Frances Seymour, a WRI Distinguished Senior Fellow, and Nancy Harris, Research Manager at Global Forest Watch, offer their expert perspective on tropical deforestation in the journal Science as the world's attention is riveted on fires in the Amazon and around the globe.
For the cash-strapped government of Rio de Janeiro, restoring forests around the city is a smart investment. New research shows that forests can provide Rio with better water quality at lower cost.
More than a quarter of global tree cover loss between 2001 and 2015 was associated with commodity-driven deforestation, not likely to be forested again, finds a new study published in Science.
WRI will host a public briefing featuring senior Chinese and U.S. participants on China-US climate and energy cooperation among national and non-federal actors on Tuesday, July 17 in San Francisco.
Indigenous Peoples and local communities are the world’s secret weapon to preserve forests and mitigate climate change, and LandMark — the first global platform to provide maps of collectively held indigenous and community lands — helps measure their impact.
As Brazilian President Michel Temer fought for his political life over the past three months, he sought support from powerful interests to keep from being impeached. His efforts paid off, but this victory for the president brought a threat to his nation’s indigenous peoples and to Brazil’s climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Indigenous Peoples and other communities hold and manage 50 to 60 percent of the world's land, yet governments recognize only 10 percent as legally belonging to these groups. That's bad economic policy, shows a new WRI report.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has a big role to play. It’s expected to become the world’s main mechanism for securing and distributing finance to help developing nations tackle climate change.
The multi-billion dollar question is: Can it live up to this expectation?
Groups call for redoubled effort to protect last great forest wilderness sites
Editor’s Note: To view the Intact Forest Landscape mapping methods and findings please visit: www.intactforests.org.
Learn how securing water and shale gas could strengthen energy security while cutting emissions.
To help city leaders shift to a planning paradigm that creates more compact neighborhoods and sustainable cities, EMBARQ has released a Transit-oriented Development Guide for Urban Communities.
The guide combines best practices from existing communities and design guidelines for creating healthy, sustainable, people-oriented cities.
This piece was co-authored with Achim Steiner, UN under-secretary general and executive director of UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
This piece explores how advances in technology can curb illegal logging, written in honor of the first International Day of Forests. It originally appeared on The Guardian's Sustainable Business Blog.
Our future is inextricably linked to forests. The social and economic benefits they provide are essential to realizing a sustainable century. A key litmus test of our commitment to this future is our response to a growing, global threat: illegal logging and the criminal timber trade.
Forests are a vital source of biodiversity and livelihoods. More than 1.6 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods, including 60 million indigenous people who are wholly dependent on forests. They are also natural carbon storage systems and key allies in combating climate change. They are vast, nature-based water utilities assisting in the storage and release of freshwater to lakes and river networks.
While deforestation is slowing in some places – most notably Brazil – it still remains far too high. The loss of forests is responsible for up to 17 percent of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions, 50 percent more than that from ships, aviation and land transport combined.
As the old adage suggests, it is important to see the forests for more than just the trees. While an estimated 500 million people depend directly on forests for their livelihoods, the entire world depends on them for food, water, clean air, and vital medicines. Forests also absorb carbon dioxide, making them critical to curbing climate change.
Despite some encouraging anti-deforestation efforts in places like Brazil, Indonesia, and Africa, globally, forests are under threat, particularly in the tropics. Between 2000 and 2010, nearly 13 million hectares of forests were lost every year. About 30 percent of the global forest cover has been completely cleared, and 20 percent has been degraded.
This dilemma begs the question: What is the outlook for forests in 2030? Are we missing the opportunity to preserve forests and ensure they continue to deliver the goods and services we need for a growing global population? How can we use forests to build a thriving global green economy?
Asking these questions is important. Finding answers to the challenges they raise is imperative.
This analysis compiles a comprehensive set of geospatial indicators of human activities that lead to forest degradation and conversion. Illustrated by numerous maps, the results provide valuable insights for land-use planning and zoning.