Local farmer in Indonesian New Guinea Countries poised to receive World Bank funds for achieving reductions in deforestation have insufficient safeguards for ensuring that local communities don't lose out in…
Poison dart frog in Yasuni National Park. Some scientists believe the park is in the epicenter of the most biodiverse region on the planet, yet Ecuador has been exploiting the…
Map of REDDX countries. Only a small fraction of the $7.3 billion pledged under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) program has actually been disbursed, find a new…
Carnegie Airborne Observatory map showing carbon in along the main stem of the Amazon in Peru. All images courtesy of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory/Greg Asner Nearly a billion tons of…
Cleared timber plantation and peat forest in Indonesia. Photos by Rhett A. Butler. Dozens of companies, non-profit organizations, and governments pledged to work together to halve forest loss by 2020…
Forest map in the Peruvian Amazon developed from the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, an airplane-based platform that uses advanced LiDAR to measure forest carbon values and other properties. Photo courtesy of…
Global Forest Watch map showing forest loss in and around Tajung Puting and the Rimba Raya project area. Just over a year ago, the Indonesian government officially approved the country's…
Selective logging in Brazil. Photo by Luke Parry. Selective logging and small sub-canopy fires are degrading vast areas of rainforest across the Brazilian Amazon, contributing to largely hidden carbon emissions,…
Cumulative deforestation and population growth. Courtesy of UNREDD Investing $30 billion a year in forest conservation — less than seven percent of the $480 billion spent annually on fossil fuels…
Rainforest in Sumatra, Indonesia. West Sumatra has officially joined Indonesia's effort to cut forest loss as a pilot province under the country's REDD+ program. The agreement, announced today, means that…
Rainforest near Makira in Madagascar. Technology giant Microsoft has bought the first carbon credits generated under a rainforest conservation project in Madagascar, reports Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which organized and…
Advocates for reduced impact logging in tropical forests often make a case that better forest management cuts carbon emissions relative to traditional forms of timber harvesting. While the argument for…
Innovation in Tropical Forest Conservation: Q&A with Corey Bradshaw Primary peat forest in Sumatra. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Much of Dr. Corey Bradshaw's work has a singular aim: to…
Deforestation in Riau Province, Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. An ambitious plan to save the world's tropical forests by valuing them for the carbon the store may fail to…
The year in rainforest news 2013 was full of major developments in efforts to understand and protect the world's tropical rainforests. The following is a review of some of the…
Peat forest in Borneo. All photos by Rhett A. Butler. Indonesia has selected the first chief of its new REDD+ agency: Heru Prasetyo, an administrator and former private sector management…
Rainforest in Sabah. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Negotiators in Warsaw have reached formal agreement on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), a program that aims to compensate tropical…
Tropical forest loss by country 2000-2012 The governments of Norway, Britain and the United States pledged $280 million toward a new initiative that aims to reduce emissions associated with forest…
The state of the REDD+ carbon market in 2012 Logging, conversion to plantations and agriculture, and other drivers of deforestation account for roughly ten percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions…
Rainforest in Indonesia. Provided two to three days of training, forest communities can accurately and cost-effectively measure biomass and other data needed to assess REDD+ projects, finds a new study…
An initiative that is developing a framework for REDD+ programs at state and provincial levels gained three more members last week. The Peruvian departments of San Martin, Loreto, and Ucayali…
Carbon credits generated from protecting thousands of hectares of endangered rainforest in northeastern Madagascar have now been certified for sale, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the project's main organizer.…
The Paiter-Suruí, a rainforest tribe that in June became the first indigenous group to generate REDD+ credits under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), has now closed their first deal. As…
Indonesia has finally established an agency to implement the country's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) program. The REDD+ agency, established by a decree from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono…
The U.N.'s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (UN-REDD) program may be faltering in Panama due to its failure to build capacity for indigenous people who should play a central…
Often misunderstood, REDD+ forest carbon offsets are a “must have” for any realistic climate-change mitigation strategy. Californians are known as innovation leaders, and once again, we are on the verge…
Infinite Earth, the developer behind Indonesia's first approved REDD+ project, has refuted an NGO's claims that the project has been only partially approved by the Indonesian government. In a statement…
A panel of scientific experts has released a final report outlining how carbon credits generated from tropical forest conservation could be used under California's cap-and-trade system while minimizing risks to…
Corruption and mismanagement in Indonesia’s forest sector have cost the government billions of dollars in losses in recent years, including over $7 billion in losses from 2007-2011, Human Rights Watch…
Australia is ending its major forest restoration project in Indonesian Borneo, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. Launched during the peak of excitement about the potential of forest conservation to help…
