Can Sri Lanka live up to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s environmental commitments?

The federal government, through its Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, FMARD has concluded arrangements to clear 400 hectares of farmlands at Iyemero Ekiti axis of the State’s agricultural processing zone as part of its intervention programmes code-named ‘Agriculture Jobs Plan’.

The information was disclosed at a meeting of the State Coordinator of the FMARD, Mr Olufemi Daramola with the Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security, Dr Olabode Adetoyi in his office in Ado Ekiti.

• Conflict over how best to protect the biodiversity of Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region may be contributing to the rapid loss of its forest cover.
• Habitats of globally threatened species, including the critically endangered Gurney’s pitta and recently discovered geckos, face destruction due to logging, agriculture and other human pressures.
• Researchers fear that entire species may be driven to extinction without ever being documented if habitats aren’t protected fast.

Cambodia’s government has strenuously promoted long-term leasing of unused land as Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) to attract investors and encourage development in the impoverished nation, but observers say the policy has resulted in few benefits at the cost of huge social and environmental impacts.

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.”

Over 3.5 billion tree seedlings have so far been planted under this year’s Green Legacy campaign.

This was disclosed at a campaign where media leaders and professionals planted tree seedlings at Gulele Botanical Garden on Tuesday. 

Press Secretariat Head Nigusu Tilahun said on the occasion that the government and the people are pulling resources to fulfill very crucial national agendas.

For decades, deforestation in Georgia has been putting the livelihoods of communities at risk. It has not only led to an increase in the impact of natural disasters, but has also deprived communities of clean running water.

Last year the world lost some 119,000 square kilometers (45,946 square miles) of tree cover – an area the size of Nicaragua – according to satellite data collated by the University of Maryland (UMD) released today by World Resources Institute (WRI). Almost a third of that loss – or an area the size of Switzerland – came from primary humid tropical forests, which house most of the planet’s plant and animal species and play an important role in climate regulation.

This special bulletin wants to pay tribute to the forest communities and peasant families around the world who despite all odds and difficulties due to the Covid-19 pandemic – including the movement restrictions imposed by governments and the corporate and elite profit-seeking abuses -, have still managed to practice solidarity:

Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Veng Sakhon has urged companies that were granted economic land concessions by the government in Koh Kong province to collaborate fully with local authorities in protecting forest land.

Communities in biodiverse Tanintharyi Region are spurning big, top-down projects and seeking recognition for their own approach to conservation.

From its forested borderlands in the east, to vast mangrove forests and hundreds of island ecosystems in the Andaman Sea to the west, Tanintharyi Region is a bastion of nature and biodiversity. The region is home to one of the largest remaining expanses of intact low-elevation evergreen forest in Southeast Asia, a stronghold for endangered and endemic species including tigers, tapirs and pangolins.

Environment rangers and community members patrolled the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary 511 times within the first four months of the year and prevented 399 forest crimes in four provinces.

Ministry of Environment secretary of state and spokesman Neth Pheaktra said on Thursday that a report on the management and protection at Prey Lang showed that 32 cases of logging and land clearing had been sent to the courts for legal action.

In 42 cases involving nearly 100 people, cease and desist contracts had been signed.