News
Climate change and ASEAN
10 May 2011
However, SFM history is the history of the forest industry. Promoting SFM is a way to benefit deforesters and compensate them through the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) fund. The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), ...See all stories on this topic »
Liberia and EU sign deal to curb illegal timber trade
9 May 2011
Pact aims to ensure that timber exported to the EU comes from legal sources and that the trade will benefit the Liberian people
REDD+ must attract private investment: UN study
9 May 2011
Well-designed forest carbon policy is needed to attract private sector finance in order to tackle deforestation and climate change, a new UN report says...
Utility price hikes push demand for wood in Tanzania
9 May 2011
Rising deforestation is a threat as the country struggles to meet rising demand for power and drought threat to hydropower
Papua New Guinea suspends controversial grants of community forest lands to foreign corps
6 May 2011
The government of Papua New Guinea yesterday suspended its controversial Special Agricultural and Business Leases program which has granted logging and plantation development concessions to mostly foreign corporations across 5.2 million hectares of community forest land, reports the Courier-Post
Kenya turns sugarcane waste into paper to preserve forests
6 May 2011
Switch may help struggling paper companies and curb climate change driven by forest loss
Brazil's forest code debate may determine fate of the Amazon rainforest
5 May 2011
Brazil's forest code may be about to get an overhaul. The federal code, which presently requires landowners in the Amazon to keep 80 percent of their land forest (20-35% in the cerrado), is widely flouted, but has been used in recent years as a lever by the government to go after deforesters. For example, the forest code served as the basis for the "blacklists" which restricted funds for municipalities where deforestation has been particularly high. To get off the blacklist, and thereby...
Logging off
5 May 2011
This agreement will be welcomed by the government's task force on Reducing Emission through Deforestation and forest Degradation or REDD, a scheme for rich countries to pay for forest conservation. Last year the government of Norway promised Indonesia ...See all stories on this topic »
7 conglomerates control 9M ha of land in Indonesia
5 May 2011
Efforts to slow deforestation in Indonesia should include curtailing further expansion of forestry holdings by giant conglomerates, says an Indonesian activist group. Analyzing data from the Ministry of Forest's Production Forest Utilization Quarterly Report, Jakarta-based Greenomics-Indonesia found that seven conglomerates in Indonesia control more than 9 million hectares of land, including large forest concessions that will likely be exempt from any moratorium on forest clearing established...
Indonesia signs agreement with EU to end the sale of illegally logged wood
4 May 2011
The EU and Indonesia today signed an agreement in Jakarta that aims to keep illegally logged wood from reaching the European market. This is the first Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) signed by an Asian nation with the EU and is seen as a considerable step forward on the fight against the illegal logging worldwide.