Science tells us that healthy forests make healthy rivers and lakes, but policy rarely reflects the connection. That could be changing as the general public comes to better understand the role that deforestation plays in climate change; an understanding that could ratchet up an appreciation of all the ecosystem services that forests deliver.
Indigenous people have been developing Life Plans, the long-term sustainable methods to revive and support their way of life, for years. But as they seek funding for implementation, these forest peoples are finding their plans have a lot in common with the carbon finance mechanism that protects forests.
In the early 1990s, environmentalists started experimenting with carbon finance to support conservation just as indigenous people of the Amazon began developing “Life Plans” to revive and support their traditions. A quarter century on, these two parallel initiatives have evolved in ways that are surprisingly complimentary so much so they’re starting to converge, and in surprising ways.
Washington DC, February 5, 2015 – Forest Trends is one of nine nonprofit organizations around the world to receive the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. The Award, which was announced today, recognizes exceptional nonprofit organizations who have demonstrated creativity and impact, and invests in their long-term sustainability with sizable one-time grants. For […]
While microfinance models have been hugely successful on a global scale in providing the means for people to escape extreme poverty, they aren’t often used to finance payments for ecosystem services projects that offer many poverty alleviating benefits. Despite it being risky and costly, both sectors see potential in working together on a larger scale
After becoming the first indigenous people in the world to generate REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) offsets, the Paiter-Surui Amazonian tribe is now looking back on its experience. While the tribe agrees that the carbon project has been successful, there is less support for the mechanism to dispense finance. Read this and more below.
Two steps forward: Green Assets’ South-Carolina based improved forest management project received its first forest carbon offset issuance for the California market, and Finite Carbon registered new compliance projects in New York and New Hampshire. Two steps back: The first national-level REDD+ Agency in Indonesia may be absorbed into a climate change mitigation directorate, and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has appointed a “chainsaw queen and a climate change denier to top posts.
Indigenous people have long been the most effective guardians of the rainforest, but confronted with growing global pressures to clear their lands, how will they find the resources needed to protect their forests and thrive? In this series, we will explore the new emerging mechanism known as “Indigenous REDD” and see how it draws on and contrasts with forest-carbon projects that exist to date.
Every New Year, we ask market experts to look into their crystal balls (or perhaps into their own work plans) and predict what’s in store for the forest carbon markets in the coming year. Select responses are published below in our Forest Carbon News Brief, alongside the top 10 stories of the past year, as voted by our readers.
After becoming the first indigenous people in the world to generate REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) offsets, the Paiter-Surui Amazonian tribe is now looking back on its experience. While the tribe agrees that the carbon project has been successful, there is less support for the mechanism to dispense finance. Read this and more below.