Showing posts with label rainforests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rainforests. Show all posts

02 December 2007

Good News out of Africa

Talking of trees, and preserving them, here's some unwonted good news from a country that sadly seems not to be awash in it:

The Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI) joins the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in announcing the creation of the new Sankuru Nature Reserve, a huge rainforest area harboring the endangered bonobo, a great ape most closely related to humans. Larger than the state of Massachusetts, the new reserve encompasses 11,803 square miles of tropical rainforest, extremely rich in biodiversity.

Trees and bonobos? What more do you want? Indeed, I felt compelled to rush off and give my widow's mite on the spot. You might like to do the same.

16 October 2007

New York Goes Green With Shame

Not really my patch, but I'd expected better from NYC:

But the market for Ipé wood drives much of the industrial logging of the entire Amazon, and has increased dramatically in the past 20 years. An emergent flowering tree, which peppers the canopy of the Amazonian rainforest in hues of pink, magenta, yellow and white, Ipé grows in the rainforests at densities of only one or two trees an acre. This means that vast areas of the forests are razed to the ground to feed the market for a single tree. It is estimated that, for every Ipé tree cut, 28 other trees must be cut and are thrown away. For New York City's 10 miles of boardwalk alone, over 110,500 acres (130 square miles) of old growth Amazon rainforest were logged.

Even more shocking, most of this logging is illegal. According to Scott Paul, Greenpeace forest issues specialist, in 2006 90 percent of Brazilian deforestation was the result of illegal logging operations. Many logging businesses are run by criminal syndicates and compliant government officials. This fact is hardly a secret: In 2000, the Brazilian government's own estimates indicated that 80 percent of the hardwood exported from that country was illegally harvested. Briefing papers prepared by Rainforest Relief about the criminality and environmental impact of the city's wood procurement policies were provided to the Bloomberg administration.

But despite rampant illegality, climate change and mass extinction, Bloomberg's administration persists in procuring wood from tropical rainforests. And it is not just the Parks Department, but a number of city agencies which have largely ignored proposals for existing economically and environmentally sound alternatives.

This, surely, is a case ripe for blogosphere noise. (And yes, I know Blog Action Day was yesterday, but better late than never.)

07 June 2007

Cool Earth Meltdown

I was going to write about Cool Earth before, but the site went down. This is both good and bad news. Bad, because it suggests a lack of planning on the part of the people behind the site, and good because it was caused by the unexpectedly large influx of people wanting to visit and participate.

That's a particularly good sign because the whole idea is about letting ordinary people make a difference to global warming by helping to keep carbon sequestered in the rainforests. Agreed, this is not as good as actually taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but given all the collateral benefits of preserving rainforests, it would be churlish to complain.

Moreover, Cool Earth seems to be recognise that preserving the rainforests is not about surrounding it with barbed wire to keep the baddies out: the local people - the goodies - must not only be taken into account, but actively involved so that they feel it is in their interests to protect rather than exploit by cutting down. Sustainability of this kind is hard to do well, but better than the current alternative.

The other key thing about Cool Earth is that it allows people who chip in to monitor their "bit" of the rainforest using Google Earth (and what a godsend that is in this context). This is absolutely crucial - not so much in terms of checking whether somebody's about to cut it down, since by then it's probably too late, but in allowing donors to feel connected. Without that feedback loop, you don't generate engagement, and the whole thing will just fizzle out.

I've no idea whether Cool Earth will make a difference or turn out to be a total flop. But it's an idea worth supporting (I'm certainly going to sign up for a few trees) - for everyone's sake.