Forests
Trees and soil at the forest’s edge store more carbon than we thought, studies reveal
Trees and soils keep a lot of carbon trapped in the forest, pulling it from the atmosphere, where it can do more harm than good. In fact, roughly 30% of the carbon generated from fossil fuel burning is captured by forests. “That’s CO2 that’s not in the atmosphere,” said Boston University biogeochemist and ecologist Lucy […]
New report pieces together toll of environmental damage in Venezuela in 2021
While trying to put together a review of what happened to Venezuela’s environment in 2021, conservationists ran into a problem. The government publishes virtually no statistics on things like deforestation, infrastructure or mining, and it often actively blocks researchers from investigating threats to local ecosystems. Last year, the government appeared to lean more heavily on […]
Plan to carve up Indonesian Papua rings alarm over fate of people and forests
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s plan to administratively split the country’s easternmost region of Papua into five provinces, from the current two, has raised concerns that its forests and natural resources will be at higher risk of being plundered. The idea has been floated for several years, and picked up steam this year, with lawmakers […]
Palm oil firm that cleared Papuan forest after losing its permit is still at it
JAKARTA — A palm oil company whose permit was revoked at the start of the year and which was ordered to halt operations is allegedly continuing to clear forests in Indonesia’s Papua province. PT Permata Nusa Mandiri (PNM), one of more than 100 companies targeted in a mass cancellation of plantation permits by Indonesia’s environment […]
FSC-certified Moorim Paper linked to massive forest clearing in Indonesia’s Papua
JAKARTA — An area of natural forest a tenth the size of Seoul has been cleared by a subsidiary of South Korean paper giant Moorim in Indonesia’s Papua region, a new report shows. The land in question, in the district of Merauke, is part of a concession licensed to PT Plasma Nutfah Marind Papua (PNMP), […]
‘Giving up’: Amazon is losing its resilience under human pressure, study shows
The Amazon Rainforest is resilient: the largest rainforest on the planet has been around for at least 55 million years, surviving repeated ice ages and warming. But human impacts, combined with climate change, are decreasing that resiliency, causing the forest to lose its ability to bounce back from repeated disturbances, according to a new study published […]
Chinese investment in Latin America plagues people and nature: Report
China has spent the last two decades quietly establishing an economic foothold in Latin America, a region that has traditionally relied on Western investment. It’s become the top trade partner for countries like Brazil and Peru, and its banks have given out more than $137 billion in loans since 2005, mostly for infrastructure, energy and […]
Deforestation for palm oil falls in Southeast Asia, but is it a trend or a blip?
JAKARTA — Deforestation associated with palm oil in the region covering Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea has declined for the second straight year, a new analysis shows, dropping to its lowest level since 2017. The decline bucks concerns that palm oil deforestation would experience a surge last year, following the 2020 downturn, on the […]
2021 Amazon deforestation map shows devastating impact of ranching, agriculture
The Amazon lost millions of hectares of primary forest in 2021, mostly as the result of cattle ranching and other agricultural activities, a new report reveals. Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) found that around 1.9 million hectares (4.8 million acres) of the rainforest were lost last year, similar to annual forest […]
World’s biggest tropical crop bank opens in Colombia, taking food research high tech
As more people are born onto this great green planet, the demand for food grows. Feeding the nearly 8 billion of us here today is a challenge, not only because of the amount of food required but because the climate crisis is making growing conditions more difficult and unpredictable. To withstand droughts, heat, floods, and […]