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.

“When invaders come from the outside, they bring hunger and death,” said Jair Seixas Reis, chief of the Maraguá people in Brazil’s state of Mato Grosso. “We don’t know what to do other than resist. It’s very dangerous. I’m asking for help. The world needs to speak out. Amazonia is the lungs of our earth and if the lungs don’t work, the world will die.”

• Newly released data indicate the tropics lost around 120,000 square kilometers (around 46,300 square miles) of tree cover last year – or an area of forest the size of Nicaragua.
• The data indicate 36,400 square kilometers of this loss – an area the size of Belgium – occurred in primary forest. This number is an increase over the annual average, and the third-highest amount since data collection began.

Indonesia - In Kalibiru, a national park in the Menoreh mountains to the west of Yogyakarta, tourists scale precarious-looking ladders up timber trees to take Instragrammable photos of themselves on treetop wooden platforms overlooking lakes and lush forest.

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.

'Urgency of climate crisis' is seen as demanding push for vast reforestation across U.S.

Climate change experts accept that reducing greenhouse gas emissions – even doing so substantially – won’t be sufficient for limiting atmospheric warming to the 2°C (3.6°F) goal of the Paris Climate Agreement. And with carbon capture technologies years away from maturity and widespread commercialization, one option is to take advantage of proven nature-based systems for sequestering carbon.

Odisha's record in addressing forest rights is poorer than the national average, despite the Union Tribal Minister hailing from the state

As Odisha goes to poll in April, the concerns of 95,91,000 tribals in the state will be a prominent electoral issue. The Schedule Tribes (ST) account for nearly 22 per cent of the state's population. The Mayurbhanj district records the highest density of tribal population.

Out of the 21 parliamentary constituencies (PC) in the state, five — Nabarangpur, Koraput, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Sundargarh — are reserved for ST candidates.

Monrovia – The Land Rights Law (LRL) is a milestone legal instrument, but if “gaps” within the law are not bridged and its “contradictions” to the Community Rights Law (CRL) of 2009 with Respect to Forest Lands not addressed, the law could undermine Liberia’s land reform process.  This is according to two policy briefs by the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) released last Thursday in Monrovia.

• A still controversial 2012 update to the Brazilian Forest Code that reduced the area required for legal reserves on rural private properties is endangering more than 15 million hectares (57,915 square miles) of Amazon forest, an area roughly the size of the U.S. state of Georgia, according to a recent study.

The claims are by tribal or pastoral communities seeking community rights over forest land they have inhabited for generations.

It’s now been over 10 years since countries around the world started to work on the international policy framework known by reference as the acronym REDD+, which stands for ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, conservation and sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.’

Rapid felling of South Sudan's teak forests, largely by foreign-owned firms, has drawn protests - and brings environmental risks

KATIRE, South Sudan - Sprawling teak forests, planted nearly a century ago to supply lumber and government income, are fast disappearing in South Sudan as timber companies take advantage of the country's chaos to extract large amounts of wood, environmentalists say.