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.

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.

The Can Gio Mangrove Biosphere Reserve, located in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City, is one of the world’s largest areas of reforested mangroves.

BY MICHAEL TATARSKI ON 21 APRIL 2020

Mongabay Series: Global Forests

The Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Benito Owusu-Bio, has launched a project which will ensure the reforestation of 300 hectares of degraded land for sustainable energy wood production and rehabilitation of 700 hectares of degraded natural forest in the Kintampo Municipality of the Bono East Region.

Dubbed: "Forest Landscape Restoration through a sustainable wood energy value chain," the €4.5 million German government-sponsored project also aims at introducing energy-efficient technologies for charcoal production and cooking stoves in the area.

Two weeks after Malagasy Forest Landscape Restoration experts came to Yaoundé, their Cameroonian counterparts visited Madagascar to intensify their South-South exchange on Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) in Africa.

The African Union Development Agency (AUDA) pilots targeted exchanges between member countries of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) to foster peer-learning on FLR.

This topic will be discussed at the Global Landscapes Forum Luxembourg on 30 November.

In Madagascar 70% of the population depends on the traditional exploitation of natural resources, and land degradation affects more than 46% of the country's surface area, with costs to 21% of the Gross Domestic Product.

Under the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), which is a country-led effort to bring 100 million hectares of forests and degraded land in Africa under restoration by 2030, Madagascar has committed to restore 4 million hectares of its forests and degrade lands (Länderlink Madagaskar einfügen, evtl. Homepage MEDD).

• When undisturbed tropical forests are lost the long-term impact on carbon emissions is dramatically higher than earlier estimates suggest, according to a new study.
• Between 2000 and 2013, about 7 percent of the world’s intact tropical forests were destroyed, leading not just to direct carbon emissions but also “hidden” emissions from logging, fragmentation and wildlife loss.

• Indonesian companies were given until March this year to disclose their “beneficial owners” under a 2018 presidential regulation, but less than 1 percent have complied.
• In the easternmost corner of the country, investors hidden by layers of corporate secrecy continue to bulldoze an intact rainforest and have nearly finished building a giant sawmill.

LETICIA, Colombia (Reuters) - Seven Amazonian countries on Friday signed a pact to protect the world’s largest tropical forest via disaster response coordination and satellite monitoring, amid recent fires that torched thousands of square miles of the jungle.

The presidents of Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, the vice-president of Suriname and the natural resource minister of Guyana attended the one-day summit in the jungle city of Leticia in southern Colombia.

n September 2019, the UN Environment Programme will honour Champions of the Earth, outstanding environmental leaders from the public and private sectors, and from civil society who have had a transformative positive impact on the environment. Here we meet previous winners of this prestigious award and find out how they still are making a difference in their communities and across the globe.