(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.
After a month of escalating rhetoric from the Harper government and oil industry front groups and confirmation today from internal government documents that the government explicitly identified environmental and aboriginal groups as "adversaries" in its strategy to increase tar sands exports, ForestEthics has launched a petition calling on Canadians to tell the Prime Minister that they won't be bullied into silence on issues that effect their communities, coast, province or environment.
The Kansas-sized country of Guyana, formerly known as British Guiana and the only English-speaking nation in South America, held elections on November 28, 2011, and voted in a new president, Donald Ramotar. This marked the end of 12 years in office for President Bharrat Jagdeo, under whose leadership Guyana became a global leader in calling attention to the incredible importance of tropical forests in the global battle to mitigate climate change.
The Department of Forests under the Ministry of Environment, with the support of FAO, UNDP and UNEP, took steps towards making forests a major part of Sri Lanka's strategy to combat climate change through the United Nations UN-REDD programme which assists developing countries to prepare and implement their national REDD+ strategies and mechanisms to improve forest governance.
An indigenous community in Mexico wants to drop protected conservation status for its area because it feels it has lost real control of its land and way of life. Concern about carbon emissions is blinding policy makers to the failures of some of their conservation policies.
An environmental expert, Salihu Dahiru, has called for investment in biodiversity for Nigeria to maximise the potentials of the United Nations programme on Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+).
Dahiru, who heads the Nigeria REDD Programme in a chat with Daily Trust said that for REDD+ to succeed in the country there must be investment in biodiversity. "Such investment must not be considered as a "burden", but as a critical need;
Remnants of torched farm huts suspended from the ground by burnt out logs mostly mangroves, are testimony that something went terribly wrong in Rufiji Delta. Ash is scattered all over the place and this was the site of brutal torching of farmers' temporary huts mainly used during the planting season.
TIME MAGAZINE - The canoes slip away from the dock, the morning mist still clinging to Anangucocha Lake in eastern Ecuador's Yasuni National Park. The water is the ink black of old tea, the paddles vanishing beneath the surface with every stroke. The Amazon rain forest has yet to fully awaken; the silence is broken only by the call of a distant troop of red howler monkeys.
To curb the encroachment of human population and disruptive economic activities into forest lands, the Department of Environment declared on Monday that no land titles would be given to areas that overlapped with or were included in proposed protected areas.
Environment Secretary Ramon Paje said he would suspend activities related to land titling in areas that have become part of planned protected areas under the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS).
As the world’s richest countries once again play brinksmanship at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Durban, Sierra Leone has embraced the vital role tropical forests play in preventing climate change by conserving its most important forest, locking up an estimated 13.6 million tonnes of carbon and protecting one of West Africa’s most threatened and wildlife-rich habitats.
