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A $494,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant will study how the spread of cogongrass af fects Alabama's pine forests /montgomeryadvertiser.com.

An isolated First Nations region on the northern British Columbia coast is emerging as a new economic powerhouse, leading the rebirth of the forest industry in that part of the province /edmontonjournal.com

Antara News, 13 March 2010 | Greenpeace activists scaled the Ministry of Forestry building in South Jakarta and unfurled a giant banner reading "Plantations are not forests". Greenpeace feared that the inclusion of `plantations in the definition of forests, would lead to massive concealment of the ongoing emissions from peatland and forest destruction that has made Indonesia the world`s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to information on the Greeanpeace Southeast Asia`s official website, Saturday. Greenpeace, along with a number of environmental and civil society organizations, have condemned the Indonesian government`s attempts to classify `plantations as forests while allowing continued destruction of critical habitats like peatland forests and the last remaining biodiversity hotspots.

Forest Carbon Portal, 1 March 2010 | This UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP- WCMC) report considers the measures that have been and might be undertaken to promote environmental co-benefits from REDD. Such measures may be linked to decisions on financing. The report surveys the measures that are found in existing REDD initiatives, including in the proposed UNFCCC REDD mechanism itself. It considers the options and opportunities for how these measures might be amended and developed in the future. [R-M: The report is available here: http://bit.ly/90fI02]

ScandAsia.Com, 14 March 2010 | The Norwegian Embassy in Jakarta has recently established a new counsellor post to strengthen the focus on deforestation and low carbon development in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam. Ms. Ragnhildstveit will work to prepare a strategy for implementation of the Government of Norway International Climate and Forest Initiative. She started working for the Embassy in the beginning of January, but she knows the region well and speaks Bahasa Indonesia. Background: The Government's Climate and Forest Initiative was launched by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg at the climate summit on Bali in December 2007, and started in the spring of 2008. One of the key objectives of the project is to include the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries in a new global climate agreement.

Ambergris Daily, 13 March 2010 | Officials of Belize and Guatemala, including a representative of the surveillance group Comision de Belice, a department in the Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, held a high-level meeting in Belize City, Belize ... in the wake of flared tensions along Belize’s western and southern border with Guatemala. There are 60 small communities of Guatemalans living in the border area inside the so-called “adjacency zone.” “They are coming over and exploiting Belize’s forests, because they have depleted the forest on their side,” Gibson said, describing the incursions as catastrophic. “It has been a burgeoning problem for us to deal with that.” He added: “What we have done under the heading of science diplomacy, is to harness science and technology to deal with this problem under the heading of the Copenhagen UN REDD Plus [Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation]… to which all countries subscribe, including Guatemala.”

By Gualbert Sutherland, Stabroek News, 13 March 2010 | Some Indigenous leaders, who recently voiced concerns about the scope of government consultations over forest preservation plans, have since been victims of intimidation tactics, the Amerindian Peoples Association (APA) disclosed yesterday, while maintaining that genuine concerns of communities cannot be ignored. Meanwhile, Minister of Amerindian Affairs Pauline Sukhai has acknowledged that there is more to do to help Amerindians understand the government’s plans but accused the APA of communicating “misconceptions and half-truths.”

The Seminal, 12 March 2010 | The need to do right by Alaskan Natives needs to be balanced against the need to do right by the planet. Rather than a simple no vote, Congress could consider the concept of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in the bill. If we’re willing to consider paying Indonesia and Brazil not to cut down their tropical forests, perhaps a similar solution for any land transferred to Sealaska can be found close to home? The Wilderness Society believes that the economic realities in the Tongass work in favor of conservation, recreation, and carbon sequestration, and against logging.

By Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta Post, 13 March 2010 | Indigenous people have begun mapping their customary land across the country in an effort to gain recognition amid conflict with the government and business communities over land ownership. The Alliance of Archipelagic Indigenous People (AMAN) estimated the indigenous people had traditionally occupied about 20 million hectares of land, most natural forest. AMAN, with its 1,163 communities occupying about 7.5 million hectares of land, mapped 2.3 million hectares of customary land. “We will submit the map to the government as a reference for land policies,” secretary-general of AMAN, Abdon Nababan, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

By Elain Ganley, Associated Press, 11 March 2010 | French President Nicolas Sarkozy, opening the conference, said defending the world's forests demanded more aggressive funding. "Those who don't want to do anything are those who don't want to pay," he said. He reiterated his appeal for a tax on financial market transactions worldwide that could be earmarked for a global climate fund. "Together, we will demonstrate that it is possible to achieve concrete and measurable results, as of this year, starting with ... the fight against deforestation," Sarkozy said. He called the Copenhagen conference "frustrating." France, Norway and four other countries pledged an initial $3.5 billion to REDD Plus through 2012. The core coordination group established in Paris will, among other things, see where the funds are spent and ensure it is done fairly. Minc, the Brazilian minister, said: if "we will arrive in Cancun with things that work, we won't repeat the problems of Copenhagen."

WWF press release, 11 March 2010 | Forest and donor countries have kicked off an important joint process which could speed up action to reduce the 15 per cent of global carbon emissions linked to deforestation and forest degradation... “Slowing deforestation would help the world significantly cut global emissions,” said WWF Forest Carbon Initiative Leader Chris Elliott. “That’s an opportunity we simply cannot ignore as any delay in reducing emissions only makes it more difficult to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees C.” “The REDD+ Partnership process must build real momentum for countries to move ahead with REDD+,” said Elliott, “It is important this remains an open and inclusive process.”

Climate-L.org, 10 March 2010 | Workshops for countries participating in the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD) and the Forest Carbon Partnership Fund (FCPF) were held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 1-3 March 2010, and Hanoi, Viet Nam, from 8-10 March 2010. The workshops were hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre and Alternatives to Slash and Burn Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins (ASB), both of which are members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). The workshops follow previous meetings in 2009 on “REDD at the Copenhagen Climate Talks and Beyond- Bridging the Gap between Negotiations and Actions.” [R-M: A background paper is available here: http://bit.ly/aqqsca]

By Ross Andrew Clarke, Law, Environment and Development Journal, 6/1, 2010 | As the dust settles after Copenhagen and the barriers to reaching global consensus on combating climate change are put into stark relief, REDD still has potential to become a UNFCCC success story. In relation to REDD, there is agreement on many core issues and significant momentum remains towards a REDD mechanism firmly engrained in the post-2012 climate change framework. Yet most debate occurs in the abstract with policy and methodological decisions made with minimal conception of how these issues will play out in REDD participant countries. This article aims to break this trend and takes a prominent REDD pilot activity as its reference point. The Ulu Masen Project in Aceh , Indonesia , while only in its infancy, provides valuable lessons on legal frameworks, benefit-sharing and financing. [R-M: The full article is available here: http://bit.ly/97KLCg]

By Rebecca Sommer, Huntingtonnews.net, 11 March 2010 | International groups expressed in a joint letter their outrage and opposition against Brazil's plan to build Belo Monte, a mega-hydroelectric project... "The decision of the Brazilian Government to go ahead with this devastating project is particularly cynical in the light of the massive amounts of funding they are currently receiving from donors like the Norwegian Government to presumably "reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation"(REDD). " said Simone Lovera, Executive Director of the international group Global Forest Coalition.

RFI, 11 March 2010 | French President Nicolas Sarkozy opens an international conference on deforestation in Paris on Thursday. Ministers from 30 heavily forested countries and 12 potential donor countries are attending the conference. “Forests are in danger,” France’s Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told a press conference on Wednesday where he called for efforts to fight deforestation to “step up a gear”. Preserving woodland, which store carbon, is seen as an essential part of the fight against climate change.

By Rebecca Sommer, Huntintonnews.net, 11 March 2010 | The proposals from the European Commission on post-Copenhagen climate policy that were released on March 10, 2010 will undermine the UN negotiations on climate change, warns a group of forest campaigners. They say the report paves the way for highly volatile carbon markets that jeopardize forest-dependent peoples’ livelihoods, and urges policymakers to focus on domestic emission cuts and finance for forest conservation and restoration instead. The European Commission communication proposes to work together with ‘interested’ developed and developing countries to create sectorial carbon market mechanisms, outside the scope of the UN Climate Change negotiations. Forest campaigners fear chaos if a scheme to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is included in these carbon markets.

By Elaine Ganley, Associated Press, 11 March 2010 | Thursday's meeting, to be followed by a May conference in Oslo, was focused on how to implement forest-preserving measures agreed on in principle at the last U.N. climate conference in December in Copenhagen, Denmark. Specifically, nations need to work out how to disburse the $30 billion pledged by rich countries over the next three years. In total, world leaders agreed to spend $100 billion by 2020 to help poor nations preserve forests, protect coasts, adjust drought-threatened crops, build water supplies and irrigation systems, and adopt low-carbon energy options such as solar and wind power. French officials said they expected 20 percent of that to go to fighting deforestation. Sarkozy said he wanted the Paris conference to bring more funding pledges for forests while working out how to organize the aid and find mechanisms to guarantee transparency. He said he wanted the private sector join in, too.

By Benjamin Bloma, Terry Sunderlandb and Daniel Murdiyarsoc, Environmental Science & Policy, April 2010 | Integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) have been a pervasive, although widely criticized, approach to tropical conservation for more than 20 years. More recently, international conservation discourse has shifted away from project-based approaches and towards reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). While REDD is based upon experience with payment for environmental services (PES) initiatives and forest-related discussions in the United Nations (UN), REDD implementation will still require sub-national projects. Issues of equity will likely pit these sub-national projects against some of the same challenges that have dogged ICDPs. This suggests that REDD project developers stand to learn a great deal from the lessons generated by experience with ICDPs.

By Glenn Hurowitz and Stephen Lovett, TheHill.com, 9 March 2010 | As Congress scrambles to cobble together the votes for legislation that addresses climate change, some are advocating “energy-only” options that could entirely exclude forests and farms from participation in a solution. Such an approach, no matter whether through legislation or regulation, is a huge mistake that would needlessly drive up the cost of climate action and dramatically reduce its environmental and jobs benefits.

Climate-L.org, 9 March 2010 | The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), with a number of government collaborators, are organizing a workshop with participants from government, development and environmental NGOs and local community and indigenous peoples representatives to discuss regional perspectives on REDD and develop a better understanding of how decentralisation and forest governance contribute to sustainable management of forests. The results are expected to feed into the 9th session of the UN Forum on Forests. CIFOR is a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Location Mexico City, Mexico Start Date 31 August 2010 End Date 03 September 2010