External News

Tucked away on the bottom of the world, New Zealand is showing bigger developed nations how its done when it comes to tackling greenhouse-gas emissions and climate change. The first jurisdiction outside Europe to take the plunge on a nation-wide mandatory carbon pricing scheme, New Zealand has gone a long way to tackling the political and economic challenges of fundamental low-carbon reform that have bedevilled the US, Canada, Japan and Australia.

Foreign-owned "carbon foresters" have ambitions to turn a fifth of New Zealand sheep and beef farmland into forests and that will devastate many rural towns, the national farmers' lobby says.

Federated Farmers president Don Nicolson said the organisation strongly believed that farm forestry was integral to farms where suited. This made the government's axing of the Afforestation Grants Scheme (AGS) in preference to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) "incredibly perplexing".

The American Carbon Registry (ACR), a non-profit enterprise of Winrock International, welcomes feedback from its members, project proponents and other interested parties on the ACR Methodology for REDD – Avoiding Planned Deforestation. 

The UN-REDD Programme has been active over the past few months, in convening and engaging with partners from around in the world to advance ideas and common understandings of governance issues related to REDD+.

The Copenhagen Accord recognized the need for a mechanism to funnel money into projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation while promoting conservation, enhancement of forest carbon stocks and sustainable forest management (REDD+).  Maria Bendana digs into the latest negotiating text and offers a detailed summary of the most relevant sections and analyzes what the outcome means for private sector engagement.