(REUTERS) - An international fund to protect the Amazon forest launched by Brazil in 2008 has gotten bogged down in red tape and donors are frustrated their $466 million contributions are hardly put to use, a Norwegian official said.
The fund was designed to slow deforestation by stimulating sustainable economic alternatives to cattle ranching and farming, which have destroyed parts of the forests.
Forest machine manufacturer Komatsu Forest has signed a major deal with the new Brazilian pulp mill Eldorado Brasil in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. In its entirety, the contract is worth about 1.4 billion Swedish kronor (US$ 200 million).
Brazil, which last week moved to reform its Forest Code, may find lessons in Russia's revision of its forest law in 2007, say a pair of Russian scientists.
The UK Government has agreed to provide £10 million to a joint project to tackle deforestation in Brazil, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman announced today at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa.
The funding will support a project based in the Cerrado, central Brazil, and aims to reduce rates of deforestation by supporting environmental registration of rural properties and by helping farmers restore vegetation on illegally cleared land. It will also fund measures to prevent and manage forest fires.
Judge Carlos Castro said the company behind the Belo Monte dam had shown that local fishing will not be impeded during construction, and the natural flow of the Xingu river will not be affected.
"There are no legal grounds to justify maintaining the stoppage measure," Castro said.
In September, Castro had ruled in favor of a fisheries group that said the dam could affect local fishing stocks, which are key to the indigenous families who make a living by fishing.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 13, 2011 (IPS) - Brazil aims to meet its climate change targets in agriculture by stimulating techniques that have been proven to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – but which may increase the use of toxic agrochemicals, activists say.
Direct seeding, restoration of grasslands, crop-livestock-forest integration, biological nitrogen fixation, commercial reforestation, and biogas production from animal waste are practices that can be financed by a soft credit line available since August.
Just three years ago, the manmade fires here were so fierce smoke would blot out the Amazon sky, turning the days dark. Towering rainforest trees exploded in flames, their canopies cleared to let pasture grow for cattle.
The ash that snowed down onto this jungle town was shin-deep. Dirty layers hid red-hot timber chunks, glowing coals that burned the bare feet of children walking through the cinder drifts.
Paragominas was losing forest faster than nearly any other place in the Amazon.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Reduced-impact logging (RIL) in an Amazon rainforest generated profits while emitting a small fraction of carbon compared with total forest clearing, a University at Albany study concludes.
Outside the XII Scientific and Technical Council of the Peugeot carbon sink forest and ONF (French Agency for Forest) has been developed at the University of Brasilia from 2 to 4 November and has brought together dozens of political, scientific and academic Brazilian and French, Peugeot and ONF announce the launch successful, the sale of "carbon credits" resulting from the project. This operation must secure additional funding to the project for an amount of 1,000,000 euros.
10/24/11 - Huffington POST | Anyone looking at Brazil on the map sees a huge swath of green, which symbolizes a country that is blessed by natural resources and a true environmental power. It isn't without a price that the world can see Brazil in this way. We have ensured keeping 61% of the land untouched and preserved. Along with that, we have managed to export U.S. $88 billion annually in agribusiness products to over 140 countries under the stronghold of an outdated environmental law passed in 1965.
