Head of the Climate and Environment Department at the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Andrea Ledward, speaks on the sidelines of the Global Landscapes Forum: The Investment Case, held on 6 June 2016 in London. A Q&A with Andrea Ledward, Head of the Climate and Environment Department at the UK Department for International Development […]
When you cut and burn a tropical forest, you’re left with a barren plain of cracked red mud, incapable of supporting life – the opposite of the teeming, hyperdiverse array of life that was destroyed. Once the trees are gone, the nutrients wash away and the soil degrades into a dense, brick-like layer so hardened […]
This past autumn, I saw a shocking headline: Forest fires in Indonesia were creating as many greenhouse gas emissions as the entire United States economy. Between June and October 2015, an estimated 2.6 million hectares—or 4.5 times the size of Bali— burned to clear land for production of palm oil, the world’s highest value non-timber […]
In Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province, the peat areas are burning and emitting a toxic smoke causing untold damage to the environment, wildlife and human health. Most of the fires in Central Kalimantan are blazing in former peatland forests, which have been drained, cleared and burned for oil palm and agriculture, large and small. The dried-out […]
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. […]
BOGOR, Indonesia – Indonesia’s mangroves are a massive storehouse of carbon and a key bargaining chip for the country in the upcoming climate change negotiations in Paris, according to the authors of a new study published in Nature Climate Change. “Indonesian policymakers should see protecting and sustainably managing mangroves as a potential solution for climate […]
Having our cake and eating it, too: Can we grow more food on the world’s range lands while at the same time conserving the wealth of biodiversity those range land support? Rangelands cover one-quarter of earth’s land mass and they are storehouses of biodiversity. The scrublands of the Southern African Karoo, for example, are estimated […]
