There has been significant discussion about the merits of stacking conservation payments over the past few years. A simple explanation for credit stacking is when landowners are paid for conservation practices on their property that provide multiple benefits to the environment. Examples of credits types that might be stacked include: endangered species, water quality, wetlands, and carbon. ...
A new look at the complex picture of land use change suggests that when it comes to forests, we’re far from being out of the woods. It started, as many things do, with a rumor. In 2013 Matt Finer, a researcher with the Amazon Conservation Association, heard from locals that someone was cutting down rainforest deep in the Peruvian Amazon, far from prying eyes. So ...
On June 15, 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued final amendments to the regulations concerning the Voluntary Labeling Program for Biobased Products. The rule is intended to incorporate statutory amendments to Section 9002 of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act signed into law on February 2, 2014. Among other ...
The nationwide five million hectare reforestation programme (5MHRP) was adopted by the Government of Vietnam as a comprehensive policy to address deforestation and poverty in the mountainous regions all over Vietnam. The programme started in 1998 and ended in 2010. It received significant national and international interests. Scholars and practitioners have commented on the effectiveness and/or ...
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest fell by 18 per cent this year, according to official government figures, but some experts are surprised by the news and fear the true trend remains upward. The estimated area of forest cleared in the 12 ...
With the launch of Global Forest Watch (GFW), anyone with an internet connection can now access troves of timely, high-quality information about where, when, and why forests are changing worldwide. The free, online monitoring system ...
We know remarkably little about what is happening to forests. Businesses currently have no way of determining whether or how much the soy, palm oil, or pulp and paper they use contribute to deforestation. So companies like Unilever and Nestlé, which ...
Knowledge used by indigenous peoples about the conservation and management of their resources has traditionally been underestimated by many conservationists. Conservation has been regarded as a modern concept, which is hitherto unknown by most ‘primitive’ societies. Looking at it from an emic point of view, this paper attempts to analyse the extent to which the Baka indigenous people of the ...
The effort to correct the national accounts in order to calculate NNP or related ‘Green GDP’ concepts, known as natural resource accounting, has been a lively research area recently. Natural resource accounting aims to provide indicators for the sustainability of current economic activity. The objective of the paper is an integrated economic and natural resource by compiling forest resources and ...
Forests are the life blood of Equatorial Guinea. They cover roughly 98 percent of the total national land area, providing services and sustenance to hundreds of thousands of Equatoguineans. But despite the critical role of forests, the country lacked a comprehensive information system to support monitoring and responsible management of these ecosystems. Until now, that is. The Ministry of ...
U.S. federal authorities recently executed search warrants at two Virginia facilities belonging to Lumber Liquidators Holdings, Inc., the largest specialty retailer of hardwood flooring in the United States. Lumber Liquidators said in a press release last month that the raids were related “to the importation of certain ...
To tackle the high rate of deforestation in Indonesia's production forests, a new type of licence was introduced in 2004 known as an Ecosystem Restoration Concession (ERC) or IUPHHK–RE by the Indonesian Government. For the first time, production forests could be managed for the purpose of restoration instead of logging. At the same time, however, the economic feasibility of ecosystem restoration ...
As the crisis of tropical deforestation reaches a new level of urgency due to forest fires raging in Indonesia, an important question is how can the world satisfy the growing demand for forest products while still preserving forest ecosystems? This week, some of the world’s largest companies ...
A discussion about the challenges, impacts and opportunities for the Forest Product Chain-of-Custody (CoC). It is currently becoming more and more important to know exactly where your materials have come from. Added to that, mandatory requirements are becoming more stringent and consumers, aware of environmental issues, are demanding wood from well-managed forests. The purpose of this document is ...
As the old adage suggests, it is important to see the forests for more than just the trees. While an estimated 500 million people depend directly on forests for their livelihoods, the entire world depends on them for food, water, clean air, and vital medicines. Forests also absorb ...
'Genuine Saving' is an indicator which reflects the practical steps towards sustainability. This paper for the first time estimates the Genuine Saving for forests in China. The results show that the Genuine Saving for forests in 1999 was 10290.25 billion Yuan (RMB) and 19402.52 billion Yuan in 2003. This shows that the annual increasing rate was 17.18%, which is higher than the traditional annual ...
Cameroon’s forests, which cover about 60 percent of the country, play a vital role for people and the economy. They account for more than six percent of the nation’s GDP, the highest percentage of all countries in the Congo Basin. ...
By examining annual data (1994-2003) for 15 countries from East Asia and the Pacific, this study provides an analysis of the effects of political institutions and other socioeconomic factors on deforestation. Results show that economic prosperity does not automatically cause higher environmental quality. Furthermore, it was found that population growth and agricultural sector growth worsen ...
This paper studies optimal any-aged forest management, including uneven-aged and even-aged management as special cases. The approach is based on applying a dynamic programming approach. Dynamic optimisation is applied to study optimal profit-maximising harvesting policies, based on decomposing the forest management problem to smaller subproblems. The optimal harvesting policy implies a ...