Rainforest Ecological Services news from mongabay.com

Concerns over deforestation may drive new approach to cattle ranching in the Amazon

2009-09-08T20:50:00Z

While you're browsing the mall for running shoes, the Amazon rainforest is probably the farthest thing from your mind. Perhaps it shouldn't be. The globalization of commodity supply chains has created links between consumer products and distant ecosystems like the Amazon. Shoes sold in downtown Manhattan may have been assembled in Vietnam using leather supplied from a Brazilian processor that subcontracted to a rancher in the Amazon. But while demand for these products is currently driving environmental degradation, this connection may also hold the key to slowing the destruction of Earth's largest rainforest.

Prince Charles says hedge funds could save rainforests

2008-09-11T14:30:39Z

Prince Charles renewed his call to protect rainforests for the services they provide humanity. Speaking Wednesday at a black-tie dinner in London, Charles compared the need to protect forests to fighting a war.

Rainforest peoples form alliance to demand payments for forest carbon credits

2008-04-07T14:30:39Z

Rainforest peoples from 11 nations have formed a coalition to demand a greater say in future climate negotiations.

Can cattle ranchers and soy farmers save the Amazon?

2007-06-06T14:30:00Z

John Cain Carter, a Texas rancher who moved to the heart of the Amazon 11 years ago and founded what is perhaps the most innovative organization working in the Amazon, Alianca da Terra, believes the only way to save the Amazon is through the market. Carter says that by giving producers incentives to reduce their impact on the forest, the market can succeed where conservation efforts have failed. What is most remarkable about Alianca's system is that it has the potential to be applied to any commodity anywhere in the world. That means palm oil in Borneo could be certified just as easily as sugar cane in Brazil or sheep in New Zealand. By addressing the supply chain, tracing agricultural products back to the specific fields where they were produced, the system offers perhaps the best market-based solution to combating deforestation. Combining these approaches with large-scale land conservation and scientific research offers what may be the best hope for saving the Amazon.

Globalization could save the Amazon rainforest

2007-06-03T14:30:00Z

The Amazon basin is home to the world's largest rainforest, an ecosystem that supports perhaps 30 percent of the world's terrestrial species, stores vast amounts of carbon, and exerts considerable influence on global weather patterns and climate. Few would dispute that it is one of the planet's most important landscapes. Despite its scale, the Amazon is also one of the fastest changing ecosystems, largely as a result of human activities, including deforestation, forest fires, and, increasingly, climate change. Few people understand these impacts better than Dr. Daniel Nepstad, one of the world's foremost experts on the Amazon rainforest. Now head of the Woods Hole Research Center's Amazon program in Belem, Brazil, Nepstad has spent more than 23 years in the Amazon, studying subjects ranging from forest fires and forest management policy to sustainable development. Nepstad says the Amazon is presently at a point unlike any he's ever seen, one where there are unparalleled risks and opportunities. While he's hopeful about some of the trends, he knows the Amazon faces difficult and immediate challenges.

Amazon deforestation damaging critical ecosystem services

2007-02-08T14:30:39Z

Human disturbance of the Amazon rainforest is more extensive than previously thought say a team of scientists writing in the current edition of the journal Frontiers in Ecology. Reviewing recent research on the Amazon ecosystem, they note that human activities are affecting the health of the forest and impacting the ecological goods and services the Amazon provides mankind.

Deforestation causes 25% of greenhouse gas emissions

2005-12-10T15:19:39Z

Yesterday the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) offered to provide forestry data and technical assistance to countries looking to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through the reduction of forest loss.

Deforestation and erosion starving Malawi

2005-10-13T15:19:39Z

Forest loss and erosion could doom Malawi to perpetual food shortages as the country's fertile soil is literally swept down to its rivers and flushed out to sea.

Tropical deforestation affects rainfall in North America

2005-09-20T15:19:39Z

NASA research has found that deforestation in the tropics affects rainfall patterns in North America. Deforestation in the Amazon region of South America influences rainfall from Mexico to Texas and in the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly, deforesting lands in Central Africa affects precipitation in the upper and lower U.S Midwest, while deforestation in Southeast Asia was found to alter rainfall in China and the Balkan Peninsula.