AMONG THE MANY NASTY things that humans are doing to the environment, few rank worse than destroying tropical forests. Rainforests sustain an astonishing diversity of species and keep our planet liveable by limiting soil erosion, reducing floods, maintaining natural water cycles, and stabilising the climate. Yet roughly 10 million hectares of tropical forest are destroyed every year – the equivalent of 50 football fields a minute.

A recent ad campaign aimed at gaining Midwestern senators support for US climate change legislation has backfired in Brazil. The ad by the National Farmers Union and Avoided Deforestation Partners, an alliance of major environmental organizations and utilities, advocates for farm state senators to support U.S. emission limits by offering an incentive: the ability of companies to purchase emission offsets in the form of standing tropical forests, which sequester the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

The combination of a gutted Forest Service, vast areas of not sufficiently restocked forestlands, a quirky loophole in the Kyoto Protocol and a provincial government ideologically driven to sell off public assets has created the perfect opportunity for forest industrialists to burn down the last barriers to privatization of BC’s Crown forests.

On August 20, 1910, a strong wind blew down off the Cascades and whipped hundreds of forest blazes into an inferno that extinguished towns and three million hectares of forests from Washington to Montana.

Ten-year figures for the Brazilian timber industry show that production in the Amazon has fallen by 50 per cent.

The figures were published in a study carried out by the Brazilian Forest Service (SFB) and the Institute of Man and Environment (Imazon), entitled 'Logging Activities in the Brazilian Amazon.'

They show that in 1998, roundwood production in the region was 28.3 million cubic metres while the figures for 2009 show total production to be only 14.2 million cubic metres.

The Irish Parliament is calling on the EU to agree that the country can used forest carbon sinks to offset its non-Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) emissions.

Not even intense international pressure, the BP oil spill, worsening floods, or the fact that the last six months have been the warmest on record globally was enough to push US climate legislation through the Senate. In the end the legislation died without a single Republican supporting it and a number of Democrats balking. Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid, said they would continue to push climate legislation in the fall, but analysts say success then is unlikely given up-coming elections in November.

July 2010: The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has published a brief describing its investment programme for sustainable forest management (SFM) and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of carbon stocks ( REDD+), as well as opportunities for funding of forest-related activities in the fifth GEF cycle (GEF-5).

I had indicated in last week’s column that I would treat with three particular aspects of global climate funding (aid) as I wrap up for now, my analysis of the LCDS, the Guyana – Norway Agreement and associated arrangements, as well as several environmental topics related to global warming and climate change. The first of these aspects (the likely impact of the current global financial and economic situation on the flow of climate funds from the global North to the poor countries of the South, particularly the poor rainforest ones) was considered last week.

Most dividend announcements are in the range of pennies to several dollars, so when a company declares a special dividend of USD 5.6 billion, it tends to grab your attention, and that of shareholders.

Obama's climate change guy Todd Stern has just wrapped up a tour of Latin America. It wasn't vacation: more like a critical lobbying opportunity.

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.

13 July 2010: The High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, co-chaired by Prime Ministers Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia) and Jens Stoltenberg (Norway), held its second meeting on 12-13 July 2010, in New York, US.

The United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD Programme) is a collaboration between FAO, UNDP and UNEP. A multi-donor trust fund was established in July 2008 that allows donors to pool resources and provides funding to activities towards this programme.

China’s potential fibre-supply gap (the difference between total demand and total domestic supply) is projected to reach approximately 150 million m3 (roundwood equivalent) by 2015 - or a volume that is more than the entire Canadian timber harvest in 2009 - a strong indication that China’s wood imports must continue to rise in the short- to medium-term period to match with projected consumption reports International WOOD Markets Group,.