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topic: forest degradation
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Protected areas bear the brunt as forest loss continues across Cambodia
- In 2023, Cambodia lost forest cover the size of the city of Los Angeles, or 121,000 hectares (300,000 acres), according to new data published by the University of Maryland.
- The majority of this loss occurred inside protected areas, with the beleaguered Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary recording the highest rate of forest loss in what was one of its worst years on record.
- A leading conservation activist says illegal logging inside protected areas is driven in part by demand for luxury timber exports, “but the authorities don’t seem to care about protecting these forests.”
- Despite the worrying trend highlighted by the data, the Cambodian government has set an ambitious target of increasing the country’s forest cover to 60% by 2050.
Tropical forest loss puts 2030 zero-deforestation target further out of reach
- The overall rate of primary forest loss across the tropics remained stubbornly high in 2023, putting the world well off track from its net-zero deforestation target by 2030, according to a new report from the World Resources Institute.
- The few bright spots were Brazil and Colombia, where changes in political leadership helped drive down deforestation rates in the Amazon.
- Elsewhere, however, several countries hit record-high rates of forest loss, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia and Laos, driven largely by agriculture, mining and fires.
- The report authors call for “bold global mechanisms and unique local initiatives … to achieve enduring reductions in deforestation across all tropical front countries.”
Rewilding Ireland: ‘Undoing the damage’ from a history of deforestation
- Eoghan Daltun has spent the past 14 years successfully rewilding 29 hectares (73 acres) of farmland on the Beara Peninsula in southwestern Ireland.
- Ireland is one of the most ecologically denuded countries in the world, only possessing about 11% forest cover but on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, co-host Rachel Donald speaks with Daltun about how he came to accomplish his rewilding feat simply by letting nature take its course and erecting a good fence, which has rapidly led to the regeneration of native forest, wildflowers and fauna.
- They also discuss the historical drivers of ecological devastation that have led to the classic, tree-less Irish landscape, from ancient times to imperial colonization and the advent of modern farming, and what the potential of rewilding is to change that and boost biodiversity.
In Cambodia, an official’s cashew factory churns out timber from a protected forest
- A senior Cambodian official notorious for illegal logging appears to be carving out a vast swath of forest in what’s supposed to be a protected area in the country’s north.
- Satellite imagery suggests some 3,100 hectares (7,700 acres) of protected forest could be lost in a concession that activists and anonymous officials say has been awarded to a company led by Ouk Kimsan.
- Kimsan, who’s also the deputy governor of Preah Vihear province, denied owning a concession inside Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary — despite his company stating the opposite on its website.
- Community activists, who manage a slice of the protected area, say their complaints about illegal logging have been ignored by the provincial government, and blame a culture of corruption.
Reforestation of Indonesia’s new capital city stumped by haphazard planting
- Less than a tenth of the reforestation target for Indonesia’s new capital city, Nusantara, has been achieved to date, planners say.
- The main obstacles that experts have identified include a preference for nonnative tree species, poor planting practices and monitoring, and a general misapplication of reforestation principles.
- Officials have acknowledged that progress is off-target, but note that the government is joined by the private sector and NGOs in carrying out tree-planting efforts.
- They also say a master plan is in the works to better guide these efforts, as Indonesia prepares to inaugurate its “green forest city” later this year.
‘Immense body of knowledge’ at stake in Cambodia’s Prey Lang as deforestation soars
- Researchers have launched a new book that catalogs hundreds of plant species from Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary that have known medicinal uses.
- The book draws on the knowledge of Indigenous communities who have found a use for these plants over the course of generations, and whose livelihoods and cultures are closely intertwined with the fate of these species.
- The book also serves to highlight the imperiled situation of Prey Lang and its native species as deforestation by politically linked timber-trafficking networks continues to destroy vast swaths of this ostensibly protected area.
- “If the current trends of deforestation continue,” the authors warn, “an immense body of knowledge about nature will be lost, reducing the resilience and adaptability of future generations.”
Vizzuality data set aims to give companies full view of supply chain impacts
- Sustainability technology company Vizzuality has published an open-source data set that can help companies evaluate how much their products are contributing to ecological degradation and accelerating climate change.
- The data set is also available through LandGriffon, an environmental risk management software.
- The software maps supply chains and calculates the impacts of several environmental indicators, including deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, loss of natural ecosystems, and biodiversity loss resulting from agricultural production.
Calls grow to repurpose land squandered in Cambodia’s concession policy
- The mismanagement of large swaths of Cambodia’s land by the country’s elites under the policy of economic land concessions has displaced thousands of rural families and accounted for 40% of total deforestation.
- With even the government seeming to acknowledge the ineffectiveness of ELCs as an economic driver, calls are growing to return the land to dispossessed communities or repurpose them in other ways.
- One expert says the role of local communities will be central to the success of any reformation of the ELC system and will need to be carefully considered to avoid the pitfalls of the old system.
- Another proposes giving land currently owned by nonperforming ELCs to agricultural cooperatives managed by communities, placing more negotiating power in the hands of farmers rather than concessionaires.
Report alleges APP continues deforestation 10 years after pledge to stop
- A new Greenpeace report alleges that pulp and paper giant APP continues to clear forests and develop peatlands 10 years after adopting its landmark 2013 pledge to stop destroying natural forests for its plantations.
- The report identifies 75,000 hectares (185,300 acres) of deforestation in APP supplier concessions or companies connected to APP between February 2013 and 2022 — an area the size of New York City.
- APP has also changed the start date of its no-deforestation policy from 2013 to 2020, which would allow the company at some point in the future to accept new suppliers that deforested between 2013 and 2020.
- APP denies allegations of continued deforestation and says its suppliers have ceased forest conversions since 2013; the company also says it has committed to peatland restoration.
Forest conservation ‘off-track’ to halt deforestation by 2030: New report
- The world lost 6.6 million hectares (16.3 million acres) of forest, an area larger than Sri Lanka, and deforestation rates increased by 4% in 2022, according to a report published Oct. 24 that tracks commitments to forest conservation.
- The Forest Declaration Assessment is an annual evaluation of deforestation rates against a 2018-2020 deforestation and forest degradation baseline compiled by civil society and research organizations.
- Much of the forest loss occurred in the tropics, and nearly two-thirds of it was in relatively undisturbed primary forests, while forest degradation, more than deforestation, remains a serious problem in temperate and boreal forests.
- Despite being far off the pace to achieve an end to deforestation by 2030, a goal that 145 countries pledged to pursue in 2021, more than 50 countries have cut their deforestation rates and are on track to end deforestation within their borders by the end of the century.
Cut down once again: Uncontrolled logging puts new Sahel reforestation projects at risk
- Reforestation projects to restore degraded lands in Chad and Cameroon, like the “Great Green Wall” and the “Reforestation 1400” projects, are facing increasing pressure from logging activity.
- Facing poverty, war and corrupt local authorities, locals and refugees are cutting trees in new protected areas for firewood or to sell charcoal.
- Local environmental defence organizations, officials and administrations who lead these reforestation projects are raising the alarm about the extent of deforestation which is contributing to desertification in these areas.
- Despite alternative solutions to excessive logging being proposed and implemented, locals are still harvesting from reforested areas.
‘Wasn’t us,’ fire-hit Indonesia claims as Malaysia chokes on poor air quality
- Malaysia has blamed forest fires in neighboring Indonesia of causing smoke that has sent air quality levels to unhealthy levels across much of the country.
- Air quality in Kuala Lumpur and other parts of Malaysia have worsened in recent days, with more than a dozen regions recording unhealthy air quality.
- Indonesian officials have denied that fires in their jurisdiction are to blame, and accused their Malaysian counterparts of misreading the data.
- Indonesia dismissed that same source of data in 2019, however, when fires in Sumatra and Borneo also spread to Malaysia and Singapore.
Indonesian children locked out of school as El Niño haze chokes parts of Sumatra & Kalimantan
- Poor air quality over several Indonesian cities and outlying rural areas has forced local authorities to cut class times or close schools altogether.
- Air pollution on Oct. 5 in one area of Palangkaraya far exceeded the level at which air quality is classified dangerous to human health.
- The government of Jambi province has closed schools until Oct. 7, after which it will review whether to reopen for in-person teaching.
Logging route cut into Cambodia’s Prey Lang from Think Biotech’s concession
- A road carved from a reforestation concession into the heart of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia appears to be facilitating the illegal logging and trafficking of valuable timber, a Mongabay investigation has revealed.
- The road originates in the concession of Think Biotech, a company previously implicated in forestry crimes, but its director denies being involved in the new road.
- The road had advanced 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) into the ostensibly protected Prey Lang before authorities ordered a crackdown — one that activists say was just for show and targeted only small-time loggers.
- Community groups and activists say Prey Lang’s forests are being decimated at alarming rates, with satellite data showing nearly the same amount of forest cover loss in the past five years as in the previous 18.
In Sumatra’s Jambi, community forest managers fish to protect peatlands
- A community in Indonesia’s Jambi province has resorted to fish farming to raise money for its efforts to prevent wildfires in the community.
- In 2015, around 80% of the province’s peat forest was damaged during the Southeast Asia wildfire crisis.
- Jambi-based nonprofit KKI Warsi cites the number of peatland canals as the greatest barrier to replenishing the wetland.
Cameroon government again opens way for logging in Ebo Forest
- Cameroon’s government is again planning to open a portion of Ebo Forest to logging, despite its status as a refuge for numerous endangered species including gorillas and chimpanzees.
- A local leader of the Indigenous Banen community, who have a claim to the territory they were expelled from in the 1950s and 60s, says most Munen are opposed to the move.
- The same portion of Ebo was briefly opened for logging in 2020, but the government reversed course. Local politicians have remained intent on reclassifying parts of the forest.
- Activists say the latest reclassification failed to meet legal requirements, particularly regarding consultation of local communities.
Sulawesi sea nomads who inspired Avatar movie chart new course saving forests
- Umar Pasandre, a member of the seafaring Bajo people, has spent more than two decades protecting mangroves in Indonesia’s Gorontalo province.
- The Bajo people were first recorded by 16th-century explorers and inspired James Cameron’s sequel to “Avatar.”
- Umar leads local mangrove-replanting initiatives and has confronted those seeking to convert the forests for aquaculture production.
Cambodia awards swath of national park forest to tycoon Ly Yong Phat’s son
- A Cambodian tycoon notorious for his association with illegal logging has expanded his grip over the country’s largest national park, with a swath of forest awarded to his son’s rubber company.
- This gives Ly Yong Phat, a ruling party senator, and his family members effective control of tens of thousands of hectares of land inside Botum Sakor National Park.
- The carving up of the park, awarded in parcels to politically connected tycoons, has led to widespread deforestation that’s driven both people and wildlife out of Botum Sakor.
- Longtime residents evicted by Ly Yong Phat’s various operations in the park have protested to demand their land back, but to no avail, with many even being jailed for their activism.
‘What we need to protect and why’: 20-year Amazon research hints at fate of tropics
- In its bold outlines, many informed people understand that climate change is reducing tropical biodiversity and thereby degrading the functionality and ecoservices of tropical forests. But what are the specific mechanisms by which these forests are being diminished over long time frames?
- One project on the slopes of the Peruvian Amazon has tried to make exactly that type of assessment, via a 20-year ongoing research project that meticulously observes a narrow transect of rainforest stretching from the Amazon lowlands near sea level to the Andean highlands above 3,352 meters (11,000 feet).
- The international team conducting this work, the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG), is painstakingly observing changes in more than 1,000 tree species, birds, frogs, snakes and more to determine not only how much climate change is affecting them, but untangling how the change process works.
- This type of in-depth research is vital to conserving tropical rainforest diversity, the carbon storage capacity it offers, and its assistance in maintaining long-persisting regional and global precipitation patterns vital to agriculture and other water needs. Mongabay contributor Justin Catanoso traveled to Peru to observe ABERG at work.
Indonesia claims record-low deforestation, but accounting raises questions
- Official data show Indonesia lost an area of forest two-thirds the size of London in 2021-2022, marking a third straight annual decline.
- The government attributes the continued drop to various forest protection policies, such as permanent ban on new permits to clear primary forests and peatlands as well as forest fire mitigation.
- However, data from the University of Maryland show Indonesia’s primary tree cover loss actually increased by 13% in 2022 compared to 2021 data — the first increase since 2017.
- The disparity in data comes from differences in methodology and definitions of deforestation and forests adopted by UMD and the Indonesian government.
Forests in the furnace: Cambodia’s garment sector is fueled by illegal logging
- An investigation has found factories in Cambodia’s garment sector are fueling their boilers with wood logged illegally from protected areas.
- A Mongabay team traced the network all the way from the impoverished villagers risking their lives to find increasingly scarce trees, to the traders and middlemen contending with slim margins, up to the factories with massive lots for timber supplies.
- The garment industry association denies that any of its members uses forest wood, but the informal and opaque nature of the supply chain means it’s virtually impossible to guarantee this.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn was a fellow. *Names have been changed to protect sources who said they feared reprisals from the authorities.
Report links paper giant RGE to Indonesia deforestation despite pledges
- A new investigative report alleges that the supply chain of one of the world’s largest producers of wood pulp and products, Royal Golden Eagle, is tainted with wood from deforestation in Indonesia.
- The allegation comes despite the company having adopted a no-deforestation policy since 2015.
- The report also reveals a chain of offshore shell companies pointing to RGE’s control of a new mega-scale pulp mill in Indonesia’s North Kalimantan province.
- This new mill threatens large-scale deforestation once it’s in operation, due to its huge demand for wood, the report says.
Sounds of the soil: A new tool for conservation?
- Researchers are discovering that listening to the soil can be a way to understand biodiversity belowground without having to overturn every bit of the land.
- Studies have shown that soils of restored forest areas have both more complex sounds and more critters than soils of degraded sites.
- Soils of intensively managed agricultural lands, also appear to be quieter, indicating that soil sounds could be a proxy for soil health.
- Some researchers are also using sounds to identify distinct species in the soil, which could open up lots of possibilities for both pest management and wildlife conservation.
Can community payments with no strings attached benefit biodiversity?
- A recent study published in the journal Nature Sustainability examines the idea of a “conservation basic income” paid to community members living in or near key areas for biodiversity protection.
- The authors argue that unconditional payments could help reduce families’ reliance on practices that could threaten biodiversity by providing financial stability and helping them weather unexpected expenses.
- But the evidence for the effectiveness of these kinds of cash transfers is scant and reveals that they don’t always result in outcomes that are positive for conservation.
License to Log: Cambodian military facilitates logging on Koh Kong Krao and across the Cardamoms
- Cambodia’s largest island, Koh Kong Krao, off its southwest coast, is covered in largely untouched old-growth forest, but recent satellite imagery shows deforestation is spreading.
- Much of the forest cover loss is in areas tightly controlled by Marine Brigade 2, a navy unit stationed on the island that has historically been accused of facilitating the illicit timber trade.
- Residents of the island said the navy controls almost every aspect of life there, with provincial officials afraid to intervene or investigate the military’s actions on Koh Kong Krao.
- Cambodia’s military has long been a key factor in illegal logging across the country, and reporters found evidence of its continued involvement in logging across the Cardamoms.
New research finds slow forest recovery in the Andes — and ways to improve
- New research led by the University of Oxford could help governments better prioritize restoration and conservation interventions across the tropical Andes.
- The study evaluated how mountain forests in the region recovered over a 15-year period, identifying four possible recovery trajectories, ranging from natural to arrested.
- Andean tropical mountain forests are some of the world’s most biodiverse forests, but so far studies on how these ecosystems bounce back after disruption have been limited; researchers estimate that restoration is stalling in 73% of the area studied.
- Between 2001 and 2014, about 5 million hectares (about 12.3 million acres) of woody vegetation has been cleared in the tropical and subtropical Andes, altering mountain forests and their ecosystem services.
High-carbon peat among 1,500 hectares cleared for Indonesia’s food estate
- A number of reports have found that an Indonesian government program to establish large-scale agricultural plantations across the country has led to deforestation.
- More than 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of forests, including carbon-rich peatlands, have been cleared in Central Kalimantan province for the so-called food estate program, according to a spatial analysis by the NGO Pantau Gambut.
- Last year, the NGO Kaoem Telapak detected 100 hectares (250 acres) of deforestation in food estate areas in North Sumatra.
- Villagers whose lands have been included in the program have also reported an increase in the severity of floods since their forests were cleared to make way for the food estates.
Tropical forest regeneration offsets 26% of carbon emissions from deforestation
- A new study published in the journal Nature analyzed satellite images from three major regions of tropical forest on Earth — Amazon, Central Africa and Borneo — and showed recovering forests offset just 26% of carbon emissions from new tropical deforestation and forest degradation in the past three decades.
- Secondary forests have a good potential to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and could be an ally in addressing the climate crisis, but emissions generated from deforestation and forests lost or damaged due to human activity currently far outpace regrowth.
- The study provides information to guide debates and decisions around the recovery of secondary forests and degraded areas of the Brazilian Amazon — around 17% of the ecosystem is in various stages of degradation and another 17% is already deforested.
- Since Brazil’s new President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office, projects to curb deforestation are in place, but plans to protect recovering areas remain unclear.
Indonesia’s mangrove restoration will run out of land well short of target, study warns
- The Indonesian government’s mangrove restoration plan faces a major hurdle, according to a new study: less than a third of the target area is actually viable for restoration.
- The finding isn’t all bad news; the researchers have been invited to collaborate with the national mangrove restoration agency on “fine-tuning where these areas are, and what kind of priority they need.”
- The study found the most promising sites for restoration are on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, which largely match the government’s own priority areas.
- Successful mangrove restoration across Indonesia could secure healthy fisheries for coastal communities and improve fisheries-based economies, thereby reducing poverty and hunger, and improving health and well-being for 74 million people.
Amazonian countries must act together to reverse rainforest loss, experts say
- A group of researchers from the Science Panel for the Amazon, an initiative dedicated to the region, says reversing the destruction of the rainforest needs to be done through large-scale restoration.
- They prescribe tailored action that unlocks different benefits in areas with high deforestation rates and forest degradation, and those experiencing climate change impacts.
- So-called arcs of reforestation would need to be created across Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Brazil, while conservation work would seek to stop further deforestation.
- According to the experts, with the exception of Brazil, Amazonian countries lack forest data for effectively running restoration actions.
Changing circumstances turn ‘sustainable communities’ into deforestation drivers: Study
- Subsistence communities can drive forest loss to meet their basic needs when external pressures, poverty and demand for natural resources increase, says a new study unveiling triggers that turn livelihoods from sustainable into deforestation drivers.
- The impact of subsistence communities on forest loss has not been quantified to its true extent, but their impact is still minimal compared to that of industry, researchers say.
- Deforestation tends to occur through shifts in agriculture practices to meet market demands and intensified wood collecting for charcoal to meet increasing energy needs.
- About 90% of people globally living in extreme poverty, often subsistence communities, rely on forests for at least part of their livelihoods—making them the first ones impacted by forest loss.
From deforestation to restoration: Policy plots path to Amazon recovery
- Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s new president, took office and promised to halt deforestation and to restore degraded land but plans to regenerate deforested areas remain unclear.
- The Science Panel for the Amazon at the COP27 climate summit provided the scientific basis to guide debates and decisions around the large-scale recovery of deforested and degraded areas.
- The most significant opportunity for large-scale and low-cost restoration is concentrated in public forests, protected areas and Indigenous lands that have suffered recent degradation.
- For areas with high levels of degradation, especially on private lands, productive restoration models capable of providing sustainable economic development are the main bet.
Japan’s example: Can forest planting reduce climate disaster risk?
- In disaster-prone Japan, torrential rains exacerbated by the climate crisis have caused serious flooding and landslides in recent years, including in the country’s many forests.
- While acknowledging the limits of forests’ ability to prevent landslides occurring in the bedrock, Japan’s Forestry Agency is implementing both forest improvement activities and erosion control facility construction to help mitigate future landslide disasters.
- Japan’s monoculture plantation forests, which represent 40% of the nation’s total forest cover, are seen by some experts and civil society members as insufficient to prevent mountain disasters. However, other experts say that a much wider range of geological and environmental factors, not just tree species, determine a forest’s disaster mitigation ability.
- Along Japan’s Pacific coast, others are using trees planted on raised embankments as an as-yet-untested countermeasure against future tsunamis, a type of disaster experts say can also be exacerbated by sea level rise due to climate change.
‘Amazing first step’ as EU law cracks down on deforestation-linked imports
- The European Union has agreed to adopt a law that will ban the trade of commodities associated with deforestation and forest degradation.
- The law will be the first of its kind in the world, and aims to tackle deforestation caused by the EU’s consumption of various agricultural commodities that are the main drivers of global forest loss, including palm oil, cattle, rubber, soy and cocoa.
- Green groups have lauded the law, but say it falls short on several key points, including failing to protect other wooded ecosystems like savannas, and providing limited rights protection for Indigenous peoples.
Indigenous community in Peru losing forests to timber, drug, land trafficking
- The Indigenous community of Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu, located in northern Peru, has been facing illegal timber, drug and land trafficking for the past several years.
- Satellite data and imagery suggest deforestation associated with these incursions has increased in 2022.
- The community lacks a communal land title to their territorial forests; experts say this is opening the door to setters who are using threats to bar regional authorities from intervening.
- Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu is one of a number of Indigenous communities in the region contending with deforestation from outsiders.
Amid conflict and chaos, a reforestation project surges ahead in Haiti
- An important reforestation project is forging ahead in Haiti, despite the nation’s economic and political upheavals.
- Reforesting 50 hectares (124 acres) with native plants this year in Grand Bois National Park, the NGO Haiti National Trust (HNT) is working closely with local communities to ensure the restoration project’s long-term survival.
- On an island buffeted by governance woes, severe deforestation and climate change, reforestation can save lives by mitigating the impacts of extreme rain events, droughts and hurricanes, and even reduce the risk of landslides caused by earthquakes.
- If ongoing funding can be secured, the group hopes to continue replanting efforts into the future with larger restoration goals.
Indigenous lands hold the world’s healthiest forests – but only when their rights are protected
- The world’s healthiest tropical forests are located in protected Indigenous areas (PIAs), according to a new study.
- However, research shows that forests with minimal human modification exist only on protected Indigenous lands. Indigenous lands that are unprotected lower forest integrity.
- Researchers believe the lower integrity of forests on Indigenous lands is due to mineral, oil, and gas deposits that are located on their lands and financial incentives for Indigenous people to deforest in unprotected areas.
- According to the researchers, strengthening Indigenous peoples’ land rights is critical to reaching global conservation and climate goals.
Report: Leaders’ vow to slow forest loss rings hollow ahead of climate talks
- Countries are nowhere close to meeting the goal of ending deforestation by 2030 announced in Glasgow in 2021, a new assessment shows.
- Indonesia is the only country that is moving in the right direction, registering declining deforestation rates in each of the past five years, which means tropical Asia as a whole is the only region on track to end forest loss.
- The world added forests the size of Peru between 2000 and 2020, but these gains don’t make up for the erasure of natural primary woodland, the report authors warn.
In new climate deal, Norway will pay Indonesia $56 million for drop in deforestation, emissions
- This year, Norway will pay Indonesia $56 million for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
- Both countries struck a new climate deal in September, in which Norway will provide support for Indonesia’s bid to curb deforestation and forest degradation, with the aim that Indonesia’s forests will turn into a carbon sink by 2030.
- Norway was supposed to pay the $56 million in 2020 under its previous climate agreement with Indonesia, but the Nordic country failed to pay, resulting in Indonesia terminating the original agreement.
For water quality, even a sliver of riverbank forest is better than none
- Costa Rica currently has laws in place to protect riparian zones along waterways, but they are unevenly enforced.
- Implementing these laws, even at the bare minimum of maintaining a 10-meter (33-foot) strip of riverbank vegetation, could lead to benefits for water quality and people, according to a new modeling study.
- The study shows that a small increase in forest cover around waterways can reduce nutrient and sediment runoff, especially on steeper lands and near farms and cities.
- Increases in water quality from riparian zones would improve drinking water for vulnerable populations in Costa Rica.
Drive for restoration and remedy behind some NGOs’ cautious support for FSC changes (commentary)
- Earlier this month, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) held its General Assembly in Bali.
- Grant Rosoman, a senior campaign advisor to Greenpeace International, argues that decisions made at this year’s General Assembly marked “the most significant change in direction” for the certification scheme in the last 20 years.
- Rosoman specifically identifies stakeholders’ approval of Motion 37 which will allow certification of forest areas cleared for plantations after November 1994 provided the party involved commits to restore an equivalent area of natural forest.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
As Brazil starts repaving an Amazon highway, land grabbers get to work
- Paving work has begun on a stretch of highway running through one of the remotest and best-preserved parts of the Brazilian Amazon — even as questions about the project’s permits abound.
- BR-319 was built in the 1970s to connect the Amazonian cities of Manaus and Porto Velho, but a 405-kilometer (250-mile) “Middle Stretch” fell into disrepair, making the road virtually impassable and killing the flow of traffic.
- Conservation experts have long warned against repaving the Middle Stretch, warning that improved access to this carbon-rich region will lead to a surge in deforestation, burning and land grabbing.
- With the repaving underway, this is already happening, raising concerns about unchecked forest loss that would have massive ramifications for the global climate.
Indonesia and Norway give REDD+ deal another go after earlier breakup
- Indonesia and Norway have embarked on another REDD+ scheme that will see the latter pay the former to keep its forests standing, after a previous attempt failed because of lack of payment.
- Indonesia is home to the third-largest expanse of tropical rainforest in the world, and the bulk of its greenhouse gas emissions comes from land-use change, forest degradation, and deforestation.
- Officials from both countries say it’s of mutual benefit to both countries, and to the world, to preserve Indonesia’s forests boost their capacity to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
- Under the new deal, payments still outstanding from the previous agreement, which was terminated in 2021, will be honored.
Cambodian government cancels development of Phnom Tamao forest amid outcry
- Cambodia’s prime minister has intervened to stop the destruction of a forest outside the country’s capital, but not before developers managed to clear between 500 and 600 hectares (nearly 1,250-1,500 acres) in a week.
- More than half of the Phnom Tamao forest had been parceled out to politically connected tycoons, prompting widespread condemnation from conservationists, environmental activists, and the general public.
- Environmental activists and local communities have welcomed Prime Minister Hun Sen’s order canceling all the developments in the forest, but say the damage already done is extensive.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.
Private road sparks fears for Cameroon’s Ebo Forest
- Bulldozers have opened around 40 kilometers (25 miles) of dirt road into the heart of the biodiverse Ebo Forest in southwestern Cameroon, raising fears this will accelerate illegal logging and poaching.
- A group of local politicians and businessmen is backing the road, which is being built without consultation with communities around the forest, an environmental impact assessment, or planning permission.
- Cameroonian and foreign conservation groups have written an open letter to the EU, the U.S. and other donors asking them to intervene.
- Cameroon’s minister for forests and wildlife has reacted by ordering the ministry’s regional representative to carry out an immediate investigation — though senior government officials in the area attended a launch ceremony for the project in May.
New Brazil bill puts cattle pasture over Pantanal wetland
- A bill loosening restrictions on cattle ranching in the Pantanal wetland has been approved by the Mato Grosso’s state legislature, prompting concerns it could lead to the loss of thousands of hectares of native vegetation.
- The Pantanal is a major transitional area between the country’s other major biomes — the Amazon Rainforest, the Atlantic Forest, and the Cerrado grasslands — and its wet area has already shrunk 29% since the 1980s.
- Advocates say they hope the new bill will bring an additional 1 million head of cattle to the Pantanal and improve declining socioeconomic parameters, but critics have warned of long-term environmental impacts.
- Another bill, currently being heard in Congress, aims to cut the state of Mato Grosso out from the country’s legally defined Amazon region, further reducing the protection of the biomes within the state.
Bangladesh struggles to protect the last of its last wild elephants
- Habitat loss, forest degradation and encroachment into forest reserves are driving Asian elephants into human habitats in search of food, increasing human-elephant conflicts.
- In 2016, there were only 268 resident Asian elephants in Bangladesh; more than 50 have been killed in the past five years, 34 of them in 2021 alone.
- Bangladesh has 12 identified elephant corridors, although at least one no longer serves that function due to forest degradation, human settlements, grabbing of forest land and unplanned development.
- The Forest Department has designed a new conservation project to protect the endangered species, including through stronger law enforcement and habitat restoration.
Organized crime drives violence and deforestation in the Amazon, study shows
- Increasing rates of both deforestation and violence in the Brazilian Amazon are being driven by sprawling national and transnational criminal networks, a study shows.
- Experts say criminal organizations engaged in activities ranging from illegal logging to drug trafficking often threaten and attack environmentalists, Indigenous people, and enforcement agents who attempt to stop them.
- In 2020, the Brazilian Amazon had the highest murder rate in Brazil, at 29.6 homicides per 100,000 habitants, compared to the national average of 23.9, with the highest rates corresponding to municipalities suffering the most deforestation.
- Experts say the current government’s systematic dismantling of environmental protections and enforcement agencies has emboldened these criminal organizations, which have now become “well connected, well established and very strong.”
Indonesia’s mangrove restoration bid holds huge promise, but obstacles abound
- Indonesia has more mangrove forests than any other country, but much of it has been degraded for fish and shrimp farms.
- The government aims to restore 600,000 hectares of mangroves by 2024, but questions remain about its stated progress toward that goal.
- If Indonesia can completely stop mangrove destruction, it can meet one-fourth of the government’s 29% emissions reduction target for 2030.
Palm oil producer mired in legal troubles still razing Sumatran forest
- A palm oil company has resumed clearing forest in its concession in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, the only place on Earth where tigers, orangutans and rhinos coexist.
- Analysis of satellite imagery by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) shows the company, PT Cemerlang Abadi (CA), cleared 309 hectares (761 acres) of secondary and regenerating forests between September 2021 and February 2022.
- RAN says it’s possible that palm oil from trees grown on this deforested land may have entered the global supply chain, as CA isn’t blacklisted by any of the major brands or traders that buy palm oil.
In Thailand’s deep south, a fight to stop quarrying in a global geopark
- Activists in the southern Thai province of Satun have for years protested against plans to open a quarry in the limestone mountain Khao Toh Krang.
- The limestone mountain sits just outside a UNESCO global geopark, notable for its Paleozoic fossils and karst landscape, and is also flanked by villages and a large school.
- Officials say the quarry will promote jobs and ensure a local source of construction material, but opponents say a group of planned quarries threaten the geopark’s UNESCO status as well as cultural and archaeological sites and the health of nearby residents.
Home away from home: Researchers trial artificial nests for Lilian’s lovebirds
- Researchers and conservationists are experimenting with artificial nest boxes to provide a home for a threatened lovebird in Malawi whose preferred nesting sites — mopane trees — are being lost to logging.
- Lilian’s lovebird prefers nesting in the cavities found in mature mopane trees, and a year-long trial shows it hasn’t taken to the nest boxes as alternative breeding and roosting sites.
- Experts say they’ll continue refining their experiment, including setting up camera traps to better understand the bird’s behavior.
- Artificial nest boxes have been used with some degree of success for other bird species facing a similar loss of their natural nesting sites, including hornbills elsewhere in Southern Africa and in Southeast Asia.
Repeated fires are silencing the Amazon, says new acoustic monitoring study
- Researchers recorded thousands of hours of sounds in areas that had been logged, burned once and burned multiple times along the “arc of deforestation” in the Brazilian Amazon.
- In the forests with repeated fires, animal communication networks were quieter, with less diversity of sound than in logged forests or forests burned only once. This type of acoustic monitoring can be used as a cost-effective way to check the pulse of the forest.
- The authors were surprised to find that insects, not birds, were the most obvious signal of forest degradation. Additionally, they found that amount of biomass in a forest doesn’t correlate with the level of biodiversity.
- There’s a major difference in the biodiversity of a forest after one burn versus multiple burns, one author said, so protecting forests from repeated fires is still worthwhile.
In Bangladesh, a community comes together to save a life-giving forest
- Several tribal settlements are spread across Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region, each with its own communally managed forest that residents can use.
- But the unchecked exploitation of the once-rich forests, a consequence of population growth, has led to local water holes drying up, forcing many residents to leave the villages.
- In one village, however, residents started an initiative with various programs aimed at conserving their forest and providing funding for alternative livelihoods to reduce members’ reliance on forest resources.
- The initiative in the village of Kamalchhori, which includes prohibitions on hunting and slash-and-burn farming, has seen local water sources restored and vegetation conserved.
2021 tropical forest loss figures put zero-deforestation goal by 2030 out of reach
- The world lost a Cuba-sized area of tropical forest in 2021, putting it far off track from meeting the no-deforestation goal by 2030 that governments and companies committed to at last year’s COP26 climate summit.
- Deforestation rates remained persistently high in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the world’s two biggest expanses of tropical forest, negating the decline in deforestation seen in places like Indonesia and Gabon.
- The diverging trends in the different countries show that “it’s the domestic politics of forests that often really make a key difference,” says leading forest governance expert Frances Seymour.
- The boreal forests of Eurasia and North America also experienced a spike in deforestation last year, driven mainly by massive fires in Russia, which could set off a feedback loop of more heating and more burning.
Can a reforestation project stop land grabs? Villagers in the DRC give it a try
- Kinandu village residents in southern Democratic Republic of Congo are taking part in a reforestation initiative in the miombo woodlands while land grabs are simultaneously on the rise.
- The fear of losing the land on which they were born and raised, coupled with an awareness of the environmental degradation they took part of, is inspiring residents to own forest concessions and restore the land.
- However, restoration largely depends on whether residents and stakeholders will change the way they produce essential goods, such as maize and charcoal.
- The government should continue to support the project after it ends in July 2022, says Jonathan Ilunga, professor of the University of Lubumbashi’s faculty of agronomy and deputy director of the Open Forests Urban Observatory.
NGOs alert U.N. to furtive 2-million-hectare carbon deal in Malaysian Borneo
- Civil society organizations have complained to the United Nations about an opaque “natural capital” agreement in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo.
- The agreement, signed behind closed doors in October 2021, involved representatives from the state government and Hoch Standard Pte. Ltd., a Singaporean firm. But it did not involve substantive input from the state’s numerous Indigenous communities, many of whom live in or near forests.
- The terms ostensibly give Hoch Standard the right to monetize carbon and other natural capital from Sabah’s forests for 100 years.
- Along with the recent letter to the U.N., the state’s attorney general has questioned whether the agreement is enforceable without changes to key provisions. An Indigenous leader is also suing the state over the agreement, and Hoch Standard may be investigated by the Singaporean government after rival political party leaders in Sabah reported the company to Singapore’s ambassador in Malaysia.
Palm oil and pulpwood the usual suspects as Papua deforestation persists
- Indonesia’s Papua region lost total forest area the size of Manhattan last year, with much of the deforestation attributed to pulpwood and palm oil companies, according to a new report.
- Using satellite imagery and on-the-ground investigations, environmental NGO Pusaka recorded 5,810 hectares (14,357 acres) of deforestation in the region.
- One observer says this continued loss of forest highlights the disconnect between the Indonesian government’s rhetoric about tackling deforestation and what it actually allows to happen on the ground.
Malaysian officials dampen prospects for giant, secret carbon deal in Sabah
- The attorney general of the Malaysian state of Sabah has said that a contentious deal for the right to sell credits for carbon and other natural capital will not come into force unless certain provisions are met.
- Mongabay first reported that the 100-year agreement, which involves the protection of some 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) from activities such as logging, was signed in October 2021 between the state and a Singapore-based firm called Hoch Standard.
- Several leaders in the state, including the attorney general, have called for more due diligence on the companies involved in the transaction.
- Civil society representatives say that a technical review of the agreement is necessary to vet claims about its financial value to the state and its feasibility.
Amazon losing far more carbon from forest degradation than deforestation: Study
- Forest degradation — due to human and environmental causes — was responsible for more carbon loss than deforestation between 2010 and 2019, researchers reported at the most recent American Geophysical Union meeting in December.
- Scientists found that the Brazilian Amazon saw more deforestation in 2019 than in 2015, but lost three times more carbon storage in 2015 than in 2019. The likely source of that additional carbon in 2015: forest degradation and biomass loss, possibly brought on by intense El Niño-related drought and storms during that year.
- More research is needed to determine precisely how much forest degradation is caused by human activities, including illegal logging and fragmentation, and set fires to make way for grazing and croplands, but also environmental factors, such as drought which has been significantly intensified by human-caused climate change.
- The large amount of carbon now being lost from degraded forests in the Brazilian Amazon should, researchers say, result in an evaluation of current conservation policies which almost exclusively focus on preventing deforestation rather than on curbing degradation.
‘We should be pretty concerned’: Study shows only 15% of coastal regions still intact
- A new study has found that only 15.5% of the world’s coastal regions remain intact, while the majority of coastal areas are either highly or extremely impacted by human activities such as fishing, agriculture and development.
- The nations with the largest swaths of undamaged coastlines included Canada, Russia and Greenland.
- The researchers only had access to data up to 2013, so their findings are likely to be an underestimation.
- The study also did not factor in the impacts of climate change, which would place additional pressure on coastal regions.
California redwood forest returned to Indigenous guardianship, conservation
- Ownership of a 215-hectare (532-acre) redwood forest along California’s north coast was returned to Sinkyone tribes and has been renamed Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ.
- The InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council is working with Save the Redwoods League, which donated the land, to protect California’s remaining old-growth forest, along with endangered species such as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet.
- The 30-year conservation plan and land transfer deal is funded by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) in order to offset habitat loss that may result from the company’s activities.
- Indigenous forest conservation principles, such as controlled burnings, will be included in the tribal protected area – an inclusion that should be seen in the 30×30 initiative to protect 30% of lands and ocean by 2030, says Save the Redwoods League and the tribal council.
Coastal deforestation fuels more frequent storms in West Africa, study warns
- Storms are hitting the densely populated coastal pocket of West Africa twice as frequently as 30 years ago, a new study says.
- Declining forest cover is fueling this increased storm frequency in the coastal regions of southern West Africa.
- With the loss of forests, the daytime temperature difference between land and sea is widening, generating stronger winds and feeding convective storms.
- “The coastal location of deforestation in SWA [southern West Africa] is typical of many tropical deforestation hotspots, and the processes highlighted here are likely to be of wider global relevance,” the study authors write.
Indigenous leader sues over Borneo natural capital deal
- An Indigenous leader in Sabah is suing the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo over an agreement signing away the rights to monetize the natural capital coming from the state’s forests to a foreign company.
- Civil society and Indigenous organizations say local communities were not consulted or asked to provide input prior to the agreement’s signing on Oct. 28.
- Further questions have arisen about whether the company, Hoch Standard, that secured the rights under the agreement has the required experience or expertise necessary to implement the terms of the agreement.
2019 fires in Indonesia were twice as bad as the government claimed, study shows
- Independent researchers have identified 3.11 million hectares (7.68 million acres) of areas that were burned during Indonesia’s 2019 fires, nearly double the official government estimate.
- The new analysis used satellite imagery that was less constrained by cloud cover and smoke, and the Google Earth Engine to more efficiently identify burn scars.
- Activists have welcomed the new methodology to more accurately map burned areas, but say that government officials are likely to push back against findings that contradict the official narrative.
- David Gaveau, a co-author of the new study, was deported from Indonesia last year after publishing preliminary findings of a larger burned area than the government claimed, although officials denied the deportation was linked to the findings.
For Mekong officials fighting timber traffickers, a chance to level up
- Global wildlife trade authority CITES held a virtual workshop for customs agents and inspections officials in the Lower Mekong region of Southeast Asia on the physical inspection of timber shipments in October.
- The region’s forests are home to around 100 species of trees for which CITES restricts trade to protect their survival.
- But attendees also note that the ability to accurately identify tree species, as well as the knowledge to spot suspicious shipments, is low in the region.
- Improving that capacity will help to address illegal logging in the region, advocates say.
One in five hectares of oil palm in Indonesia is illegal, report shows
- A fifth of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, are operating illegally inside forest areas that are off-limits to commercial agricultural activity, a new report from Greenpeace shows.
- Half of these plantations are operated by corporations, and the other half by smallholders, indicating that nearly a third of registered palm oil companies in Indonesia have illegal plantations.
- These illegal plantations occupy protected areas such as national parks and UNESCO World Heritage Site, and overlap with the habitat of threatened wildlife like orangutans and tigers.
- Many of the companies identified in the report are members of so-called sustainability certification schemes like the RSPO and ISPO, pointing to a failure by these initiatives to address unsustainable practices.
Bornean communities locked into 2-million-hectare carbon deal they don’t know about
- Leaders in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, signed a nature conservation agreement on Oct. 28 with a group of foreign companies — apparently without the meaningful participation of Indigenous communities.
- The agreement, with the consultancy Tierra Australia and a private equity-backed funder from Singapore, calls for the marketing of carbon and other ecosystem services to companies looking, for example, to buy credits to offset their emissions.
- The deal involves more than 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of forest, which would be restored and protected from mining, logging and industrial agriculture for the next 100-200 years.
- But land rights experts have raised concerns about the lack of consultation with communities living in and around these forests in the negotiations to this point.
Planned copper mine raises fears for biodiversity hotspot in Jordan
- The Jordanian government plans to carve out almost a third of the Dana Biosphere Reserve to allow mining for copper in the biodiverse area.
- With more than 800 different plants and 215 bird species, Dana is home to about a third of Jordan’s flora, almost half of the country’s mammals, and half of all the bird species.
- Local communities and conservationists have expressed alarm over the plan, warning of irreversible environmental destruction, water and air pollution, and loss of habitat for rare wildlife.
- They also say the environmental impact assessment for the project has never been published, and cite the dangers of long-term contamination, pointing to 2,000-year-old copper mines that continue to pose a toxic threat.
COP-26: Amazonia’s Indigenous peoples are vital to fighting global warming (commentary)
- The United Nations Climate Change summit, the 26th conference of the parties (COP-26), held in Glasgow Scotland through November 12, is important both for the future of the global climate and for Amazonian Indigenous peoples.
- Uncontrolled climate change threatens the Amazon forest on which Indigenous peoples depend, and Indigenous peoples in turn have an important role as guardians of the forest.
- Decisions on how international funds intended to avoid greenhouse gas emissions are used represent both opportunities and risks for the climate, for the forest, and for Indigenous peoples.
- Indigenous voices need to be heard at COP-26, as empowered stakeholders threatened by climate change, and for the invaluable traditional wisdom these peoples can contribute to global warming solutions. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
BR-319 highway hearings: An attack on Brazil’s interests and Amazonia’s future (commentary)
- Brazil’s proposed reconstruction of the BR-319, a highway connecting Manaus (in central Amazonia) with the “arc of deforestation” in southern Amazonia, would bring deforesters to vast areas of what remains of the Amazon forest.
- The forest areas in western Amazonia that would be opened by planned roads connecting to the BR-319 are vital to maintaining rainfall that supplies water to São Paulo and other major urban and agricultural areas outside the Amazon region.
- Holding public hearings allows a “box to be checked” in the licensing process — a key step in obtaining official approval for the highway project. The hearing was held despite impacted Indigenous peoples not having been consulted, among other irregularities.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Deforestation notches up along logging roads on PNG’s New Britain Island
- Recent satellite data has shown a marked increase in the loss of tree cover in Papua New Guinea’s East New Britain province.
- Many of the alerts were near new or existing logging roads, indicating that the forest loss may be due to timber harvesting.
- Oil palm production is also growing, altering the face of a province that had more than 98% of its primary forest remaining less than a decade ago.
- The surge in land use changes has affected not only the environment in East New Britain, but also the lives of the members of the communities who depend on it.
Math campus multiplies threats to Rio de Janeiro’s dwindling Atlantic Forest
- A plan to create a new mathematics campus with student accommodation in Rio de Janeiro is being challenged by residents as it calls for the removal of 255 trees in a patch of the already severely diminished Atlantic Forest.
- A study shows the construction site sits on a slope that poses a high geological risk, leaving residents worried about flooding and landslides in an area already affected by intense rainfall.
- Experts say there are irregularities in the licensing granted to the construction, and environmental laws are not being respected.
- The Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IMPA), which is building the new campus, says all its licenses are in order, that it will reforest the area, and that the educational and social benefits will be worth it.
Paper giants’ expansion plans raise fears of greater deforestation in Indonesia
- Two paper giants, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL), plan to significantly expand their production capacity in Indonesia.
- Activists warn that these plans could lead to increased deforestation of natural forest and peatlands in Indonesia to plant the pulpwood trees needed to meet this capacity, exacerbating the annual fire season.
- They say the projects are benefiting from the Indonesian government’s deregulation initiative that strips away environmental and social protections across a wide swath of industries, including pulp and paper.
- In response to the expansion plans, a coalition of 33 NGOs has sent a letter to APP’s financiers and buyers, asking them to refrain from doing business with the company.
Spike in deforestation detected in Papua concession linked to South Korea’s Moorim
- Satellite imagery has detected 965 hectares (2,384 acres) of tree loss from January to May this year in a concession run by a subsidiary of South Korean paper company Moorim in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua.
- The findings appear to corroborate an earlier investigation, using drone images, that showed signs of clearing in peat swamp areas in the concession.
- Besides the alleged deforestation, Indigenous communities in the area have also reportedly been denied the right to give their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) to the project.
- The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which certifies Moorim’s paper products as sustainable, says its takes these allegations “very seriously”; Moorim did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment.
North American paper industry merger sets off environmental alarms
- Canadian firm Paper Excellence plans to acquire U.S. pulp and paper giant Domtar, with shareholders overwhelmingly approving the proposed merger.
- The acquisition signals Paper Excellence’s expansion in North America, something that environmentalists say will threaten Canada’s boreal forest.
- This is because Paper Excellence is reportedly controlled by the owners of Indonesia’s Asia Pulp & Paper, which has a long track record of deforestation, forest and peat fires, and human rights violations.
Next to India’s capital, a village looks to the past for its forest’s future
- For generations, a community outside India’s capital has worked to protect their sacred grove from outside interests like mining and real estate.
- Despite being a biodiversity hotspot, the protection status of this grove under India’s Forest Conservation Act remains in limbo.
- But conservationists and experts say they hope new archaeological findings will help the community get more secure legal protection for their grove.
What makes mapping and monitoring zero-deforestation commitments effective?
- Experts have identified 12 attributes of effective zero deforestation commitment, or ZDC, mapping and monitoring systems.
- The attribute framework can be used to guide the development of effective ZDC mapping and monitoring systems.
- Having such a framework is important as there’s not a single one-size-fits-all ZDC mapping and monitoring system that will meet the needs of all users.
Half of burned forests across Latin America don’t survive, study finds
- Researchers monitored the forests of 22 Latin American countries from 2003 to 2018, and analyzed their resistance to fires.
- According to the researchers, 48% of these ecosystems that suffered burning in 2003 were wiped out in subsequent years.
- The study found that all forests in Latin America are susceptible to fires, with severe implications for greenhouse gas emissions, particulate matter, and biodiversity.
Indonesian pulpwood firms told to protect peat are doing the opposite: Report
- Pulpwood companies in Indonesia are continuing to plant on degraded peatlands inside their concessions, despite being required to protect and restore these ecosystems, a new report shows.
- The report focuses on 16 pulp and paper producers and found all of them in violation of peat protection and rehabilitation regulations.
- Among the violations are planting and harvesting acacia trees in previously burned peatlands, and digging new canals to drain peatland.
- Among the companies highlighted in the report are subsidiaries of two of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world, APP and APRIL.
Hotter and drier: Deforestation and wildfires take a toll on the Amazon
- Drought and high temperatures amplify the destructive effects of deforestation and wildfires.
- Across the Amazon Basin, tree species adapted to drier conditions are becoming more prevalent, and in the Central Amazon, savannas have replaced floodplain forests in just a few decades.
- While deforestation remains a main concern, the impacts of forest degradation are becoming increasingly important.
Cleaning up Cambodia’s kitchens could curb deforestation, climate change
- NGOs and companies across Cambodia are taking action in response to the mass use of charcoal and forest biomass in household and restaurant kitchens countrywide. The shift away from these polluting fuel sources to cleaner energy alternatives is being sparked by health and environmental concerns.
- Education is a key strategy for implementing the shift away from charcoal and wood, as their use is ingrained in the culture, with many Cambodians saying food doesn’t taste as good when cooked with other fuels.
- One innovative solution is turning the country’s coconut husks into “green charcoal,” which is already earning the nation recognition for being a global leader within the sustainable charcoal sector.
- Cambodia’s farmers are also moving away from using forest biomass for energy, and are instead utilizing biodigesters to turn household and farm waste into biogas for cooking and to make organic fertilizer.
Rush to turn ‘black diamonds’ into cash eats up Uganda’s forests, fruits
- As recently as 2018, only a little over 42% of Ugandans had access to electricity — many were too poor to afford it. As of 2016-17, 90% of all households burned wood fuel for cooking, with just 15.5% using charcoal in rural areas, but 66.4% of urban households using it.
- Those using charcoal account for roughly 23% of the country’s total population, which means that some 10.7 million citizens in a nation of 46.8 million rely on charcoal to cook their meals, based on recent U.N. data.
- Charcoal producers are working hard to meet this exploding demand, degrading and depleting the nation’s forest reserves, and now buying up fruit trees on private lands to make into briquettes. Many charcoal producers lack the licenses required by the government, so are cutting trees and making charcoal illegally.
- The surging charcoal industry is destroying Uganda’s forests and biodiversity, while briquette burning is also causing respiratory and other health problems, and its carbon emissions are adding significantly to global climate change.
In less than a generation, legal mining in Colombia deforested over 120,000 hectares
- A study by researchers in Colombia found that forest clearing by legal mining operations has increased sharply in recent years.
- The study shows that just 1% of the 8,600 legal mining concessions in the country account for 60% of the deforestation associated with the sector.
- The authors say that if mining titles continue to be granted at current rates, Colombia could lose 400,000 hectares (990,000 acres) of forest from legal mining alone over the next two decades.
‘We guard the forest’: Carbon markets without community recognition not viable
- Researchers looked at 31 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that hold almost 70% of the world’s tropical forests and 62% of the total feasible natural climate solution potential, and found that most of the tropical forested countries looking to benefit from carbon markets still need to define community carbon rights.
- There is significant public and private interest to use carbon markets to fight climate change and work toward the goals of the Paris Agreement, with the global LEAF coalition pushing to mobilize at least $1 billion to tackle deforestation and forest degradation.
- While carbon markets appear to be a win-win for protecting the forests and promoting developing economies, if implemented without meaningfully including communities, they could worsen risks faces by these communities including increasing land grabs and efforts to capture associated rents, and increasing threats of human rights violations, criminalization and conflicts.
- Studies increasingly show that Indigenous peoples and local communities are the best stewards of tropical forests, and that granting them land rights is a highly cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions.
Bolsonaro govt wanted to ‘run the cattle’ through environmental protections. It was a stampede
- The government of President Jair Bolsonaro accelerated its agenda of environmental deregulation during the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing a slew of measures weakening existing protections and slashing the amount of fines imposed on violators.
- Bolsonaro’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, had made the plans clear at the outset of the pandemic last April, when he suggested “running the cattle” through the regulations while the rest of the country was focused on the health crisis.
- A new study makes clear just how far the government pursued this agenda: 28 of the 57 deregulation measures passed under Bolsonaro came during the first seven months of the pandemic, 16 of them last September alone, while environmental fines during this time dropped by 70%.
- The measures saw, among other things, a reduction in citizen representation on environmental policy councils; replacement of environmental policymakers with inexperienced military and police officers, and the shuttering of several agencies.
Papua deforestation highlights eastward shift of Indonesia forest clearing
- Deforestation is increasing in forest-rich regions in Indonesia, even as the government claims the national average has gone down, a new report shows.
- The NGOs behind the report attribute the decline in the national deforestation rate to the fact that there’s virtually no forest left to clear in parts of Sumatra and Borneo.
- Instead, deforestation has moved east, largely to the Papua region, home to nearly two-fifths of Indonesia’s remaining rainforest — an area the size of Florida — where companies are clearing land for oil palm and pulpwood plantations and mines.
- Another key driver of the deforestation in Papua is infrastructure development, which the government claims is meant to connect remote villages and communities, but which really serve mines, plantations and logging concessions, the report shows.
Gold and diamonds fail to shine as drivers of Amazon development
- Gold and diamond mining in the Brazilian Amazon don’t contribute to sustained improvements in the economy, health and education, among other development parameters, a new study shows.
- The study compared these parameters in 73 Amazonian municipalities where mining takes place, against others in the region without mining.
- It found that any improvements were brief, lasting no more than five years, while the adverse environmental impacts lingered for up to seven years.
- The researchers, from the Instituto Escolhas, plan to hone their methodology by including other parameters, such as tax incentives for miners, which they predict will show that the industry is also a drain on public coffers.
Myanmar’s troubled forestry sector seeks global endorsement after coup
- Two days after the military coup in Myanmar on Feb. 1, the nationally privatized Myanmar Forest Products and Timber Merchants Association (MFPTMA) released a statement claiming its timber trade is fully in compliance with legal and official deforestation guidelines intended govern international exports.
- The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has publicly countered the letter, saying that Myanmar’s timber trade is highly corrupt and does not comply with international policies such as the EU’s Timber Regulation.
- Expert critics say the letter was motivated by money, and that any subsequent timber trade would directly benefit the ongoing military coup, which has been promised to last for at least a year.
- The EIA has called for placing economic sanctions on Myanmar, particularly in regard to the timber trade, until power is handed back to the democratically elected government.
How the pandemic impacted rainforests in 2020: a year in review
- 2020 was supposed to be a make-or-break year for tropical forests. It was the year when global leaders were scheduled to come together to assess the past decade’s progress and set the climate and biodiversity agendas for the next decade. These included emissions reductions targets, government procurement policies and corporate zero-deforestation commitments, and goals to set aside protected areas and restore degraded lands.
- COVID-19 upended everything: Nowhere — not even tropical rainforests — escaped the effects of the global pandemic. Conservation was particularly hard in tropical countries.
- 2019’s worst trends for forests mostly continued through the pandemic including widespread forest fires, rising commodity prices, increasing repression and violence against environmental defenders, and new laws and policies in Brazil and Indonesia that undermine forest conservation.
- We don’t yet have numbers on the degree to which the pandemic affected deforestation, because it generally takes several months to process that data. That being said, there are reasons to suspect that 2020’s forest loss will again be substantial.
Lasers reveal steep decline in ecosystem function of degraded Amazon forests
- Large portions of the Amazon rainforest are degraded by human activities, such as patchy smallholder farming, timber extraction, and burning.
- Airborne laser scans paired with an ecological model show that these areas store less carbon, carry less water, and are much more fire-prone.
- During periods of extreme drought, intact forests also run out of water and become as hot as degraded forests, stressing the entire ecosystem
Trans-Purus: Brazil’s last intact Amazon forest at immediate risk (commentary)
- Brazil’s remaining Amazon forest is roughly divided in half by the Purus River, just west of the notorious BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) highway. To the west of the river lies the vast “Trans-Purus” region — intact rainforest stretching to the Peruvian border. To the east, the forest is already heavily deforested, degraded and fragmented.
- Multiple threats are now closing in on the Trans-Purus region, and expected to increase greatly with the impending “reconstruction” of the BR-319. Planned roads linked to the BR-319 would open the Trans-Purus region to land grabbers (grileiros), organized landless farmers (sem-terras) and other actors from Brazil’s “arc of deforestation.”
- A massive planned gas and oil project would also likely lead to new road connections to the other planned highways in the Trans-Purus area, opening even more of the region to invasion. Asian oil palm and logging companies are among those with a historical interest in the area.
- This last large block of intact Brazilian Amazon forest is essential for ecosystem services — maintaining biodiversity, carbon stocks, and the forest water cycling functions essential for rainfall in other parts of Brazil and neighboring countries. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Surrounded by intruders, the last of Brazil’s Piripkura hold out in the Amazon
- The Piripkura Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state is home to two of the last three members of this once isolated tribe.
- The territory has long been the target of land grabbers and loggers, with the deforestation rate increasing in recent years on the back of policies that effectively whitewash illegal land grabs.
- The ordinance that designates the Piripkura Indigenous Territory as a protected area expires in September 2021, and its renewal beyond that date depends on the fate of the two Indigenous people still living there.
- Experts say the federal agency for Indigenous affairs, Funai, has not only failed to formalize and protect the territory, but even encouraged its illegal occupation and destruction.
BR-319: The beginning of the end for Brazil’s Amazon forest (commentary)
- Brazil’s planned reconstruction of the BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway paralleling the Purus and Madeira rivers would give deforesters access to about half of what remains of the country’s Amazon forest, and so is perhaps the most consequential conservation issue for Brazil today.
- The highway route is essentially a lawless area today, and the lack of governance is a critical issue in the battle over licensing the highway reconstruction project.
- The BR-319 upgrade would link the current “arc of deforestation” to central Amazonia, allowing movement of deforestation actors to all forest locations with road links to Manaus, while a planned BR-319 connecting road would open the vast forest area between the BR-319 and the Peruvian border.
- The BR-319 Environmental Impact Assessment has many flaws, including ignoring impacts beyond those adjacent to the highway. The EIA also contains passages admitting to some disastrous project impacts. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Rewilding key to averting mass extinctions and reducing carbon emissions
- A recent study that analyzed data from biomes all over the world, covering an area of almost 3 billion hectares (7 billion acres) that were turned from natural habitats into farmlands, concluded that rewilding is key to recovery.
- Restoring 30% of this area and preserving remaining natural habitats could remove almost half the carbon dioxide surplus humans have emitted since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
- Restoring this area would also save 71% of animal species from extinction compared with current extinction rates, according to researchers.
- High-priority areas are concentrated in the tropics. Wetlands restoration has the highest positive impact for biodiversity conservation and forests the highest importance for climate change mitigation.
On a Philippine mountain, researchers describe a ‘fire flower’ orchid species
- A new wild orchid species, Dendrochilum ignisiflorum, has been described in the Philippine province of Benguet in the northern Cordilleras mountain range.
- This fiery orange orchid belongs to a genus found in high-elevation forests in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines, Borneo and Sumatra.
- The scientists who described it say the species is threatened by climate change, which could make its niche range uninhabitable.
- The mountain where it’s found is also an increasingly popular tourist spot, while the forests in the area around it are being cleared for agriculture.
Forest degradation outpaces deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: Study
- Brazilian Amazon deforestation rates have declined from, and stayed below, their 2003 peak, despite recent increases. However, this decline was offset by a trend of increased forest degradation, according to an analysis of 23 years of satellite data. By 2014, the rate of degradation overtook deforestation, driven by increases in logging and understory burning.
- During the 1992-2014 study period, 337,427 square kilometers suffered a loss of vegetation, compared to 308,311 square kilometers completely cleared, a finding that has serious implications for global greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss.
- Forest degradation has been connected to outbreaks of infectious diseases as a result of increased contact between humans and displaced wildlife. Degradation can also facilitate the emergence of new diseases and some experts warn that the Amazon could be the source of the next pandemic.
- These findings could have major implications for Brazilian national commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement, as well as international agreements and initiatives such as the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and REDD+, which rely on forest degradation monitoring.
Hotter tropics may worsen climate change, reforestation could lessen it: Studies
- Researchers know tropical forests play an important part in regulating the global climate, but there is great uncertainty still as to how various forest mechanisms will work as the world warms in the years ahead.
- Two new studies shed light on the problem: one finds that a hotter global climate could release far more carbon from tropical soils than currently believed. The research conducted in Panama found that soil carbon emissions increased by 55% over two years when those soils were heated by four degrees Celsius.
- However, more research is needed to see if such large losses would be maintained over time, as well as what future results might be in other tropical forests and soils around the world.
- In another study conducted in Malaysia, scientists determined that active restoration of degraded tropical forests could be a key tool for lowering atmospheric CO2 concentrations, potentially curbing climate change and helping moderate global temperatures.
Brazilian dry forests are chronically degraded even in non-deforested areas
- Authors call the effect chronic anthropogenic disturbance and modeled it for areas with human settlements, infrastructure construction, grazing, logging, and fire in 47,100 remaining fragments of the biome.
- The Caatinga is the only biome exclusively Brazilian, and is home to more than 900 species of animals and plants.
- But with more than 27 million people, it is also one of the most degraded biomes in the country, although the study highlights areas that can still be conserved, including wildlife corridors.
Study finds a Mexico-sized swath of intact land lost to human pressure
- A new study has found that human activities contributed to the loss of 1.9 million square kilometers (734,000 square miles) of intact land between 2000 and 2013, and that more than half of the world is under moderate or intense pressure from humanity.
- The most substantial losses occurred in tropical and subtropical grassland, savanna, and shrublands, while the most intact regions were tundras, boreal and taiga forests, deserts and xeric shrublands.
- The team is currently working on an update to produce near real-time results of land degradation for the past seven years.
- These findings can help inform policies and aid conservation monitoring efforts, according to the researchers.
Vietnam creates new nature reserve, possible home to elusive ‘Asian unicorn’
- Conservationists have hailed the establishment of the new Dong Chau-Khe Nuoc Trong Nature Reserve as a major step for the protection of Vietnam’s wildlife.
- The new reserve is home to a number of threatened species, including two species of muntjac deer (Muntiacus vuquangensis and M. truongsonensis), the Annamite striped rabbit (Nesolagus timminsi), the Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica), the southern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus siki), the red-shanked douc langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), and the crested argus (Rheinardia ocellata), which resembles a peacock.
- Conservationists debate whether it may also shelter the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), a mysterious antelope-like bovine so rare it has been called the “Asian unicorn.”
- Critical threats such as poaching and deforestation remain, however, and conservationists say enforcement of new protective measures will be key to the reserve’s success.
Experts question integrity of Indonesia’s claim of avoided deforestation
- The $103.8 million is payment for 20.3 million tons of avoided emissions from 2014-2016, but observers, including on the GCF board, have questioned the way the Indonesian government arrived at that figure.
- Among the contentious points: a reference level that may be inflated, possible double counting, and persistent state neglect of Indigenous rights.
- The government says the process was transparent, and may be eligible for even more funding once it starts accounting for peatland fires in its baseline calculations.
Mining industry releases first standard to improve safety of waste storage
- On Aug. 5, spurred by a deadly Brazilian dam disaster in early 2019, a partnership between the U.N. and industry leaders released new guidance for companies to manage their mining waste safely.
- The Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management “strives to achieve … zero harm to people and the environment with zero tolerance for human fatality,” according to its preamble.
- However, some environmental and human rights groups say the measures in the standard don’t go far enough.
Forest restoration, not just halting deforestation, vital to Amazon
- The Brazilian state of Maranhão has lost more than three-quarters of its original forest cover and the remaining old-growth forest is severely threatened, with the “Amazon forest [in the state’s west] on the edge of collapse,” say researchers. This threat heightens the importance of conserving secondary forest in the state.
- But new zoning of Legal Amazonia in Maranhão’s west passed in May will reduce the amount of standing forest farmers must preserve, which could lead to largescale legal deforestation of secondary forests and reward previous illegal deforestation.
- The State Forest Policy currently being debated for passage by the Maranhão parliament could implement safeguards to protect secondary forests (though likely won’t). Without those safeguards, warn researchers, these forests that provide important ecological services and economic benefits could further disappear.
- Scientists say that agroforestry and forest restoration should be prioritized by the Brazilian national and state governments in order to generate sustainable livelihoods and protect secondary forests, aiding in climate change mitigation, water and soil conservation, and providing sustainable livelihoods.
Corn growers in Brazil’s Cerrado reap a hostile climate of their own making
- Agribusiness entities that deforested vast swaths of the Cerrado biome in Brazil to grow corn are now suffering a drop in production because of climate changes brought about by their own actions.
- That’s the finding of a new study that shows the loss of native vegetation has led to more warm nights and changes in rainfall patterns, affecting corn crops that require moderate temperatures and reliable rainfall.
- The study’s authors say everyone loses from this scenario, and call for keeping the native vegetation in place as much as possible.
- International pressure and a serious commitment from agribusiness, which is largely resistant to efforts to preserve the Cerrado, might be the way to stop deforestation, they suggest.
Pandemic or not, the mission to save the rare Philippine eagle grinds on
- A critically endangered Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi) was rescued in the Zamboanga Peninsula in the southern Philippines during the height of the country’s COVID-19 lockdown, when all land, sea and air travel were barred.
- Despite the mobility limitations, various groups were able to exchange information and provide the much-needed proper first aid and rehabilitation for the rescued eagle, which was released back into the wild on May 20.
- There are currently seven known and identified Philippine eagles in the Zamboanga Peninsula, where there are ample protection mechanisms to support breeding eagle pairs.
- Deforestation, hunting and poaching are still the biggest threats to Philippine eagles, but recent collective efforts by various stakeholders have helped strengthen their conservation, experts say.
Palm oil from Indonesian grower that burned forest is still being sold
- An investigation by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) shows that palm oil from PT Kallista Alam, a company in Sumatra, entered the global supply chain and may have ended up in products made by Nestlé and Mars.
- The company was largely blackballed by buyers with sustainability commitments after a 2012 fire on its concession razed 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of pristine lowland rainforest that’s home to critically endangered Sumatran orangutans.
- An “oversight” in the second half of 2019 led to its crude palm oil being bought by a refinery run by the Permata Hijau Group, a top Indonesian palm oil processor that supplies commodities giant Cargill.
- Cargill, in turn, sells palm oil to multinational brands including Nestlé and Mars; RAN has called on the latter two companies to explicitly issue a no-buy order to their suppliers for Kallista Alam’s palm oil.
Indonesia to receive $56m payment from Norway for reducing deforestation
- Indonesia is set to receive $56 million from Norway as the result of the Southeast Asian country’s efforts to preserve its vast tropical rainforests to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
- The payment is for Indonesia preventing the emission of 11.23 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) through reducing its rate of deforestation in 2017.
- Indonesia will be the latest country to receive a results-based payment from Norway, a decade after Norway pledged to disburse $1 billion for Indonesia’s emission reduction from deforestation and forest degradation.
- Both countries have agreed to continue their partnership after the initial agreement expires this year.
Green alert: How indigenous people are experiencing climate change in the Amazon
- Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Brazilian Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.
- Indigenous people believe that climate change has even affected their physical health: previously controlled diseases like measles and yellow fever, they say, have inexplicably reappeared in the rainforest, and even indigenous women’s menstrual cycles are beginning at an earlier age.
- Indigenous people have found many ways to take action and lessen the harm. These approaches include selecting and growing seeds that are more resistant to drought and heat, investing in frontline firefighters and even a smartphone app that offers information about climatic variations.
Indigenous COVID-19 cases top 500, danger mapped in Brazil agricultural hub
- 537 COVID-19 cases and 102 deaths are being reported by 38 indigenous groups in Brazil. Most of the cases are in the remote Brazilian Amazon, where communities are located far from medical assistance. Experts, citing the vulnerability of indigenous peoples to outside disease, worry the pandemic could result in a many more deaths.
- In response to the pandemic, indigenous groups in Mato Grosso state have partnered with an NGO to produce a daily updated map monitoring COVID-19 outbreaks in urban areas near indigenous villages. The website is meant to keep indigenous people informed, and put pressure on national and international groups to respond.
- Amid the pandemic, indigenous land rights in Mato Grosso are increasingly threatened by federal and state government policy shifts that critics say would encourage and legitimize land grabbing, illegal logging and mining inside indigenous territories.
- Particularly impacted by the policy changes, should they go into effect, are isolated indigenous groups, including the Kawahiva and Piripkura peoples who roam as yet federally unrecognized indigenous reserves near the city of Colniza, Mato Grosso.
As habitat degradation threatens Amazon species, one region offers hope
- Two recent studies looked into the impact of human disturbance on ecological diversity in Amazonia habitats. Another study in the Rupununi region of Guyana found how important maintaining connectivity is to maintaining ecosystem health.
- The first study investigated how forest fragmentation impacts mixed-species flocks of birds. The research found evidence that forest habitat fragmentation in the Amazon has caused mixed-species bird flocks to severely diminish and even disappear.
- A second study evaluated the impact of logging and fire on seed dispersal in tropical forest plots in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. The research team found that Amazon forests which have been heavily logged and burned are populated primarily by tree species with smaller seeds, and smaller fruits.
- The remote Rupununi region provides water connectivity between the ancient Guyana Shield and the Amazon basin. A recent study there identified more than 450 fish species within the Rupununi region. The research illustrated the value of conserving connectivity between diverse habitats.
Amazon road projects could lead to Belize-size loss of forest, study shows
- Scientists studying the impact of 75 road projects in five countries in the Amazon Basin have found that they could lead to 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres) of deforestation.
- Seventeen percent of these projects were found to violate environmental legislation and the rights of indigenous peoples.
- The total cost for the projects, which stretch a combined 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) is $27 billion, yet half of them will be financially unfeasible.
- The study’s authors cite a lack of reliable technical feasibility studies, solid data and pressure from financiers to minimalize socioenvironmental impacts.
Audio: What can we expect from tropical fire season 2020?
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we look at what’s driving the intense fire seasons we’ve seen around the world in recent years, what we can expect from the 2020 fire season in tropical forest regions like the Amazon and Indonesia, and some solutions to the problem.
- Australia’s fire season may have just ended, but most of the world’s tropical forest regions will soon be entering their own. We welcome three guests to the podcast today to examine the trends shaping tropical fire seasons around the world: Rhett Butler, Dan Nepstad, and Aida Greenbury.
- Wildfires have made international headlines a lot in the past few years, most recently due to Australia’s devastating bushfires, but the Amazon, Indonesia, and Congo Basin also had severe fire seasons in 2019.
- Our guests discuss the drivers and also some solutions, like investing in Brazilian farmers to incentivize fire prevention, and the High Carbon Stock Approach to stemming forest loss.
Bolsonaro revives a plan to carve a road through one of Brazil’s last untouched areas
- President Jair Bolsonaro has revived a plan, conceived in the 1970s, to extend the BR-163 highway, the main soy corridor in Brazil, north to the border with Suriname.
- The road would cross 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) over a vast forest area called Calha Norte.
- The Trombetas State Forest, one of the four conservation units the road would cut through, stores 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide — more than Brazil’s entire emissions in 2018.
- The area is also rich in biodiversity: 40% of its species are found nowhere else on Earth.
Soy made the Cerrado a breadbasket; climate change may end that
- The Brazilian Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna covering over 20% of the nation’s landmass. More than half the Cerrado’s native vegetation — much of it biodiverse dry forest — has been converted to agribusiness, turning it into a breadbasket for Brazil and a key source of soy for China, the EU and other international markets.
- Brazilian soy cultivation is set to expand by 12 million hectares between 2021 and 2050, with the vast majority of that expansion happening in the Cerrado and especially on its agricultural frontier — a four-state region known as Matopiba.
- However, the Matopiba region (consisting of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia states) is more vulnerable to climate change than other parts of Brazil. Researchers say global warming on the savanna is also worsened by the conversion of native vegetation to croplands and pastures.
- Extensive conversion of native vegetation (which holds moisture in roots deep underground) into a soy monocrop (which stores little water) is becoming a major problem, as little Cerrado soy is currently irrigated. Scientists argue that the conservation of native vegetation must be actively pursued to save the Cerrado agricultural frontier.
Murder, logging and land theft: inside a crime factory in the Amazon
- One of the Amazon’s most deforested regions, Lábrea is remote, poorly policed and suffering from a land tenure crisis. As a result, land grabbing, illegal logging and murder are routine.
- A criminal nexus of landholders laying claim to protected forests they intend to turn into cattle pasture competes over the former São Domingos rubber plantation, where reporters found settlers had left en masse following a spate of killings last year.
- Several of the high-profile landholders and local officials investigated and convicted by federal prosecutors since 2013 were found to have cloned or forged legal documents, and engaged in conspiracy, fraud, environmental crimes and invasion of public land.
Rapid deforestation of Brazilian Amazon could bring next pandemic: Experts
- Nearly 25,000 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Brazil, with 1,378 deaths as of April 15, though some experts say this is an underestimate. Those figures continue growing, even as President Jair Bolsonaro downplays the crisis, calling it “no worse than a mild flu,” and places the economy above public health.
- Scientists warn that the next emergent pandemic could originate in the Brazilian Amazon if Bolsonaro’s policies continue to drive Amazon deforestation rates ever higher. Researchers have long known that new diseases typically arise at the nexus between forest and agribusiness, mining, and other human development.
- One way deforestation leads to new disease emergence is through fire, like the Amazon blazes seen in 2019. In the aftermath of wildfires, altered habitat often offers less food, changing animal behavior, bringing foraging wildlife into contact with neighboring human communities, creating vectors for zoonotic bacteria, viruses and parasites.
- Now, Bolsonaro is pushing to open indigenous lands and conservation units to mining and agribusiness — policies which greatly benefit land grabbers. Escalating deforestation, worsened by climate change, growing drought and fire, heighten the risk of the emergence of new diseases, along with epidemics of existing ones, such as malaria.
Will the next coronavirus come from Amazonia? Deforestation and the risk of infectious diseases (commentary)
- Many “new” human diseases originate from pathogens transferred from wild animals, as occurred with the COVID-19 coronavirus. Amazonia contains a vast number of animal species and their associated pathogens with the potential to be transferred to humans.
- Deforestation both brings humans into close proximity to wildlife and is associated with consumption of bushmeat from hunted animals.
- Amazonian deforestation is being promoted by the governments of Brazil and other countries both through actions that encourage clearing and by lack of actions to halt forest loss. The potential for releasing “new” diseases adds one more impact that should make these governments rethink their policies.
- The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Brazilian government office responds to Fearnside’s BR-319 oil & gas commentary
- On 9 March 2020, Mongabay published a commentary written by Philip M. Fearnside on the “Solimões Sedimentary Area”, an oil and gas project that would implant thousands of wells spread over the western portion of the Brazilian Amazon, to the west of Highway BR-319 – a forest area almost entirely intact due to lack of road access. According to the commentary, the project would bring many risks to the area: oil spills, impact on isolated indigenous tribes and deforestation due to the expansion of a road network.
- EPE, the Brazilian Energy Research Office, sent a response to Mongabay on 27 March 2020 (published below), claiming “conceptual mistakes.” It argues, among other objections, that the Solimões project’s main goal is to evaluate future scenarios for a potential oil and gas exploration system in the area, not a de facto implementation of this system. The office also mentions the participatory process in which the local communities were allegedly involved and, concerning the risk of deforestation, refutes it saying that this kind of operation is mainly done by air or navigable rivers.
- As a rebuttal to EPE’s response, also published here, Fearnside objects that the project is a “trial balloon” to see what criticisms will arise so that the authors of the impact assessment can be more prepared to ensure approval of the environmental licenses. Furthermore, Fearnside emphasizes that the opening of a new frontier can stimulate the government to build roads and attract other activities linked to deforestation, like logging, land grabbing and palm oil production.
BR-319 illegal side road threatens Amazon protected area, indigenous land (commentary)
- Brazil faces a critical decision on licensing Highway BR-319, in the Purus / Madeira river basins of Amazonas state, which would “chop the Amazon rainforest in half.”
- The highway would bring deforesters to vast areas of intact Amazon rainforest. Protected areas along the route have been created to avert spread of deforestation.
- However, an illegal side road is already being built connecting with the BR-319, and accessing one of those protected areas, while also threatening indigenous and traditional riverine communities.
- The construction of this illegal road dramatizes the fiction that governance measures would control on-the-ground events if the completed highway is licensed. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Extreme El Niño drought, fires contribute to Amazon insect collapse: Study
- A recent study found that dung beetle species experienced significant diversity and population declines in human-modified tropical Brazilian ecosystems in the aftermath of droughts and fires exacerbated after the 2015-2016 El Niño climate event.
- Forests that burned during the El Niño lost, on average, 64% of their dung beetle species while those affected only by drought showed an average decline of 20%. Dung beetles provide vital ecoservices, processing waste and dispersing seeds and soil nutrients.
- For roughly the past three years, entomologists have been sounding alarms over a possible global collapse of insect abundance. In the tropics, climate change, habitat destruction and pesticide use are having clear impacts on insect abundance and diversity. However, a lack of funds and institutional interest is holding back urgently needed research.
Brazil drastically reduces controls over suspicious Amazon timber exports
- Forest degradation nearly doubled in the Brazilian Amazon last year, rising from 4,946 square kilometers in 2018, to 9,167 square kilometers in 2019. Experts say this is likely due to soaring illegal timber harvesting and export under President Jair Bolsonaro.
- To facilitate illegal harvesting of rare and valuable timber, like that of the Ipê tree, whose wood can sell for up to $2,500 per cubic meter at Brazilian export terminals, Bolsonaro’s environment officials have reversed regulations that formerly outlawed suspicious timber shipments, making most such exports legal.
- Experts say that the relaxation of illegal export regulations not only protects the criminal syndicates cutting the trees in Amazonia, but also shields exporter Brazil, and importers in the EU, UK, US and elsewhere, preventing them from being accused of causing Amazon deforestation via their supply chains.
- Activists fear overturned timber export regulations will embolden illegal loggers, who will escalate invasions onto indigenous and traditional lands, as well as within conservation units. More than 300 people were assassinated over the past decade as the result of land and natural resource conflicts in the Brazilian Amazon.
Drones in the canopy: Project aims to save the Amazon with technology
- In seeking an alternative to the develop-or-conserve dichotomy that governs policymaking over the Amazon, Brazilian scientists have come up with the Amazonia Third Way, a plan to preserve the region’s biodiversity by supercharging sustainable forestry practices with technology.
- In the second half of this year, three communities in Pará state will receive the first creative laboratories — mobile units that will bring technologies such as blockchain and drones to the cocoa and cupuaçu production processes. Future laboratories will focus on Brazil nuts, acai berries, essential oils and other products.
- The project will also rely on the help of business accelerators and the Rainforest Business School to support so-called bioeconomy start-ups and offer training courses for forest communities under this new development paradigm.
Oil and gas project threatens Brazil’s last great block of Amazon forest (commentary)
- The eastern part of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is already heavily deforested and degraded, but the western portion of the region (covering roughly 740,000 square kilometers; 285,000 square miles) is almost entirely intact due to the lack of road access.
- The huge block of forest to the west of Highway BR-319 (a road stretching between Amazonas and Rondônia states) is essential to maintaining the region’s biodiversity, its indigenous peoples, its huge forest carbon stocks, and its role in water recycling that supplies rainfall to places like São Paulo.
- Planned roads branching off Highway BR-319 would open the northern part of this vast forest block to entry by deforesters. Now a new threat is rapidly advancing: the Solimões oil and gas project that would implant thousands of wells spread over the central and southern portions of this forest block. Although not part of the official development’s preliminary environmental impact statement, future roads linking the drilling areas to the BR-319 are likely to give deforesters access to the entire area.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Painting with fire: Cerrado land managers learn from traditional peoples
- Fire is a disturbance that has occurred naturally in Brazil’s tropical savanna — known as the Cerrado biome — for thousands of years. Indigenous and traditional people living in the Cerrado taught themselves to work successfully with fire, using it as an environment-enhancing land management tool.
- However, modern land managers, influenced by techniques practiced in European and U.S. forests, imposed a non-alteration “zero-fire” conservation policy for decades in the Cerrado.
- That practice allowed the steady buildup of combustible organic material, which frequently led to late dry season wildfires or even mega-fires, ecosystem harm, and conflicts with traditional peoples. But in fact, a new study shows prescribed burns in the Cerrado cause no net loss in species diversity, and even enhance some species.
- Starting in 2014, pilot projects launched by the government on conserved lands in the Cerrado have successfully utilized Integrated Fire Management (IFM), including prescribed burns — approaches learned in part from traditional communities. The result is a decrease in wildfire size, intensity and ecosystem damage.
Private firms will pay soy farmers not to deforest Brazil’s Cerrado
- The meteoric growth of the soy industry, which cultivates the profitable bean to feed livestock and cultivated fish in both Brazil and internationally (especially in the UK and EU) is rapidly destroying critical biomes like the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savanna.
- But in December. Tesco, Nutreco, and Grieg Seafood launched a groundbreaking initiative aimed at reducing deforestation in the Cerrado by paying farmers to conserve native vegetation on their lands.
- The “Funding for Soy Farmers in the Cerrado Initiative” has so far managed to secure around US$13 million in pledges to incentivize farmers to avoid new deforestation, and instead grow on land that has already been transformed for agriculture. A mechanism for distributing the funds has yet to be established.
- The initiative’s goals align with those of the Cerrado Manifesto, a voluntary pact already signed by 60+ organizations to protect the Cerrado. Backers only want soy grown on the 38 million hectares already converted from savanna to agriculture. A sticking point: transnational commodities companies, like Cargill, haven’t signed on.
As 2020 fire season nears, Indonesian president blasts officials for 2019
- President Joko Widodo has chided his top officials for failing to anticipate the severity of the land and forest fires that hit Indonesia last year, saying they must do better as the 2020 dry season approaches.
- The fires are set annually to clear land for planting, and there had been ample warning that an intense dry season and El Niño weather system would exacerbate the problem in 2019.
- The president threatened again to fire officials for failing to prevent or control fires in their jurisdictions this year, and quashed their excuses that last year’s burning wasn’t as bad as in other countries.
- A key weapon in the government’s fight against future fires is a program to restore degraded peatlands; but activists say the program is opaque and flawed, with little public accountability of the progress made.
Despite foreign aid, Colombia struggles to rein in Amazon deforestation
- Colombia is grappling with rampant deforestation in the Amazon, which was up 97% in 2018 from 2016, when the country’s former largest illegal armed group, the FARC, demobilized.
- After providing $85 million since 2015, Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom renewed a pledge for $366 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) and promote sustainable development in Colombia.
- The government has not provided a domestic policy agenda to support the goals outlined by the international agreement. Authorities, who have undertaken military operations against forest clearing in national parks, have yet to dismantle the organized crime groups that are allegedly behind the large-scale deforestation.
- High rates of forest loss are particularly concerning for a critical biological corridor and watershed between the country’s Andes, Amazon and eastern savanna biospheres, where deforestation has been particularly severe.
Indigenous, protected lands in Amazon emit far less carbon than areas outside
- A new study calculates the gains and losses in carbon across the Amazon rainforest from deforestation as well as human-caused and naturally occurring degradation of the forest.
- The team found that around 70% of the total carbon emitted from the Amazon between 2003 and 2016 came from areas outside indigenous-held lands and protected areas, despite the fact that these outside areas made up less than half of the total land area.
- The researchers argue that their findings make the case for supporting indigenous communities with “political protection and financial support” to protect carbon stocks in the Amazon necessary to address climate change.
Indonesian palm oil firm hit with $1.8m fine for 2015 fires
- Indonesia’s environment ministry has won a long-awaited court judgment and $1.8 million fine from a palm oil company that experienced fires on its concession in 2015.
- The company, PT Kaswari Unggul, had challenged the initial administrative sanctions issued in the wake of the burning, and continued to stonewall against the ministry’s efforts to hold it responsible for the burning.
- Ironically, the company’s resistance to the sanctions, which would have compelled it to introduce fire-prevention measures on its land, may have contributed to fires flaring up on the same concession again this year.
- The ministry has welcomed the recent judgment, but has yet to collect on any of the combined $224 million it’s been awarded in similar cases, thanks to legal stonewalling and a Byzantine court bureaucracy.
Indonesia fires cost nation $5 billion this year: World Bank
- Land and forest fires in Indonesia cost the country $5.2 billion in damage and economic losses this year, equivalent to 0.5% of its economy, according to a new analysis from the World Bank.
- Half of the estimated economic loss came from the agriculture and environmental sectors, as fires damaged valuable estate crops and released significant greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, estimated at 708 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
- The actual economic loss could be higher as the World Bank hasn’t taken into account the impacts of the fires on the public health and on the image of Indonesia’s palm oil industry.
The role of sustainable finance in Forest Landscape Restoration (commentary)
- To finance the major investments in Forest Landscape Restoration, help from the private and financial sector is needed.
- To increase investors’ willingness to write checks, public- funded grants play a crucial role. To get institutional investors on board, sustainable finance must mature, providing proven track records so investors can better understand risk.
- If the ambitious goals of Initiative 20×20 or the Sustainable Development Goals are to be met, all capital must be engaged, whether it’s private, public, or philanthropic.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Paper and fast fashion fan the flames burning Indonesia’s peat: Report
- Pulp and paper giants APP and APRIL continue to source their raw material from plantations located on carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia.
- The burning of these peat forests prior to planting accounts for much of the fires that have made Indonesia one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters, and of the toxic haze that spreads out to neighboring countries.
- A report by a coalition of NGOs warns that these problems could get worse under the companies’ current peat-intensive business model and a relaxing of peat-protection regulations by the government.
- The companies have disputed the scale of the fires attributed to their suppliers’ plantations, and say they already carry out peat conservation initiatives.
Indonesia fires emitted double the carbon of Amazon fires, research shows
- Forest fires that swept across Indonesia this year emitted nearly twice the amount of greenhouse gases as the fires that razed parts of the Brazilian Amazon, new research shows.
- The Indonesian fires pumped at least 708 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in the atmosphere, largely as a result of burning of carbon-rich peatlands.
- The fires were the most intense since 2015 and threaten to set back Indonesia’s commitments to reduce its carbon emissions and contribute to global efforts to slow climate change.
FSC report on palm giant Korindo lists litany of violations, even with redactions
- The Forest Stewardship Council has released a batch of heavily redacted reports on violations carried out by an FSC affiliate, palm oil company Korindo, in the Indonesian region of Papua.
- Korindo had earlier issued a cease-and-desist letter to stop the release of damaging information from the investigation, but the redacted reports still paint a “devastating” picture of the company’s wrongdoing, including massive deforestation, activists say.
- Among the details omitted from the published reports is the estimated compensation owed to indigenous communities affected by Korindo’s forest-clearing activities, believed to be in the “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
- The FSC has proposed remedial measures to be carried out by Korindo, but activists say these are far from commensurate with the company’s “extreme violations,” including the clearing of more than 50,000 hectares (123,500 acres) of rainforests.
Makers of Oreos, KitKats among brands linked to Indonesia forest fires
- Consumer goods companies behind major brands are getting some of their palm oil from producers linked to fires in Indonesia that have burned an area the size of Puerto Rico.
- The findings, in a report by Greenpeace, identify Mondelēz, Nestlé, Unilever and Procter & Gamble as among the companies exposed to these producers, along with major palm oil traders Wilmar and Cargill.
- These are companies that have committed to sustainable and ethical sourcing of palm oil, and in many cases have blacklisted problematic suppliers.
- Greenpeace attributes their repeated exposure to tainted palm oil on the opacity of plantation ownership in Indonesia, which leads big consumers not to recognize that many producers are part of producer groups with a record of environmental and labor rights violations.
Carbon emissions from loss of intact tropical forest a ‘ticking time bomb’
- When undisturbed tropical forests are lost the long-term impact on carbon emissions is dramatically higher than earlier estimates suggest, according to a new study.
- Between 2000 and 2013, about 7 percent of the world’s intact tropical forests were destroyed, leading not just to direct carbon emissions but also “hidden” emissions from logging, fragmentation and wildlife loss.
- Another key difference between the old and new estimates is that the latter take into account the diminished carbon sequestration potential of these forests.
- The authors write that the indigenous communities who live in and protect about 35 percent of these forests will have a bigger role to play in the fight against climate change.
Controversial dam gets green light to flood a Philippine protected area
- The environment department has issued an environmental compliance certificate that allows the contested Kaliwa Dam project in the Sierra Madre mountain range to go ahead, part of a wider push to secure water supplies for Manila and surrounding areas.
- The certificate is one of the last sets of documents required by the developers for the project being funded by a $238.3 million loan from the Export-Import Bank of China.
- Yet its issuance comes despite a government-conducted environmental impact assessment showing that the dam’s reservoir alone will endanger endemic wildlife and plants, drive massive species migration, and pose risks to lowland agricultural and fishing communities with a history of flash flooding.
- The site of the planned dam falls within the Kaliwa watershed forest reserve, which has been designated a natural wildlife park sanctuary and game refuge, and an IUCN Category V Protected Landscape/Seascape.
Indonesian court fines palm oil firm $18.5m over forest fires in 2015
- An Indonesian court has fined a palm oil company $18.5 million for fires that destroyed 970 hectares (2,400 acres) of forest on its concession in Borneo in 2015.
- The judgment is the latest in a growing number of cases where courts have taken a zero-tolerance approach that makes concession holders liable for any fires that occur on their land, regardless of whether or not they can be proven to have started the fires.
- Observers have welcomed the verdict, but say the challenge now will be to compel the company to pay up. Since 2015 the government has won $223 million in judgments in similar cases, but collected just $5.5 million.
- The company in the latest case, PT Arjuna Utama Sawit, is a supplier to Singapore-based Musim Mas Group, a major oil palm trader whose customers include consumer brands such Unilever. Musim Mas said it was seeking an explanation from PT Arjuna Utama Sawit.
Area the size of Puerto Rico burned in Indonesia’s fire crisis
- A spike in fires in September has contributed to the razing of 8,578 square kilometers (3,304 square miles) of land across Indonesia this year, or an area the size of Puerto Rico.
- More areas are expected to continue burning through to the end of the year, but the fire season this year isn’t expected to be as bad as in 2015, when 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles) of land was burned.
- The onset of rains has also reduced the incidence of transboundary haze that previously sparked protests from neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.
- Almost all the fires this year occurred on deforested land that had previously been burned, where the vegetation has not had sufficient time to regenerate after the last fires.
Indonesian enforcement questioned as fires flare up on the same concessions
- Indonesia says it plans to impose stricter punishment for plantation companies with recurring instances of fire on their concessions, including permanently revoking their permits.
- Several of the companies whose concessions have been burning this year were also at the heart of the 2015 fires.
- Activists say the fact that the problem is recurring on the same concessions highlights the government’s failure to adequately punish the companies.
- A Greenpeace report has found no meaningful action taken against palm oil companies guilty of burning since 2015, and inconsistent enforcement against pulpwood companies during that same period.
Audio: Traveling the Pan Borneo Highway with Mongabay’s John Cannon
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Mongabay staff writer John Cannon, who traveled the length of the Pan Borneo Highway in July and wrote a series of reports for Mongabay detailing what he discovered on the journey.
- The Pan Borneo Highway is expected to make commerce and travel easier in a region that is notoriously difficult to navigate, and also to encourage tourists to see the states’ cultural treasures and rich wildlife. But from the outset, scientists and conservationists have warned that the highway is likely to harm that very same wildlife by dividing populations and degrading habitat.
- Cannon undertook his 3-week reporting trip down the Pan Borneo Highway in an attempt to understand both the positive and negative effects the road could have on local communities, wildlife, and ecosystems, and he’s here to tell us what he found.
Nature-based climate action no longer ‘the forgotten solution’
- At the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) held in San Francisco last year, nature-based solutions to the climate crisis — like keeping forests standing and restoring degraded ecosystems to enhance their carbon storage potential — were referred to as “the forgotten solution.”
- Though conservation of forests and other landscapes could be playing a crucial role in mitigating global climate change, renowned conservationist and UN messenger for peace Dr. Jane Goodall, in a speech delivered last September at the GCAS, said she had personally attended a number of conferences where forests went unmentioned. “Saving the forest is one third of the solution,” Goodall said. “We must not let it be the forgotten solution.”
- That message appears to have been heeded by a number of governments, companies, and civil society groups who committed to major nature-based climate initiatives at the UN Climate Summit held last Monday and the NYC Climate Week that concludes this weekend.
The sink and the safeguard: Benefits of protecting and restoring intact forests for people and planet (commentary)
- The need for protecting intact forests is pressing, and not just in the hotspots for rapid land use change like the Amazon or the Congo Basin.
- Forests in countries and regions experiencing relatively lower rates of deforestation, such as Suriname and Gabon, are also at risk of future degradation. Yet these High Forest Low Deforestation (HFLD) countries receive a relatively small portion of climate finance, challenging the ability to conserve and maintain many of the last intact forests.
- When it comes to climate action, we tend to think of adaptation and mitigation as distinct strategies: efforts either to cope with the impacts or to curtail them. But in fact, research indicates that a significant percentage of initiatives aimed at mitigation also have adaptation outcomes. This is particularly evident in the forest and agricultural sectors. The same holds true for intact forests. Including these forests in the country-level targets of the Paris Agreement is a win-win on both fronts.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
The thinning fabric of Earth’s forest cover (commentary)
- The ever-smaller number of forests that remain truly intact and free from degradation are a precious resource, pivotal in addressing the twin challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss as well as offering many other benefits to people. But are we taking good care of them? Not yet.
- More and more of the world’s remaining forests are switching from healthy core to degraded, carbon-emitting edges, or isolated patches as intensive human use drives fragmentation, logging, over-hunting, fires, and a host of other pressures large and small.
- Decision makers mistakenly perceive that forest intactness is not as important or urgent as deforestation, or that it is too difficult to measure and monitor. We must lift these constraints, put better policies in place, and expend far more effort into halting the degradation of forests on the ground, in particular in those 20-30 countries where the most-intact forests are concentrated.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
‘We’ve been negligent,’ Indonesia’s president says as fire crisis deepens
- Indonesia’s government has been negligent in anticipating and preparing for this year’s fire season, the country’s president says.
- The fires, set mostly to clear land for planting, have razed huge swaths of forest and generated toxic haze that has spread as far as Malaysia and Singapore.
- The president’s acknowledgement of the government’s lack of preparation comes in the wake of his own ministers apportioning blame for the fires to other parties.
- Activists say the government has little moral standing to go after the companies that have set their concessions ablaze, noting that the government itself has refused to take responsibility for failing to do enough to tackle similar fires in 2015.
Indonesian minister draws fire for denial of transboundary haze problem
- Indonesia’s environment minister continues to deny that fires in the country are sending toxic haze to neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.
- An environmental activist warns that this stance, which goes against the data presented by Malaysia, risks undermining Indonesia’s credibility.
- The haze is an annual irritant in diplomatic ties between Indonesia and its neighbors, with much of the burning taking place to clear land for oil palm and pulpwood plantations.
- Malaysia has offered to help Indonesia fight the fires, which have sickened tens of thousands of people in Sumatra and Borneo, threatened an elephant reserve, and churned more than 100 millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Diplomatic row heats up as haze from Indonesian fires threatens Malaysia
- The number of fire hotspots in Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra has increased nearly sevenfold in a four-day period in early September.
- The surge has prompted calls from Malaysia, which has historically been affected by haze from fires in Indonesia, for its Southeast Asian neighbor to get the burning under control.
- The Indonesian government has refuted complaints that the recent increase in hotspots has resulted in transboundary haze.
- Indonesia faces what could be the worst fire season since 2015, fanned by an El Niño weather pattern.
Indonesia forest-clearing ban is made permanent, but labeled ‘propaganda’
- A temporary moratorium first issued in 2011 on granting permits to clear primary forests and peatlands for plantations or logging has been made permanent by Indonesia’s president.
- The government says the policy has been effective in slowing deforestation, but environmental activists blast those claims as “propaganda,” saying that forest loss and fires have actually increased in areas that qualify for the moratorium.
- They’ve highlighted several loopholes in the moratorium that allow developers to continue exploiting forest areas without consequence.
- Activists are also skeptical that a newer moratorium, on granting permits for oil palm cultivation, will do much to help slow the rate of deforestation.
Haze from fires, Indonesia’s national ‘embarrassment,’ are back
- Indonesia is experiencing its worst annual fire season since 2015, with the cross-border spread of haze once again threatening to spark a diplomatic row with neighbors Malaysia and Singapore.
- The government has acknowledged that measures adopted in the wake of the 2015 fires to prevent a repeat of that disaster may have fallen short, including efforts to restore drained peatlands and drill wells to provide water for firefighters.
- President Joko Widodo, scheduled to visit Malaysia and Singapore later this week, says he feels embarrassed by the return of the fires and haze, and has ordered the firing of officials found to have failed to tackle the problem.
- At the local level, however, governors of the affected provinces appear to be taking the matter lightly: saying the haze isn’t at a worrying level, offering a reward for shamans who can summon rain, and proposing questionable theories about the causes of the fires.
Study shows how to protect more species for less money in western Amazon
- A new study identifies nearly 300 areas for proposed protection in the western Amazon that would give the most bang for the buck in terms of the number of species conserved in this biodiversity hotspot.
- The researchers considered management and lost-opportunity costs in their analyses, and found that the presence of indigenous communities in protected areas can actually bring down the costs of conservation.
- While the estimated cost for protecting these proposed areas is just $100 million a year — less than a hundredth of the GDP of the countries in the western Amazon — the researchers say there needs to be clear political will to implement such a solution.
Experts deny alleged manipulation of Amazon satellite deforestation data
- The Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE) issues annual Amazon deforestation reports via its PRODES satellite monitoring system (which relies on NASA Landsat satellite imaging), while the DETER system issues monthly deforestation/degradation alerts (which rely on Sino-Brazilian satellites).
- While experts consider INPE’s monitoring systems among the best in the tropics, ministers in the Bolsonaro administration have insinuated that the deforestation data may be manipulated. Experts have denied this, and note that INPE findings align well with those collected by NGOs Imazon and ISA, and Global Forest Watch (GFW).
- All of the data collected so far from various sources show an upswing in deforestation since Jair Bolsonaro’s election win. However, definitive and precise statistics require year-to-year comparisons, not monthly ones, and won’t be available until later in 2019.
- In March, Brazil’s environment minister pressed for a new but costly private deforestation tracking system. In June, the open-access platform MapBiomas — a network of NGOs, universities and tech firms, along with Google — launched a system to compile data from INPE, ISA, Imazon and GFW to produce definitive deforestation data.
Indonesian ban on clearing new swaths of forest to be made permanent
- A temporary moratorium that prohibits the issuance of new permits to clear primary and peat forests is set to be made permanent later this year.
- Though largely ineffective in stemming deforestation in the first few years after its introduction in 2011, the moratorium has since 2016 been shored up by peat-protection regulations that have helped slow the loss of forest cover.
- Environmental activists have welcomed the move to make the moratorium permanent, but say there’s room to strengthen it, such as by extending it to include secondary forests.
- They’ve also called for the closing of a loophole that allows primary and peat forests to be razed for plantations of rice, sugarcane and other crops deemed important to national food security.
Canopy-dwelling rainforest mammals most sensitive to human disturbance
- New research using arboreal camera traps finds that canopy-dwelling mammals are particularly sensitive to the impacts of human disturbance in rainforests and that these effects are easily missed by more traditional survey methods.
- Large-bodied arboreal species like the endangered Peruvian woolly monkey and the endangered black-faced spider monkey were found to be most impacted by forest disturbance, according to the study, published in the journal Diversity and Distributions last week.
- These larger primates are important seed dispersers for hardwood trees, which contribute disproportionately to the biomass of tropical forests. The loss of these species could thus lead to cascading ecosystems effects that might pose a significant threat to the carbon storage potential of degraded tropical forests.
Audio: Saving forests and biodiversity by providing affordable healthcare
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Kinari Webb, founder of Health in Harmony, an organization using healthcare for humans to save rainforests and their wildlife inhabitants.
- In the decade since Heath in Harmony launched its healthcare-for-conservation program in Indonesia’s Gunung Palung National Park, infant deaths in local communities have been reduced by more than two-thirds, the number of illegal logging households in the park has gone down by nearly 90 percent, the loss of forest has stabilized, 20,000 hectares of forest are being replanted, and habitat for 2,500 endangered Bornean Orangutans has been protected.
- Webb talks about radical listening, the tremendous impacts for rainforests and orangutans of providing affordable healthcare to local communities, and her plans to expand Health in Harmony’s efforts outside of Indonesia on this episode of the Newscast.
Peat protection rule may be a double-edged sword for Indonesia’s forests
- A government regulation issued in 2016 requires logging companies to restore peat with protected status in their concessions, mostly in Sumatra, and prohibits them from developing on it.
- But activists say this prohibition threatens a massive supply shortfall for two of the world’s biggest paper producers, which they warn could push the companies to source wood from unprotected forests in other parts of Indonesia.
- Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) face a supply crunch of up to 30 percent and 25 percent respectively, according to an analysis by NGOs.
- Both companies dispute this finding, saying their supplies remain secure even as they seek to boost their output.
Palm oil, logging firms the usual suspects as Indonesia fires flare anew
- Fires have flared up once again on concessions held by palm oil and logging companies in Riau province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
- For many of the companies involved, this isn’t the first time fires have sprung up on their land, prompting activists to question the government’s ability to enforce its own regulations against slash-and-burn forest clearing.
- Much of the affected area is peat forest, some of it being developed in violation of a ban on exploiting deep peatland, whose burning releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- A failure by the government to collect on fines levied against the few companies prosecuted for setting fires on their concessions means there’s little deterrent effect for other companies that see slash-and-burn as the cheapest way to raze forests for plantations.
Indonesia’s threat to exit Paris accord over palm oil seen as cynical ploy
- A top Indonesian minister says the country may consider pulling out of the Paris climate agreement in retaliation for a European policy to phase out palm oil from biofuels by 2030.
- Luhut Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs, says Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, can follow in the footsteps of the United States, which has declared its withdrawal from the climate pact, and Brazil, which is considering doing the same.
- The threat is the latest escalation in a diplomatic spat that has also seen Indonesia and Malaysia, the No. 2 palm oil producer, threaten retaliatory trade measures against the European Union.
- The EU says its policy is driven by growing consumer concerns about the sustainability of palm oil, which in Indonesia is often grown on plantations for which vast swaths of rainforest have had to be cleared.
No more fires in Indonesia? Blazes on Sumatran peatland say otherwise
- Forest fires have flared up in Sumatra again this dry season, belying the government’s claims that it has brought the annual problem under control.
- All of the fires recorded so far have been on peat forests, a carbon-rich terrain that a slew of government policies have specifically targeted for restoration and protection since the disastrous fire season of 2015.
- Environmental activists say there’s no transparency to gauge how well peat restoration efforts are progressing, and little engagement with NGOs on the ground.
- They warn of a continuation of the “business-as-usual” approach that sees the government typically only respond to fires after they’ve broken out.
Defending the Amazon’s uncontacted peoples: Q&A with Julio Cusurichi
- Julio Cusurichi, a Shipibo-Conibo leader, has been working to protect the peoples and forests of his native Madre de Dios region in southeastern Peru.
- Increasingly, illegal gold miners as well as illegal loggers and drug traffickers are proving to be an existential threat for the indigenous people of the region, which concentrates some of the Amazon’s greatest biodiversity.
- In recent years Cusurichi led a successful campaign to create a legally recognized indigenous territory and helped establish a network of indigenous forest monitors when the government abandoned the effort.
- Now, he is working to gain a greater role for indigenous peoples in governing their territories. “The goal is for indigenous people to be the protagonists,” he told Mongabay on a recent visit to Peru’s capital, Lima. “We have to administer the Amazon regions that are our ancestral territories and not just leave it to the government.”
Indonesia to get first payment from Norway under $1b REDD+ scheme
- Indonesia and Norway have agreed on a first payment from a $1 billion deal under which Indonesia preserves its rainforests to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
- The agreement comes nearly a decade since the deal was signed in 2010, with the delay attributed largely to the need for legislation and policy frameworks to be put in place, as well as a change in the Indonesian government since then.
- The amount of the first payment still needs to be negotiated by both sides, with Indonesia pushing for a higher valuation than the $5 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent that Norway paid Brazil under a similar deal.
- Indonesia still has work to do to ensure a consistent pace of progress and tackle the forest fires that account for much of the loss of its forests.
Current threats and future hopes for the greater Mekong’s mangroves
- Critical to the health of rivers, shorelines and forests globally, today only 150,000 square kilometers (57,900 square miles) of mangroves remain, down from 320,000 square kilometers (123,550 square miles) 50 years ago.
- Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar are home to the largest mangrove forests in the Greater Mekong region of Southeast Asia, but rapid economic growth and illegal logging for fuelwood collection have damaged these forests.
- Technical advancements such as floating mangroves, along with increased public awareness, do offer hope for the future of these trees in the region, as some are protected and recovering.
Funds tripled and target slashed, but Indonesia still off pace for reforestation
- Indonesia’s efforts to reforest critically degraded land, left over from mining, logging and agricultural activities, have fallen far short of the government’s targets.
- The government initially sought to restore an area the size of the United Kingdom by 2030, before slashing its target to an area the size of England.
- Environmental activists have questioned how the government determines what constitutes land that needs to be restored, and say even an increased annual restoration goal combined with a tripling of funding is insufficient to meet the smaller overall target.
- Officials say lack of funding is the main impediment to the program’s success, and while an untapped pool of money is available, local officials are reluctant to touch it because of a history of mismanagement.
The case for forests’ prominent role in holding off climate change
- The authors of a new report argue that investment in forests as a climate change mitigation strategy is just as important as addressing emissions from the energy sector.
- Despite the recognized potential contributions of forests to slowing the warming of the earth, they aren’t typically seen as a permanent solution to climate change.
- The authors of the report contend that provisions in the Paris rulebook, approved at the UN climate conference in Poland, are designed to hold countries responsible for changes to their forests so that such ‘reversals’ won’t go unaccounted for.
Hazy figures cloud Indonesia’s peat restoration as fire season looms
- An El Niño weather system in the early months of 2019 could see forest fires flare up once again in Indonesia.
- The government rolled out a slate of measures following disastrous fires in 2015, centering on the restoration of degraded peatlands that had been rendered highly combustible by draining for agriculture.
- While the number and extent of fires since then have declined significantly, activists attribute this more to milder weather in the intervening years, rather than the government’s peatland management and restoration measures.
- Activists have also questioned figures that suggest the target of restoring 24,000 square kilometers (9,300 square miles) of peatland by the end of 2020 has been almost achieved, saying there’s little transparency about the bulk of the required restoration, being carried out by pulpwood and plantation companies.
A living planet begins with thriving forests (commentary)
- In my lifetime, global wildlife populations have seen an overall decline of more than half.
That’s a statement of such enormity that it’s hard to process.
- The evidence comes from WWF’s recent Living Planet Report 2018, which shows that, on average, populations of mammals, fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles declined by 60 percent between 1970 and 2014. And the trends are still going in the wrong direction. My children could be reading about many of these species — such as orangutans and Amur leopards — in history books if conservation actions are not ramped up.
- We need a fundamental shift in the way we treat our one and only planet, a New Deal for Nature and People by 2020, to galvanize serious international action to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity, including efforts to stop the degradation and destruction of our forests.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Deforested, degraded land restoration a top priority for African leaders
- African leaders met at a summit to discuss land restoration across the continent on Nov. 13, ahead of the U.N. Biodiversity Conference in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt.
- Representatives from several African countries shared their countries’ pledges to restore hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of degraded and deforested land in the coming decades.
- The summit’s leaders said they hoped the deliberations during the day-long summit would help African countries in both their contributions to international targets and to the improvement of their natural ecosystems for the benefit of their citizens.
Chinese demand wiping out forests in the Solomon Islands: New report
- Logging companies are harvesting timber from the forests of the Solomon Islands at about 19 times the sustainable rate, according to an analysis by the watchdog NGO Global Witness.
- More than 80 percent of the Solomons’ log exports go to China.
- Global Witness is calling on China to build on its efforts to develop its “Green Supply Chain” by requiring companies to verify that the timber they import comes from sustainable and legal sources.
Land rights, forests, food systems central to limiting global warming: report
- In the wake of the dire, just released UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, a climate advocacy group known as CLARA (Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance) has published a separate report proposing that the world’s nations put far more effort into land sector measures to store carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- They suggest that these nature-oriented, land-based approaches could be far more effective, and more rapidly implemented, than relying on costly or largely untested high tech solutions such as bioenergy, carbon capture-and-storage, and geoengineering.
- Among the approaches CLARA proposes are the establishment of far stronger land rights for indigenous peoples (who are among the world’s best forest stewards), as well as a serious reduction in deforestation and the restoration of forest ecosystems worldwide.
- The CLARA report also calls for the transformation of agriculture (less tilling, less fertilizers, more support for small farms), and a global revolution in dietary habits, including a reduction in meat consumption and less food waste.
Fire fundamentally alters carbon dynamics in the Amazon
- With higher temperatures and increasingly severe droughts resulting from climate change, fires are becoming a more frequent phenomenon in the Amazon.
- New research finds that fires fundamentally change the structure of the forest, leading it to stockpile less carbon even decades after a burn.
- The research also shows that the burning of dead organic matter in the understory can release far more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought.
Audio: The ‘Godfather of Biodiversity’ on why it’s time to manage Earth as a system
- On this episode we welcome the godfather of biodiversity, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, to discuss some of the most important environmental issues we’re currently facing and why he believes the next decade will be the “last decade of real opportunity” to address those issues.
- Lovejoy joined the Mongabay Newscast to talk about how deforestation and the impacts of climate change could trigger dieback in the Amazon and other tropical forests, causing them to shift into non-forest ecosystems, as well as the other trends impacting the world’s biodiversity he’s most concerned about.
- He says it’s time for a paradigmatic shift in how we approach the conservation of the natural world: “We really have got to the point now where we need to think about managing the entire planet as a combined physical and biological system.”
Study finds widespread degradation, deforestation in African woodlands
- New research has found that deforestation rates between 2007 and 2010 in the woodlands of southern Africa were five times greater than previously thought.
- Similarly, carbon losses from the region during that time period were three to six times higher.
- The study used radar data, as opposed to visual satellite imagery, to measure the biomass found in southern Africa’s woodlands.
- Around 17 percent of the region’s area was degraded during the time period, the researchers found.
REDD+ projects database: where forest carbon emissions reduction projects are underway
- A searchable database of 467 forest carbon emissions reduction (REDD+) initiatives in 57 countries is now available through the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
- The ID-RECCO database gathers in one free online tool over 100 different categories of information – including project partners, activities, and funding sources – on these subnational projects aimed at conserving forests, promoting local economies, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation.
- The tool makes these data and their sources accessible to anyone, with minimal interpretation: while it does not summarize project results, it provides goals, activities, and links to project websites for the reader to learn more.
Brazil hits emissions target early, but rising deforestation risks reversal
- The decline in deforestation between 2016 and 2017 saved emissions of the equivalent of 610 million metric tons (672 million tons) of carbon dioxide from the Brazilian Amazon and 170 million metric tons (187 million tons) from the Cerrado, Brazil’s wooded savanna, according to the Brazilian government.
- The emissions reductions, announced Aug. 9, eclipsed the targets that the Brazilian government set for 2020.
- However, amid rising deforestation over the past few years, particularly in the Amazon, experts have expressed concern that the reductions in emissions might not hold.
Tracking the shift of tropical forests from carbon sink to source
- Improved maps of carbon stocks, along with a better understanding of how tropical forests respond to climate change, are necessary to meet the challenge of keeping the global temperature below a 2-degree-Celsius (3.6-degree-Fahrenheit) rise, according to scientist Edward Mitchard of the University of Edinburgh.
- Currently, tropical forests take up roughly the same amount of carbon as is released when they’re cleared or degraded.
- But climatic changes, which lead to more droughts and fires resulting in the loss of tropical trees, could shift the balance, making tropical forests a net source of atmospheric carbon.
Bornean bantengs feeling the heat in logged forests, study finds
- A recent study shows that Bornean bantengs in recently logged forests in Malaysia’s Sabah state have become less active during the daytime in response to the hotter temperatures brought on by there being fewer trees providing shade.
- Banteng herds living in forests with more regrowth continue to be active throughout the day as they have more shade and refuge.
- The paper’s researchers suggest that steps must be taken to reduce the stress upon bantengs, such as limiting disturbance during key times of activity and maintaining blocks of mature forest.
Brazil ignored U.N. letters warning of land defender threats, record killings
- United Nations rapporteurs sent two letters to the Temer administration in 2017. The first warned of threats to human rights activists in Minas Gerais state. The second condemned the record number of environmental and land defender killings in Pará state last year. Brazil ignored both letters.
- The State Public Ministry (MPE), the independent public prosecutor’s office in Minas Gerais, had requested the inclusion of six laborers and their families in the Protection Program of Human Rights Defenders, of the Secretariat of Rights of the Presidency in May, 2017.
- The laborers say they were threatened by representatives of Anglo American Iron Ore Brazil S.A., a subsidiary of London-based Anglo American, a global mining company. In March Anglo American Brazil reported a mineral duct rupture which contaminated the Santo Antônio and Casca rivers, and riverside communities.
- 908 murders of environmentalists and land defenders occurred in 35 countries between 2002 and 2013. Of those, 448, almost half, happened in Brazil. In 2018 so far, at least 12 Brazilian social activists and politicians have been slain — twice as many as compared to the same period in 2017.
Carol Van Strum, crusader against Agent Orange, wins prestigious environmental award
- The international David Brower Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding environmental and social justice work was presented to Strum on March 1, 2018.
- Strum is the author of “A Bitter Fog,” which tells the story of the fight she helped lead against aerial herbicide spraying in the Five Rivers area of Oregon, which led to a temporary ban on aerial pesticide spraying on federal forests.
- Though the ban was rescinded, the work done by Strum and others on the issue contributed to a new national forest policy that favors selective harvests without herbicides.
Small hydropower a big global issue overlooked by science and policy
- Brazil recently announced an end to its mega-dam construction policy, a strategy other nations may embrace as understanding of the massive environmental and social impacts of big dams grows.
- However, a trend long neglected by scientists and policymakers ¬ the rapid growth of small dams – has been spotlighted in a new study.
- Nearly 83,000 small dams in 150 nations (with 11 small dams for each large dam), exist globally, while that number could triple if all capacity worldwide is used. More than 10,000 new small dams are already in the planning stages. But small dam impacts have been little studied by scientists, and little regulated by governments.
- Environmentalists say that, with the rapid construction of new small dams, it is urgent for researchers to assess the impacts of different types of small dams, as well as looking at the cumulative impacts of many small dams placed on a single river, or on main stems and tributaries within watersheds.
Cerrado: appreciation grows for Brazil’s savannah, even as it vanishes
- The Brazilian Cerrado – a vast savannah – once covered two million square kilometers (772,204 square miles), an area bigger than Great Britain, France and Germany combined, stretching to the east and south of the Amazon.
- Long undervalued by scientists and environmental activists, researchers are today realizing that the Cerrado is incredibly biodiverse. The biome supports more than 10,000 plant species, over 900 bird and 300 mammal species.
- The Cerrado’s deep-rooted plants and its soils also sequester huge amounts of carbon, making the region’s preservation key to curbing climate change, and to reducing Brazil’s deforestation and CO2 emissions to help meet its Paris carbon reduction pledge.
- Agribusiness – hampered by Brazilian laws in the Amazon – has moved into the Cerrado in a big way. More than half of the biome’s native vegetation has already disappeared, as soy and cattle production rapidly replace habitat. This series explores the dynamics of change convulsing the region.
Analysis: the Brazilian Supreme Court’s New Forest Code ruling
- Last week Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge by environmentalists, upholding the constitutionality of most, though not all, of Brazil’s New Forest Code – legislation crafted in 2012 by the powerful bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby in Congress.
- The 2012 code is weaker than the old Forest Code, which was approved in 1965, but never well enforced.
- Many environmentalists have expressed concern that the high court ruling endorses legislation that prioritizes the economic importance of industrial agriculture over basic environmental protections.
- Conservationists also say that the decision rewards those who have illegally infringed on environmental laws at a time when pressures on forests are growing more intense, especially in the Amazon. This story includes a chart that provides a detailed analysis of the environmental pros and cons of the Supreme Court decision.
Amazon forest to savannah tipping point could be far closer than thought (commentary)
- In the 1970s, scientists recognized that the Amazon makes half of its own rainfall via evaporation and transpiration from vegetation. Researchers also recognized that escalating deforestation would reduce this rainfall producing effect.
- A 2007 study estimated that with 40 percent Amazon deforestation a tipping point could be reached, with large swathes of Amazonia switching from forest to savannah. Two newly considered factors in a 2016 study – climate change and fires – have now reduced that estimated tipping point to 20-25 percent. Current deforestation is at 17 percent, with an unknown amount of degraded forest adding less moisture.
- There is good reason to think that this Amazon forest to savannah tipping point is close at hand. Historically unprecedented droughts in 2005, 2010 and 2015 would seem to be the first flickers of such change.
- Noted Amazon scientists Tom Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre argue that it is critical to build in a margin of safety by keeping Amazon deforestation below 20 percent. To avoid this tipping point, Brazil needs to strongly control deforestation, and combine that effort with reforestation. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Brazil high court Forest Code ruling largely bad for environment, Amazon: NGOs
- In a tight decision, the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) upheld the constitutionality of much of Brazil’s 2012 New Forest Code, that had been created under the powerful influence of the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby. The upheld 2012 New Forest Code is a weaker body of environmental regulations than the 1965 code created under Brazil’s military government.
- The court ruling made constitutional a declared amnesty for those who illegally cleared their Legal Reserves (lands, by law, they must not clear) before 22 July 2008, eliminating required fines and tree replantings. It allows for the reduction of Legal Reserves in states or municipalities largely occupied by indigenous reserves or protected areas.
- The STF decision also allows for the reduction in size of APAs (Areas of Permanent Protection), even when considered fundamental by environmentalists for maintaining water supplies and preventing climate disasters such as floods and mudslides.
- The ruling allows farmers who have already illegally cleared protected APAs, to get authorization to clear even more land, and approves farming activities on steep slopes and hilltops. Environmentalists were critical of the high court decision, while agribusiness praised it.
Andes dams twice as numerous as thought are fragmenting the Amazon
- A new study identified 142 dams currently in operation or under construction in the Andes headwaters of the Amazon, twice the number previously estimated. An additional 160 are in the planning stages.
- If proposed Andes dams go ahead, sediment transport to the Amazon floodplains could cease, blocking freshwater fish migratory routes, disrupting flow and flood regimes, and threatening food security for downstream communities, impacting up to 30 million people.
- Most dams to date are on the tributary networks of Andean river main stems. But new dams are planned for five out of eight major Andean Amazon main stems, bringing connectivity reductions on the Marañón, Ucayali and Beni rivers of more than 50 percent; and on the Madre de Dios and Mamoré rivers of over 35 percent.
- Researchers conclude that proposed dams should be required to complete cumulative effects assessments at a basin-wide scale, and account for synergistic impacts of existing dams, utilizing the UN Watercourses Convention as a legal basis for international cooperation for sustainable water management between Amazon nations.
Belo Monte legacy: harm from Amazon dam didn’t end with construction (photo story)
- The controversial Belo Monte dam, operational in 2016 and the world’s third biggest, was forced on the people of Altamira, Pará state, and is now believed to have been built largely as payback to Brazil’s construction industry by the nation’s then ruling Workers’ Party for campaign contributions received.
- The dam was opposed by an alliance of indigenous and traditional communities, and international environmentalists, all to no avail. Today, the media coverage that once turned the world’s eyes toward Belo Monte, has gone away. But that hasn’t ended the suffering and harm resulting from the project.
- Tens of thousands of indigenous and traditional people were forced from their homes, and had to give up their fishing livelihoods. Meanwhile, the city of Altamira endured boom and bust, as workers flooded in, then abandoned it. The Belo Sun goldmine, if ever built, also continues to be a potential threat.
- In this story, Mongabay contributor Maximo Anderson and photographer Aaron Vincent Elkaim document the ongoing harm being done by the giant dam. Belo Monte, today, stands as a warning regarding the urgent need to properly assess and plan for mega-infrastructure projects in Amazonia.
Drought-driven wildfires on rise in Amazon basin, upping CO2 release
- Despite a 76 percent decline in deforestation rates between 2003 and 2015, the incidence of forest fires is increasing in Brazil, with new research linking the rise in fires not only to deforestation, but also to severe droughts.
- El Niño, combined with other oceanic and atmospheric cycles, produced an unusually severe drought in 2015, a year that saw a 36 percent increase in Amazon basin forest fires, which also raised carbon emissions.
- Severe droughts are expected to become more common in the Brazilian Amazon as natural oceanic cycles are made more extreme by human-induced climate change.
- In this new climate paradigm, limiting deforestation alone will not be sufficient to reduce fires and curb carbon emissions, scientists say. The maintenance of healthy, intact, unfragmented forests is vital to providing resilience against further increases in Amazon fires.
Brazilian Supreme Court ruling protects Quilombola land rights for now
- Brazil’s Supreme Court has soundly rejected a lawsuit filed in 2003 by a right wing political party that would have drastically limit the ability of quilombolas (former slave communities) to legitimize claims to their traditional lands.
- There are 2,962 quilombolas in Brazil today, but just 219 have land titles, while 1,673 are pursuing the process of acquiring legal title. Titled quilombola territories include 767,596 hectares (1.9 million acres); these settlements have a good record of protecting their forests. Brazil’s total quilombola population includes some 16 million people.
- While advocates for quilombola rights cheered the Supreme Court decision, major threats to the communities loom: successive administrations have drastically slashed the budget for titling quilombola lands, almost completely stalling the demarcation process. Also, a constitutional amendment, PEC 215 is moving through Brazil’s Congress.
- PEC 215 would shift authority from the Executive branch to Congress for giving out land titles to quilombolas, recognizing indigenous claims to ancestral lands, and creating protected areas. With Congress dominated by the ruralist caucus and agribusiness, PEC 215 threatens Brazilian forests and indigenous and traditional communities.
Venezuela: can a failing state protect its environment and its people?
- Venezuela is fast becoming a failed state, with 11.4 percent of its children malnourished, 10.5 percent of its workforce unemployed, and an annual inflation rate of roughly 2,700 percent for 2017.
- Serious food, fuel and medicine shortages have in recent months resulted in mobs raiding stores and shops, fishing boats, even the stoning of a cow to death where it stood in a field, in order for people to be able to provide for their families.
- Meanwhile, Pres. Maduro has sought to save his nation from economic ruin by selling off its natural resources, opening the Arco Minero in Bolívar state to mining – 112,000 square kilometers, more than 12 percent of the country. He has also announced the creation of the Petro cryptocurrency, backed by the nation’s oil and possibly minerals.
- Mongabay correspondent Bram Ebus, in partnership with InfoAmazonia, recently traveled to the remote Arco Minero and reported firsthand on the chaotic political and social situation, where indigenous communities and the environment are put at risk by economic hardship, a corrupt military, armed gangs and guerrilla bands.
Maduro seeks sell off of Venezuela’s natural resources to escape debt – analysis
- With Venezuela’s hyperinflation rate soaring to an estimated 2,700 percent in 2017, corruption and looting rife, and food and medicine in short supply nationwide, President Nicolás Maduro is desperate to find solutions to the country’s deepening economic crisis.
- Many of the president’s solutions, including the Arco Minero and the Petro cryptocurrency, could end up selling off Venezuela’s mineral wealth while devastating indigenous territories and the environment, including the Venezuelan Amazon.
- The Arco Minero, announced by Maduro in 2016, would open 112,000 square kilometers, more than 12 percent of the country, to mining. And while Maduro has invited transnational companies to do the work, most mining that is currently being done is controlled by corrupt elements of the military and organized armed gangs.
- In December, Maduro announced the Petro cryptocurrency, another scheme likely meant to help ease Venezuela’s debt. The new virtual currency would either be backed by the country’s untapped oil wealth or mineral wealth, including gold, coltan and diamonds. The fear is that none of these policies will prevent Venezuela from becoming a failed state.
Pope’s message to Amazonia inspires hope, but will it bring action?
- On 19 January, Pope Francis spoke to a crowd of thousands, including many indigenous people, in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, the capital of Madre de Dios state in the Amazon, a region that has seen significant deforestation (62,500 hectares between 2012 and 2016), and significant violence due to illegal mining.
- Latin American analysts, while excited about the pope’s visit, and appreciative of his spotlighting of illegal mining in Madre de Dios and other environmental problems across Amazonia, expressed doubt that the papal visit will have much impact in the long run.
- The pope singled out large corporations in his address: “[G]reat business interests… want to lay hands on [the Amazon’s] petroleum, gas, lumber, gold and other forms of agro-industrial monocultivation,” he said. “We have to break with the historical paradigm that views Amazonia as an inexhaustible source of supplies for other countries without concern for its inhabitants.”
- The pope invited a top-down and bottom-up response by Catholics to the Amazon crisis, calling on indigenous people “to shape the culture of local churches in Amazonia,” and announcing next year’s first-ever Synod for Amazonia – a gathering of global bishops who will put papal doctrine such as Laudato Si, his landmark 2015 papal encyclical, into action.
Record Amazon fires, intensified by forest degradation, burn indigenous lands
- As of September 2017, Brazil’s Pará state in the Amazon had seen a 229 percent increase in fires over 2016; in a single week in December the state saw 26,000 fire alerts. By year’s end, the Brazilian Amazon was on track for an all-time record fire season.
- But 2017 was not a record drought year, so experts have sought other causes. Analysts say most of the wildfires were human-caused, set by people seeking to convert forests to crop or grazing lands. Forest degradation by mining companies, logging and agribusiness added to the problem.
- Huge cuts made by the Temer administration in the budgets of Brazilian regulatory and enforcement agencies, such as FUNAI, the nation’s indigenous protection agency, and IBAMA, its environmental agency, which fights fires, added to the problem in 2017.
- The dramatic rise in wildfires has put indigenous communities and their territories at risk. For example, an area covering 24,000 hectares (59,305 acres), lost tree cover within the Kayapó Indigenous Territory from October to December, while the nearby Xikrin Indigenous Territory lost roughly 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) over the same period.
Venezuela’s Mining Arc boom sweeps up Indigenous people and cultures
- In 2016, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro declared the opening of the Arco Minero, which sprawls in an east-to-west crescent across 112,000 square kilometers (43,243 square miles) mostly in Bolívar state, south of the Orinoco River and in the Venezuelan Amazon.
- Indigenous communities within the Arco Minero were given no say in the development of mining in their region or near their territories, a clear violation of the International Labour Organization’s 169 Convention, an agreement to which Venezuela is a party.
- Mining is not only spreading in Bolivar’s Mining Arc, where armed gangs and the military compete for gold, diamond and coltan claims, but also into Venezuela’s Amazonas state to the south. Indigenous men and women leave their ancestral communities and small farms to do backbreaking and dangerous work in the mines for little money.
- Violence against, and conflicts with, indigenous communities can be expected to escalate as Venezuelan armed gangs and military organizations, and Colombian guerrilla groups continue to expand their presence in the region, and flex their muscles in the mining areas.
Study: Amazon dams are disrupting ecologically vital flood pulses
- Flood pulses are critical to the way the Amazon, its tributaries and other tropical rivers function – and these seasonal flood pulses are a huge driver of ecological productivity and diversity.
- Floodplain forests depend upon annual flood pulses to bring nutrients and sediment from river channels out into the surrounding terrestrial habitat.
- Reductions to flood pulses, brought by Amazon dams both large and small, could lead to shifts in tree species diversity and composition, with implications for carbon storage and emissions.
- Unreliable flood regimes, as created by dams of all sizes, significantly impact Amazon river systems and species’ life cycles, population dynamics, food sources, and habitats above and below the water line.
Brazil 2018: Amazon under attack, resistance grows, courts to act, elections
- While forecasts are always difficult, it seems likely that Brazilian President Michel Temer will remain in power for the last year of his term, despite on-going corruption investigations.
- Elections for president, the house of deputies, and most of the senate are scheduled for October. Former President Lula has led the presidential polls, though right wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro has grown strong. Lula’s environmental record is mixed; Bolsonaro would almost certainly be bad news for the environment, indigenous groups and the Amazon.
- During 2018, Temer, Congress and the bancada ruralista (a lobby representing agribusiness, cattle ranchers, land thieves and other wealthy rural elites) will likely seek to undermine environmental laws and indigenous land rights further. Potential paving of the BR 319 in the heart of the Amazon is considered one of the biggest threats.
- However, grassroots environmental and indigenous resistance continues to grow, and important Brazilian Supreme Court decisions are expected in the weeks and months ahead, which could undo some of the major gains made by the ruralists under Temer.
Brazil announces end to Amazon mega-dam building policy
- Brazil’s government this week announced a major shift away from its policy of building mega-dams in the Brazilian Amazon – a strategy born during the country’s military dictatorship (1964-1985) and vigorously carried forward down to the present day.
- The Temer government claims the decision is a response to intense resistance from environmentalists and indigenous groups, but while that may be part of the reason, experts see other causes as well.
- The decline in political influence of Brazil’s gigantic construction companies caused by the Lava Jato (Car Wash) corruption investigation is likely a major cause of the change in policy. So is the current depressed state of Brazil’s economy, which makes it unlikely that Brazil’s huge development bank (BNDES) will invest in such multi-billion dollar projects.
- While environmentalists and indigenous groups will likely celebrate the shift away from the mega-dam policy, experts warn that many threats to the Amazon remain, including pressure by Brazil’s ruralist lobby to open up conserved areas and indigenous lands to agribusiness, along with threats posed by new road, rail, waterway and mining projects.
Top 20 forest stories of 2017
Mongabay published hundreds of stories on forests in 2017. Here are some of our favorites. 1. Rebel road expansion brings deforestation to remote Colombian Amazon With the demobilization of Colombia’s FARC militant group, the country is expanding agriculture and infrastructure in places in the country once too dangerous to develop. One of these areas is […]
How a hunger for teeth is driving a bat toward extinction
- Bat teeth are more valuable than paper money on the island of Makira, in the eastern Solomon Islands.
- The use of bat teeth as a currency means that bats on the island are commonly hunted. One species, the Makira flying fox, is found only on the island and is being threatened with extinction due to human pressures.
- In addition to direct hunting, human population growth and logging are also threatening the bats.
- To save the species, researchers recommend developing quotas for sustainable harvesting, as well as an outreach campaign connecting the survival of this key piece of Makiran culture with the need to conserve the bats.
Brazil 2017: environmental and indigenous rollbacks, rising violence
- The bancada ruralista, or ruralist lobby, in Brazil’s congress flexed its muscles in 2017, making numerous demands on President Michel Temer to make presidential decrees weakening environmental protections and revoking land rights to indigenous and traditional communities in Brazil – decisions especially impacting the Amazon.
- Emboldened ruralists – including agribusiness, cattle ranchers, land thieves and loggers – stepped up violent attacks in 2017, making Brazil the most dangerous country in the world for social or environmental activists. There were 63 assassinations by the end of October.
- Budgets to FUNAI, the indigenous agency; IBAMA, the environmental agency; and other institutions, were reduced so severely this year that these government regulatory agencies were largely unable to do their enforcement and protection work.
- In 2017, Temer led attempts to dismember Jimanxim National Forest and National Park, and to open the vast RENCA preserve in the Amazon to mining – efforts that have failed to date, but are still being pursued. Resistance has remained fierce, especially among indigenous groups, with Temer sometimes forced to backtrack on his initiatives.
Chainsaws imperil an old-growth mangrove stronghold in southern Myanmar
- Tanintharyi, Myanmar’s southern-most state, is home to the country’s last remaining old-growth mangrove forest. The trees support village life and a booming fishing industry up and down the coast.
- But logging for charcoal and fuel wood, much of it illegal, is taking a toll. Studies show that roughly two-thirds of the region’s remaining mangrove forests have been degraded, with consequences for people and wildlife.
- Conservationists are attempting to expand community forestry and set up mangrove reserves to combat the widespread degradation.
Selective logging reduces biodiversity, disrupts Amazon ecosystems: study
- Reduced-impact logging, also called selective logging, which gained popularity in the 1990s, aims to balance biodiversity impacts with global demand for timber by extracting fewer trees. But the success of this approach is coming under increasing scrutiny.
- A new study in the Brazilian Amazon found that dung beetle communities, and their important role as “ecosystem engineers,” is severely disrupted by even low-level timber extraction, with sharp reductions in species richness.
- Multitudes of studies on birds, mammals, amphibians and invertebrates around the globe demonstrate the same finding: that even low-levels of timber extraction have significant impact on species diversity.
- This extensive research suggests that selective logging techniques should be shelved in favor of “land-sparing” timber extraction strategies, which create a patchwork of highly logged sites and intact forest reserves.
Amazon dam impacts underestimated due to overlooked vine growth: study
- New research on the rapid growth of lianas – native woody vines – on the artificial reservoir islands of the Balbina dam in the Amazon finds that forest communities there underwent a transformation as a result of severe habitat fragmentation, resulting in the altering of the carbon sequestration and emission balance.
- Some tree species are severely impacted by this extreme form of habitat fragmentation and die, while native lianas — woody vines that climb to reach the forest canopy — thrive and rapidly fill the biological niche left by failing trees.
- Trees, with their greater biomass, store more carbon in trunks and branches than lianas, so the carbon balance shifts as lianas dominate. Rather than sequestering carbon, these dam-created islands end up emitting carbon as the trees die.
- The rapid growth of lianas further contributes to the degradation of remnant tree communities challenged by fragmentation. Amazon dam environmental impact assessments don’t currently evaluate increased reservoir island carbon emissions.
Mine tailings dam failures major cause of environmental disasters: report
- Between 2008-2017 it’s estimated that more than 340 people died, communities have been ravaged, property ruined, rivers contaminated, fisheries wrecked and drinking water polluted by mining tailings dam collapses. Estimates from the year 2000 put the total number of tailings dams globally at 3,500, though there are likely more that have not been counted.
- A new United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report states that as mining production escalates globally to provide the minerals and metals required for a variety of industrial needs, including green technologies, it is urgent that nations and companies address tailings dam safety.
- The UNEP report recommends that mining companies strive for a “zero-failure objective” in regard to tailings dams, superseding economic goals. UNEP also recommends the establishment of a UN environmental stakeholder forum to support stronger international regulations for tailings dams, and the creation of a global database of mine sites and tailings storage facilities to track dam failures.
- One idea would be to eliminate types of tailings dams that are just too dangerous to be tolerated. For example, mining experts say there is no way to insure against the failure of “wet tailings disposal” dams, like the Samarco dam that failed in 2015 – Brazil’s worst environmental disaster ever. As a result, they recommend storing all future tailings waste via “dry stock disposal.”
EU-LatAm trade deal good for agribusiness; bad for Amazon, climate – analysis
- The EU-Mercosur trade deal, being concluded this month by the European Union and the South American trade bloc (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) is being negotiated in secret. However, part of the document has been leaked to Greenpeace, alarming environmentalists.
- The leaked secret trade documents show that the accord would encourage the export of high-value goods, like automobiles, from Europe to Latin American, while encouraging the export of huge amounts of low-value products – including beef and soy – from South America.
- This emphasis on production and international consumption could greatly increase the need for agricultural land in Latin America, and result in a major increase in deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, and Argentine Chaco.
- The conversion of forests to crop and range lands could significantly decrease carbon storage, leading to a rise in carbon emissions that could help push global temperatures more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, with potentially catastrophic results for ecosystems and civilization.
Latin America-Europe trade pact to include historic indigenous rights clause
- The Mercosur trade bloc (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) and the European Union are expected to conclude trade negotiations and put finishing touches on a trade agreement by the end of this year.
- That pact will include landmark indigenous human rights clauses meant to protect indigenous groups from violence, land theft and other civil rights violations.
- The human rights guarantees institutionalized in the trade agreement, if violated, could potentially lead to major trade boycotts, and are particularly important to indigenous groups in Brazil, where the agribusiness lobby known as the bancada ruralista wields tremendous political power.
- Brazil’s ruralist elite has been engaged in a decades-long effort to deny indigenous groups rights to their ancestral lands. Violence by large scale farmers and land thieves has seriously escalated under the Temer administration, which strongly backs the ruralist agenda.
Nigeria pledges to restore nearly 10 million acres of degraded land
- The government of Nigeria has announced its plans to restore four million hectares, or nearly 10 million acres, of degraded lands within its borders.
- The West African nation is now one of 26 countries across the continent that have committed to restoring more than 84 million hectares (over 200 million acres) of degraded lands as part of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), an effort that aims to bring 100 million hectares of land under restoration by 2030.
- The restoration of degraded forests and other landscapes was found to have the most climate mitigation potential of 20 natural climate strategies examined for a recent study.
Militarization and mining a dangerous mix in Venezuelan Amazon
- Venezuela today is gripped by a catastrophic economic crisis, born out of corruption on a vast scale, government mismanagement and a failed petro-economy.
- In 2016, President Nicolás Maduro announced the opening of the Orinoco Mining Arc, a vast region in the southern part of the nation perhaps boasting $100 billion in untapped gold, diamonds and coltan, as well as being one of the most biodiverse parts of the Amazon.
- Maduro also created an “Economic Military Zone” to protect the region. Today, the army has a huge presence there, ostensibly to reduce the influence of organized gangs doing illegal mining.
- In reality, the military is heavily involved in mining itself, often allegedly competing with gangs for resources, with violent conflict a result. Small-scale miners, indigenous and traditional communities, and the environment could be the big losers in this struggle for power and wealth.
Ferrogrão grain railway threatens Amazon indigenous groups, forest
- Michel Temer’s administration is fast tracking the Ferrogrão (Grainrail), a 1,142 kilometer railway to link grain-producing midwest Brazil with the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, in order to more economically and efficiently export soy and other commodities to foreign markets.
- The railway is seen as vital to Brazil’s agribusiness-centric economy, especially considering the country’s current economic crisis, but indigenous groups say they’ve not been consulted in project planning as stipulated by International Labour Organization Convention 169.
- The railway will come near several indigenous groups: the Kaiabi in Indigenous Territory of Batelão, the Pankararu in Indigenous Territory of Pankararu, the Kayapó in Indigenous Territory of Kapot-Nhinore, and the Panará in Indigenous Territory of Baú. These groups say they’ve not been properly consulted by the government.
- Ferrogrão will also pass near Jamanxim National Park and cut through Jamanxim National Forest, where the government is seeking diminished protections to benefit elite land thieves. Scientists worry that deforestation brought by the loss of these conserved lands, plus the railway, could significantly reduce the Amazon’s greenhouse gas storage capacity.
Damming or damning the Amazon: Assessing Ecuador / China cooperation
- In 2008, Ecuador, led by President Rafael Correa, approved a new constitution based upon Buen Vivir (the ”Good Life”), committing the nation to indigenous rights, environmental sustainability and state sovereignty. However, Correa quickly aligned the nation with China, a partnership that many critics say undermined the promises of the constitution.
- Under Correa, China became Ecuador’s primary creditor and Chinese investment, both public and private, resulted in an infrastructure boom in new dams, mines, oilrigs, roads, power transmission lines, telecommunications systems and schools.
- During Correa’s administration, eight major dams were built, including Coca Coda Sinclair (CCS) constructed by Chinese state corporation Sinohydro. While CCS promised local prosperity, residents of surrounding communities say the government provided them with no say in the project, which has created serious environmental problems.
- In May, a new president, Lenin Moreno, was elected. He has so far not followed in Correa’s footsteps, and his administration seems set on deemphasizing the relationship with China, with few major infrastructure projects currently in the works. However a power struggle in the ruling Alianza País Party has made Ecuador’s political path forward less than clear.
$2 billion investment in forest restoration announced at COP23
- Last Thursday, at the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany (known as COP23), the World Resources Institute (WRI) announced that $2.1 billion in private investment funds have been committed to efforts to restore degraded lands in the Caribbean and Latin America.
- The investments will be made through WRI’s Initiative 20×20, which has already put 10 million hectares (about 25 million acres) of land under restoration thanks to 19 private investors who are supporting more than 40 restoration projects.
- There’s a plethora of recent research showing that, while halting deforestation is of course critical, the restoration of degraded forests and other landscapes are a vital component to meeting the Paris Agreement’s target of keeping global warming below two degrees Celsius.
From carbon sink to source: Brazil puts Amazon, Paris goals at risk
- Brazil is committed to cutting carbon emissions by 37 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, to ending illegal deforestation, and restoring 120,000 square kilometers of forest by 2030. Scientists warn these Paris commitments are at risk due to a flood of anti-environmental and anti-indigenous measures forwarded by President Michel Temer.
- “If these initiatives succeed, Temer will go down in history with the ruralistas as the ones who put a stake in the beating heart of the Amazon.” — Thomas Lovejoy, conservation biologist and director of the Center for Biodiversity and Sustainability at George Mason University.
- “The Temer government’s reckless behavior flies in the face of Brazil’s commitments to the Paris Agreement.” — Christian Poirier, program director at Amazon Watch.
- “There was, or maybe there still is, a very slim chance we can avoid a catastrophic desertification of South America. No doubt, there will be horrific damage if the Brazilian government initiatives move forward in the region.” — Antonio Donato Nobre, scientist at INPA, the Institute for Amazonian Research.
As negotiators meet in Bonn, Brazil’s carbon emissions rise
- Brazil pledged in Paris to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 37 percent by 2025 over 2005 levels. But its emissions shot up 8.9 percent in 2016, largely due to deforestation and agriculture. That increase threatens Brazil’s Paris goal.
- Pará, in the heart of the Amazon, was the highest carbon emitter state, with 12.3 percent of the national total (due almost exclusively to deforestation and poorly managed industrial agriculture), followed by Mato Grosso state (9.6 percent of national emissions), which has converted much forest to soy production.
- Experts say that this emissions trend could be reversed through sustainable forestry and more efficient agricultural practices. However, the dominance of the elite ruralist faction in Congress and in the Temer administration is preventing progress toward achieving Brazil’s carbon pledge.
Indigenous lands at risk, as Amazon sellout by Brazil’s Temer continues (commentary)
- Brazilian president Michel Temer has twice survived National Congress votes to initiate impeachment against him on extensive corruption charges.
- Temer did so by selling out the environment, particularly the Amazon, to the ruralists who largely control the assembly.
- Among the concessions made or promised to ruralists are presidential decrees to allow agribusiness to rent indigenous lands, forgiving unpaid environmental fines owed by landowners, and ending any enforcement of restrictions on labor “equivalent to slavery.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Indigenous forests could be a key to averting climate catastrophe
- A new study finds the world’s tropical forests may no longer be carbon sinks, with a net loss of 425 million tons of carbon from 2003 to 2014. Also, 1.1 billion metric tons of carbon is emitted globally from forested areas and land use annually — 4.4 billion metric tons are absorbed by standing forests on managed lands, but 5.5 billion metric tons are released via deforestation and degradation.
- As a result, curbing deforestation and degradation is now seen by scientists as a vital strategy for nations to meet the carbon reduction goals set in Paris in 2015, and of averting a catastrophic 2 degree Celsius rise in temperatures by the end of the century.
- Other new research finds that indigenous and traditional community management of forests could offer a key to curbing emissions, and give the world time to transition to a green energy economy. In a separate study, Amazon deforestation rates were found to be five times greater outside indigenous territories and conservation units than inside.
- “We are a proven solution to the long-term protection of forests, whose survival is vital for reaching our [planetary] climate change goals,” said an envoy of a global indigenous delegation in attendance at COP23 in Bonn, Germany. The delegation wants the world’s nations to protect indigenous forests from an invasion by global extraction industries.
Mining activity causing nearly 10 percent of Amazon deforestation
- Scientists have learned that nearly 10 percent of the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2005 and 2015 was due to mining activities. Previously, it was thought to cause just 1-2 percent, but that is because past assessments primarily looked at deforestation caused by the mines themselves, and didn’t account for all the ancillary infrastructure that accompanies the mines.
- With mining causing such high levels of deforestation — up to 70 kilometers away from mines — and with the Brazilian government under Michel Temer eager to open vast areas of the Amazon to mining, the researchers say that companies and government need to aggressively address the deforestation issue.
- While the new research documented Amazon deforestation due to many ancillary activities, including roads, staff housing and airports, it did not look into the major deforestation brought by
the new hydroelectric dams that often provide energy for mining operations
- To address the high level of deforestation caused by mining in the Amazon, Brazil needs to significantly revise its environmental impact assessment process to include ancillary infrastructure up to 70 kilometers away from mines along with related hydroelectric dam construction.
Temer offers amnesty, erasing up to $2.1 billion in environmental crime fines
- 95 percent of fines issued by IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, are never paid. These fines are worth R$11.5 billion (US $3.5 billion).
- In a new decree, President Temer has offered offenders — including farmers and ranchers responsible for illegal deforestation —an amnesty of 60 percent of fines, provided the remaining 40 percent is paid into a government environmental fund.
- While that fund — if fleshed out — would provide significant amounts of money for environmental agencies, Temer’s decree provides no new and effective means of enforcing the measure.
- The amnesty, as seen by critics, is one in a long series of anti-environmental and anti-indigenous decrees made by Temer in order to buy support from congressional deputies and gain their votes to shelve a second round of corruption charges against the president.
Brazilian police nab Amazon timber thieves who faked forest credits
- Federal Police arrested and fined participants in an illegal logging and forest credit fraud scheme operating in Pará, Santa Catarina, Paraná and Mato Grosso states.
- The timber thieves were aided in this crime by gaps in the government’s licensing program and poor control of the timber production chain in Pará and Mato Grosso; lapses which authorities are now moving to correct.
- The timber thieves cut rare ipê trees on the Amazon’s Cachoeira Seca indigenous reserve, then used falsified records and a variety of companies to move the timber to other states and export the wood, used for expensive decking in the U.S., Argentina, Panama, France, Germany, the UK, United Arab Emirates and South Korea.
- Fines for illegal timber harvesting are only R$ 5,000 (US$ 1,587) per hectare; and for failing to submit proper reports, between R$ 1,000 and R$ 100,000 (US$ 317 to US$ 31,700), insignificant amounts that do little to deter a crime that can yield very high profits for perpetrators. These fines have not been increased since 2008.
Temer guts Brazil’s slavery law, to the applause of elite ruralists
- Brazil has about 155,000 people working in conditions analogous to slavery, many used by elite ruralists who have become wealthy via environmental crime. Slave labor, for example, is often used in the Amazon to keep illegal deforestation and illicit agribusiness hidden and off the books.
- President Temer has issued a decree — known as a portaria — narrowing the definition of slavery. Holding people in economic servitude, in conditions analogous to slavery, is no longer illegal. Now slaves must be held against their will, and two government officials must catch the slaveholder in the act.
- The easing of the slavery law, experts say, is Temer’s way of rewarding the bancada ruralista, the agribusiness lobby, which includes about 40 percent of the Congress and continues to support Temer and to reject on-going rounds of corruption charges against the president.
- Outrage over the weakening of the slavery law is widespread in Brazil and abroad. NOTE: this story was updated on 10-25-17 to report that Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) has temporarily suspended implementation of Temer’s slavery decree until an STF ruling can be made.
Amazonian manatee migration at risk from disruption by proposed dams
- Amazonian manatees (Trichechus inunguis) spend the high-water season feeding in flooded forests, but migrate to deeper permanent water bodies to see out the dry season.
- Researchers have found that as the dry season approaches, manatees time their migration out of the floodplain to avoid bottlenecks that would block their route, and doom them.
- But, the scientists warn, those bottlenecks will become far more common, and less predictable, if the hundreds of hydropower dams planned for the Amazon go forward.
- The dams, and the bottleneck problem they create, “generates profound concern for the conservation of manatees,” the scientists write.
Booming legal Amazon wildlife trade documented in new report
- Wildlife trade attention has recently focused on Africa. But a new report spotlights the brisk legal international trade in plants and animals from eight Amazon nations. The report did not look at the illegal trade, whose scope is largely unknown.
- The US$128 million industry exports 14 million animals and plants annually, plus one million kilograms by weight, including caiman and peccary skins for the fashion industry, live turtles and parrots for the pet trade, and arapaima for the food industry.
- The report authors note that such trade, conducted properly, can have benefits for national economies, for livelihoods, and even for wildlife — animals bred in captivity, for example, can provide scientists with vital data for sustaining wild populations.
- The report strongly emphasizes the need for monitoring, regulating and enforcing sustainable harvest levels of wild animals and plants if the legal trade is to continue to thrive, and if Amazonian forests and rivers are not to be emptied of their wildlife.
Amazon deforestation linked to McDonald’s and British retail giants
- British fast food restaurants and grocery chains, including Tesco, Morrisons and McDonald’s, buy their chicken from Cargill, which feeds its poultry with imported soy, much of it apparently coming from the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado — areas rapidly being deforested for new soy plantations.
- A decade ago, Cargill and other global commodities companies agreed to stop buying soy from the Brazilian Amazon and established a Soy Moratorium in the region.
- But a recent study showed that Cargill and other companies simply began sourcing their soy purchases from nearby areas, including the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado, a vast area of savanna, part of which is included in Brazil’s definition of Legal Amazonia.
- That shift has resulted in rapid deforestation in both areas; a Mighty Earth report revealed that U.S. soy distributor Cargill is a major soy buyer there. Efforts to extend the soy moratorium to the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado have long been opposed by Cargill, despite calls to do so by NGOs, scientists and the Brazilian environment minister.
Audio: Is forest certification an effective strategy? Plus acoustic ecology of the Javan rhino
- We take a closer look at the evidence for the effectiveness of forest certification schemes on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast.
- Mongabay recently kicked off a new in-depth series called “Conservation Effectiveness” that looks at the scientific literature examining how well various conservation types work, from forest certification to payments for ecosystem services and community forestry. The first installment is out now, and Zuzana Burivalova, a tropical forest ecologist at Princeton University who did the research analysis that the article was based on, is here to speak with us about what she found.
- We also speak with Steve Wilson, who is currently working on a PhD at the University of Queensland on Javan rhino ecology and conservation. This is our latest Field Notes segment, in which Wilson will play for us three different Javan rhino vocalisations and fill us in on what the rhinos use these calls for.
Amazon community on Tapajós River invaded by wildcat miners
- The Brazilian community of Montanha-Mangabal made up of beiradeiros —riverside peasant farmers and traditional fishermen — has been invaded and threatened by angry wildcat miners.
- The beiradeiros community spread for miles along the Tapajós River in Pará, worked for decades to establish its legal land rights, achieved in 2013 when Brazil’s National Colonization and Agrarian Reform Institute (INCRA) turned the land into a 550 square kilometer Agro-Extractive Settlement (PAE).
- However, the federal government failed to meet its obligation to demarcate the land. As a measure of last resort, Montanha-Mangabal and Munduruku indigenous allies began marking the land’s boundaries in September using GPS and signs.
- This self-demarcation process apparently led to the miners’ invasion, as they illegitimately claim some of the community’s land. The beiradeiros, Munduruku, and other indigenous groups see the invasion as part of a bigger threat by Brazilian ruralists and the government to develop the Amazon.
Brazil: a world champion in political and environmental devastation (commentary)
- Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world is heir to a fabulously rich heritage in its natural wealth and natural wonders.
- It is also heir to a corrupt colonial tradition that today still rewards the nation’s wealthiest most privileged elites, as they overexploit forests, rivers, soils and local communities in the name of exorbitant profits.
- These vast profits are made via intense deforestation, cattle ranching, mining, agribusiness, dam and road building and other development, with little or no regard for the wellbeing of the environment or the people.
- Brazil’s landed elites, known today as ruralists, are well protected by state and federal governments, and remain largely exempt from prosecution for crimes against the environment and public good. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Temer walks back plan to open Denmark-sized area of Amazon to mining
- Brazilian president Michel Temer this Tuesday published a new decree reversing his August 23rd order to open a vast national reserve in the Amazon to mining.
- The reserve, known as RENCA, contains nine conserved areas as well as two indigenous reserves. Environmentalists and indigenous leaders were concerned that the opening of the region to large scale mining would put protected areas at risk.
- Temer’s original Amazon mining decree was met with worldwide condemnation from environmentalists, indigenous groups, scientists, artists and the general public.
- RENCA encompasses 4.6 million hectares (17,800 square miles). Only 0.3 percent of the entire reserve is deforested, making it one of the Amazon’s most intact regions.
Does forest certification really work?
- Based on a review of 40 studies of variable quality, we found that certified tropical forests can overall be better for the environment than forests managed conventionally.
- But there wasn’t enough evidence to say if certified tropical forests are better than, the same as, or worse than conventionally managed tropical forests when it comes to people.
- We also found that profits and other economic benefits can be hard to come by for certified logging companies working in tropical forests.
- This is part of a special Mongabay series on “Conservation Effectiveness”.
Andes dams could threaten food security for millions in Amazon basin
- More than 275 hydroelectric projects are planned for the Amazon basin, the majority of which could be constructed in the Andes whose rivers supply over 90 percent of the basin’s sediments and over half its nutrients.
- A new study projects huge environmental costs for six of these dams, which together will retain 900 million tons of river sediment annually, reducing supplies of phosphorus and nitrogen, and threatening fish populations and soil quality downstream.
- Accumulating sediments upstream of dams are projected to release 10 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, significantly contributing to global warming, and would contaminate waters and the aquatic life they support with mercury.
- The construction of these dams should be reconsidered to preserve food security and the livelihoods of millions of people in the Amazon Basin.
Belo Monte dam installation license suspended, housing inadequacy cited
- A federal court has suspended the installation license of the Belo Monte mega-dam in the state of Pará, Brazil. The dam, slated to have the world’s third-largest generating capacity, became operational in 2015, but won’t see construction finished until 2019.
- The court ordered further construction halted until Norte Energia met the commitments it made in 2011 to provide adequate housing for those displaced by the dam, including indigenous and traditional people that had been living along the Xingu River.
- Among commitment violations cited were houses built without space for larger families, houses built from different materials than promised, and homes constructed too far from work, schools and shopping in Altamira, a city lacking a robust public transportation system.
- The consortium continues to operate the dam, as its operating license has not been suspended.
Zero tolerance of deforestation likely only way to save Amazon gateway
- In a new paper, conservationists urgently call for a policy of zero deforestation and sustainable agroforestry in Maranhão, one of Brazil’s poorest states, before its remaining Amazon forests are lost.
- The region’s forests are home to unique and endangered species, including the jaguar (Panthera onca), Black bearded saki (Chiropotes satanas), and kaapori capuchin (Cebus kaapori), one of the world’s rarest primates.
- It is also inhabited by some of the most vulnerable indigenous groups in the world, including uncontacted indigenous communities.
- Though 70 percent of remaining forest lies within protected areas, illegal logging and slash-and-burn agriculture are persistent problems, threatening already fragmented wildlife habitat and forcing indigenous tribes off ancestral land.
Indigenous communities resist Chinese mining in Amazonian Ecuador
- Last weekend, a tribunal held by indigenous communities in Gualaquiza, in the Amazon headwaters region of Ecuador, accused the nation’s first large scale mining operation of major human and environmental abuses.
- The Mirador and Panantza-San Carlos open-pit copper mines are run by Ecuacorriente S.A. (ECSA) and owned by the Chinese consortium CRCC-Tongguan. The two mines are located in the Cordillera del Cóndor region and within the Shuar indigenous territory.
- Charges lodged against the government and Chinese consortium include displacement of 116 indigenous people, the razing of the town of San Marcos de Tundayme, escalating violence including the death of Shuar leader José Tendetza, discrimination, intimidation, threats, and worsening environmental degradation.
- President Lenin Moreno’s administration has so far made no response to the Gualaquiza accusations or the demand for redress of grievances filed by the tribunal’s leaders.
Temer’s Amazon mining decrees derided by protestors, annulled by judge
- In a seeming win for Canadian and Brazilian mining companies, President Michel Temer on August 23rd abolished a vast Amazonian national reserve — the Renca preserve, covering 4.6 million hectares — and opened the region up to mining.
- The reserve, straddling Pará and Amapá states, contains large preserved areas and indigenous communities. Temer’s original Amazon mining decree was met with widespread condemnation, resulting in a second clarifying decree on August 28th.
- On August 29th, federal judge Ronaldo Spanholo annulled both decrees, citing Brazil’s 1988 constitution, and ruling that the Renca preserve may not be abolished by presidential order but only legislative action. The Brazilian Union´s General Advocate said it will appeal the judge´s decision.
- BBC Brasil reported that Canadian mining companies, who would likely profit from the Renca preserve´s abolishment, were notified that the region was going to be opened up for prospecting last March, five months before the original decree was issued.
Study examines sex-specific responses of Neotropical bats to habitat fragmentation
- While scientists have long known that males and females of some species use their habitat in different ways, the various responses to habitat destruction that are sex-specific are less well understood.
- Research published in the journal Biotropica this month looked at the different responses to the effects of fragmentation exhibited by male and female individuals of Seba’s Short-tailed Bat (Carollia perspicillata) and the Dwarf Little Fruit Bat (Rhinophylla pumilio), both fruit-eating bats native to the Neotropics.
- Researchers captured more than 2,000 bats of the target species in eight forest fragments of various sizes and nine control sites at the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, a research forest about 80 kilometers north of Manaus in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The authors of the study write that their results align with those of previous research in temperate areas, where male and female bats have been found to differ in their responses to habitat degradation at the local and landscape level.
Visualizing the impacts of human disturbance on tropical forest biodiversity
- Efforts to protect biodiversity often focus on keeping forests and the habitat they represent from being cut down. But research published in the journal Nature last year suggests that forest degradation resulting from human activities is perhaps just as urgent a threat to biodiversity as deforestation.
- According to the study, man-made disturbances in Pará’s tropical forests have resulted in levels of biodiversity loss equivalent to clearing 92,000 to 139,000 square kilometers (around 35,500 to 53,700 square miles) of pristine forest.
- If that kind of raw data is hard to wrap your brain around, that’s where Silent Forest comes in. Thiago Medaglia described it as “a journalistic data visualization project” in an email to Mongabay.
Orangutans find home in degraded forests
- The study leveraged three years of orangutan observation in the field and airborne mapping of the forest structure using laser-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology.
- The research team found that orangutans make use of habitats that have been ‘degraded’ by logging and other human uses.
- The research is part of a larger effort in collaboration with the Sabah Forestry Department to map carbon stocks and plant and animal biodiversity throughout the Malaysian state of Sabah with the goal of identifying new areas for conservation.
Charcoal and cattle ranching tearing apart the Gran Chaco
- The year-long probe of Paraguay’s charcoal exports by the NGO Earthsight revealed that much of the product was coming from the Chaco, the world’s fastest-disappearing tropical forest.
- Suppliers appear to have reassured international supermarket chains that it was sustainable and that they had certification from international groups such as FSC and PEFC.
- But further digging by Earthsight revealed that the charcoal production methods used may not fit with the intent of certification.
- Several grocery store chains mentioned in the report have said they’ll take a closer look at their supply chains, and the certification body PEFC is reexamining how its own standards are applied.
Deforestation vs. Degradation: How we underestimate tropical forest greenhouse gas emissions
- Researchers calculated carbon dioxide emissions from tropical forest degradation from 74 countries focusing on timber harvesting, wood fuel collection, and fires.
- They found that emissions from forest degradation amounted to 2.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide — a third of those from tropical deforestation and greater than the emissions from power generation in the USA.
- Forest degradation emissions for a third of the countries studied were higher than their emissions from deforestation.
Forest advocates say zero-carbon goals too reliant on unrealistic tech
- To reduce their carbon footprints, some international energy companies are promoting bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
- However, critics say BECCS techniques are land-intensive and that carbon capture is costly and largely unproven. They urge more attention be paid to phasing out fossil fuels instead of uncertain carbon capture technology.
- Industry reps say they are working such strategies into their own models regarding carbon-emission reductions and identifying land for forest growth and carbon storage.
Restoring degraded land could mean big financial gains for Latin America
- The report, produced by the World Resources Institute, finds big financial rewards for restoration.
- Landowners could increase their incomes by using restoration to replenish agricultural yields and bolster food security, sell forest products, and earn money from ecotourism.
- Restoration could also have big rewards in terms of carbon storage, with WRI researchers estimating 5 billion metric tons of CO2 could be sequestered over 50 years if 20 million hectares is restored.
In a border town, a favorite African fuel has an uncertain future
- About five percent of Africa’s workforce – about 20 million people – are employed by the charcoal or firewood industry
- Traders say that a large part of their operating expenses go to bribes, payoffs, and security
- Despite health risks, charcoal remains a popular and cost-effective option for household cooking
Exclusive: Rainforest rapidly cleared for sugarcane in Bolivia
- Satellite data indicate deforestation for sugarcane in the northern portion of the country near Madidi National Park is ramping up as the San Buenaventura sugar mill expands production in the area.
- Nearly 2,000 hectares have been cleared for sugarcane so far, with a total of 11,700 hectares planned for cultivation by 2023.
- The Tacana Indigenous community alleges it was forced to concede 4,000 hectares of its ancestral territory for the construction of the mill.
- Deforestation already affects 20 percent of the Pan Amazon, and scientists warn that if it continues at this pace, it could produce an ecological collapse in less than 40 years.
Peru’s REDD+ conservation efforts paying off
- REDD+ conservation efforts generated almost $34 million for Peru between 2013 to 2015.
- Around one-eighth of Peru’s protected forests are involved in REDD+ programs
- In 2014, Peru signed a $225 million deal with Norway to bring net deforestation to zero by 2021
China’s reforestation program a letdown for wildlife, study finds
- According to fieldwork from south-central Sichuan Province, biodiversity within monocultures is lower than within cropland, the very land being restored.
- The research found that cropland restored with mixed forests offers marginal biodiversity gains and comes at no economic cost to households, relative to monocultures.
- The researchers recommend incentives for restoration of native forests under the program, which they say would provide the greatest benefits for biodiversity.
Gold mining ramps up, pushes deeper into Peruvian reserve
- Artisanal gold mining is big in the Amazon Basin, with high gold prices driving miners to seek the precious metal in an increasing number of areas.
- As more gold is sought, more forest is felled for prospecting and extraction.
- New numbers show there’s been a major uptick in mining-related tree cover loss in February and March – with April likely to continue the trend.
New research sets doomsday for Indo-Pacific mangroves
- Mangroves are hugely valuable, both ecologically and economically, but many are highly threatened by clearing and rising sea levels.
- This new study finds some mangroves may be able to keep pace with rising seas because of influxes of sediment – but many more may not, and may become submerged in the coming decades.
- The the authors say it’s not too late to turn things around in some areas.
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