Major American pension fund puts confidence in timber
Confidence in timber investment funds has been heightened after a major American state pension fund decided to put $500 million into timber.
Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board (Mass PRIM) has decided to make the investment just three years after selling a $700 million section of its timber portfolio.
Senior timber investment officer at Mass PRIM, Tim Schlitzer, said it was a perfect time to reinvest in the long-term benefits that timber can provide.
May has been a difficult month for lumber prices in North America, with values dipping to the point that gains made earlier this year were effectively cancelled out. However, it is not all bad news as the stocks of leading players are holding up well.
REDD new hope for Resilience and Building of the Climate Change in Tanzania
It is no longer debated that the world climate is still changing fast and is the most pressing issues of this generation, which cause different impacts on human beings as well as its surroundings.
Will REDD Preserve Forests Or Turn into Nightmare?
May 27, 2010 - It could be the cheapest way to save the planet from climate change. Western governments and corporations want to shut down a major source of carbon dioxide emissions by paying the people who destroy forests to desist. But the dream could turn into a nightmare, in which Western polluters use their carbon credits to evade cutting emissions at home, while the promised benefit to the atmosphere is lost in a mire of conflict and corruption.
Global Carbon Market Grows to $144 billion Despite Financial and Economic Turmoil
Cologne, May 26, 2010—The latest annual report from the World Bank on the global carbon market showed that in 2009 it grew to $144 billion, up 6% from 2008 despite enduring its most challenging year to date. The global economic crisis negatively impacted both demand and supply sides and, as indu
The American Power Act: Trees Fare Well in Latest US Climate Bill
It’s been a good run for trees in climate-change talks, and that run continues with the latest climate bill introduced two weeks ago in the US Senate (read the full discussion draft here). For proof, just ch
In 2007, more than 50,000 fires raged through the Brazilian Amazon, reducing what were once lush rainforests to charred plains stretching to the horizon. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, fires on the island of Borneo consumed millions of hectares of old-growth forests.
US environmental consultancy EcoTrust has won approval for the first carbon offset project methodology in improved forest management (IFM) under the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS). IFM is a relatively new field of carbon crediting activity taking on heightened importance following the widening of the international REDD initiative on deforestation to include forest restoration and sustainable forest management - so called REDD-plus.