Guest guest Posted December 8, 2008 Report Share Posted December 8, 2008 --Today for you 32 news articles about earth's trees! (444th edition) http://forestpolicyresearch.org --To Subscribe / to email format send blank email to: earthtreenews- OR earthtreenews- In this edition: Not so site-specific news related to the world's trees Index: 1) First ever REDD plan filed, 2) You only get 61 trees, 3) Big climate conference gets report called Foundations for Effectiveness, 4) Carbon lessons: Imagine being in your favorite forest, 5) Adopt carbon-saving and carbon-enhancing approaches to development , 6) Most important thing on earth, 7) Mangrove Action Project 8) New book on Mangrove ecosystems, 9) Forest not just for loggers anymore, 10) FoE's report on climate-based forest protection being vulnerable to corruption, 11) Non-timber products Curriculum Workbook, 12) Global Indigenous Peoples Consultation on REDD, 13) WebBLOG dedicated to REDD, 14) How will we ensure / insure carbon sequestered forests? 15) All about Mangroves, 16) FSC may be a criminal operation under new Lacey act laws, 17) Forests conversion to biofuels sequesters less than forest preservation, 18) FERN and the Forest Peoples Programme cast heavy shadow on REDD, 19) Give Info to the UN to help 'em prevent desertification and water scarcity, 20) Co-Management conservation in Tropical Forests, 21) HSBC pulls back from loans that destroy tropics and Boreal, 22) Conservation requires knowing what's threatening species with extinction, 23) Biodiversity implications of rural abandonment, 24) Gap analysis of forest protection efforts, 25) More funding for Carnegie Landsat Analysis System Lite (CLASLite) 26) REDD does more harm than good! 27) Biodiversity hotspots are also the best carbon sinks, 28) World Bank plans to continue to make mistakes in forests, 29) Cifor report details REDD implementation options, 30) Ecological Internet' Ancient forest campaign, 31) More funding for tool known as the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System, Articles: 1) Terra Global Capital, LLC announces that it has submitted the world's first REDD (Reduced Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation) methodology for validation to the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS). The methodology was developed in collaboration with Community Forestry International Inc. It defines how carbon offsets generated by activities that reduce deforestation and forest degradation can be calculated, monitored, and verified under the highly rigorous VCS AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use) guidelines. The methodology supports community-based projects by providing for the inclusion of multiple landowners, and a host of drivers including, fuel-wood collection, illegal logging, establishment of land-tenure, or land clearing for agricultural expansion. It also covers a number of mitigation activities such as community-based forest patrolling, sustainable intensification of agriculture, introducing fuel-efficient wood-stoves, or alternative income streams. In addition, the methodology encourages the inclusion of forest regeneration activities, such as enrichment planting, fire hazard reduction, or the removal of invasive species Quantifying the carbon benefits from project activities aimed at reducing a multitude of interacting drivers of degradation and deforestation has been a significant challenge to project developers and communities, in part due to issues such as leakage. Dr. Mark Poffenberger, CFI's Executive Director, who has been working on community-based forestry projects in Southeast Asia for over 30 years, commented, "REDD projects are an incredible opportunity for local communities to maintain their forests and their traditional lifestyles in a world where forests are disappearing rapidly. However, the level of technical expertise and market knowledge required to bring these projects to market requires partnering with firms like Terra Global Capital." Terra Global Capital's unique expertise in project development, carbon finance, and ecosystem science has enabled the creation a of a comprehensive methodology which offers a set of practical tools to model carbon offsets and provides concrete guidelines on how to overcome significant challenges including leakage related to REDD projects. CFI's extensive experience working with forest-dependent communities has informed the development of the methodology in terms of effective, community-based strategies for mitigating the impact of major drivers of deforestation and degradation. http://www.baxterbulletin.com/article/20081203/NEWS01/812030315 2) Nalini Nadkarni, a professor of environmental studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., places the ratio of trees to people worldwide at about 61 to 1. Ms. Nadkarni arrived at this number by using NASA satellite images to figure out the amount of land covered by different forest types, and combining this number with density figures taken from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization. Her estimate for the total number of trees worldwide, as of 2005, was a little over 400 billion. She then divided this total by the world population as of midnight, Dec. 31 of the same year — about 6.5 billion. That yielded 61 trees per person. "This number is one of the interesting things you glom onto, because suddenly you can picture yourself and these trees," said Ms. Nadkarni, a canopy biologist with 25 years of experience studying and climbing trees in places like Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea and the Amazon. She appeared as a guest on National Public Radio's Morning Edition last week to discuss her finding, and some listeners questioned the accuracy of her figures. According to this story, all the trees should be gone in one generation, so how come we have trees left?" wrote one reader at the NPR Web site. "I like trees as much as anyone, but I despise junk science." But Ms. Nadkarni insisted that the 61:1 ratio is an approximate number, and that it is important to focus on the bigger picture. "It's not that 61 is the most accurate number of trees, but it is a way to personalize the number of finite trees that we humans can access, and ask is there a way to reduce our consumption," she says. So just how much are we consuming? Ms. Nadkarni herself cites statistics from the North Carolina Forestry Association, which show that the average American uses over a ton of wood each year, equivalent to roughly 43 cubic feet of lumber, 681 pounds of paper — or, perhaps most pointedly, a single tree measuring 100 feet tall and 18 inches in diameter. A Society of American Foresters report (PDF), meanwhile, finds that the United States has 750 million acres of forestland, and while overall consumption of wood products has increased significantly since the mid-1960s in a variety of categories — up 43 percent in lumber, 32 percent in plywood, 45 percent in pulpwood, and 33 percent in fuelwood, among other products — per capita, consumption, however, has remained mostly steady. So how does the 61:1 ratio hold up against such numbers? Ms. Nadkarni says that if only the wood, paper and products that come directly from trees are considered, mankind is almost certainly not using up 61 trees per person. "But if you extend that number to agriculture and other activities that involve clearing of forests to produce food and make houses," Ms. Nadkarni added, "then we're over the 61." http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/trees-and-consumption-a-forest-of-calculations/ 3) On the eve of the December 2008 UNFCCC negotiations on climate change, the Rights and Resources Initiative and Rainforests Foundations Norway are pleased to release a policy brief, Foundations for Effectiveness: A framework for ensuring effective climate change mitigation and adaptation in forest areas while ensuring human rights and development. This policy brief provides a clear framework for action to ensure that responses to climate change do not undermine national social and economic development nor human rights. It calls for the full participation of indigenous peoples and forest communities in climate intervention strategies established in Poznan and beyond. Rights and Resources Initiative partners will be presenting their work at two sessions during Forest Day 2, a UNFCCC COP 14 Parallel Event organized by RRI partner, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). http://rightsandclimate.org/2008/12/01/moving-towards-copenhagen-foundations-for-effectiveness/ 4) Imagine for a moment standing under the canopy of your favorite forest, whether it's in the eastern United States, the Amazon, somewhere in the Sierra Nevadas, Costa Rica, Russia, or China. Visualize the diversity of life that it holds – the birds, flowers, insects, mammals – and try to imagine seeing the trees and plants "breathing" in the carbon dioxide and storing it in their leaves and massive trunks, then "breathing" it out again by dropping their leaves and branches and letting the fungi and other microorganisms take over their part of the process (decomposition), then returning that carbon to the air or ground again for the trees to take up over the next season, under their canopy of leaves. The forest and all its players are just doing their jobs, and willingly. Now imagine that same forest being cut to the ground or burned within the span of a few hours or days – as compared to how much time it took to grow and how many iterations of the carbon cycle it's been through. As a result, the forest (or what's left of it) no longer acts effectively as a carbon sink. It may be an open wasteland of tree stumps, organic debris and stirred up soil, exposed to the wind and sun. That once forested land has now become a carbon source, a source of carbon that once was a container or sink for carbon, now released liberally into the atmosphere. That whole amazing carbon cycle has been broken and opened up to release all that stored carbon into the atmosphere as CO2. And "Voila!" As with each readers' imagination, so too are many thousands of acres of forest now being burned or destroyed at alarming rates in ways that release tons of carbon, contributing to the positive feedback mechanism – at an exponential rate – of increasing GHGs and thus increasing our global temperature through human actions (for more information on sinks and sources, http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/issues/climatechange/carbon.asp http://mywonderfulworld.typepad.com/my_wonderful_world_blog/2008/11/danielle-williams-on-deforestation-and-climate-change.html 5) " If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly and effectively as possible, we need to do everything we can to encourage the people living in and around the world's tropical forests to adopt carbon-saving and carbon-enhancing approaches to development, " said Dennis Garrity, General of the World Agroforestry Centre, one of 15 centres supported by the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). " One crucial way to do that is to give them the same opportunities to sell their carbon as a commodity in the global market as is encouraged in other sectors. " The analysis will be presented in Poznán, Poland at the influential Conference of the Parties (COP 14), an international gathering of experts working to ensure that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) effectively and fairly discourages activities that boost harmful emissions, while encouraging carbon-saving approaches to development that could halt or at least slow global warming. The World Agroforestry Centre—also known as ICRAF—advised the COP that efforts to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, or REDD, are being unfairly stymied by the fear that officially acknowledging the carbon-saving capacity of forestry and agroforestry would " flood the market " with inexpensive carbon credits. The market for carbon credits, in which polluters in industrialized countries offset their emissions by paying others for reducing emissions, was valued at $64 billion in 2007, by the energy firm New Carbon Finance. This figure is projected to grow in 2008. But the credits system is now largely rewarding carbon saved in industrial operations in countries like China and India as policy makers struggle to agree on a plan for accepting carbon saved in tropical forests and agricultural landscapes. In 2008, the World Bank found that Africa accounted for only 1.4 percent of projects in the pipeline of the Clean Development Mechanism, while China took 73 percent and Brazil and India both 8 percent. The Nobel-prize winning International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated that over two billion acres of farmland in developing countries are suitable for more intensive agroforestry, in which farmers cultivate trees or shrubs that provide food, fodder, fertilizer or other valuable products while also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The IPCC asserts that agroforestry has the potential to remove 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which is equivalent to replacing 1,400 large coal-fired power plants with gas-fired facilities. Meanwhile, ICRAF asserts that allowing farmers to sell that carbon on global carbon markets could generate as much as $10 billion each year for poor people in rural areas. Industrialized countries are sending mixed signals on the future role of forestry and agroforestry in carbon markets. The European Commission recently recommended against allowing credits for forests in general, though it is not clear what its position will be on agroforestry. The United Kingdom and Norway have been more receptive to the idea of linking developing country forests to carbon markets, as have some influential policy makers in the United States. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/bc-pat112108.php 6) Trees are considered one of the most important things in this earth. They are essential for the growth of plants and animals. For us humans we need trees for oxygen. Trees give balance to the climate and serve as a carbon dioxide filter. They are also considered as a home for different animal and plant species. They also give beauty to the world. Today, due to the necessity, trees are being cut down at a fast rate. Based on environment statistics, more than half of the trees in this world are gone due to human activity. Deforestation has been ongoing centuries ago. Forests are being destroyed at an exceptional rate. Back in the old times people are surrounded by vast number of trees but due to the fact that they need wood for cooking and heating, deforestation began. Until today there is a massive cutting down of trees. Environmentalists are beginning to worry about the effects of this in the future. There are many reasons why forests are being destroyed. Here are some common reasons why deforestation occurs. 1) The trees are being used to build materials like furniture and paper products. 2) Forests are being cleared to accommodate the building of urban and residential areas. 3) Deforestation happens in order to clear a land that will be used for growing crops and other agricultural products.4) In some countries, they cut down forest to provide an area for grazing animals. 5) Trees are being cut down to be used as a firewood or charcoal. 6) Forests are being depleted to explore possibility of oil and mining. 7) Slash and burn farming techniques. http://www.edubook.com/deforestation-causes-and-effects/ 7) Twenty-eight years ago, while working as an aeronautical engineer for Boeing, Alfredo Quarto seized an opportunity to become a full-time Greenpeace activist. Now, as the founder and executive director of the Seattle-based Mangrove Action Project, Alfredo has found his own critical mission: saving the Earth's mangroves. Known as "rainforests by the sea," mangrove forests not only help provide indigenous populations with food, fuel and building material, they also create critical "buffer zones" between the land and the sea that limit loss of life and habitats during tropical storms. Once covering over 32 million hectares along tropical and subtropical coastlines around the world -- about the size of 70 million football fields -- mangroves now occupy less than half that area. 13.7 Billion Years asked Alfredo some questions to find out what happened and what he's doing to save these little-known but very important plants. Q: How did you make the change from being an aeronautical engineer to activist? A: I was actually working as a volunteer for Greenpeace in Seattle at the same time I worked for Boeing. When I saw an opportunity to work for Greenpeace on assignment in Japan in 1980, I quit Boeing to become a full-time activist. That must've been quite a pay cut! Greenpeace paid me seven dollars a day -- a far cry from my engineering pay, but I love Japanese food! And the people there were friendly. I was enriched in spirit by the experience. Q: How were you first introduced to mangroves? A: I found out that activism is quite wearing on one's private life and finances. I needed a break, and I decided to start a new career in photojournalism. I became involved in mangrove issues in 1992, while on a photojournalist assignment for an article in Cultural Survival Quarterly. My second writing effort for the journal, "Fishers Among the Mangroves," paid me two free copies of their magazine, which I still have. Q:Why did you start the Mangrove Action Project? A: I discovered that the single issue of mangrove destruction as a result of shrimp farming contained components of several issues I had been involved with in the past: indigenous communities, endangered species, marine ecology and human rights violations. It just seemed quite appropriate and timely to start up the Mangrove Action Project. Thankfully, we have received a lot of moral support for our network from around the world. What exactly is a mangrove? Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, salt-tolerant trees and other plant species, which thrive in inter-tidal zones of sheltered tropical and subtropical shores. They have special roots and leaves that enable them to live in salty wetlands where other plants cannot survive. http://www.mangroveactionproject.org/news/current_headlines/interview-alfredo-quarto-executive-director-of-the-mangrove-action-project 8) Book available through internet: 'The Role of Physical Processes in Mangrove Environments' Information on distriubution of book published in March 2008. (11 Nov 2008) We would like to inform you of the distribution of our book published in March last year: Y. Mazda, E. Wolanski and P.V. Ridd "The Role of Physical Processes in Mangrove Environments -Manual for the preservation and utilization of mangrove ecosystems." This book is intended for researchers, engineers, students, managers/decision-makers in governments and NGOs interested in the preservation and utilization of mangrove environments. It is both a textbook and a reference book, as well as a manual for the preservation and utilization of mangrove ecosystems/environments. At present, we have them out of stock, because of request by various researchers interested in the mangrove environments. However, you can get it without charge from the following Web-Site, "e-library" of the publisher. http://www.terrapub.co.jp/e-library/index.html 9) Forests, once considered natures factories producing a seemingly endless supply of wood, are now considered as "ecosystems" providing a range of economic, industrial, cultural and social benefits along with thier environmental benefits and services. We rely on the forests of the world for food, medicine, firewood, soil, rehabilitation, agriculture, shelter and water, just to name a few. (the slave and victim for our commodities ) These ecosystems have become closely linked at achieving social equity and economic growth in many developing nations. Timber is the primary income for many tropical countries, with planted forests ( plantations of single species trees) being the largest contributor to their economies. Containing eighty percent of the worlds biomass, forests extract vast amounts of atmospheric carbon making them our best defense against climate change. The following satellite images clearly demonstrate what we continue to do to these ecosystems. These satellite images are several years old, taken in 2003 or 2004 with ongoing logging since then within all these regions, including large sectors of this cutting under FSC certification. One acre of forest is lost every second within the tropical regions of the world. Consider an acre is about the size of a football field, not including the end-zones This statistic does not include the cutting that takes place in the remaining forests of the world, where so called management is generally implemented. Millions of dollars are being spent on studies and research regarding global warming and climate change. With the evidence and reasons blatantly obvious when will society realize we must finally take the step from being aware to literally taking action? http://turnanewleafinc.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/when-will-we-realize/ 10) Friends of the Earth International (FoE) will argue in a report to be published on Thursday, that plans to slow the decline of forests, which would see rich countries pay for the protection of forests in tropical regions, are open to abuse by corrupt politicians or illegal logging companies. Forests store a significant amount of carbon and cutting them down is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions -- currently this accounts for around 20% of the world's total. Deforestation also threatens biodiversity and puts the livelihoods of more than 60 million indigenous people who are dependent upon forests at risk. Working out a way to protect forests will be one of the key issues discussed next week in the United Nations climate change summit in Poznan, Poland, which marks the start of global negotiations to replace for the Kyoto protocol after 2012. Government representatives at the meeting will consider the adoption of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd) mechanismin which richer countries pay to maintain forests in tropical regions to offset their own emissions. The idea was based on Nicholas Stern's 2006 review of the economics of climate change. Stern said that £2.5bn a year could be enough to prevent deforestation across the eight most important countries. But Stern also argued that, for such a scheme to work, institutional and policy reforms would be required in many of the countries that would end up with the protected forests, such as Indonesia, Cameroon or Papua New Guinea. FoE agrees that forests could be included in climate change targets but argues that, in its current form, Redd is fraught with problems. In its report, the group says that the proposals seem to be aimed at setting up a way to generate profits from forests rather than to stop climate change. " It re-focuses us on the question, who do forests belong to? In the absence of secure land rights, indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities have no guarantees that they'll benefit from Redd, " said Joseph Zacune, a climate and energy coordinator at Friends of the Earth International. " There's increased likelihood of state and corporate control of their land especially if the value of forests rises. " http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=111327 11) Nontimber Forest Products Curriculum Workbook. Portland, Oregon: Institute for Culture and Ecology. 451 p. The workbook is an interdisciplinary set of instructional materials that includes over 100 lesson plans and handouts covering the ecological, cultural, political and economic importance of NTFPs. The geographic focus of the workbook is on the United States, but the exercises can be adapted to scale-up to the international arena, or to scale-down to focus on species and issues of regional or local importance. The workbook consists of seven modules each including detailed lessons plans, activities, evaluation tools, and ready-to-use teaching aids, such as PowerPoint presentations and handouts. Each module has a specific disciplinary orientation (history, culture, economics, ecology, policy) to facilitate easy adoption within those different disciplines. The curriculum encourages critical thinking about NTFP issues and their relationship to overall forest health, sustainability and biodiversity conservation. This is accomplished through interactive classroom and field activities. Both theoretical frameworks and research methods are introduced and there is an emphasis on building effective communication and collaboration skills. Faculty are encouraged to integrate individual lesson plans into their existing courses or use the workbook materials as the foundation for a new course or workshop on NTFPs. In addition, the Institute for Culture and Ecology is available to facilitate a set of workshops and courses based on the materials. Nontimber Forest Products Curriculum Workbook Website: http://www.ifcae.org/projects/ncssf2 - 12) Participants to the Global Indigenous Peoples Consultation on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) adopted an Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities' Global Strategy on REDD. The strategy makes reference to a number of overarching principles, including a human-rights approach to all REDD activities on the basis of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and International Labour Organization Convention no. 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples, and the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples in REDD activities. It also stresses the need to distinguish between reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation as a goal that interests all climate change stakeholders including indigenous peoples (redd) and the use of term REDD to signify possible future policies and instruments designed to achieve this goal. With regard to international processes and organizations, recommendations address: http://gregornot.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/global-indigenous-peoples-consultation-on-reducing-emissions-from-deforestation-and-forest-degradation/ 13) The way in which forests are defined will be a crucial factor in determining whether REDD serves a truly useful purpose in helping to protect the world's forests or, alternatively, is simply used as a means of supplementing the incomes of logging and industrial plantation companies. It is widely agreed that the existing definition of "forest", as agreed under the Marrakesh Accords, and which allows for any areas as small as 0.05 hectare and with as little as 10% tree cover, is woefully inadequate in terms of recognising the wider roles and functions that true forests fulfil. In this piece, Sean Cadman of the Wilderness Society, who has been involved in recent UNFCCC discussions on forest definitions, considers some of the issues. The current definition used for reporting and accounting purposes under the Kyoto Protocol is structurally based, comprising: 1) A minimum area of land of 0.05 hectares with tree crown cover (or equivalent stocking level) of more than 10 per cent with trees with the potential to reach a minimum height of 2 metres at maturity in situ. 2) It includes (i) young stands of natural regeneration; (ii) all plantations which have yet to reach a crown density of 10-30 per cent or tree height of 2-5 metres; (iii) areas normally forming part of the forest area which are temporarily unstocked as a result of human intervention such as harvesting or natural causes but which are expected to revert to forest. -- The Kyoto Protocal definition makes no distinction between, among other things, planted crops of monoculture perennial woody plants and complex biodiverse natural forests. o when you think about your picture of a forest wherever you live it is very unlikely to include 2 meter high oil palms marching endlessly over the hills of a devastated tropical forest landscape or 10 m high fields of spindly eucalypt trees planted in straight lines alongside the remnants of a 500 year old forest of 80 meter high giant old-growth eucalypt forest at the edge of the Tasmanian Wilderness in Australia. http://www.redd-monitor.org/2008/11/26/the-role-of-forest-definitions-in-global-climate-change-negotiations/ 14) Paying landowners to let forests grow is promoted by the United Nations as a viable way to fight global warming, but experts first have to puzzle out how to insure trees against going up in smoke. Under U.N. plans, owners will get carbon credits to slow the destruction of tropical forests. But fires caused by lightning -- along with other hazards such as storms, insects and illegal logging -- are a big risk for insurers and investors. A new U.N. climate treaty to include granting forest owners tradeable carbon credits will be discussed by about 190 nations in Poznan, Poland, from December 1-12. The credits could be worth billions of dollars for those agreeing not to cut down trees. Burning forests to clear land for farming releases about a fifth of all the greenhouse gases blamed for causing climate change. If trees die, the carbon stored as they grew would be released, rendering carbon credits worthless. " From a formal point of view insurance shouldn't be a problem, " said Wojciech Galinsky, who works on U.N. projects to promote green investment in developing countries. " If Tina Turner's legs can be insured, why not forests? " But there is wide disagreement on how to assess the risks under the new U.N. treaty, due to be agreed by end-2009. Forest owners want full access to credits as fast as possible. But insurers suggest that half be retained in buffer funds in case forests vanish in a few decades. If a forest disappeared, the credits in the funds would go to them. " How much land-managers will see of the price is what the excitement is about, " said Frances Seymour, head of the Center for International Forestry Research in Indonesia. http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4AQ0HY20081127 15) Mangroves have been one of the poor relations of the world of plant conservation – at least until recently. The bushy trees that fringe the muddy estuaries of the tropics have been taken for granted and never considered as glamorous as orchids or rainforests. As a result, large areas of mangroves have been cleared without much public protest, until the losses mounted up astonishingly. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the UN stock take of the health of the planet, revealed when it was published in 2005 that 35 per cent of the world's mangroves had been lost in the two decades between 1980 and 2000 – and that was just in countries where adequate data was available. In reality mangroves are the equivalent of rainforests on the coast, a complex ecosystem which not only acts as a nursery breeding area for young fish and crustaceans but can also provide flood defence against tidal storm surges. A good example of this is the Sundarbans, the world's largest coastal mangrove forest stretching across India and Bangladesh – it is a natural barrier against tsunamis and cyclones. Large-scale farming of shrimps and tiger prawns is behind the destruction of many mangrove areas, the UN says. Grassroots efforts to save mangroves from development are becoming more popular as the benefits of mangroves are becoming more widely known. In the Bahamas, for example, active efforts to save mangroves are occurring on the islands of Bimini and Great Guana Cay. In Trinidad and Tobago as well, efforts are underway to protect a mangrove threatened by the construction of a steel mill and a port. The mood about mangroves is changing and the Virgin Islands campaign may well succeed. http://www.mangroveactionproject.org/news/current_headlines/opinion-these-rainforests-on-the-coast-are-a-nursery-for-fish-bvi 16) In May 2008, the US government enacted a revision to the Lacey Act, a hundred year-old piece of legislation that renders it illegal to trade in goods in the US which are from illegal sources, which now makes the Act applicable to the timber trade. Whilst timber traders are no doubt hoping that use of FSC certified wood is going to keep them out of prison, they may be in for a nasty shock. does the trading of illegally sourced woods, which are nevertheless FSC certified, represent the practice of " due care " or perhaps conversely of " knowingly " trading illegally sourced woods? Many wood and paper traders will no doubt assume that FSC products are at least legal. The FSC's Pinciples and Criteria do include a stipulation that the forestry operation should comply with all relevant laws. However, for the last two years, FSC-Watch has repeatedly exposed that this requirement is not consistently complied with. FSC-Watch believes that, given the long and now well-known track record of FSC certificates being issued (by, amongst others, the Rainforest Alliance, one of the promoters of the new Act) to companies that are operating illegally, the purchase of FSC certified wood products could not be seen as an indicator of a trader having exercised " due care " . In some cases, where specific certificates have been shown - by FSC-Watch amongst others - to have been issued to law-breakers, US traders might even find themselves charged with " knowingly " trading illegal (but FSC certified) wood, and going to prison as a result. The problem is likely to be especially acute in relation to FSC Mixed Sources labelled FSC wood. As FSC-Watch has been showing for at least two years, and on which there is now clear evidence and general agreement amongst even timber industry members of the FSC, the 'Controlled Wood' policy, which 'regulates' the non-certified content in 'Mixed Sources' certified wood, is effectively useless in terms of ensuring exclusion of wood from undesirable sources, including those that are illegal. The trade in Mixed Sources FSC certified wood products containing illegally-sourced components might therefore be deemed by courts to be an indication of non-application of " due care " . http://www.fsc-watch.org/archives/2008/11/30/FSC_and_the_Lacey_Ac 17) Keeping tropical rain forests intact is a better way to combat climate change than replacing them with biofuel plantations, a study in the journal Conservation Biology finds. The study reveals that it would take at least 75 years for the carbon emissions saved through the use of biofuels to compensate for the carbon lost through forest conversion. And if the original habitat was carbon-rich peatland, the carbon balance would take more than 600 years. On the other hand, planting biofuels on degraded Imperata grasslands instead of tropical rain forests would lead to a net removal of carbon in 10 years, the authors found. The study is the most comprehensive analysis of the impact of oil palm plantations in tropical forests on climate and biodiversity. It was undertaken by an international research team of botanists, ecologists and engineers from seven nations. " Our analysis found that it would take 75 to 93 years to see any benefits to the climate from biofuel plantations on converted tropical forestlands, " said lead author Finn Danielsen of Denmark's Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology (NORDECO). " Until then, we will be releasing carbon into the atmosphere by cutting tropical rain forests, in addition to losing valuable plant and animal species. It's even worse on peatlands, which contain so much carbon that it would be 600 years before we see any benefits whatsoever. " Biofuels have been touted as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels, one of the major contributors to global warming. One such biofuel, palm oil, covers millions of acres in Southeast Asia, where it has directly or indirectly replaced tropical rain forests, resulting in loss of habitats for species such as rhinos and orangutans and the loss of carbon stored in trees and peatlands. " Biofuels are a bad deal for forests, wildlife and the climate if they replace tropical rain forests, " said co-author Dr. Neil Burgess of World Wildlife Fund. " In fact, they hasten climate change by removing one of the world's most efficient carbon storage tools - intact tropical rain forests. " The authors call for the development of common global standards for sustainable production of biofuels. " Subsidies to purchase tropical biofuels are given by countries in Europe and North America supposedly to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from transport " said Danielsen. " While these countries strive to meet their obligations under one international agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, they encourage others to increase their emissions as well as breach their obligations under another agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity. " http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/wwf-bpo120108.php 18) A new report from Belgium and UK-based NGOs FERN and the Forest Peoples Programme casts a heavy new shadow over the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). Based on a assessment of nine FCPF 'Readiness Plan Idea Notes', the groups conclude that the Bank has been cutting corners, failing to consult properly, and has ignored its own internal safeguard policies. In a joint press release, given in full below, Marcial Arias, from the International Indigenous Peoples' Forum on Climate Change also called for the "suspension" of all REDD activities and carbon market initiatives in indigenous areas until such time as the inhabitants' rights were recognised. The World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility has approved 25 national concept notes presented by countries for REDD financing and the report, examining nine of these, finds that the process has been rushed, is implicitly linked to a market based REDD, is dominated by central governments, and has so far involved little or no consultation with indigenous peoples, local communities or civil society organisations. Furthermore, the report shows that the World Bank's forest fund is not following its own rules or safeguard policies. The way the Bank's fund operates is of major concern to forest peoples because it plans to support governments to formulate national REDD strategies that could shape official conservation and land use policies in tropical forest countries for years to come. Governments meeting at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poznan, Poland, until 14 December 2008 are engaged in fast-track negotiations to secure a deal on REDD by the end of 2009. Many organisations and individuals, including Lord Stern, have recognised that local peoples' tenure rights is an essential first step for any effective REDD mechanism. Under statutory or customary law, most tropical forests are owned by indigenous peoples or forest dependent communities and so if REDD schemes really are to reduce deforestation, these peoples must play a key role in all negotiations. http://www.redd-monitor.org/2008/12/02/world-bank-fcpf-ngos-say-its-failing-forests-and-peoples-indigenous-leader-calls-for-suspension-of-redd-activities 19) The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has invited comments on a draft report it commissioned entitled "Policies for fighting water scarcity and combating desertification." The report reviews relevant initiatives in the field of water scarcity and right to water, and evaluates opportunities for creating an effective work programme/roadmap for the UNCCD through undertaking a comprehensive study on water resource and water scarcity adaptation, taking into account relevant and emerging issues, projects and programmes, case studies and other relevant technical and financial information. Readers are invited to review, evaluate and comment, by 15 December 2008, on whether the report articulates options for a Water Scarcity Adaptation Policy Framework for the UNCCD and elaborates an appropriate strategy that would be used for advocating for the adoption of the policy opinions by governments. [uNCCD invitation] http://www.climate-l.org/2008/12/unccd-invites-c.html 20) Conservation of tropical ecosystems is a complex task requiring not only the need for basic information on the distribution, ecology, and state of conservation of its components, but also a delicate articulation of social interests at local, regional, and national levels. In many cases conservation priority, and therefore resources to be invested, vary from locality to locality and from region to region in each country. To achieve a reasonable use of limited resources within the needs of a conservation framework requires various types of approaches, some of which may or may not be viable depending on the historical, geographical, political, and economic contexts of each locality. Equally important are the social and economic costs of conservation to local communities, which in many cases perceive conservation as a liability and as a burden due to competition for land and other resources, property damage, and risk to life. The Serengeti (Tanzania, East Africa)—one of the flagship conservation areas of the world—is a case in point and the focus of a new paper published in the December issue of Tropical Conservation Science by Jafari R Kideghesho and Paul E Mtoni. The authors argue that conservation in the Serengeti needs to be approached as co-management involving sharing of power, responsibilities, and rights and duties between the government and local resource users. They advocate for intensive community involvement and reactivation of local traditional institutions in co-management approaches. The authors feel that raising awareness, educating about the legal aspects of conservation, and giving local communities autonomy over conservation decisions will yield positive attitudes among the people toward conservation. They also suggest that this should be paralleled by government bureaucracies becoming more sensitive to community approaches to conservation and good governance. Kideghesho, J. R. and Mtoni, P. E. 2008. The potentials for co-management approaches in western Serengeti, Tanzania. Tropical Conservation Science Vol.1 (4):334-358 http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1201-kideghesho_tcs.html 21) HSBC has cut lending to oil palm developers and logging companies in Malaysia and Indonesia due to environmental concerns, reports Reuters. Following criticism by the Forest Peoples Program, an indigenous rights' group, over its failure to disclose the names of its palm oil industry clients, Francis Sullivan, HBSC's adviser on the environment, told Reuters than the bank would terminate relationships with forestry companies having questionable environmental practices. " We're planning to exit 30 percent of client relationships in the forest land and forest products sector in high-risk countries, including Malaysia and Indonesia, (because) they don't meet our forestry policy, " Sullivan was quoted as saying. Sullivan also said HSBC was reviewing its relationships with companies involved in oil sands development. Oil sands are known to be a particularly dirty source of energy and supporting development conflicts with HSBC's recent effort to position itself as a leader on climate change and the environment. Last year the bank gave an $8 million grant to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) to fund the world's largest field experiment on the long-term effects of climate change on forest dynamics. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1202-hsbc.html 22) An important task in tropical conservation is to understand which species are particularly vulnerable to extinction, and identify the characteristics that put them at risk. Because habitat loss and fragmentation are at the root of the global extinction crisis, an extensive collection of literature has developed around profiling species assemblages in fragmented landscapes. It is also clear that species may respond differently to fragmentation, but many species experience direct or indirect negative effects, sometimes resulting in local extirpation in habitat patches. Tropical dry forests are biodiversity rich, have a more restricted geographic distribution than tropical wet forests, and have undergone, as a result of human activity, a severe process of transformation to human modified landscapes. In the Neotropics, this change has resulted in vast losses of tropical dry forest areas, and in many cases remaining forests are found heavily fragmented. These highly seasonal tropical forests harbor rich assemblages of reptiles, but less is known about them than is the case for tropical wet forests. Writing in the December issue of Tropical Conservation Science, Juan E. Carvajal-Cogollo and Nicolás Urbina-Cardona provide new information on the reptile species assemblages found in forest fragments in the Colombian Caribbean region. They recorded the highest reptile richness in larger forest fragments, but species-area relationship was not apparent, and they also point out that the greatest amount of species exchange was between larger and smaller forest fragments, suggesting that both large and small fragments are important for the persistence of reptile species in the fragmented landscape. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1201-carvajal-cogollo_tcs.html 23) Urbanization — and accompanying rural abandonment — may have profound implications for global biodiversity and therefore should factor into conservation planning, argue researchers writing in the December issue of Tropical Conservation Science. Analyzing the impact of population growth and urbanization on rural depopulation rates in 25 countries, Aerin Jacob and colleagues project a continuing decline in rural population density. They argue that this process will lead to ecological homogenization as a dominant habitat (secondary forest or savanna) replaces a mosaic of human-maintained landscapes, resulting in declines in biodiversity at the local scale. Jacob, a biologist at McGill University, says she and her colleagues first noticed these trends during fieldwork in protected areas in Uganda and rural parts of Spain and Mexico. " We saw that as people moved out of rural or newly protected areas and into cities, there was a sharp decline in human-caused disturbances like fires, grazing livestock and cutting fuelwood, " she told mongabay.com, publisher of Tropical Conservation Science. " This pushed the landscape to change from a mosaic of diverse habitats towards one dominant habitat type, in this case to forest. We need to understand the social, biological and economic reasons behind rural depopulation if we want to conserve biodiversity and help rural people deal with declining populations, " she continued. " Globally, the situation is complex. Rural depopulation and the resulting environmental changes will not happen everywhere. Nor does a decrease in habitat diversity necessarily imply conservation losses. " " No one knows the fate of these abandoned lands--sometimes they degrade further, sometimes they are left to recover to their previous state, and sometimes they are transformed into industrial plantations for crops like tea or palm oil. http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1201-Jacob_et_al_tcs.html 24) The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has recently published material regarding the relevance of its Programme of Work on Protected Areas (PoWPA) gap analysis, which guides parties in identifying gaps in protected areas systems and in participation of indigenous and local communities, in relation to reducing emissions for deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). Many of the identified areas that lack protection are also potential sites for REDD. The publication outlines four case studies in which the PoWPA gap analysis revealed sites that not only require protection but also have REDD potential: the Bahamas, Bolivia, Madagascar, and Mexico. The paper concludes by suggesting that the CBD PoWPA gap analysis can be a helpful tool for enhancing the synergies between the Rio Conventions. [The Publication] http://www.climate-l.org/2008/12/cbd-secretariat.html 25) The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology with a $1.6-million grant to expand and improve its tropical forest monitoring tool known as the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System Lite (CLASLite). The Stanford University-based group says CLASLite " will rapidly advance deforestation and degradation mapping in Latin America, and will help rain forest nations better monitor their changing carbon budgets. " The technology will prove useful as the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) mechanism — currently under negotiation at international climate talks — comes online. " About 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and degradation of tropical forests, " said Greg Asner, project leader and a researcher at Stanford. " And much of it occurs in developing nations, where monitoring capabilities are often unavailable to governments and NGOs. This grant allows us to improve and expand CLASLite, and to train many people from tropical forest nations so that they can determine where and when forest losses are occurring. Perhaps most importantly, rain forest nations will be able to better determine how much CO2 comes from deforestation and degradation—information that has been very scarce in the past. We hope that CLASLite will become a central tool for rain forest monitoring in support of global carbon crediting for REDD—the United Nations initiative on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. " CLASLite is capable of penetrating the upper levels of the rainforest canopy and detecting small differences in vegetation patterns at a scale of about 100 feet (30 meters), producing forest maps from old and new data from Landsat satellites, as well as several other NASA sensors in Earth orbit. The technology can sense changes due to selective logging and small surface fires that burn below the forest canopy. New iterations of the technology are increasingly user friendly, designed for a desktop environment. " We have learned through the training of new users of CLASLite that forest monitoring can become an everyday activity that no longer requires huge investments in computers or expertise, " said David Knapp, a senior scientific programmer in Asner's group. " This is our goal." http://news.mongabay.com/2008/1204-asner.html 26) Global Forest Coalition, The Wilderness Society, Global Justice Ecology Project and concerned youth highlighted the risks associated with the implementation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in a " REDD fortune-telling " action today at the UN Climate conference here. In its current form, they argue, REDD could derail the Climate Convention and undermine a post-2012 Climate agreement. In a parody of what calculations of carbon base lines have become, fortune-tellers introduced a new 'methodology' to predict future deforestation rates. They rounded up delegates from different countries to read their " Carbon Karma " by gazing into a crystal ball to see how much the rate of deforestation in the delegate's country would rise in the future, and hence how much money they could expect to make from REDD for reducing that predicted rate of future deforestation (i.e. increasing the rate of deforestation more slowly). The action also exposed another major problem with REDD-that the inclusion of REDD into the carbon market will mainly benefit the countries and actors that have caused most of the world's deforestation. These countries would receive the greatest benefits from REDD, where countries that have successfully conserved their forests would be left out. Many of the false solutions proposed, like the " stock-flow approach " or the proposal to work with " flexible and adaptive country-specific baselines " will further create massive amounts of false carbon credits, thereby allowing the continued emissions of carbon from industrialized countries. Other risks to REDD include the promotion of tree plantations and the violation of Indigenous Peoples' rights. Marcial Arias, of the Kuna Indigenous Peoples and Global Forest Coalition said: " The Indigenous Peoples will lose in the REDD regime as proposed and most of the funding will go to those who are destroying the forests " . A statement issued earlier from the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) read: " We call for the suspension of all REDD initiatives in Indigenous territories until such a time that Indigenous Peoples' rights are fully recognized and promoted " . [1] Gemma Tillack, a youth representative from Tasmania, Australia and a spokesperson for The Wilderness Society concluded: " If the current definition of 'forests' is used in REDD, it could lead to the massive direct and indirect replacement of carbon rich forests by monoculture tree plantations, and the violation of Indigenous Peoples rights. Some developed countries have been using a loophole in the definition to convert biodiverse, carbon dense forests to biologically barren monoculture tree plantations without incurring any emission penalty, despite the disastrous impact this practice has on biodiversity, local communities and CO2 emissions " . Global Forest Coalition chairperson, Dr. Miguel Lovera +48 726 078 399 The Wilderness Society spokesperson, Sean Cadman 27) A U.N. atlas pinpointed on Friday parts of forests from the Amazon to Madagascar where better protection could give the twin benefits of slowing global warming and preserving rare wildlife. The atlas, issued at December 1-12 U.N. climate talks in Poznan, Poland, identified hotspots with a high diversity of animals and plants in forests that were also big stores of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, in trees and soils. " It shows overlaps between carbon stored and areas of biodiversity importance, " Barney Dickson, of the World Conservation Monitoring Center of the U.N. Environment Program, told Reuters. " This offers the prospect of a double dividend, " he said of the atlas, meant to guide governments in deciding where to protect forests by slowing logging and clearing of forests. If a government wanted to aid gorillas and other great apes, forests in part of the eastern Congo basin could be set aside. Rare birds and amphibians could be helped by protecting carbon-rich forests in Ecuador. Elsewhere, it pointed to parts of the Amazon basin, the tip of South Africa, central Papua New Guinea, parts of the Philippines and most of Madagascar as among priority areas. The 187-nation talks of 11,000 delegates in Poznan are examining schemes to slow the rate of deforestation, such as payments to preserve tropical forests. Current deforestation rates release about 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions by mankind, led by burning fossil fuels. http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4B435F20081205?feedType=RSS & feedName=environmentNews 28) In response to a comment about the World Bank's record in the forests and the new Forest Carbon Partnership Facility the Bank's Benoit Bosquet said, "I expect that we will make mistakes." Not a very promising sign for forest dwelling people or the forests in the tropics. In his presentation, Benoit gave a brief history of the FCPF. It was announced at the Bali climate conference in 2007 and has been operational since June 2008. All the Readiness Plan Idea Notes (R-PINs) are on-line. Six observers are in place, including the UN-REDD programme and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). A Participants Committee has been elected. The Readiness Fund has about US$100 million and will increase the capital target to US$150 million. This is a bit more than UN-REDD, but Benoit noted that in comparison with Brazil's Amazon fund, which aims to raise US$21 billion by 2021, it's very small. Meanwhile, the Carbon Fund has about US$70 million either committed or pledged. There is an agreement with the UN-REDD programme to cooperate on "REDD readiness" globally and at national levels. There is an agreement to allocate US$3.6 million per country, to implement readiness plans. 44 countries have expressed interest in FCFP. 30 R-PINs have been produced and 20 have been selected. This is to be increased to 30. The observers on the Participants Committee include forest-dependent peoples, the private sector, International Organisations, NGOs, UNFCCC and the UN-REDD programme. The World Bank chairs the meeting but as a facilitator. There ought to be only one REDD programme per country, Benoit said. So we sit down with the country to coordinate this — whether it is World Bank, UN-REDD, NGOs or private sector projects, they should all be under one REDD programme. Donors should also be part of coordination. The first scoping missions to Indonesia and Panama have been carried out and scoping missions are upcoming in Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Congo. During the questions, Patrick Alley of Global Witness pointed out that the World Bank doesn't have a great record on forestry. He added that a large group of NGOs pleaded with Benoit not to launch FCPF at Bali and that the R-PINs have been written without consultation. "How can we expect the Bank to act in good faith?" he asked. http://www.redd-monitor.org/2008/12/05/world-bank-admits-we-will-make-mistakes-on-redd/ 29) The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) today released a comprehensive analysis clarifying major challenges and offering an assortment of options that could help negotiators reach a global agreement on reducing carbon emissions tied to forest destruction and degradation. The report, Moving ahead with REDD: Issues, options and implications, is set to be released as officials from around the world have gathered here under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Negotiators are seeking to outline a new global agreement for reducing greenhouse gases, which will set the stage for final decisions scheduled for 2009 in Copenhagen. " Our analysis allows negotiators to see that while the REDD process is indeed complicated, there is a clear set of options available for the issues under discussion, " said Frances Seymour, CIFOR's Director General. " And each option usually involves some trade-offs related to effectiveness, efficiency and equity. These talks are too important to fail, but given the solutions available, there is ample opportunity for success " . The CIFOR report examines a wide range of issues related to the design of REDD, including the ongoing debate over the appropriate geographical scale of such initiatives. Overall, most countries are favoring implementation of REDD at a national level, arguing that, among other things, it would deter what is known as " carbon leakage. " Carbon leakage occurs when a reduction in forest emissions achieved in one area simply prompts the deforestation or degradation activities to shift to another area. " A national approach would account for all domestic leakage, and governments would be stimulated to use a broad set of policies to reduce forest emissions, " said Arild Angelsen, CIFOR scientist and Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. " But, focusing strictly on this option means that, in the near-term at least, REDD programs would be feasible for only a few middle-income countries, and also carries high risk of governance failures and 'nationalization' of carbon rights – leaving less for local communities. On the other hand, a sub-national or project approach allows for early involvement and wide participation and is attractive to private investors. " Angelsen, who edited the report, which includes contributions from 20 scientists, favors a " nested approach " , where countries can commence initiatives at the sub-national level, and transfer to national level accounting within a certain time period. " Negotiators also need to establish clear and appropriate reference levels – or baselines – from which to measure emission reductions, " added Angelsen. " They have to balance the risk of paying for credits that do not truly reduce emissions if baselines are too generous; and low participation and rejection by developing countries if baselines are set too tight. There is potential for this issue to become a real stumbling block to achieving an effective agreement. " The report also looks at the inclusion of forest degradation in the design of any REDD scheme. CIFOR notes that countries where deforestation is the main concern may have little interest in investing in the monitoring necessary to measure carbon released through forest degradation. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/bc-roo120408.php 30) Ecological Internet's campaign to end ancient forest logging as the keystone response to the climate and biodiversity crises continues to gain both scientific credibility and prominence within the environmental movement. A new atlas from the UN Environment Programme shows not surprisingly that most of the world's terrestrial biodiversity and carbon storage hotspots [ark] are found in Earth's last great primary and old growth forest expanses. Find ways to maintain these areas in an intact condition while meeting local development aspirations, without stealing their land, and the world is well on the way to global ecological sustainability. For several years Ecological Internet has informed the forest movement and the world that perhaps the greatest impediment to doing so is greenwash perpetuated by the likes of Greenpeace, WWF, RAN and FSC that the world's last primeval ecosystems should be logged. The Ecologist magazine notes in their current issue Ecological Internet's campaign discrediting the myth that ancient forests can be logged in an environmentally acceptable manner. To make the green mainstream media after years of ridicule (Greenpeace would never support ancient forest logging, hah) is gratifying. There we get FSC's first response to two years of campaigning, answering how logging ancient forests benefits the environment: " The FSC counters that in order to be effective as the demand for timber grows, it is forced to work with industrial logging companies and allow the sustainable cutting of old-growth and primary forests... allowing logging places an economic value on the forest ecosystem, which in turn helps avoid the ground being clear-cut for pasture or crop monocultures. " Here at long last is the answer to our campaign's basic question, " how does logging centuries old trees protect ancient forests? " FSC and greenwash friends are promoting first time industrial logging of the world's last ancient forests to protect them from being logged. How brilliantly simple. Forget about the facts that there is no evidence selectively logged forests will not ultimately be cleared in the long-term, that first time logging releases at least 40% of ancient forest's carbon that will never be recovered, and that the Earth is experiencing a massive extinction spasm largely because of selectively logged, fragmented forests. http://www.rainforestportal.org/issues/2008/12/ecological_internets_campaign.asp 31) The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded a $1.6m grant to the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology to expand and improve its tropical forest monitoring tool known as the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System Lite (CLASLite). The Stanford University-based group says CLASLite "will rapidly advance deforestation and degradation mapping in Latin America, and will help rainforest nations better monitor their changing carbon budgets." The technology will also prove to be useful when the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanism, currently under negotiation at international climate talks, comes online. "About 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and degradation of tropical forests," said Greg Asner, project leader for CLASLite. "Much of it occurs in developing nations, where monitoring capabilities are often unavailable to governments and NGOs. "This grant allows us to improve and expand CLASLite, and to train many people from tropical forest nations so that they can determine where and when forest losses are occurring. "Perhaps most importantly," he added, "rainforest nations will be able to better determine how much CO2 comes from deforestation and degradation. (This) information has been very scarce in the past. CLASLite is capable of penetrating the upper levels of the rainforest canopy and detecting small differences in vegetation patterns at a scale of about 100 feet (30 metres), producing forest maps from old and new data from Landsat satellites, as well as several other Nasa sensors in Earth orbit. "The technology can sense changes resulting from selective logging and small surface fires that burn below the forest canopy. http://takecover08.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/canopy-penetrating-system-boosts-forest-carbon-monitoring/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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