Abholzung

June 29, 2009: A New Idea to Save Tropical Forests Takes Flight and then in 2005, a small group of countries changed everything. Papua New Guinea teamed up with Costa Rica and a handful of other countries to make a formal plea to the United Nations.

A global emergency funding scheme to drastically reduce the destruction of tropical rainforests over the next five years was announced by the Prince of Wales today, with the US pledging $275m (£165m) towards rainforest protection.

TREES are one of the most efficient systems of carbon capture and storage on the planet. They breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, locking the carbon into their roots, trunk, branches, twigs and leaves and the soil. They are so good at this that about 20% of the greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere can be attributed to deforestation. In the run-up to the climate talks in Copenhagen in December, bright minds around the world are negotiating a formal scheme for reducing the loss of trees as a way of lowering the world’s carbon emissions.

While it is clear that deforestation is an important source of global carbon emissions, the potential role that agricultural mosaics at the forest margin could play, to help reduce pressure on the forest, store carbon and create benefits for local people is gaining evidence   Scientists and fo

That's the conclusion from a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) has condemned Malaysia's booming practice of converting tropical forests into rubberwood plantations, arguing that the conversion threatens Malaysia's biodiversity, endangered species, and releases significant greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers have questioned 2009 findings by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) that found that India's forests were, unlike many tropical Asian nations', on the rebound. According to the FSI, Indian forests had grown by almost five percent from the 1990s. Yet, were these finding too good to be true?

According to Jean-Philippe Puyravaud and Priya Davidar of Pondicherry University, and William Laurance from James Cook University, the findings were very likely too optimistic.

Less than six months before the global climate summit in Copenhagen, this summer is giving us another taste of climate change. The extended heat wave reminded us that we're on the edge of a dangerous threshold unless we reduce carbon emissions quickly.

The tree-planting carbon offset proposed by B.C.'s Ministry of Forests in July doesn't inspire confidence that the province understands how forests can truly help us meet this challenge.

Monster monsoon rains may have loosened the mud and rock that buried and killed more than 1,000 people in the northwestern Chinese Province of Gansu over the weekend, but the mudslide in Zhouqu was more than a natural disaster.

Official records show that government-run lumber companies cut 313,000 acres of forest from the slopes of Zhouqu county between 1952 and 1990, denuding the geologically vulnerable mountainsides and subjecting them to soil erosion.

The Tropical Forest Conservation Act is an incentive program that provides less developed countries with debt relief when they protect their forests. According to USAID, this act includes funding from both the United States federal government and private organizations. The Tropical Forest Conservation Act funds protect forests throughout all regions of the world, including Bangladesh, Belize, Jamaica, and Botswana, as well as others.

COMMENT In the last three weeks, Sarawak was abuzz with news of a particular climate change mitigation mechanism called REDD (Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries).

First, a news article by Reuters informed that an Australian carbon trading company has signed a carbon offset deal with nine tribal leaders that would purportedly preserved more than 100,000ha of forests in the state.

The country's forests are at the centre of a new global scramble to 'buy up' carbon, but as Thembi Mutch reports, is the process really going to benefit the environment or people?

Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Foreign purchases of agricultural land from Mozambique to Cambodia pose “significant risks” to the livelihoods of farmers in countries with “weak land governance,” the World Bank said in a report.