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RESULTS		Results 1 – 25 of 91
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Tropical rainforests: From bad to worse Satellite images show rapid deforestation in Papua New Guinea and Amazon	Joseph Romm	01 Jul 2008	Gristmill
The following post is by Ken Levenson, guest blogger at Climate Progress. Pushed from center stage by the expected record arctic ice and permafrost melt, tropical rain forest destruction has been elbowing its way back through the smoke and into view. This Mongabay article, 'Papua New Guinea's rainforests disappearing faster than thought,' is one such look: Previously, the forest loss was estimated at 139,000 hectares per year between 1990 and 2005. But now ...
Topics: Amazon, climate, deforestation, greenhouse-gas emissions, Papua New Guinea, rainforests (all these topics)

To Preserve and Protect Vermont-sized area of Amazon may be protected		06 Jun 2008	News
Posted at 10:51 AM on 06 Jun 2008 Brazil's president has unveiled plans to protect a large area of the Amazon rainforest, after weeks of mutterings that the country has insufficient protections in place. The proposal by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva would create three protected reserves for a total area the size of Vermont; the plan still has to be approved by Brazil's Congress. Amazon deforestation is on the rise, and w ...
Topics: Amazon, Brazil, habitat protection, news, rainforests (all these topics)

Papua Bare World's third-largest tropical rainforest disappearing quickly		02 Jun 2008	News
Posted at 4:48 PM on 02 Jun 2008 Papua New Guinea is home to the world's third-largest tropical rainforest, but the country is experiencing such rampant deforestation that more than half of its tree cover could be lost by 2021, says a new study. "Forests in Papua New Guinea are being logged repeatedly and wastefully with little regard for the environmental consequences and with at least the passive complicity of gove ...
Topics: carbon offsets, climate, deforestation, news, Papua New Guinea, rainforests (all these topics)

At Least He'll Be Better Than Ours Brazil swears in new environment minister		28 May 2008	News
Posted at 3:01 PM on 28 May 2008 Carlos Minc was sworn in as Brazil's environment minister on Tuesday. Minc succeeds Marina Silva, who quit after six years of uphill battling to protect the Amazon rainforest from development. Greens are cautiously optimistic about Minc, who was a founder of Brazil's Green Party, a former environment secretary in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and one of 500 winners of a 1989 United Natio ...
Topics: Amazon, Brazil, international politics, news, politics, rainforests (all these topics)

Silva Buckle Brazil's pro-rainforest environment minister resigns		13 May 2008	News
Posted at 4:05 PM on 13 May 2008 Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva resigned Tuesday after six years in office, leading a Greenpeace campaigner to lament that "Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment." Silva's policies prioritized environmental protection, particularly for the Amazon; while her policies landed her a spot as one of Grist's fave green politicians, they ...
Topics: Amazon, Brazil, international politics, news, politics, rainforests (all these topics)

China's coming land grab More hidden costs of our love affair with cheap imported goods	Tom Philpott	11 May 2008	Gristmill
Remember a couple of weeks ago, when a Brazilian soy magnate turned a voracious eye on the Amazon rainforest, marveling at how awesome it would be to raze more of it to plant soy? Blairo Maggi, known as Brazil's 'soy king,' said this: With the worsening of the global food crisis, the time is coming when it will be inevitable to discuss whether we preserve the environment or produce more food. There is no way to produce more food without occupying more land and taking d ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, Brazil, China, economy, rainforests (all these topics)

'Orangutans' scale wall, save forest Unilever supports rainforest destruction moratorium	Glenn Hurowitz	07 May 2008	Gristmill
Greenpeace just announced a big win in its anti-palm oil campaign: just five days after launching a campaign to pressure food and cosmetics giant Unilever to stop purchasing palm oil from rainforest destroyers, Unilever met Greenpeace halfway. Apparently nervous about the prospect of orangutan-suited activists continuing to scale their corporate headquarters (see picture), the company agreed to support a legal moratorium on rainforest destruction. Given that Unilever ...
Topics: environmental movement, Greenpeace, habitat protection, Indonesia, politics, rainforests (all these topics)

Food crisis resolved! Let's raze more Amazon rainforest!	Tom Philpott	28 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Blairo Maggi is a powerful man in Brazil. He owns a company called Grupo Andre Maggi that runs vast soybean plantations in the state of Matto Grasso, which straddles the Amazon rainforest and what the Nature Conservancy calls 'the world's most biologically rich savanna.' The New York Times has called Maggi 'the largest soybean grower in the world ... with 400,000 acres of his own under production.' Maggi works closely with the world's biggest soybean processors: Arch ...
Topics: agriculture, Big Ag, biofuels, Brazil, deforestation, food, rainforests (all these topics)

Market force of nature Social concerns complicate an issue that, for scientists, is a no-brainer	Maywa Montenegro	23 Apr 2008	Gristmill
A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece, now posted at Seed, about a financial mechanism for reducing deforestation and degradation (REDD) and vaster territory it will likely prime for pricing ecosystem services. It's fun to watch the story evolve, as now we're seeing the U.K.-based Canopy Capital sign an agreement to protect a 371,000 hectare chunk of tropical forest in Guyana -- in advance even of a market infrastructure to value all the services provided by th ...
Topics: business, Guyana, investing, public lands, rainforests (all these topics)

Betting on the future Private equity firm buys rights to rainforest reserve's environmental services	biodiversivist	21 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Photo: Smccann via Flickr This picture of what appears to be an insect with rainbows flying out its butt was taken in Guyana. There are untold, untapped, unknown chemistries created by millions of years of evolution harbored in what remains of the planet's biodiversity. This is a vast storehouse of information, which would provide humanity with centuries of medicines and other benefits if we can just find ways to preserve it. We can't let our biodiversity ...
Topics: biodiversity, biofuels, business, Guyana, investing, rainforests (all these topics)

Cries on the Prize Chevron throws hissy fit that anti-Chevron activists received award		15 Apr 2008	News
Posted at 10:48 AM on 15 Apr 2008 Chevron is throwing a hissy fit over the Goldman Environmental Prize awarded to two Ecuadorian activists who want the oil company to clean up pollution in the Amazon rain forest. Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, dumped 18.5 billion gallons of petrochemical waste in the Amazon between 1972 and 1992. Lawyer Pablo Fajardo and community organizer Luis Yanza won the G ...
Topics: Amazon, Big Oil, Ecuador, energy, grassroots activism, heroes, litigation, news, oil, rainforests, water pollution (all these topics)

'The Clean Energy Scam' Biofuel boom leveling rainforest, Time reports	Tom Philpott	30 Mar 2008	Gristmill
From an excellent article in Time: Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world's top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it's running out of uncultivated land. But most of the damage created by biofuels will be less direct and less obvious. In Brazil, for instance, ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, Brazil, deforestation, energy, ethanol, rainforests (all these topics)

All the World's a Shag Catching up with our favorite European eco-porn activists	Katharine Wroth	28 Mar 2008	Grist Feature
Ellingsen (left), Johansson (second from right), and friends at their "Wild Climax Refuge" in Costa Rica. Courtesy FFF Nearly four years ago, Lissa Harris wrote a titillating Grist profile of two European activists who were, as she put it, "raising cash to save the rainforest, one money shot at a time." That story, "Norwegian Wood," became one of Grist's a ...
Topics: deforestation, grassroots activism, green living, interview, rainforests, sex (all these topics)

Strike a blow against palm oil madness Rainforest Action Network's new pledge petition	Joseph Romm	25 Mar 2008	Gristmill
The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress. ----- In Hell and High Water, Joe lays out his proposals for how to slow down our greenhouse-gas emissions in the first half of this century, giving us the breathing space to eliminate them in the second half. His program primarily consists of deploying existing technology, and it is quite doable, should we find the political will. His last proposal, however, is to 'stop all tropical deforestati ...
Topics: Big Ag, business, celebrity, deforestation, grassroots activism, rainforests (all these topics)

Amazon Disgrace Peruvian Amazon under threat from oil exploration, illegal logging		17 Mar 2008	News
Posted at 10:11 AM on 17 Mar 2008 There's no better way to start off a Monday than with depressing news from the Peruvian Amazon, which is under threat from both fossil-fuel development and illegal logging. Despite protests from environmental and human rights groups, Peru's government plans to auction off dozens of parcels of remote rainforest for oil and gas companies to explore. And in even more somber news, Per ...
Topics: energy, fossil fuels, habitat loss, insanity, logging, news, Peru, rainforests (all these topics)

Razing, a Riot Brazil seizes huge load of illegal Amazon timber after riots		25 Feb 2008	News
Posted at 6:50 AM on 25 Feb 2008 Brazilian troops and police seized about 500 truckloads of illegal hardwood timber from the Amazon rainforest over the weekend, following riots and protests by sawmill workers and others that had forced out environmental inspectors earlier in the week. After the inspectors were driven out, they came back days later with over 450 troops to confiscate illegal timber that the government has ...
Topics: Amazon, Brazil, deforestation, news, rainforests (all these topics)

That Was Easy Staples cuts off contracts with paper supplier over eco-concerns		08 Feb 2008	News
Posted at 7:38 AM on 08 Feb 2008 This is spiffy, so allow us to Post-it: Office supply giant Staples has cut off all contracts with gigantic Asia Pulp & Paper, citing concern that APP feeds Indonesian and Chinese rainforest into its pulp mills. In recent years, other businesses including Office Depot have quit dealings with APP over environmental concerns, but Staples had stuck with 'em. Now, though, Staples' Vic ...
Topics: business, greening biz operations, news, rainforests (all these topics)

Slowforestation Decelerating growth in tropical forest trees, thanks to accelerating carbon dioxide	Joseph Romm	22 Jan 2008	Gristmill
I meant to blog on this earlier, but lost track of it after failing to find the original study (for reasons that will become clear). The bottom line is: Global warming could cut the rate at which trees in tropical rainforests grow by as much as half, a new study based on more two decades of data from forests in Panama and Malaysia shows. The effects, so far largely overlooked by climate modelers, Nature magazine said, could severely erode or even remove the a ...
Topics: climate, climate change impacts, deforestation, greenhouse-gas emissions, rainforests (all these topics)

Plowing up the Amazon Scientist says biofuel boom endangers world's largest rainforest	Tom Philpott	18 Jan 2008	Gristmill
A fifth of the Amazon rainforest -- the world's biggest carbon sponge -- has disappeared since the 1970s. The Brazilian government has succeeded in recent years in slowing the deforestation rate, but its efforts have recently been faltering. Bungle in the jungle. Photo: iStockphoto In the last four months, 2300 square miles of rainforest got leveled, Reuters reports. In the year before that, the forest surrendered 3700 square miles. If the current rate hold ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, Brazil, deforestation, energy, rainforests (all these topics)

Papua New Guinea loses the moral high ground PNG agrees to let palm-oil producers raze rainforest	Joseph Romm	28 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Everyone at Bali cheered when the Papua New Guinea delegate dissed the Bush team: We seek your leadership. But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way. Oh, snap! [Sorry, couldn't resist one last 2007 Daily Show-ism] Now comes the heartbreaking news:Malaysian company Vitroplant has been granted necessary permits by the PNG government to begin clearing 70% of the rainforests on biodiversity rich Woodlark Isl ...
Topics: biofuels, climate, habitat loss, Papua New Guinea, rainforests (all these topics)

Humor fails Saddening video report on Indonesian palm oil plantations	JMG	05 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Here is a short, painful four-minute news report about palm oil plantations -- watch it and weep:
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, deforestation, energy, Indonesia, rainforests (all these topics)

They Tried to Make Me Go to a Reserve, I Said Bonobo Congo nature preserve set up to protect bonobos		20 Nov 2007	News
Posted at 10:04 AM on 20 Nov 2007 A swath of Congo rainforest larger than the state of Massachusetts will be designated as a nature reserve in a collaborative effort between American and Congolese environmental groups and agencies. Advocates hope the reserve will be a significant step toward protecting the endangered bonobo, one of humans' closest ape relations. Bonobos, which live only in the Co ...
Topics: Congo, news, progress, rainforests, wildlife (all these topics)

It's Simple, Simon Simon & Schuster joins the ranks of greener publishers		08 Nov 2007	News
Posted at 2:33 PM on 08 Nov 2007 Random House has done it. Scholastic has done it. Even a publisher of the Bible is going green. So hey, Simon & Schuster: welcome aboard! The publisher, which counts such notables as Stephen King and Ursula Hegi among its authors, has committed to increasing its recycled-paper content from the current 10 percent to 25 percent or more by 2012. It will also buy at least 10 percent of ...
Topics: greening biz operations, news, rainforests, recycling (all these topics)

Bush swaps debt for nature Costa Rica and Guatemala deals could point to common ground on climate crisis	Glenn Hurowitz	17 Oct 2007	Gristmill
The Bush administration, Costa Rica, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy will today announce a 'debt-for-nature' swap that could herald something bigger in the future. The United States will write off $12.6 million in debt owed it by Costa Rica. In exchange, Costa Rica will protect some of the most valuable rainforest wildlife habitat in the world. Photo: obooble This follows the Bush administration's support for an even bigger sw ...
Topics: carbon sequestration, climate, Costa Rica, deforestation, international politics, politics, rainforests (all these topics)

Forgive and For Get U.S. agrees to forgive $26 million debt in Costa Rica debt-for-nature swap		17 Oct 2007	News
Posted at 8:52 AM on 17 Oct 2007 The U.S. federal government has agreed to a debt-for-nature swap with Costa Rica that will see $26 million of the Central American country's debt owed to the U.S. go instead toward conservation of its rainforests. The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International each donated about $1.2 million to the effort while the U.S. is financing $12.6 million of it. Those fu ...
Topics: Costa Rica, international politics, news, rainforests, United States (all these topics)

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