
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How to save the Amazon rainforest
(01/04/2009) Environmentalists have long voiced concern over the vanishing Amazon rainforest, but they haven't been particularly effective at slowing forest loss. In fact, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars in donor funds that have flowed into the region since 2000 and the establishment of more than 100 million hectares of protected areas since 2002, average annual deforestation rates have increased since the 1990s, peaking at 73,785 square kilometers (28,488 square miles) of forest loss between 2002 and 2004. With land prices fast appreciating, cattle ranching and industrial soy farms expanding, and billions of dollars' worth of new infrastructure projects in the works, development pressure on the Amazon is expected to accelerate. Given these trends, it is apparent that conservation efforts alone will not determine the fate of the Amazon or other rainforests. Some argue that market measures, which value forests for the ecosystem services they provide as well as reward developers for environmental performance, will be the key to saving the Amazon from large-scale destruction. In the end it may be the very markets currently driving deforestation that save forests.
Brazil's ecosystem payments system offers clues for REDD implementation
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