Creating monitoring programs may seem easy, but actually isn’t. There are three primary impediments: money, credible data, and communication skills. We emphasize communication skills because the best data in the world is useless if it lies fallow.
Nearly 10 million hectares were burned by fires that engulfed areas of Indonesia in 1997 and 1998. The fires were mostly ignited by plantation companies and others eager to clear forest land as rapidly and cheaply as possible.
In 1998 the leaders of the Group of Eight (Japan, France, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada and Russia) committed to actions that would help protect the world's forests.
Download full report in PDF format from WWF's Web site at https://www.panda.org/downloads/forests/tnc_report.pdf
In recent years, international attention has increasingly focused on the rapid conversion and degradation of the world's tropical forests.
Yet half of the remaining large tracts of natural forest are found in northern (or boreal) regions.
Over the last fifteen years, two of the most contentious issues faced by the World Bank have been its involvement in the forest sector and its structural adjustment lending.
This report addresses the intersection of these two arenas by asking:
Cameroon contains some of the Congo Basin's most biologically diverse and most threatened forests.
Central Africa's forests have a long history of human use. Large-scale commercial logging, however, is a recent phenomenon.
This report addresses the following questions:
In light of the important issues that trade and forests entail, this report analyzes the risks and opportunities associated with proposed liberalization of international commerce in forest products.
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In 1995, the World Resources Institute published a comparative study of national laws and policies affecting forests and forest-dwellers in India, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and PNG (Lynch and Talbott, 1995). The study arrived at two main conclusions.
Over the past 150 years, deforestation has contributed an estimated 30 percent of the atmospheric build-up of CO2. It is also a significant driving force behind the loss of genes, species, and critical ecosystem services.
Burma holds more than half of mainland Southeast Asia's closed forest, and is often called "the last frontier of biodiversity in Asia." Having lost virtually all of their original forest cover, Burma's neighbors -- China, India, and Thailand -- rely increasingly on Burma as a source of timber.
Recommends policies to promote renewed forest stewardship and sound environmental management neglected during the Mobutu dictatorship and civil war. Argues that proper husbanding of the country's forest resources can act as a stimulant to economic growth.
The raging fires that recently destroyed large portions of the Brazilian Amazon, have generated global concern for the future on the world's last few intact forest frontiers. Indeed, Indonesia's and Venezuela's forests have also suffered fire-induced destruction.
Guyana's abundant forest resources, encompassing 85 percent of its land area at the heart of the Guiana Shield, represent the largest remaining intact tropical forest frontier in the world.
Backs to the Wall outlines how Suriname's government could protect both forests and forest-dwelling communities.
Tropical forests are vanishing at alarming rates throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and their many contributions to huan welfare are being undermined. Despite increased efforts to stem deforestation, recent findings indicate that the problem is getting worse.
As the 21st Century approaches, the world is being impoverished as its most fundamental capital stock--its species, habitats, and ecosystems--erodes. Not since the Cretaceous era ended some 65 million years ago have losses been so rapid and great.
Under current national income accounting practices, assets such as buildings and equipment are valued as productive assets and depreciated over time; natural resource assets are not. This asymmetry is the way national assets are treated sends misleading signals to policymakers.