Tag Archive for: Deforestation

Deforestación potencia crisis climática global, advierte IPCC

/by

El Informe Especial sobre Cambio Climático y Tierra, dado a conocer el 8 de agosto por el Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC por sus siglas en inglés), advierte que la deforestación exacerba los efectos del cambio climático, tales como la escasez de agua, sequías y falta de alimentos. La deforestación puede abrir tierras vírgenes para la agricultura, pero esta pronto se seca y se deteriora, advierten los autores del reporte.

En promedio, el área de tierra que sufre de sequías ha crecido apenas por encima del uno por ciento al año desde 1961, señala el reporte. Esto se añade al impacto del calentamiento global, con áreas de suelo que se han calentado el doble del promedio de la temperatura superficial mundial – lo cual incluye a los océanos – y los suelos deforestados probablemente sean más cálidos, asegura el documento.

Cerca de 500 millones de personas viven ahora en áreas que experimentan desertificación, indica el informe, y probablemente sufran más escasez de alimentos y agua

Valérie Masson-Delmotte, directora de investigación de la Comisión Francesa de Energías Alternativas y Energía Atómica, y coautora del reporte, indicó en una conferencia de prensa en Ginebra que “el riesgo de la deforestación y la degradación de suelos para la seguridad alimentaria ha crecido, con base en nuevas evidencias presentadas en el reporte.

SIGUE LEYENDO EN BIODIVERSIDADLA

Los Cedros Under Threat – Film

/by

May 10, 2017 

Friends, the Los Cedros Biological Reserve is under serious threat.

The Rainforest Information Centre, with funding from the Australian Government’s development assistance bureau, helped establish the Los Cedros Biological Reserve in Ecuador in 1988. We have continued to support reserve director Jose Decoux throughout the intervening 30 years, and as a result, Los Cedros is the last remaining well-forested watershed in Western Ecuador.

The Ecuadorean government has secretly signed a mining agreement covering Los Cedros and other “protected” areas with the Canadian company “Cornerstone Capital Resources inc”, a large speculative fund which doesn´t do any mining itself but employs local small time operators until the big sell off to some real mining company.

This agreement is under the “Office of Strategic Sectors” and this means no appeal is possible nor effective oversight. This office is under tight observation for the discovery of large scale theft and bribes being paid with key management people either in jail or fled the country. The people who denounced this corruption are also in jail or living underground.

Longtime director of Los Cedros Biological Reserve, Jose Decoux writes: “The mining company has made contact with me and on advice from the lawyer I have to meet with them or face administrative sanctions. Read: expulsion from the reserve without compensation.“ The first company representative visited Los Cedros last week.

Many of the international scientists who have worked at Los Cedros have signed a letter attesting to the irreplaceable scientific value of this, the last well-forested watershed in Western Ecuador.

You can support this fight by signing the petitition here:  https://rainforestinfo.nationbuilder.com/save_los_cedros

KEEP READING ON PERMACULTURE RESEARCH NETWORK 

Can We Restore 350 Million Hectares by 2030?

/by

Author: Chris Reij and Robert Winterbottom | Published on: February 15, 2017

With growing awareness of the economic costs of land degradation, political leaders are adopting ambitious targets to restore degraded forests and agricultural land.  Building on the interest in forest landscape restoration generated by the Bonn Challenge, in 2014, countries adopted the New York Declaration on Forests to restore 350 million hectares (865 million acres) of degraded forests and agricultural land by 2030. That’s an area bigger than the size of India.

Several regional initiatives focused on galvanizing further political and financial support for implementing restoration at scale have emerged, like Initiative 20×20 to restore 20 million hectares (49 million acres) by 2020 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the African Forest Landscape Restoration initiative (AFR100) to restore 100 million hectares (254 million acres) of degraded forests in Africa by 2030.

The question now is: How can we restore this massive amount of degraded and deforested landscapes? Evidence shows that we can—as long as we learn from the places showing early successes. Tree planting is key, but it’s not enough.

KEEP READING ON WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE

Can Radical Transparency Fix Global Supply Chains and Slow Climate Change?

/by

Author: Steve Zwick | Published: December 3, 2016

Kevin Rabinovitch stands straight and speaks in clear, clipped tones – more like a naval officer than a corporate quant – as, on the screen behind him, a daunting mass of threads and whorls illustrates the global flows of Brazilian soybeans from thousands of individual municipalities across Brazil, through specific exporters and importers, to countries around the world.

“We buy a lot of soy from Brazil,” he says. “But we also buy things that eat soy in Brazil before we buy them,” he continues, referring to the chickens and cows that end up in pet food manufactured by food giant Mars Inc, where he’s Global Director of Sustainability.

Known for its ubiquitous Mars and Milky Way candy bars, privately-held Mars, Inc also makes Whiskas cat food, Wrigley’s chewing gum, and dozens of other products that require tens of thousands of tons of cattle, soy, and palm oil – all of which are packaged in products derived from pulp & paper.

These are the “big four” commodities responsible for most of the world’s deforestation, and they achieved that status because thousands of companies buy them from hundreds of thousands of farmers around the world, and many of those farmers chop forests to make way for plantations.

KEEP READING ON HUFFINGTON POST

How 1 Company Is Helping Solve Clean Water Crisis

/by

Author: Dr. Joseph Mercola | Published: October 8, 2016

“Carbon for Water,” a film by Evan Abramson and Carmen Elsa Lopez, reveals a reality most people in the Western world cannot fathom — a world where a large portion of each day is devoted to finding drinkable water.

In the Western Province of Kenya, 90 percent of the population have no easy access to drinking water. In order to make the available water safe to drink, they must first search for firewood, and then boil the water.

Alas, firewood is an equally scarce commodity, and locals resort to illegally cutting down and stealing wood from the ever-dwindling forest — a practice said to contribute to deforestation, which makes the threat of water shortage even more severe.

At present, Kenya’s forest covers less than 2 percent of the land, but as noted by the filmmakers:1

“Just six or seven decades ago a beautiful forest covered most of Western Province. Today, a lot of the forest is gone. Forest degradation and the reduction of rainfall are connected.

Once the forest is destroyed, the rainfall is reduced. In order to avoid conflicts that might lead to civil wars, Kenya’s forests need to be protected urgently, but that can’t happen if people rely on firewood to boil the water they need to drink.”

KEEP READING ON MERCOLA.COM

Watersheds Lost up to 22% of Their Forests in 14 Years. Here’s How It Affects Your Water Supply

/by

Author: Yyuan Qin and Todd Gartner | Published on: August 30, 2016

Drought in Sao Paulo. Flooding in the Himalayas. And pollution in Sumatra. These three distinct water crises have a common cause—degradation in forests.

That’s because upstream forests, wetlands and other “natural infrastructure” play a critical role in supplying clean water downstream. They stabilize soil and reduce erosion, regulate water flow to mitigate floods and droughts, and purify water. Yet the world’s watersheds lost 6 percent of their tree cover on average from 2000-2014, putting citizens at risk of losing their water supplies.

Global Forest Watch (GFW) Water, a global mapping tool and database launched today, examines how forest loss, fires, unsustainable land use and other threats to natural infrastructure affect water security throughout the world. GFW Water provides data sets, statistics and risk scores for all of the world’s 230 watersheds, areas of land where all of the water drains to a common outlet such as a river. Users can drop a pin anywhere to learn about the risks to the water supply near them, and find resources on how investing in natural infrastructure protection can help alleviate these threats.

KEEP READING ON WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE