Category Archives: Deforestation

Revealed: the places humanity must not destroy to avoid climate chaos

Posted on by

Tiny proportion of world’s land surface hosts carbon-rich forests and peatlands that would not recover before 2050 if lost

Detailed new mapping has pinpointed the carbon-rich forests and peatlands that humanity cannot afford to destroy if climate catastrophe is to be avoided.

The vast forests and peatlands of Russia, Canada and the US are vital, researchers found, as are tropical forests in the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia. Peat bogs in the UK and mangrove swamps and eucalyptus forests in Australia are also on the list.

Continue reading...

Brazil’s Amazon beef plan will ‘legalise deforestation’ say critics

Posted on by

The beef industry hopes a planned deforestation-free farming zone will tempt buyers back but many fear it will drive up illegal tree felling

For many, the overriding image of agriculture in the Amazon is one of environmental destruction. About 80% of deforestation in the region has been attributed to cattle ranching, tainting beef exports.

Brazil’s beef industry hopes to tempt buyers back to the Amazon region, which covers about 40% of the country’s total area, with a new deforestation-free pledge. But critics are concerned it could effectively legalise deforestation in the region.

Continue reading...

Transform approach to Amazon or it will not survive, warns major report

Posted on by

Panel of 200 scientists tells Cop26 Indigenous people, business, governments and scientists must collaborate

The world’s approach to the Amazon rainforest must be transformed to avoid an irreversible, catastrophic tipping point, according to the most comprehensive study of the region ever carried out.

More than 200 scientists collaborated on the new report, which finds that more than a third of the world’s biggest tropical forest is degraded or deforested, rainfall is declining and dry seasons are growing longer.

Continue reading...

Armed attack on Brazilian Amazon community while delegate at Cop26

Posted on by

Witnesses say tents in forest in disputed area of Pará state set alight and residents beaten

A land defender from Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, said armed men attacked a forest community she defends while she was at the Cop26 talks in Glasgow.

Claudelice Silva dos Santos, a Cop26 delegate and nominee for the 2019 Sakharov prize, said she had received a phone call sounding the alarm after about 30 pickup trucks arrived at the São Vinicius camp at the Tinelli farm in Nova Ixipuna, home to about 80 families, at about 3pm local time on 3 November.

Continue reading...

Indonesia says Cop26 zero-deforestation pledge it signed ‘unfair’

Posted on by

Environment minister of country home to world’s third-biggest rainforest says deforestation pledge must not halt development

Indonesia has questioned the terms of a Cop26 deal to end deforestation by 2030, days after joining more than 100 countries in signing up to it.

The nations agreed on the multi-billion-dollar plan at the climate conference in Glasgow this week to stop cutting down trees on an industrial scale in under a decade.

Continue reading...

Eco-friendly, lab-grown coffee is on the way, but it comes with a catch

Posted on by

Beanless brews can cut deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions dramatically – but what will happen to workers in traditional coffee-growing regions?

Heiko Rischer isn’t quite sure how to describe the taste of lab-grown coffee. This summer he sampled one of the first batches in the world produced from cell cultures rather than coffee beans.

“To describe it is difficult but, for me, it was in between a coffee and a black tea,” said Rischer, head of plant biotechnology at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which developed the coffee. “It depends really on the roasting grade, and this was a bit of a lighter roast, so it had a little bit more of a tea-like sensation.”

Continue reading...

Leaked EU anti-deforestation law omits fragile grasslands and wetlands

Posted on by

Campaigners say draft regulation contains many loopholes, including exclusion of Cerrado and Pantanal

The fragile Cerrado grasslands and the Pantanal wetlands, both under threat from soy and beef exploitation, have been excluded from a European Union draft anti-deforestation law, campaigners have said, and there are many other concerning loopholes.

The European Commission has pledged to introduce a law aimed at preventing beef, palm oil and other products linked to deforestation from being sold in the EU single market of 450 million consumers. But campaigners said a leaked impact assessment reveals “significant omissions” in the plans, including the exclusion of endangered grasslands and wetlands, as well as products that raise environmental concerns, such as rubber and maize.

Continue reading...

‘I’ve never said we should plant a trillion trees’: what ecopreneur Thomas Crowther did next

Posted on by

The ecologist admits ‘messing up’ in the past, but says his Restor project will be ‘a Google Maps of biodiversity’, showing the impact of restoration – from a forest to your own back garden

Listen to our podcast: Can we really solve the climate crisis by planting trees? – part one

Thomas Crowther understands more than most the danger of simple, optimistic messages about combating the climate crisis. In July 2019, the British ecologist co-authored a study estimating that Earth had space for an extra trillion trees on land not used for agriculture or settlement. Its implications were intoxicatingly hopeful. By restoring forests in an area roughly the size of China, the press release accompanying the paper suggested two-thirds of all emissions from human activities still present in the atmosphere could be removed.

The study, led by Jean-François Bastin, a postdoctoral researcher at Crowther’s lab in ETH Zürich, Switzerland, was the second most featured climate paper in the media in 2019, according to one analysis. It inspired the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) One Trillion Trees Initiative, launched last year after Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff read the paper on the recommendation of Al Gore, the former US vice-president. The Time magazine owner told everyone he could about the research: chief executives, friends and world leaders, even convincing climate sceptic Donald Trump to back the WEF initiative with a multibillion tree commitment.

Continue reading...

‘Everything is changing’: the struggle for food as Malawi’s Lake Chilwa shrinks

Posted on by

The livelihoods of 1.5 million people are at risk as the lake’s occasional dry spells occur ever more frequently

• All photographs by Dennis Lupenga/WaterAid

There was a time when the vast Lake Chilwa almost disappeared. In 2012 it had been extremely hot in southern Malawi, with little rain to fill the rivers that ran into the lake.

“Many fishermen were forced to scramble for land near the lake banks, while others had to migrate to the city,” says Alfred Samuel. “We could barely feed our children because the lake could not provide enough fish, or water for rice growing.”

Continue reading...

Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon hits highest annual level in a decade

Posted on by

Rainforest lost 10,476 sq km between August 2020 and July 2021, report says, despite increasing global concern

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has hit the highest annual level in a decade, a new report has shown, despite increasing global concern over the accelerating devastation since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019.

Between August 2020 and July 2021, the rainforest lost 10.476 square kilometers – an area nearly seven times bigger than greater London and 13 times the size of New York City, according to data released by Imazon, a Brazilian research institute that has been tracking the Amazon deforestation since 2008. The figure is 57% higher than in the previous year and is the worst since 2012.

Continue reading...

‘Best a human can be’: indigenous Amazonian Karapiru dies of Covid

Posted on by

Karapiru Awá Guajá, among the last of the hunter-gatherer Awá tribe, survived a massacre and a decade alone in the forest, inspiring others with his resilience and ‘extraordinary warmth’

He survived a massacre that killed most of his family in the Brazilian Amazon and lived for 10 years alone in the forest, but Karapiru Awá Guajá could not escape the pandemic.

Karapiru, one of the last of the hunter-gatherer nomadic Awá of Maranhão state, died of Covid-19 earlier this month. With only 300 Awá thought to remain, they have been called the “earth’s most threatened tribe”.

Continue reading...

Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs

Posted on by

Cutting emissions more urgent than ever, say scientists, with forest producing more than a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year

The Amazon rainforest is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it is able to absorb, scientists have confirmed for the first time.

The emissions amount to a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to a study. The giant forest had previously been a carbon sink, absorbing the emissions driving the climate crisis, but is now causing its acceleration, researchers said.

Continue reading...

Amazônia: life and death in the Brazilian rainforest

Posted on by

The 10th edition of the Carmignac photojournalism award was dedicated to the Amazon and the issues related to its deforestation. Photojournalist Tommaso Protti, accompanied by journalist Sam Cowie, travelled thousands of miles across the Brazilian Amazon. From the eastern region of Maranhão to the western region of Rondônia, through the states of Pará and Amazonas, they portrayed modern-day life in the Brazilian Amazon, where social and humanitarian crises overlap with destruction of the rainforest.

As I sat in my hotel room in Marabá, a city in the Amazon state of Pará, Jornal Nacional – Brazil’s flagship news programme – transmitted images of the country’s newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro. “The Indigenous in their reservations are like animals in a zoo,” he said. It was November 2018.

Continue reading...

Brazil aerial photos show miners’ devastation of indigenous people’s land

Posted on by

Impact of thousands of wildcat goldminers shown as president Jair Bolsonaro is accused of trying to promote their illegal work

Rare and disturbing aerial photographs have laid bare the devastation being inflicted on Brazil’s largest reserve for indigenous people by thousands of wildcat goldminers whose illegal activities have accelerated under the country’s far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

Activists believe as many as 20,000 garimpeiro prospectors are operating within the Yanomami reserve in northern Brazil using speedboats and light aircraft to penetrate the vast expanse of jungle near the border with Venezuela.

Continue reading...

Green growth: the save-the-mangrove scheme reaping rewards for women in Kenya

Posted on by

A community project on the Lamu archipelago trains women in preserving this vital ecosystem and provides business loans

Kenya’s mangroves have been harvested for centuries, the timber used in shipbuilding and for ornate doors and furniture as well as shipped across the Indian Ocean and around the world.

The Lamu archipelago accounts for more than half of Kenya’s mangrove forests. But across the country an estimated 40% of this precious commodity has been degraded, as more mangroves have been cut to provide construction materials and charcoal for cooking, and oil leakages from cruise liners and ships that pass along the coast kill off young saplings. The area has become one of the most degraded marine ecosystems in east Africa.

Continue reading...

Campaigners lose court case to stop Ugandan forest clearance

Posted on by

Court ruling gives go-ahead for sugar plantation in Bugoma forest, home to endangered chimpanzees

Conservationists in Uganda have condemned as “shallow and absurd” a court ruling that authorised the government to allow swathes of a tropical forest to be cleared for a sugar-cane plantation.

Three environmental groups had taken the government to court over a decision to allow Hoima Sugar Ltd to build on 5,500 hectares (13,500 acres) in the Bugoma Forest Reserve.

Continue reading...

It’s inspiring hope and change – but what is the IUCN’s green list?

Posted on by

The red list of species at risk is well-known, but the list for protected sites is quietly helping to ‘paint the planet green’

When Kawésqar national park was formed in the Chilean part of Patagonia in 2019, just one ranger was responsible for an expanse the size of Belgium. Its fjords, forests and Andean peaks are a precious wilderness – one of the few remaining ecosystems undamaged by human activity, alongside parts of the Amazon, the Sahara and eastern Siberia.

Chilean officials hope that Kawésqar will, one day, meet the high standards for protected areas laid out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and make it on to the organisation’s “green list”.

Continue reading...

The ‘forgotten’ people picking your Brazil nuts – for a fraction of the price

Posted on by

Rich profits from the prized nut have failed to benefit those finding them. Now cooperatives hope to shake up the system

On a steamy March morning, Edivan Kaxarari walks with a few other villagers in single file down a trail in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil’s Rondônia state, near the border with Bolivia.

His sister-in-law Cleiciana carries her 11-month-old son in one arm and a rifle in the other, and his brother Edson clears the path ahead with a machete. It is hunting season for the seeds of the Amazonian Brazil nut tree.

Continue reading...

‘They are living maps’: how Richard Mosse captured environmental damage in the Amazon

Posted on by

In a new set of photos, environmental degradation in the Amazon is explored to shine light on ‘a hideously complex story’

In his 20s, Irish photographer Richard Mosse made his first foray into photojournalism by capturing postwar Balkan nations. This experience led to a realisation that the medium was inadequately suited to capture complex, layered narratives. “You have to put the thing in front of the camera, and when that thing is an abstraction, far bigger than a human figure, it’s very difficult to do,” he explained in a recent podcast with Monocle.

The subjects he found himself covering over the next two decades were equally abstract and complex as the first, ranging from conflict in DR Congo to the refugee crisis in Europe. However, in his search for ways to subvert the medium and bend it to his will, he eventually managed to create his own unique brand of photography, characterised by the use of infra-red film and other technology rooted in military reconnaissance.

Continue reading...

‘Reclaim These Streets’ and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures

Posted on by

Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand

Continue reading...