Biodiversity source material for Tread Softly briefings

20/7/2021: After independent verification of the country’s deforestation rates in 2016 and 2017, Gabon has become the first African country to receive a results-based payment for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). The REDD+ concept has been around since 2005 and trialed in various forms, with varying degrees of success.

Source: Mongabay

DR Congo plans to lift logging moratorium

14/7/2021: The government in the Democratic Republic of Congo may permit new industrial logging concessions at the same time as negotiating extension of a $1 billion forest protection scheme. Major donors include Norway, Germany and the UK.

Source: Climate Home News

UN draft accord sets out new biodiversity goals

13/7/2021: The UN Convention on Biological Diversity has released the first draft of a post-2020 framework to be negotiated at the biodiversity summit in Kunming, China, in October. Campaigners are disappointed at the lack of a concrete action plan to achieve the objectives.

Source: Climate Home News

How protected are protected areas?

6/7/2021: The UN biodiversity conference in Kunming this October will consider a new 2030 target to designate 30% of the planet's land and marine areas as protected. But a series of reports have questioned the capacity of many countries to deliver standards that fulfil protected status.

Source: China Dialogue

Palm oil: What's the big deal?

16/6/2021: Palm oil has become an ingredient in so many of our daily staples. But more than 90% of palm oil is produced in the regions of Borneo, Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, where the land being cleared is tropical rainforests. Is this as bad as we are led to believe?

Source: DW

Chinese banks pouring billions into deforestation-linked firms

9/6/2021: New analysis from Global Witness has revealed that Chinese banks and investors provided more than $22.5 billion to deforestation-linked companies worldwide between 2013 and 2020. This makes China the sixth-largest funder of global deforestation in the period, behind major commodity producers Brazil, Malaysia, the U.S. and Indonesia, and non-producer Japan.

Source: Mongabay

Deforestation intensifies in northern DRC protected areas

2/6/2021: Preliminary data for 2021 indicates unusually heavy deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, home to the bulk of Africa’s tropical rainforest. Satellite data and imagery record incursions into forest areas that are supposed to be under official protection.

Source: Mongabay

Illegal clearing for agriculture drives tropical deforestation

20/5/2021: A new report has found that at least 69% of tropical forests cleared for ranching and farmland between 2013 and 2019 was done in violation of national laws and regulations. If tropical deforestation emissions tied to commercial agriculture were a country, it would rank third behind China and the U.S.

Source: Mongabay

Aichi target for land protected areas has been met

19/5/2021: The latest edition of the Protected Planet Report reveals that 17% of land is now within documented protected and conserved areas. This fulfils Aichi Target 11 - the global 10-year biodiversity target for 2020. The target for marine protected areas was not achieved.

Source: UN Environment Programme

Study on biodiversity loss calls for urgent global economy ‘rethink’

12/5/2021: New research examining the major causes of the world’s biodiversity loss calls for a profound re-organisation of the global post-pandemic economy. Researchers find that the global approach to setting biodiversity policy seeks to align nature with the existing rules of the economic game, rather than the other way around.

Source: Pentland Centre

Previous123......67Next