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News articles on avoided deforestation

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Mongabay.com news articles on avoided deforestation in blog format. Updated regularly.

How best to balance economic growth and protection of the environment?

(08/30/2010) When people are hungry for an uncertain income, they will destroy everything. When people become poor due to a poor decision they were excluded from making, who should be responsible for that? Development is seen as the answer to poverty. However, many controversial developments have actually increased poverty, and while the investors in such schemes may benefit, the local people pay the price. This happened in Tundai, a fishing village in the ex-mega rice area near Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan. When central government in the 1990s decided to convert the peat swamp forests into rice fields, the community had no voice or involvement in the decision. The project failed. Now over a million hectares of former lush forests have become a wasteland, and the people of Tundai have been thrust into poverty.


Indonesia's forest conservation plan may not sufficiently reduce emissions

(08/25/2010) One third of Indonesia's greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation originate from areas not officially defined as 'forest' suggesting that efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) may fail unless they account for carbon across the country's entire landscape, warns a new report published by the World Agroforestry Centre (CGIAR). The policy brief finds that up to 600 million tons of Indonesia's carbon emissions 'occur outside institutionally defined forests' and are therefore not accounted for under the current national REDD+ policy, which, if implemented, would enable Indonesia to win compensation from industrialized countries for protecting its carbon-dense forests and peatlands as a climate change mechanism.


Gazprom, Shell and Clinton Foundation back rainforest carbon deal in Borneo

(08/24/2010) A forest conservation project backed by Shell, Gazprom Market and Trading and the Clinton Foundation on the island of Borneo has won approval under a carbon accounting standard, reports Reuters.


Indonesia gets first $30M from Norway under $1B forest deal

(08/19/2010) Norway has agreed to transfer an initial $30 million to Indonesia under its $1 billion REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) partnership with the Southeast Asian country.


Indonesian people-not international donors or orangutan conservationists-will determine the ultimate fate of Indonesia's forests

(07/29/2010) Many of the environmental issues facing Indonesia are embodied in the plight of the orangutan, the red ape that inhabits the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Orangutan populations have plummeted over the past century, a result of hunting, habitat loss, the pet trade, and human-ape conflict. Accordingly, governments, charities, and concerned individuals have ploughed tens of millions of dollars into orangutan conservation, but have little to show in terms of slowing or reversing the decline. The same can be said about forest conservation in Indonesia: while massive amounts of money have been put toward protecting and sustainable using forests, the sum is dwarfed by the returns from converting forests into timber, rice, paper, and palm oil. So orangutans—and forests—continue to lose out to economic development, at least as conventionally pursued. Poor governance means that even when well-intentioned measures are in place, they are often undermined by corruption, apathy, or poorly-designed policies. So is there a future for Indonesia's red apes and their forest home? Erik Meijaard, an ecologist who has worked in Indonesia since 1993 and is considered a world authority on orangutan populations, is cautiously optimistic, although he sees no 'silver bullet' solutions.


Scientists sound warning on forest carbon payment scheme

(07/22/2010) Scientists convening in Bali expressed a range of concerns over a proposed mechanism for mitigating climate change through forest conservation, but some remained hopeful the idea could deliver long-term protection to forests, ease the transition to a low-carbon economy, and generate benefits to forest-dependent people.


Ending deforestation could boost Brazilian agriculture

(06/26/2010) Ending Amazon deforestation could boost the fortunes of the Brazilian agricultural sector by $145-306 billion, estimates a new analysis issued by Avoided Deforestation Partners, a group pushing for U.S. climate legislation that includes a strong role for forest conservation. The analysis, which follows on the heels of a report that forecast large gains for U.S. farmers from progress in gradually stopping overseas deforestation by 2030, estimates that existing Brazilian farmers could see around $100 billion from higher commodity prices and improved access to markets. Meanwhile landholders in the Brazilian Amazon—including ranchers and farmers—could see $50-202 billion from carbon payments for forest protection.


Rainforest scientists urge UN to correct "serious loophole" by changing its definition of 'forest'

(06/24/2010) The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) has released a resolution urging the UN to change its definition for 'forest', before the controversial definition undermines conservation efforts, biodiversity preservation, carbon sequestration, and the nascent REDD (Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and forest Degradation).


U.S. farms and forests report draws ire in Brazil; cutting down the Amazon does not mean lower food prices

(06/24/2010) Not surprisingly, a US report released last week which argued that saving forests abroad will help US agricultural producers by reducing international competition has raised hackles in tropical forest counties. The report, commissioned by Avoided Deforestation Partners, a US group pushing for including tropical forest conservation in US climate policy, and the National Farmers Union, a lobbying firm, has threatened to erode support for stopping deforestation in places like Brazil. However, two rebuttals have been issued, one from international environmental organizations and the other from Brazilian NGOs, that counter findings in the US report and urge unity in stopping deforestation, not for the economic betterment of US producers, but for everyone.


Saving tropical forests helps protects U.S. agriculture, argues campaign

(06/18/2010) Reducing deforestation abroad helps protect the U.S. agricultural sector by ensuring higher prices for commodities and reducing the cost of compliance with expected climate regulations, argues a new report issued by Avoided Deforestation Partners, a group pushing for the inclusion of tropical forests in domestic climate policy, and the National Farmers Union, a farming lobby group.


Indonesia's plan to save its rainforests

(06/14/2010) Late last year Indonesia made global headlines with a bold pledge to reduce deforestation, which claimed nearly 28 million hectares (108,000 square miles) of forest between 1990 and 2005 and is the source of about 80 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Indonesia would voluntarily cut emissions 26 percent — and up to 41 percent with sufficient international support — from a projected baseline by 2020. Last month, Indonesia began to finally detail its plan, which includes a two-year moratorium on new forestry concession on rainforest lands and peat swamps and will be supported over the next five years by a one billion dollar contribution by Norway, under the Scandinavian nation's International Climate and Forests Initiative. In an interview with mongabay.com, Agus Purnomo and Yani Saloh of Indonesia's National Climate Change Council to the President discussed the new forest program and Norway's billion dollar commitment.


REDD threatens rights of 350 million local people

(06/03/2010) Last week the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program received a jump start with a four billion US dollar pledge from a number of industrialized nations. Under REDD tropical forest nation will be paid to keep forests standing, however the program—as it currently stands—has provoked concern over the rights of the some 350 million people living in or adjacent to forests. The Accra Caucus on Forests and Climate Change, a coalition of some 100 organizations from 38 countries, has released a report outlining an alternative vision of REDD that would uphold the rights of local and indigenous people while protecting forests.


As Amazon deforestation rates fall, fires increase

(06/03/2010) While rates of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon have been on the decline since 2004, the incidence of fire is increasing in the region, undermining some of the carbon emissions savings of reduced deforestation rates, report researchers writing in the journal Science. The paper argues that REDD, a global plan to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, must include measures to eliminate the use of fire from land management in the Amazon.


Corruption could undermine REDD

(06/03/2010) With four billion US dollars pledged last week to kick-start the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), a new report by Global Witness warns that the funds could do little to stem deforestation if governance and accountability are not improved and corruption tackled. The REDD program provides funds to tropical nations to keep forests standing as a means to sequester carbon.


Norway's billion dollar contribution to Indonesian forests excludes national reforestation scheme

(06/01/2010) Norway's billion dollar contribution to forest and peatlands conservation in Indonesia will not fund reforestation of deforested areas, a government minister told The Jakarta Post.


New protected areas in Brazil contribute to major drop in Amazon deforestation rate

(06/01/2010) Protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon are proving highly effective in reducing forest loss in Earth's largest rainforest, reports a new study based on analysis of deforestation trends in and around indigenous territories, parks, military holdings, and sustainable use reserves. The research, published in the early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that 37 percent of the recent decline in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon can be attributed to newly established protected areas. Brazil designated some 709,000 square kilometers (274,000 sq mi) of Amazon forest — an area larger than the state of Texas — between 2002 and 2009 under its Amazon Protected Areas Program (ARPA). Meanwhile deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell by nearly three-quarters between 2004 and 2009.


Indonesia to revoke palm oil concession licenses under forest deal

(05/31/2010) Indonesia will revoke existing forestry licenses to cut down natural forests under the billion dollar deal climate deal signed with Norway last week, reports Reuters.


Can markets protect nature?

(05/03/2010) Over the past 30 years billions of dollars has been committed to global conservation efforts, yet forests continue to fall, largely a consequence of economic drivers, including surging global demand for food and fuel. With consumption expected to far outstrip population growth due to rising affluence in developing countries, there would seem to be little hope of slowing tropical forest loss. But some observers see new reason for optimism—chiefly a new push to make forests more valuable as living entities than chopped down for the production of timber, animal feed, biofuels, and meat. While are innumerable reasons for protecting forests—including aesthetic, cultural, spiritual, and moral—most land use decisions boil down to economics. Therefore creating economic incentives to maintaining forests is key to saving them. Leading the effort to develop markets ecosystem services is Forest Trends, a Washington D.C.-based NGO that also organizes the Katoomba group, a forum that brings together a wide variety of forest stakeholders, including the private sector, local communities, indigenous people, policymakers, international development institutions, funders, conservationists, and activists.


World failing on every environmental issue: an op-ed for Earth Day

(04/22/2010) The biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis, the deforestation crisis: we are living in an age when environmental issues have moved from regional problems to global ones. A generation or two before ours and one might speak of saving the beauty of Northern California; conserving a single species—say the white rhino—from extinction; or preserving an ecological region like the Amazon. That was a different age. Today we speak of preserving world biodiversity, of saving the 'lungs of the planet', of mitigating global climate change. No longer are humans over-reaching in just one region, but we are overreaching the whole planet, stretching ecological systems to a breaking point. While we are aware of the issues that threaten the well-being of life on this planet, including our own, how are we progressing on solutions?


Where do forest carbon markets go from here?

(04/20/2010) For thousands of years, we have been planting and growing trees without difficulty. It's simple, and forest carbon business strategy can be, too. In fact, it's core to what I'm trying to teach the MBA/MS students in my course at the Erb Institute this semester: If the world's best available technology for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is employing the natural photosynthetic capacity of natural forest management, we can too.


Skoll Foundation Awards $2.2 millon to avoided deforestation and the ecosystem services market

(04/18/2010) This week the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship awarded its annual Awards for Social Entrepreneurship and three of the seven prizes went to individuals and organizations focused on tropical forests and ecosystem services, including Forest Trends, Imazon, and Telapak. Each award is worth $765,000, which amounts to over $2.2 million for this space. The awards were presented at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford, United Kingdom.


$6B forest conservation plan lacking in transparency, indigenous participation, say activists

(04/13/2010) The process to establish REDD+, a proposed climate change mitigation mechanism that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by funding conservation and sustainable management of tropical forests (REDD+), is lacking in transparency and failing to include civil society organizations and indigenous peoples, say activists across forty NGOs.


Chaos and the Accord: Climate Change, Tropical Forests and REDD+ after Copenhagen

(04/06/2010) The Copenhagen Accord, forged at COP15 upended international efforts to confront climate change. Never before have 115 Heads of State gathered together at one time, let alone for the singular purpose of crafting a new climate change agreement. Even though the new Accord is still in intensive care, two things are already clear. First, we have entered an entirely new world. And second, tropical forests have the greatest potential to breathe life into the new agreement.


Indonesia to establish rainforest trust fund

(03/30/2010) Indonesia is preparing to establish a trust fund to reduce deforestation, reports the Jakarta Globe.


U.S. and Brazil sign deforestation agreement

(03/07/2010) Brazil and the United States have signed an agreement to worth together to reduce deforestation as part of an effort to slow climate change.


Australia pledges $30m to reduce deforestation in Sumatra

(03/03/2010) Australia will contribute A$30 million to a project to reduce deforestation in the province of Jambi, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, reports Reuters.


REDD may not provide sufficient incentive to developers over palm oil

(02/22/2010) In less than a generation oil palm cultivation has emerged as a leading form of land use in tropical forests, especially in Southeast Asia. Rising global demand for edible oils, coupled with the crop's high yield, has turned palm oil into an economic juggernaut, generating us$ 10 billion in exports for Indonesia and Malaysia, which account for 85 percent of palm oil production, alone. Today more than 40 countries - led by China, India, and Europe - import crude palm oil.


Google Earth boosts deforestation monitoring capabilities

(02/07/2010) Google has taken a step towards ramping up the deforestation monitoring capabilities the Google Earth Engine by contracting Massachusetts-based Clark Labs to develop an online version of its Land Change Modeler application.


Commodity trade and urbanization, rather than rural poverty, drive deforestation

(02/07/2010) Deforestation is increasingly correlated to urban population growth and trade rather than rural poverty, suggesting that measures proposed to reduce deforestation will be ineffective if they fail to address demand for commodities produced on forest lands, argues a new paper published in Nature GeoScience.


Forest conservation in U.S. climate policy: an interview with Jeff Horowitz

(02/05/2010) The Copenhagen Accord signed in December is widely seen as a disappointment. The Accord set no binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions targets and did not even commitment to a legally binding treaty in the future. Serious work is needed to bring the process back on track. But some progress was made. Countries agreed on international monitoring of emissions (a point of conflict between China and the United States) and funding (rich countries pledged $3 billion a year for the next three years and up to $100 billion a year by 2020) for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. Furthermore, there were gains for the REDD mechanism, a U.N.-backed plan to compensate developing countries for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation.


Could special bonds fund the green revolution and stabilize the climate?

(02/02/2010) There is no question that governments around the world are moving slowly and sluggishly to combat climate change, especially when placed against the measures recommended by climate scientists. Only a handful of nations have actually cut overall greenhouse gas emissions, and the past couple decades have seen emissions rise rapidly worldwide as nations like India and China industrialize while Brazil and Indonesia continue massive deforestation. Global temperatures are rising in concert (though with natural fluctuations): the past decade is the warmest on record. After the failure of Copenhagen this past December to produce an ambitious and binding treaty, many are wondering if the world will ever address the threat of climate change or if future generations are set to live in a world far different—and more volatile—than the one we currently enjoy.


UK to fund efforts to shift towards greener palm oil production

(01/31/2010) Britain will contribute £50m ($80m) towards efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Indonesia, including a project that aims to encourage palm oil producers to establish plantations on degraded lands instead of in place of rainforests and carbon-dense peatlands, reports BBC News.


Photos: park in Ecuador likely contains world’s highest biodiversity, but threatened by oil

(01/19/2010) In the midst of a seesaw political battle to save Yasuni National Park from oil developers, scientists have announced that this park in Ecuador houses more species than anywhere else in South America—and maybe the world. "Yasuní is at the center of a small zone where South America's amphibians, birds, mammals, and vascular plants all reach maximum diversity," Dr. Clinton Jenkins of the University of Maryland said in a press release. "We dubbed this area the 'quadruple richness center.'"


Congo basin rainforest countries

(01/15/2010) Payments for ecosystem services may be a key component in maintaining Central Africa's rainforests as healthy and productive ecosystems, finds a comprehensive assessment of the region's forests.


Forest carbon conservation projects top $100 million

(01/14/2010) The market for carbon credits generated through forest conservation topped $100 million from 2007 through the first half of 2009, despite a global recession and plunging carbon prices in regulated markets, reports a new assessment by Ecosystem Marketplace.


REDD must address corruption to save rainforests in Indonesia, says report

(01/13/2010) The Indonesian government squandered billions of dollars in funds set aside for reforestation through corruption and mismanagement in the 1990s, raising important questions as the country prepares for the influx of money from a proposed climate change mitigation scheme known as REDD+ (reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation), warns a new report released Tuesday by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), a forest policy research group.


Indonesia to plant and restore vast area of forest to reach emissions target

(01/07/2010) Indonesia will rehabilitate degraded forests and plant millions of hectares of new forests to meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent from projected levels by 2020, reports Reuters.


Guyana to increase oversight of gold mining under deal to save forests with Norway

(12/21/2009) As apart of a deal with Norway to preserve its rainforests, Guyana will step up oversight of its gold mining industry, which has been accused of causing significant environmental damage including deforestation and mercury and cyanide pollution.


Dead REDD? Not quite, but plan to protect forests suffers set back in Copenhagen

(12/20/2009) A plan to reduce tropical deforestation by paying developing countries to protect forests was postponed Saturday after world leaders failed to produce a binding climate agreement, reports the Associated Press.


Biggest private funder of Amazon conservation teams with Google and scientists to develop earth monitoring platform

(12/18/2009) The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the largest private funder of Amazon rainforest conservation, is playing an unheralded but integral role in the development of the Earth Engine platform, a system that combines the computing power of Google with advanced monitoring and analysis technologies developed by leading environmental scientists. The platform, which was officially unveiled at climate talks in in Copenhagen, promises to enable near real-time monitoring of the world's forests and carbon at high resolution at selected sites before COP-16 in Mexico.


Kenya REDD project becomes first in Africa to win gold-level validation

(12/18/2009) A Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) project in Kenya has become the first in Africa to win GOLD level validation under the Climate Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Alliance's REDD Standard, a certification program to ensure that communities and biodiversity benefit from such projects.


More than half world's science academies support call to save rainforests

(12/17/2009) More than half world's science academies have signed a statement supporting a plan to save tropical forests as a means to fight climate change, reports the Global Canopy Program, an initiative that has worked closely with Prince Charles to promote rainforest conservation. The statement argues that tropical forest protection is a critical strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next 15-20 years. It calls upon world leaders to reach a consensus on a path forward for a funding package that would support the infrastructure needed to develop an effective reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) mechanism.


U.S. pledges $1B towards rainforest conservation

(12/17/2009) The U.S. will contribute $1 billion towards an effort to reduce emissions from deforestation, according to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.


Google's Earth Engine to help tropical countries monitor forests

(12/16/2009) A powerful forest monitoring application unveiled last week by Google will be made freely available to developing countries as a means to build the capacity to quality for compensation under REDD, a proposed climate change mitigation mechanism that would pay tropical countries for protecting forests, according to a senior Google engineer presenting at a side event at COP15 in Copenhagen.


Rich logging countries open logging loophole in plan to reduce deforestation

(12/15/2009) While one tropical forest policy group saw hopeful signs emerging in the most recent revision of the negotiating text on the reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) mechanism at climate talks in Copenhagen, activist groups are warning that there remains a substantial logging loophole for developed countries.


Progress made on two key REDD issues in Copenhagen

(12/15/2009) Negotiators in Copenhagen have made progress on two key issues for the reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) mechanism, reports a forest policy group.


New REDD text is weak, say activists

(12/12/2009) Activist group have condemned the latest draft text of an agreement that aims to protect rainforests as a means to mitigate climate change.


REDD may miss up to 80 percent of land use change emissions

(12/11/2009) The political definition of 'forest' used in REDD (Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) threatens to undermine the program's objective to conserve ecosystems for their ability to sequester carbon, according to a new analysis by the Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) Partnership for Tropical Forest Margins. In an analysis of three Indonesian provinces using REDD proposals for carbon accounting, ASB found that REDD may miss up to 80 percent of the actual emissions due to land use change. The carbon accounting problems could be fixed, according to ASB, by expanding REDD's purpose from reducing emissions linked to deforestation (considering the problematic definition of forests) to reducing emission from all land use changes that either release or capture greenhouse gases, including but not limited to forests.


Google Earth to monitor deforestation

(12/10/2009) It what could be a critical development in helping tropical countries monitor deforestation, Google has unveiled a partnership with scientists using advanced remote sensing technology to rapidly analyze and map forest cover in extremely high resolution. The effort could help countries detect deforestation shortly after it occurs making it easier to prevent further forest clearing.


REDD+ could turn deforesters into forest protectors

(12/09/2009) Payments for conservation and sustainable management of forests could turn agents of forest destruction into forest protectors, according to a comprehensive analysis of national policy options to reduce deforestation released in Copenhagen by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).



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