|
||||
|
Bai Shan Lin, a Chinese logging company, has big plans for Guyana: forest concessions covering 960,000 hectares; a 20-kilometre river gold mining concession; a 500-hectare Guyana-China Timber Industry Economic and Trading Cooperation Park and a 160-hectare real estate development.
This week, Global Witness released a new report investigating a land grabbing crisis in Laos and Cambodia. The report looks at two Vietnamese “rubber baron” companies, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) and the Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG). Global Witness found that these companies “have leased vast tracts of land for plantations in Laos and Cambodia, with disastrous consequences for local communities and the environment”.
WWF loves “sustainability”. With “sustainability”, there’s no need to address over-consumption, or the never-ending growth of capitalist expansion. Consumption can increase, as long as it’s “sustainable”.
Avaaz has launched a petition to stop Aceh’s proposed spatial plan, which would involve the conversion of 1.2 million hectares of forest, “into plantation and mining areas and other purposes”.
A new report by Carbon Trade Watch takes a detailed and critical look at REDD from the perspective of land enclosures. “REDD+ will not stop deforestation,” the report argues. Rather than addressing the root causes of deforestation, REDD promotes the argument that environmental destruction in one location can be ‘compensated’ in another. As such, REDD reinforces underlying causes of deforestation.
The Alto Mayo Protected Forest in the Peruvian Amazon covers about 182,000 hectares. Although it became a protected area in 1987, it remained under serious threat. Today it is the site of a REDD project run by Conservation International with funding from Walt Disney.
In November 2012, Chu Wenze, the chairman of Chinese logging company Bai Shan Lin, gave a presentation outlining his company’s plans for Guyana at the 2nd World Congress on Timber & Wood Products Trade in Taicang, China. The company’s plans expose Guyana’s proposals to reduce deforestation and forest degradation as a bunch of lies. Skoll World Forum debate: “How do we feed the world and still address the drivers of deforestation?”
This week the 10th Skoll World Forum takes place at the Saïd Business School in Oxford. One of the topics for debate is “How do we feed the world and still address the drivers of deforestation?”
The Paraguayan Chaco covers an area about the size of Poland. Thorn forests provide habitat to a wide range of species, including jaguar, ocelot, puma, tapir and giant armadillo. It is home to indigenous peoples, such as the Ayoreo, some of whom are uncontacted, the last uncontacted indigenous tribe south of the Amazon.
In this recent article, Janette Bulkan raises questions about the REDD deal between Norway and Guyana, asking whether it is suitable as part of a global model of REDD, and whether it is likely to reduce deforestation in Guyana.
More details about the Province of Aceh’s proposed spatial plan are emerging. The Jakarta Post reported this week that if the plan were approved in its current form, an area of 1.2 million hectares of forest would be converted “into plantation and mining areas and other purposes”.
The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) divested from 23 palm oil companies in 2012. “Several palm oil producers were excluded from the portfolio because their long-term business model was deemed unsustainable,” GPFG writes in its 2012 annual report.
“Dieter Hoffmann of Harapan Rainforest knows what a reporter likes to see,” writes Klaus Esterluss of the German TV broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Esterluss visited the Harapan Rainforest Project last year for a report for DW. And what he wanted to see were tiger footprints.
Once again, an Indonesian pulp and paper company is clearing the forests of indigenous communities to replace them with industrial tree plantations. Once again, villagers are protesting. Once again, the police and authorities are siding with the company.
Since 2009, companies have announced new oil palm plantation projects in the Congo Basin covering a total area of 1.6 million hectares. Projects currently underway cover 500,000 hectares. A new report by Rainforest Foundation UK warns that vast areas of the Congo Basin forests are potentially threatened by the expansion of oil palm plantations. |
    
|
|||
 Content written by Chris Lang / REDD-Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||||
