The UK has joined forces with the Indonesian government to tackle deforestation and prepare Indonesians for the impacts of climate change, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander announced at Davos today.
The partnership will work to bring down carbon emissions by reversing the high rate of deforestation in the country, boost Indonesia ’s low carbon economy and [...]

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COPENHAGEN CLIMATE DEAL HEADED FOR 3.5°C GLOBAL WARMING AND CLOSE TO 800 PPM CO2 EQUIVALENT GHG CONCENTRATIONS.
A sobering new assessment by the “Climate Action Tracker” (http://www.climateactiontracker.org) of the emission commitments and pledges put forward by industrialized and developing countries for the Copenhagen climate negotiations shows that the world is headed for a global [...]

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A 160-nation U.N. climate conference in Ghana split on Friday over ways to pay poor countries to slow deforestation, blamed for producing up to 20 percent of the greenhouse gases caused by human activities.
Options suggested for raising billions of dollars in incentives include markets that would allow trading in the carbon dioxide locked up in [...]

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Brazil’s new environment minister reached an agreement with the grain processing industry to ban purchases of soy from deforested Amazon until July 2009, winning praise from environmentalists.
“This same initiative will be extended to two other sectors — the timber sector and the beef sector,” Environment Minister Carlos Minc said while praising the grain industry and [...]

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Africa is suffering deforestation at twice the world rate and the continent’s few glaciers are shrinking fast, according to a U.N. atlas on Tuesday.
Satellite pictures, often taken three decades apart, showed expanding cities, pollution, deforestation and climate change were damaging the African environment despite glimmers of improvement in some areas.
“Africa is losing more than 4 [...]

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Brazil’s newly appointed environment minister drew a bleak picture of the Amazon rain forest’s future on Monday, saying the latest figures for deforestation in April were worrying and that this year would likely be worse than last.
“The worst is to come. Now is the test,” Carlos Minc told reporters, noting the period with the highest [...]

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A sawmill that processes logs from the Amazon in Tailandia, Brazil. Photograph: Paulo Santos/Reuters

Brazil has unveiled its plan to encourage farmers in the Amazon region to develop sustainable sources of income and turn their backs on the illegal logging that is ravaging the rainforest.
The Sustainable Amazon Plan includes £300m in low-interest loans that will be [...]

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A slowdown of deforestation from the Amazon to the Congo basin could generate billions of dollars every year for developing nations as part of a U.N. scheme to fight climate change, a study showed on Monday.Burning of forests by farmers clearing land accounts for 20 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions. A 190-nation U.N. climate [...]

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The destruction of Sumatra’s natural forests is accelerating global climate change and pushing endangered species closer to extinction, a new report warned today.
A study from WWF claims that converting the forests and peat swamps of just one Sumatran province into plantations for pulpwood and palm oil is generating more annual greenhouse gas emissions than the [...]

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