IIASA researchers announce a new citizen science campaign on human impact on forests for improving forest management maps and value estimations on biodiversity and carbon storage, within the Nature Map project.
Nature-based solutions such as ecosystem restoration will play an indispensable role in addressing climate change, but a strong economic case will need to be made to convince policymakers, investors and business leaders to place them higher on the agenda.
Despite efforts to protect them, tropical forests are dwindling at a near-record rate at a time when humanity needs them more than ever in the fight against climate change. In this interview with Eco-Business, World Resources Institute’s global forests director Rod Taylor argues that we need to rethink the balance between development and conservation.
An experiment conducted in Brazil in an area of Atlantic Rainforest suggests that intensive silviculture, including the use of herbicide and substantial amounts of fertilizer, is a more effective approach to promoting the regeneration of tropical forest and biomass gain than the traditional method based on manual weeding and less fertilizer.
Studies reveal that community-forest management can reduce deforestation and poverty
Washington: Researchers observed that giving local communities the opportunity to manage their forests reduced deforestation and poverty. According to the study published in the journal of Nature Sustainability, community-forest management led to a 37 per cent relative reduction in deforestation and a 4.3 per cent relative reduction in poverty.
A quarter of a century ago, Cameroon passed a law which gave people living on the edge of forests the right to own and manage forest areas. These communities depended on the forest for livelihood activities, like agriculture, hunting, fishing and non-timber forest products – like fruits or medicinal plants.
Paraguay’s main opposition party recently introduced a bill offering conscription-age youth an alternative to mandatory military service: replanting trees in depleted forests. The reforestation proposal highlights the seriousness of environmental degradation in Paraguay, mainly driven by the clearing of forests for agriculture, which has sustained one of Latin America’s highest economic growth rates. In an interview with WPR, Joel E.
When Liberia emerged from its civil war in 2003, one of the fi
IXTLÁN DE JUÁREZ, Mexico, Jan 3 2019 (IPS) - “I dream of a healthy, sustainable, well-managed forest,” says Rogelio Ruiz, a silviculturist from southern Mexico, who insists that “we have to clean it up, take advantage of the wood, and reforest.”
These activities are essential for the ecosystem, especially to adapt to the impacts of climate change, the president of the La Trinidad Communal Lands Commissariat, in the municipality of Ixtlán de Juárez, in the state of Oaxaca, some 840 km south of Mexico City, told IPS.
However, civil groups, including those at a recent forest governance forum, pointed out that many forest residents were still uncertain if the new policy will maintain their land rights.
SOMSAK SAE-LAO, an assistant village chief in the small Nan community of Pang Kob, still has no idea whether his villagers could be subject to any benefits for helping protect surrounding forest under a global scheme known as REDD+, if implemented here.
The village has unresolved overlapping claims with Khun Nan National Park on a high mountain, thus becoming uncertain about their land rights.