Pressroom

Pope Francis leaves on Wednesday for Africa, where poverty, the environment, foreign exploitation of resources and corruption are expected to be high on his agenda as he visits the continent where Catholicism is growing fast. He will spend most of the Sept. 4-10 trip in Mozambique and Madagascar and briefly visit Mauritius at the end.

Name any fast-food restaurant, personal care product or home good you have bought recently, and chances are it contributed to the deforestation of the Amazon. Now name a big bank ― any big bank, really. More than likely it has helped finance that destruction.

“No podían construir grandes represas ni conocían las avanzadas técnicas de ingeniería que en la actualidad poseemos; sin embargo, los pobladores del antiguo Perú desarrollaron un sistema hidráulico que les permitió manejar los riesgos de sequía en climas extremos. Los mismos que hoy podrían ayudar a mejorar el suministro de agua de la capital.”

Carbon offsetting has increased in popularity and people want to know how it really helps.

Financial Times article on Vietnam’s trade. Includes a statement from Forest Policy, Trade, and Finance’s Phuc Xuan To.

Select dispatches responding to the surfacing evidence of climate change. Includes a statement from Ecosystem Marketplace’s Stephen Donofrio.

For the first time, the Myanmar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (MEITI) has opened the books to share information with the public on revenue Myanmar’s government collects from harvesting timber. Last month, the MEITI released two reports juxtaposing statistics on production and tax payments from government ministries’ ledgers with corresponding figures reported by the state-owned Myanma Timber Enterprise […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE │ This week, the EC released its long-anticipated plan to amplify the EU’s action against deforestation. This represents a significant step in the right direction to regulate EU imports of palm oil, soy, timber, and other commodities. European demand has been linked to nearly a quarter of global trade in commodities produced […]

The issue of corporate deforestation is on the rise, taking root in supply chains in a surprising range of sectors. And the risks to companies for inaction are rising, too.

YANGON—Internationally known for forestry products such as teak, timber extraction in Myanmar is lucrative. The website of the Myanmar Timber Enterprise (MTE) boasts that the “forestry sector in Myanmar is one of the major contributors to the national economy.” A new report from the Myanmar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (MEITI) reveals that the forest sector […]