Activists concerned Forest Advisory Committee recommendation will lead to privatisation, destruction of forests

The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) has recommended that private players be allowed to raise plantations to be later used for compensatory afforestation (CA). This has raised concerns among green activists.

The effect of losing intact tropical forests is more devastating on the climate than previously thought, researchers report.

A new international study reveals that between 2000 and 2013, the clearance of intact tropical forests led to much higher levels of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere than first believed—resulting in a 626% increase in the calculated impact on climate.

• The people of Indonesia’s Aru Islands fended off a land grab that would have led to the destruction of a vast area of rainforest, through a sophisticated grassroots campaign that held power to account.
• The campaign holds lessons for rural communities facing similar threats, but their prospects have been diminished by new legislation that strengthens the hand of the powerful and corrupt.

The Indonesian government is failing to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples who have lost their traditional forests and livelihoods to oil palm plantations in West Kalimantan and Jambi provinces, Human Rights Watch said in a report. Loss of forest occurs on a massive scale and not only harms local indigenous peoples but is also associated with global climate change.

Human rights groups say about 60,000 settlers are being targeted, in the latest effort to halt the destruction of what is referred to as Kenya's key water tower

NAIROBI - Thousands of people are being removed from Kenya's largest forest, a senior official said on Thursday, in a controversial move aimed at saving the country's most important "water tower", which has been decimated by decades of corruption.

Their claims were rejected, raising concerns whether due process was followed

The recent Amazon wildfires brought everyone to a choking standstill as the world’s largest tropical rainforest and the lungs of our planet were going up in flames. Environmentalists blamed the far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who pushed for development of the protected land reserves and is against environmental fines. Speculation is rife that the fires started with a deliberate attempt by loggers and farmers to clear the forests.

In Brazil, a struggle over the future of the Amazon is taking place. The struggle will have global impact.

he Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched two new publications, ‘Forest Futures, Sustainable pathway for forests, landscapes and people in Asia Pacific Region’ and ‘Forestry Sector Review: Pakistan’. The reports were launched by the Advisor to the Prime Minister on Climate Change, Malik Amin Aslam and FAO Representative in Pakistan, Minà Dowlatchahi in Islamabad.

Protecting the world’s remaining tropical forest cover from natural resource extraction is essential if the worst of climate change is to be avoided, and the rights of people who depend on those forests are to be respected. For this to happen, politicians have to see political advantage in voting for laws and budgets that promote such protection.

Sociological study finds pros and cons in a REDD+ carbon credit scheme in the Brazilian Amazon that rewards small-scale ecosystem service providers in local communities.

• To safeguard the almost 90 percent of its land still covered with forest, the small Brazilian state of Acre implemented a carbon credit scheme that assigns monetary value to stored carbon in the standing trees and rewards local “ecosystem service providers” for their role protecting it.

“Climate change is hitting hardest those who have done least to cause it, especially the world’s indigenous peoples from the Arctic to the tropics,” said renowned actor and activist Alec Baldwin speaking at the 18th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York on 23 April 2019.

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.