By Alaine Johnson, Resilience.org
At this crucial moment for Australia and the world, it is pertinent to take a step back from reactions to the ongoing flames and proactively revisit what happened in the Amazon—and why—before fires reignite in the dry season.
By Farmlandgrab.org Staff, Farmlandgrab.org
It may come as a shock to Harvard students, faculty, and alumni, as well as the millions of educators and others in the United States whose pensions are managed by TIAA, to learn that these two institutions are deeply and directly invested in this destructive expansion of agribusiness. Over the past twelve years, TIAA and Harvard University have collectively spent over $1 billion on Brazilian farmland, making them two of the largest owners of farmland in the Cerrado.
By Staff, IPCC Response, IPCCResponse
We—Indigenous Peoples and local communities—play a critical role in stewarding and safeguarding the world’s lands and forests. For the first time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released today recognizes that strengthening our rights is a critical solution to the climate crisis.
By Martine Maron, Andrea Griffin, April Reside, Bill Laurance, Don Driscoll, Euan Ritchie, Steve Turton, The Conversation
Australia’s high rates of forest loss and weakening land clearing laws are increasing bushfire risk, and undermining our ability to meet national targets aimed at curbing climate change.
By Guy Dauncey, The Practical Utopian
The Coastal Douglas fir biogeoclimatic zone that dominates the landscape on the east coast of Vancouver Island is the smallest and most at-risk zone in B.C., with the highest number of species and ecosystems at risk, many of which are ranked globally as imperiled or critically imperiled.
By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy
With the era of cheap fossil fuels coming to a close, what's left as low-cost fuel is wood and that had to be the target of the next wave of exploitation. Naively, I was thinking that the rush to wood would have taken the form of desperate people moving to the woods with hand-held axes, but no, in Italy it is coming in a much more destructive way.
By Emmanuel Freudenthal, Mongabay
Deep in the heart of the forests of Myanmar, a massive trade in illicit charcoal to neighboring China is feeding a multi-million dollar industry that connects the forests and its people to industrial warehouses in China and the products they make for the world.
By Bill Laurance, The Conversation
The bottom line is that if we’re smart and plan carefully, we can still increase food production and human equity across much of the world.
By Roz Pidcock, Carbon Brief
It is possible to produce enough food to feed a growing population without another tree being felled, according to new research. But there’s a catch.
By Sabine Joukes, New Internationalist Blog
We will continue to plant the trees together with Malawi’s communities, and we have a joint responsibility to see they survive.
By Jim Robbins, Yale Environment 360
A growing body of scientific evidence shows that the felling of tropical forests creates optimal conditions for the spread of mosquito-borne scourges, including malaria and dengue. Primates and other animals are also spreading disease from cleared forests to people.
By Bill Laurance, The Conversation
An alarming new study has shown that the world’s forests are not only disappearing rapidly, but that areas of “core forest”...are vanishing even faster.