Jump to Navigation

Biodiversity

Issue date: 
December 27, 2009

2009: a year in review of rainforest protection

2009 may prove to be an important turning point for tropical forests.

Lead by Brazil, which had the lowest extent of deforestation since at least the 1980s, global forest loss likely declined to its lowest level in more than a decade. Critical to the fall in deforestation was the global financial crisis, which dried up credit for forest-destroying activities and contributed to a crash in commodity prices, an underlying driver of deforestation.
 

Maya Lin to Debut 'Unchopping a Tree' at Support REDD+ Gala at COP15

COPENHAGEN, Dec.

Invest in nature now, save trillions later

PARIS (AFP) – Investing billions today to protect threatened ecosystems and dwindling biodiversity would reap trillions in savings over the long haul, according to a UN-backed report issued Friday.

Costing the Earth: Investing in protecting Ecosystems

Coral reefs around the world are worth a staggering $172 billion dollars a year to the global economy. But the wealth of the oceans' reefs, and their amazing monetary value, is on the verge of being destroyed.

Logged forests support biodiversity after 15 years of rehabilitation

With the world facing global warming and a biodiversity crisis, a new study in Conservation Biology shows that within 15 years logged forests—considered by many to be 'degraded'—can be managed in order to successfully fight both climate change and extinction.

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and REDD - Latin America in the lead

This fall, professionals in PES and REDD are headed south. From across the globe practitioners and policymakers in environmental markets are booking flights to Colombia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico to discuss the future of our world's ecosystems. In several cases, this is the first time that Latin America is serving as host to these international conferences on environmental markets. With a strengthening regional economy and four out of five of the world's most bio-diverse countries, Latin America is becoming a major player in REDD and PES.

Seeing Through the Haze:How NGOs Work the Forests

As they do every year, Greenpeace and nongovernmental organizations like “Eyes on the Forest,” which is supported by the WWF and other western environmental groups, have squarely blamed the plantation industry for the seasonal fires in Sumatra.

This generates sympathy for the anti-forestry campaign NGOs have been waging in Indonesia for many years, which pits economic development against the environment.

But this perspective is simplistic and wrong.

Issue date: 
May 18, 2009

A profitable rainforest!(?)

A MOST unusual document landed on your correspondent’s desk recently: a financial report from a rainforest. Iwokrama, a 370,000-hectare rainforest in central Guyana, announced that it was in profit. It added, more intriguingly, that rainforests had entered the “global economy”.

Huge drop in Amazon Forest Fires in 2008

New NASA research shows a sharp decline in the amount of smoke over the Amazon during the 2008 burning season, coinciding with a drop in deforestation reported last week by Carlos Minc, Brazil's Environment Minister.

Brazil approves land tenure law that grants 67 Mill. ha of rainforest to settlers

June 29, 2009: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva last week signed a controversial law granting 67.4 million hectares (166 million acres) of Amazon rainforest land to more than 1 million illegal settlers, reports Reuters.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Biodiversity


by Dr. Radut