Pages tagged with “forest”

• The Goldman Environmental Prize

  In April 2013, the winners of the Goldman Prize for Environmental Excellence were announced. Awards were granted to six activists from around the world doing amazing work to protect their environment and the people that depend on it. Winners included: Jonathan Deal from South Africa, who led a successful campaign against fracking in South Africa to protect the Karoo, a…

• Rainforest Foundation UK publishes report on commercial palm oil expansion in the Congo Basin

  Rainforest Foundation UK has published a report about the worrying expansion of commercial palm oil plantations throughout the world’s second largest rainforest, the Congo Basin.  “Seeds of Destruction” identifies half a million hectares of industrial oil palm projects that are getting underway in the Congo Basin rainforest, much of which is driven by the companies who have already destroyed forests…

• TFT

  We're pleased to provide details about the tenth of 12 recently funded projects. Synchronicity Earth is supporting TFT (formerly the Tropical Forest Trust) to provide core support for the Centre for Social Excellence in Cameroon. Click here to read more. More to follow on Wednesday so watch this space for details on our other funded projects and new partners.

• TFT Centre for Social Excellence

  Synchronicity Earth is funding TFT (formerly the Tropical Forest Trust) to provide core support for the Centre for Social Excellence in Cameroon. TFT addresses deforestation by working with forest companies to helps them transform themselves and the stories of their products. Whilst working with logging companies in the Congo Basin, TFT realised that whilst they were not in short supply…

• Ornamental Fisheries

  Ornamental fisheries (fish for the aquarium trade) are an important component of international wildlife trade. FAO has estimated that the value of the international trade for ornamental fish has increased by around 14% per year since 1985. It has been valued at approximately USD 15billion per year as a combined figure for freshwater and marine species. Developing countries account for…

• Rioplus20 Early Outcomes

  In my last blog I covered the low expectations in the run-up to the Rio+20 Earth summit. As Rio draws to a close it seems these were borne out by events, barring an unlikely last ditch rescue operation by world leaders. Rather than analyse the shortcomings of Rio—there are plenty of people doing that—I want to ask a seemingly simple…

• Update on Brazil’s Forest Code

  On Monday, Brazil’s President Dilma Rouseff announced the details of proposed changes to Brazil’s Forest Code, a set of rules which apply to all privately owned rural land (not only forests). The code is conservation-minded on paper (it requires landowners to keep 80% of native vegetation in the Amazon, as well as conserving biodiverse habitats such as mangroves and riverbanks)…

• Global Witness: Critical intervention to tackle Industrial Forest Use

  Global Witness seeks to change the mindset, policies and practices of actors involved in industrial forest use to permanently accept that natural forests must be excluded from their activities, and to achieve the reallocation of financial and policy support to sustainable locally-controlled forestry.

• Industrial Logging

  Logging for commercially valuable timber has been a major driver of forest loss and degradation across the tropics. Traditional logging techniques involve clear-cutting, which is attractive in tropical forests because of its high profitability, but devastating for wildlife and forest communities. Southeast Asian forests were decimated from the 1950s onwards by large-scale logging operations to produce timber for export around…

• Palm Oil

  The palm oil boom in South East Asia – 86% of the world’s supply comes from Indonesia and Malaysia – has had significant environmental impacts. Half of new oil palm plantations are established on highly diverse lowland forests in Borneo, Sumatra and Malaysia, causing extinctions and threatening others such as the orangutan. Peatland drainage for oil palm plantations has helped…

• Pulp and Paper

  Pulp and paper have close links with palm oil, with many companies in Southeast Asia involved in the production of both. It will not be surprising to find out that – like palm oil – the production of pulp and paper also brings with it environmental side effects.