Subsidized by Mother Nature, society has consumed, for various reasons and over centuries, vast amounts of timber extracted from primary tropical forests. The trees were not planted nor tended. And usually, companies just rented the much needed forestland from the government, at low prices over long periods of time. Yet this natural capital is drying […]
Like most fathers of teenage children, I am often accused of being out of touch. While my work takes me to many places, geographic and esoteric, my children do have a point: it is fair to say that much of the world of popular culture passes me by. However, I do have a favorite author […]
In your best John Cleese voice: “All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans ever done for us?” Monty Python’s famous skit from the movie “The Life of Brian” illuminates the fact […]
International development is rife with buzzwords. New concepts spring to the fore — many of them refashioned or remarketed versions of old concepts. They flood panel discussions, procurement orders and program design documents — that is, until the next “big thing” emerges to take their place. Will “landscapes” be that next trendy development fad? […]
Protecting the world’s dwindling forests and making small farms more productive will cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually – money governments and charities do not have to spend, experts said at a London conference.
Investment bankers and fund managers met with agriculture and forestry researchers, representatives from advocacy groups and government agencies at the Global Landscapes Forum: The Investment Case event held in London on June 10.
Originally posted on CIFOR’s Forests News. By Thomas Hubert, CIFOR. LONDON, England: There was standing room only at several of the sessions of the Global Landscapes Forum: The Investment Case event held here on June 10. As investment bankers and fund managers rubbed shoulders with agriculture and forestry researchers, representatives from advocacy groups and government agencies, […]
This blog was originally posted on CIFOR’s Forests News as part of the POLEX blogs. By Stephen Leonard The annual mid-year climate talks in Bonn commenced with a fast-start as countries were eager to commence REDD+ negotiations as soon as possible and resolve the three outstanding issues – further safeguards guidance, non carbon benefits (NCBs), […]
Originally posted on CIFOR’s Forests News: By Thomas Hubert. BOGOR, Indonesia: If a tree falls in the rain forest, do investors care if it really fell ….or was it chopped? More investors than ever before do care about how and why a tree hits the forest floor. And for public and private investment sectors, there are sophisticated ways […]
Originally posted on CIFOR’s Forests News blog By Peter Holmgren, Director General of the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) As we look to the Sustainable Development Goals and the new climate deal as mechanisms to secure our future on the planet, it is obvious that many of the pressing challenges facing humanity are found […]
By Clément Chenost, co-founder and technical director of the Moringa fund. Over the past 5 years, coffee production in Brazil and Central America has been severely affected by droughts and the leaf rust disease. In Nicaragua, a drop of nearly 40% was observed in coffee production in 2012-13, leading to serious social and economic impacts and […]
The Tropical Landscapes Summit in Jakarta concentrated on sustainable development. Bringing together government, private sector and NGOs the summit discussed economic action that needs to be taken in the fight against climate change.
For sustainable landscapes, fostering green businesses with private sector investments was a key topic during this week’s two-day event Tropical Landscapes Summit 2015 in Jakarta. CIFOR scientists and communicators participated in the event and produced a video wrap (see above) and three blog posts for CIFOR’s Forests News Blog, summarizing key messages and observations. Check out the blogs by clicking below: Day […]
By Troy Wiseman, CEO of EcoPlanet Bamboo The last 10 years of REDD and REDD+ development have shown that the price attributed to and the willingness to pay for forest based ecosystem services, whether through compliance or a voluntary schemes, is unlikely to ever compete with the market price for wood and fiber that comes from […]
By Iain Henderson, member of UNEP Finance Initiative REDD+ and Sustainable Land Use A long, long time ago, in an age when the REDD+ acronyms that both comfort and confuse were but a twinkle in negotiators’ eyes, the world was a very different place. This was the ‘pre-smartphone period’, a world without Twitter or Facebook, a world where ‘text […]
