Region Archives: International

The growing market for rubber is a major, but largely overlooked, cause of tropical deforestation, new analysis shows. …But even as the true environmental cost of the ubiquitous rubber tire is being exposed, the damage could be about to escalate sharply. The new culprit is electric vehicles. Being substantially heavier than conventional vehicles, they reduce the life of a tire by up to 30 percent. …Yet there has been little outrage. While growers and processors of other tropical commodity crops, such as soy, beef, palm oil, cocoa, and coffee, are under ever greater pressure from both regulators and consumers to show their products are not grown on land deforested to accommodate them, rubber has escaped public attention. …A new international analysis published in October… found that between 10 and 15 million acres of tropical forests has been razed in Southeast Asia alone since the 1990s to feed our hunger for rubber. 

Logging typically degrades tropical forests. But what if logging is carefully planned and carried out by well-trained workers While public campaigns to end logging dominate both the popular press and high-profile science journals, a transition from “timber mining” to evidence-based “managed forestry” is underway. Given poor logging practices are likely to continue in about 500 million hectares of tropical forest, efforts to promote responsible forestry deserve more attention. In our new report we recommend five ways to improve tropical forest management. This work was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Forest Service International Program. Fortunately, these practices are compatible with management for non-timber forest products such as fruits, fibres, resins and medicinal plants, as well as biodiversity conservation. They would also reduce carbon emissions and increase carbon removal in cost-effective ways.

AUSTRALIA — South Australia did it in 2012. Victoria managed it back in 1998, Queensland in 2010, Tasmania in 2017. Only WA and NSW have held on to their pine plantations as commercial businesses. Why have most States decided to relinquish these massive estates…and realised significant financial windfalls through privatisation? More than 50 years ago across Australia governments took the lead in expanding plantations with financial assistance form the Commonwealth. Softwood was a new industry and the scale of the investment was large. ….Fast forward 50 years, and despite the industry having fully matured, the WA Government continues to take responsibility for supplying the wood. …It’s time for the State Government to change its methods for encouraging plantation forestry and follow eastern Australia — pass the pine plantation baton on to the private sector and, with government support, let it take control of its own destiny.

Papua New Guinea boasts the third largest rainforest in the world and houses about 7% of the planet’s biodiversity, including threatened species found nowhere else in the world. In recent years, fraudulent practices in the logging and agriculture industry have resulted in massive forest loss across the country while road network expansion plans threaten to further fragment forests and open them up for resource exploitation. Satellite data and imagery show logging activity on the rise in PNG, particularly in the province of Oro. Conservationists and officials say forest laws must be tightened in PNG and local communities included in decision-making to reduce forest loss, while incentivizing communities to conserve the remaining forests.

©Peter Trimming

The Scottish Government’s forestry agency has been accused of “indiscriminate massacre” after it admitted it could have killed nearly 2,000 baby red squirrels over five years. Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) estimated that 1,976 red squirrel babies – known as kits – were killed when their nests were destroyed during tree felling between 2017 and 2022. FLS has a duty to protect wildlife and is a partner in a major multi-agency effort called Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels. It took the protection of endangered species such as red squirrels “very seriously”, it said. But one former FLS wildlife expert claimed that the real number being killed could be much higher because the bodies were never found. The slaughter was a “disgrace” and a “travesty”, he said. …Red squirrels are one of Scotland’s most beloved and most threatened woodland animals. Killing, injuring or capturing the animals, or damaging their dreys, are offences under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act.

The Drax Foundation, the charitable entity of renewable energy company Drax Group (Drax), has donated £862,000 to 19 non-profit organisations across the regions where it operates in the UK and North America. This new funding means that in 2023 the total Drax has committed to philanthropic funding is over £4.6million. The Drax Foundation is focused on funding initiatives that support education and skills development in Science Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM), those that improve green spaces and enhance biodiversity within local communities and improve access to renewable energy and energy efficiency in areas of low social mobility. The projects funded in this round will mean over 32,000 young people can benefit from STEM training, 1,229 hectares of land will be restored or protected and over 20,000 people will receive improved access to green spaces in their communities. 

The Amazon rainforest is often portrayed as a giant carbon sink for the world, soaking up emissions generated elsewhere. So it may come as a surprise that Brazil, home to 60% of the rainforest, is the world’s fifth-biggest emitter of CO₂ — with more than two-thirds of those emissions coming from agriculture, forestry and other land use. Those numbers highlight how the country’s path to reaching its target of net zero emissions by 2050 has little in common with that of most other countries. …Arthur Ramos says… “While power generation is 90% renewable, deforestation and agriculture are the biggest issues. Deforestation alone accounts for 50 per cent.” …Almost all deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is unlawful, the result of illegal logging, mining and ranching. …With Brazil set to host COP30 in 2025, there is optimism that the country can build on its strengths in renewables, halt deforestation and improve agricultural technology.

Ending native forest logging in Tasmania and valuing the state’s centuries-old trees as carbon storage could save the state at least $72m, according to a report by a pro-market thinktank. The analysis by the Blueprint Institute, to be launched on Wednesday, recommends the state government immediately stop subsidising its forestry arm, Sustainable Timber Tasmania, and announce logging will end in mid-2025. The institute said the Tasmanian government and opposition should work with the federal government to introduce a “robust carbon methodology” that allowed the state to generate carbon credits by stopping logging and introducing conservation measures. It estimated CO2 sequestration in Tasmania’s forests could be worth $345m and provide a net benefit to the state of $72m after the cost of a transitional package for the timber industry was factored in.

Tropical forests the world over are in trouble. Vast swaths have been razed to the ground, lost forever, and studies indicate that at least 10% of those that remain standing are severely degraded. As humanity tries to backpedal on the destruction we’ve wrought, restoring degraded areas to their former glory through tree planting and forestry techniques has become a major endeavor. But scientists still know surprisingly little about the long-term effects of different restoration methods on forests. …Now, a new study that investigates the long-term effects of forest restoration at sites in Malaysian Borneo indicates that planting trees for biomass accumulation can in some cases boost measures of biodiversity in the long run compared to natural regeneration. The researchers found enhanced adult tree diversity, including the recovery of rare species, in forest plots planted with timber species and subject to basic forestry maintenance, such as cutting climbers, compared to areas where forest regenerated naturally.

UKRAINE — Forests in Ukraine make up about 16.5% of the country’s territory and fulfil important functions including support of rural livelihoods, conservation of biodiversity, and protection of agricultural land against erosion. Currently, they are heavily impacted by two main factors: climate change and the ongoing war. In addition to the degradation and dieback of forests as a result of storms, pests, diseases, and wildfires, the war has damaged large areas of forests and made them inaccessible due to contamination with unexploded ordinance. The war also disrupted research and education infrastructure, including the regular collection of forest-related data, and led to the displacement of forest scientists and students to other parts of the country or abroad. …These and other major challenges were identified during a two-day hybrid Forum on Ukraine Forest Science and Education.

SAO PAULO, Brazil – Destruction across the Amazon rainforest so far this year has slowed dramatically, down 55.8% from the same period a year ago in a major turnaround for the region vital to curbing climate change, according to an analysis provided to Reuters. The analysis by the nonprofit Amazon Conservation’s MAAP forest monitoring program offers a first look at 2023 deforestation across the nine Amazon countries. Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia all showed declining forest loss. …The drop coincides with a shift since last year to pro-conservation governments under leftist presidents in Brazil and Colombia. Analysts credit most of the decline to stronger environmental law enforcement in Brazil. …Amazon old-growth forest loss fell to 9,117 square kilometers from Jan. 1 to Nov. 8, down 55.8% from the same period in 2022, according to MAAP.

A new study… sheds new light on the extensive benefits of secondary forests in the Amazon. Naturally regrown forests, also known as secondary forests, play a critical role in the connectivity of old-growth forest habitats. …“Although tropical secondary forests store less carbon than old-growth forests, they rapidly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.” The research emphasizes the significant impact of secondary forests in mitigating the effects of forest fragmentation in the Amazon. Professor John Healey… “The secondary forests are helping maintain connectivity for patches of old-growth forest that are too small to support long-term viable populations of rare species.” …“Secondary forests are buffering as much as 41% of old-growth forest edges, potentially shielding them from negative edge effects such as hotter temperatures and wind,” said study lead author Charlotte Smith. …Healey says the research provides powerful new evidence of the importance of managing forests at the landscape scale.