Abholzung

A surging population in Africa seeking to provide energy for cooking needs has led to massive environmental damage, including soil degradation.
 
Worldwide deforestation accounts for 25-30 percent of annual CO2 global emissions, the result of the burning of brushland for subsistence agriculture and wood fires used for cooking.
 

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 13, 2011 (IPS) - Brazil aims to meet its climate change targets in agriculture by stimulating techniques that have been proven to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – but which may increase the use of toxic agrochemicals, activists say.

Direct seeding, restoration of grasslands, crop-livestock-forest integration, biological nitrogen fixation, commercial reforestation, and biogas production from animal waste are practices that can be financed by a soft credit line available since August.

Just three years ago, the manmade fires here were so fierce smoke would blot out the Amazon sky, turning the days dark. Towering rainforest trees exploded in flames, their canopies cleared to let pasture grow for cattle.

Proving the outcry that forests are shrinking due to increased urbanisation, industrialisation and rehabilitation, India has set its record straight with a modest increase in its forest cover.

Norway has been accused of climate hypocrisy in Indonesia, where it has won plaudits for financing forest protection even as its state pension fund allegedly secures even greater revenues from logging, plantations, mining and other environmentally destructive practices.