Gertrude Kabusimbi Kenyangi of Uganda received the 2015 Wangari Maathai ‘Forest Champions’ Award. Ugandan forestry activist Gertrude Kabusimbi Kenyangi was awarded the 2015 Wangari Maathai ‘Forest Champions’ Award in recognition of her efforts to promote the conservation and sustainable use of her country’s forest resources. Given in recognition of outstanding efforts to improve and sustain […]
Researchers outline the current state of climate-smart agriculture in West Africa. Agriculture plays a key role in the economic development of West African countries. By directly providing employment and income to about 70% of the population, agriculture is the engine of West African economies. It is also the backbone of food security for rural and […]
Despite a decline in numbers in the last few decades, nearly 800 million people around the world still don’t have enough food to eat. About 2 billion people are not getting enough of at least one kind of micronutrient, which are essential for good health. Many food-insecure people live in the world’s tropical regions, some […]
In London on 10 June 2015, a variety of representatives of the finance community rubbed shoulders with anthropologists, foresters, NGOs and government representatives at the Global Landscapes Forum: The Investment Case. The event was part of a growing multistakeholder movement that seeks to harness the influence of the financial sector to transform rural landscapes. As […]
The Indian tale about the blind men and the elephant is well known. The poet John Godfrey Saxe told it like this: It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined, who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind), that each by observation, might satisfy his mind. Each of […]
It’s the season for bountiful corn harvests. We consume corn in so many forms — for some, it constitutes a major part of a meal; for others, it provides fuel for an end of summer road trip. That’s right, the same starchy grain that nourishes us fuels our cars. How so? In the U.S., corn […]
Bamboo and rattan bring a wealth of practical options, but countries are not tapping into the many economic-environmental benefits of these strategic forest resources. A new global initiative will address this, providing a knowledge base of practical information, tools and policy guidance designed to help countries meet their sustainable development goals and develop green economies. […]
The world’s tropical forests are in trouble, confirm new satellite-based data from the University of Maryland and Google, and released today on Global Forest Watch. The world lost more than 18 million hectares (45 million acres) of tree cover—an area twice the size of Portugal—in 2014. Tropical countries lost 9.9 million hectares (24.5 million acres) […]
In June I attended the Global Landscapes Forum: The Investment Case meeting in London. Many good ideas were shared, networks strengthened and many new contacts for our company Nature Services Peru made. But overall, the meeting left me worried. Worried about the growing disconnect between financiers and the 100 million+ land use projects they are […]
Side event: Toward a roadmap for sustainable landscapes investments at scale — Inputs from forestry science The capital is ready. The project ideas are there. It’s time to scale up. Don’t miss out on this side event at FAO World Forestry Congress in Durban: On the 9th of September, from 12:45 until 14:15 in the 11CDE […]
In Spanish the word for politics and policy is the same – ‘política’ – reminding us that policy is always political. Although in Spanish the adjective ‘pública’ can be added to distinguish the senses that English tries to maintain, it can serve us well to focus on their overlapping meanings. There is no policy truly […]
A growing number of producers, traders and retailers have over the past few years made zero-deforestation pledges aiming to decouple production of palm oil, soy, beef and other commodities from deforestation impacts. The financial sector, however, has largely remained absent even though it is an important stakeholder as capital is a fundamental component of agricultural […]
Forget about finding the needle in the haystack. An even more complicated task might be counting all the hay on the farm. A new study documents the results of just such a search, undertaken across the globe, to count the number of tree species found in the planet’s tropical forests. By the authors’ estimate—all 143 […]
Farming and ranching remain the main drivers of deforestation in Brazil, a new study from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has found. But any new government policy to combat the problem may be undermined by lack of coordination and communication, says one of the study’s authors, Monica Di Gregorio, a senior CIFOR associate. […]
With the world’s appetite for chocolate at an all-time high, producers are looking for new places to grow cacao—the raw ingredient in cocoa and chocolate. Some are turning to South America, where satellite images show one cacao plantation encroaching dramatically on the Amazon rainforest. Historically, much of the world’s cacao has come from West Africa, […]
