THE Forestry and Value Chains Development Programme (FORVAC) has brought in positive results in
Namtumbo District, Ruvuma Region as villagers are no longer engaging in illegal logging as it was in the past.

Reports have it that villagers are now aware of the dangers that comes with illegal logging and
deforestation and in turn they collectively conserve the nearby forests so as to earn cash that
makes them to execute different village development projects.

Early this year the world commemorated the International Day of Forests, with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) joining Uganda to reiterate their commitment to restoring forests and degraded lands, as well as calling for action to reduce deforestation.

Background
The call for forest restoration and better management of the ecosystem was made during a high level national dialogue organised jointly by FAO, the European Union, Sweden and the Ministry of Water and Environment.

The High Court in Kampala has ruled that National Environmental Authority was right to allow sugarcane growing on Bugoma Forest land.

Conservationists including Water and Environment Media Network Uganda Limited (WEMNET-U), National Association of Professional Environmentalists(NAPE) and the African Institute for Energy Governance went to court challenging the Environment and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) report approved by NEMA that allowed Hoima Sugar Limited to conduct sugarcane growing in the disputed Bugoma Central Forest Reserve.

A tree planting ceremony was held along a stretch of road leading to Badas Dam as part of the Badas Tree Planting 2021 project yesterday.

It is a collaborative research project between Universiti Brunei Darussalam’s (UBD) Institute for Biodiversity and Environmental Research (IBER) and Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) aimed at supporting Brunei Darussalam National Climate Change Policy (BNCCP) particularly in increasing forest cover.

The Congo Basin contains the world's second-largest rainforest, crucial for regulating the world's climate. Inside it, a plan to halt the forest's decline is bearing fruit.

With a gentle tug of his left hand, Patrick Wasa-Nziabo eases dozens of kernels from a sun-dried cob and into a large plastic bucket brimming with lemon-yellow corn at his bare feet.

• Once covered in vast tropical forests, East Kalimantan, in the Indonesian half of Borneo Island, is today the most intensively mined province in Indonesia.
• Surface mining for coal has left behind vast expanses of barren land across the province.
• Under Indonesian law, mining companies are responsible for rehabilitating their mining concessions.

More than 200 indigenous Bunong families in Mondulkiri province have asked authorities to retrieve 5ha of community forest land they claim had been secretly stolen from them by speculators.

Roch Chok, a representative of the more than 200 families, told The Post on November 30 that two people in Koh Nhek district’s Or Buonloeu commune deployed two bulldozers to clear the forest land on November 29.

The two, he said, claimed to represent an unnamed tycoon with the title oknha – an honorific bestowed on those who donate at least $500,000 to the state for development.

Minister of Interior Sar Kheng has instructed all provincial governors, and the Mondulkiri provincial governor in particular, to regularly inspect forests and natural resources in helicopters.

Sar Kheng, also the deputy prime minister, said relevant ministries and leaders in Mondulkiri have to protect natural resources. The work, he said, will gain the support of people and attract tourists and investors to the area.

“It is our ancestral wealth,” he said.

Kagenal Incorporated Land Group (ILG) a group in the Central Inland Pomio (CIP) LLG in Pomio district of East New Britain will be receiving 52 per cent revenue of a project that is underway in their LLG.

The project is known as Reducing Emission Deforestation Degradation (REDD+) operating under a company, Night Incorporate, which is an American corporation that operates in the country in partnership with the LLG specialising in carbon trade credit.

CIP LLG has preserved 60 000 square kilometers of land for reforestation under this project.

Main photo: The yak (Bos grunniens and Bos mutus) is a long-haired bovid found throughout the Himalaya region of south Central Asia, the Tibetan Plateau and as far north as Mongolia and Russia. (Used under Creative Commons license) Flickr/Arian Zwegers

An innovative community-based forest management policy has resolved a long-simmering land-use conflict between migratory yak herders and sedentary residents in a remote area of Bhutan.

The Prey Lang Protected Area has lost more than 100,000 hectares of forest between 2000 and 2019, more than half of which became plantations, according to a report released August 10 by the NGO Jesuit Service Cambodia’s Ecology Program and the Cambodian Youth Network.

To determine forest loss and recovery over the nearly two decade period, the Technical Report on Forest-Cover Change Detection in the Prey Land Protected Area of Cambodia compared satellite images, which showed that 58,138 hectares of forest was converted into plantations and 43,188 hectares became “non-forest.”

JAKARTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Indonesia has cut back its planned transfer of state forests to local communities this year by half - an area twice the size of Los Angeles - because of the coronavirus outbreak, according to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

Bambang Supriyanto, the ministry’s director general of social forestry and environmental partnership, said social distancing measures from March to June had halted the technical work needed on the ground to certify the handover of land.