Land tenure rights

On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the Obama administration would commit $1 billion over the next three years toward a proposed global scheme to preserve tropical forests. It’s called REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. As countries attempt to hammer out a final deal before the end of the summit, Anjali Kamat files a report featuring a range of concerns over what this UN-backed proposal could mean for the future of the world’s rainforests and forest dwellers. [includes rush transcript]

A major private-sector project to reduce carbon emissions through forest management in Bolivia is a ‘scam’, environmental group Greenpeace said in a report released earlier this month. The NGO claims that the environmental and social benefits of the initiative have been grossly oversold, although the project sponsors - along with some other green groups - insist that the efforts have been worthwhile.

The 2009 Nobel prize for economics recently was awarded to two Americans – Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson – for complementary ideas on economic governance.

Father Henri de Roziers has worked to help the poor and landless in the Amazon for more than 30 years.

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.