|
|
I’d say you have to see the Amazon for yourself to understand how vast it is, but I’ve been there—and even I can’t imagine it. The rain forest is more than 2 million sq. miles—two-thirds the size of the continental United States—and the river system of the gigantic basin produces 20% of the world’s freshwater [...]
In this week’s international edition of TIME—which is thankfully not behind the paywall—I have a piece on Ecuador’s innovative plan to forswear drilling for oil in the Yasuni National Park in exchange for funding from the international community. Yasuni is in the western reaches of the Amazon rain forest, and it may be the most [...]
After years of allowing clear-cutting and rapid deforestation in the Amazon, Brazil has managed to save its forests. But a new law landing on the President’s desk could undo much of that — and open the door to the bad old days of massive deforestation
Deforestation is a major cause of climate change, responsible for perhaps 15% (PDF) of the world’s overall greenhouse gas pollution. That’s because trees sequester carbon, and when those trees are cut down or burned, they release that carbon back into atmosphere. And as we lose trees, we lose a valuable carbon sink—each year the Amazonian rainforest [...]
I’m in Quito, Ecuador tonight, where I’ve flown—by way of a long detour to Panama City, thanks very much Continental Airlines—to report a story about one of the more innovative conservation ideas out there. Ecuador—which you can find nestled in the northwestern corner of South America, between Colombia and Peru—has two major natural resources: oil [...]
If you’re eating a food that came in a wrapper while reading this, you probably eating palm oil — at least there’s a 50/50 chance you are. About half the packaged food found in a supermarket contains palm oil, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and a lot of that product comes from the lush [...]
Remember that inconvenient truth from half a decade ago? Even if you don’t, it seems like most of modern science, politics, and popular culture does – though they are often wildly divided on the issue. These days it seems like everything is in some way linked to “climate change.” There was the extreme rain that [...]
An eight-part series that appeared in the Economist has won this year’s prestigious Grantham Prize for environmental reporting. Journalist James Astill reported the 14,000 word story in the forests of Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Uganda, assessing the state of the world’s tropical forests and what’s being done to protect them. The prize’s jurors credit the [...]
Another day, another global report on the world’s land use. This time a wide-ranging survey from the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO)—an intergovernmental body that promotes the sustainable use of forest resources—has revealed that the area of the world’s tropical forests that are under some form of sustainable management has increased 50% since 2005, from [...]
We’ve just posted an interesting story to Time.com about a group of monks in northern Cambodia who are lobbying for over a dozen protected forests to go onto the global carbon market. This is exactly the kind of project that makes Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) so promising: protecting the forests in [...]
