The Ability of World Forests to Capture and Store Carbon
Nature knows how to capture and store carbon and has been doing so effectively for mellenia. We need this capacity in order to help us resolve the climate crisis we have created.
Carbon Trading Scheme Pushing People off Their Land
MOUNT ELGON, Uganda, Aug 31 (IPS) - With the world’s attention focused on climate change, one of the methods suggested to reduce global carbon emissions is causing the displacement of indigenous persons as western companies rush to invest in tree-planting projects in developing countries.
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.
GARCIA RIVER FOREST, Calif., Aug 21 (Reuters) - A stand of young redwoods, survivors in what was once a magnificent forest of towering giants, could play a small part of the battle to slow global warming -- and forms part of an emerging market.
Sometimes you have to hand it to capitalism. It’s sheer magic, the way the system takes promising concepts, steeps them in the transformative power of the market – and turns them into howling social and environmental disasters.
In Brazil’s Amazon basin, farmers have long sought out a special form of fertiliser – a locally sourced compost-like substance prized for its amazing qualities of reviving poor or exhausted soils. They buy it in sacks or dig it out of the earth from patches that are sometimes as much as 6ft deep. Spread on fields, it retains its fertile qualities for long periods.
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.
