A new tool from WRI’s Access Initiative and the Jamaica Environment Trust, shows where recently approved or proposed development projects overlap with protected areas, fisheries, forest reserves, and other areas important for Jamaica's environment and public health.
The government of Nova Scotia announced an ambitious plan earlier this month to protect 245,000 hectares of forest and park land, establishing the Canadian province as a conservation leader in one of the world’s most heavily forested nations. Roughly 14 percent of all land in Nova Scotia will now be legally protected from development, making it the province with the second-highest percentage of land devoted to protected areas in Canada, after British Columbia.
This news is significant for conservationists and for the vast number of Canadians who depend on these forests for clean air, water, and a bounty of other resources. It also illustrates a powerful truth: precise, science-based maps are an essential component of good forest management and planning.
Across the Caribbean, national economies are heavily dependent on coastal ecosystem services. Coral reefs, mangroves, and other coastal ecosystems provide fish habitat, attract tourists, and protect shorelines from storm damage. However, coastal habitats continue to degrade
The Interactive Forest Atlas of Cameroon is a living forest information system hosted in the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) and supported by a joint team including members from MINFOF and the World Resources Institute (WRI).
With significant areas of overlapping high biodiversity resources and mineral wealth, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) faces increasing pressure from competing uses of land widely considered incompatible. This policy paper reviews the rise of commercial mining and the mining concessions afforded ostensibly at the expense of conservation efforts where protected areas and mining permits overlap. The paper highlights the need for the DRC to review and harmonize multiple and often contradictory laws, strengthen land use laws, and build implemetation and enforcement capacity.
Current use valuation programs can encourage landowners to resist development pressures and leave forest as forest.
This paper explores current use valuation programs as one tool for conserving and fostering sustainable management of southern U.S. forests under private ownership. The brief identifies key constraints on existing programs and suggests measures that could be
A new WRI report explores what makes public ballot measures successful and how they can help conserve forests in the U.S. South.
From 1988 through 2010, 354 measures were proposed across the 13 states of the U.S. South.
A variety of measures exist to prevent deforestation or forest conversion to other land uses. Some of these measures, such as purchasing land outright for conservation or purchasing conservation easements, are designed to permanently protect forests by
To date, traditional public land acquisition programs have played a relatively small role in the conservation and sustainable management of southern U.S. forests. The South trails behind other U.S. regions in both the percent of the land base and the acres per
The forested watersheds of the southern United States provide a number of benefits—including water flow regulation, flood control, water purification, erosion control, and freshwater supply—to the region’s citizens, communities, and businesses.
It's time to raise awareness of the variety of incentives that can help forest owners in the southern U.S. keep their land.
Forests of the southern United States provide a wide variety of benefits—collectively known as “ecosystem services”—to people, communities, and businesses. For example, they provide timber, help purify water, control soil erosion, help regulate climate by
Consciente du rôle essentiel des écosystèmes forestiers, le gouvernement de la RDC s’est engagé, en partenariat avec la communauté internationale, à améliorer la gouvernance du secteur forestier afin d’en assurer une gestion durable.
This series is made possible with support from Toyota.
As a result of rapid development over the last 40 years, the vast majority of land in the southern U.S. has been in some way impacted by humans.