Forestry and Development: Welcome

June 2010: Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Michael Somare has put a question mark over unilateral forest and climate deals at the recent 'REDD+ Partnership' meeting in Oslo, Norway. In an address to conference delegates, Mr Somare said that "the international mechanisms to deal with REDD+ have largely failed: meeting after meeting, promise after promise, but nothing tangible delivered in our countries." More...

PNG in Bonn: most emissions outside forest sector

June 2010: Papua New Guinea stated that most forest-based emissions come from outside of the forest sector at the most recent UNFCCC negotiations in Bonn, Germany. This finally puts PNG in line with forest research bodies such as CIFOR and the FAO, which have long stated that drivers of deforestation - and therefore emissions - come from outside of the forest sector. More...

Review of AUSAID spending to PNG

June 2010: Australian media have again focussed their attention towards AusAID spending in the Pacific region. According to a number of media sources, the Australian Government aid programmes are offering exorbitant salary packages to a number of advisors. More...

Canadian foresters and NGOs broker deal, Greenpeace divided

June 2010: Forestry companies and environmental groups have reached an Agreement on the conservation of the Boreal Forest in North Canada. The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement involves 21 member companies of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) and nine environmental organisations, among them Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation and Pew Environment Group's related conservation campaign. More...

Christiana Figueres to replace de Boer at UNFCCC

June 2010: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently appointed Christiana Figueres as the new U.N. climate chief, replacing Yvo de Boer as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. De Boer's departure follows a largely unproductive climate summit in Copenhagen that ended with a nonbinding accord promising emissions cuts and immediate financing for poor countries. More...

Is Australia about to cave on illegal logging?

April 2010: Rumours circulating in Canberra indicate that the Australian Government is about to implement a new policy on illegal timber imports. But the impending policy will have less to do with achieving positive environmental outcomes than political game playing - and the cost will inevitably fall on the Pacific's poorest. More...

REDD will do little for PNG according to leading economist

April 2010: One of the Pacific region's leading agricultural economists has argued that proposed REDD schemes will do little to improve the livelihoods of local communities in Papua New Guinea. More...

Global deforestation slowing: FAO

April 2010: New findings from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that the global rate of deforestation slowed over the last decade. The report, covering 233 countries and areas, is FAO's most comprehensive forestry study to date. More...

Illegal logging 'virtually impossible' to measure

April 2010: Illegal logging rates have fallen in several countries according to a pilot study for a new research project by Chatham House, a UK think-tank. Chatham House's illegal logging expert, Duncan Brack, further argued that it is "virtually impossible" to accurately measure the amount of illegal logging in a presentation at a joint UNECE, FAO, and WTO conference on emerging trade measures on timber markets. More...

South Africa lashes Greenpeace for lobbying efforts

April 2010: South African authorities hit back against environmental NGOs for their efforts to halt a World Bank loan investing in power plant infrastructure in the country's failing energy industry. Earlier this month, Greenpeace intensified lobbying efforts against a proposed World Bank loan assisting the development of the Medupi coal-fired power station. Greenpeace failed to stop the World Bank from eventually approving the US$3.7 billion loan. More...

Illegal logging exports from PNG to Australia found small

March 2010: Reports commissioned by the Australian Government have found the incidence of illegal timber in imports to Australia to be low. Nevertheless, under pressure from anti-forestry activists, the Agriculture and Forestry Minister, Tony Burke, is toying with imposing legally mandated import restrictions because of an election promise to do so. More...

WWF's numbers on forestry questioned

February 2010: The recent scandals surrounding the accuracy of data on climate change have spread to arguably the world's most reputable conservation organisation, WWF. The scandal surrounds the use of WWF numbers in IPCC reports, and the validity of those claims. It also calls into question WWF's previous claims about levels of illegal logging. More...

US NGO ignores the obvious

February 2010: US-based campaign organisation Ecological Internet has launched a misguided smear campaign against the forestry industry in Papua New Guinea. The NGO has disseminated reams of misinformation, including accusations of torture and bribery. More...

Copenhagen commitments

February 2010: The deadline for nations to state their emissions-reducing commitments under the Copenhagen Accord passed on 31 January. A large number of nations submitted their commitments. However, the lack of technical detail in most of the submissions is stark. It clearly reveals the political nature of the Accord itself. More...

January 2010: A Special Report on Copenhagen - What it Means for Forestry

Copenhagen - what it means for forestry
Environmental campaigners, like world leaders, invested heavily in a strong Copenhagen outcome. This was no more apparent than in the protracted campaigns against the world's forestry and commodity industries in the lead-up to the conference. More...

Forestry in the negotiations
While a number of news reports and activists hailed a positive outcome for the world's forests at the negotiations, the decisions at Copenhagen will not have a significant impact upon forested nations in the immediate future. More...

Yes to SFM, no to 'no conversion'
The negotiations for longer-term, legally binding 'post-Kyoto' commitments made slow progress. Despite public comments that the group working on forestry and land-use was making headway, much of the negotiating text is still up for grabs, and it is very much dependent upon the progress of other negotiating groups. More...

No carbon trading bonanza
The failure at Copenhagen was the result of fundamental divisions between the industrialised economies, which wanted formal commitments from China and India and other major developing countries to reduce emissions and the outright rejection of that by those developing countries. More...

Concrete decisions
Outside the media circus surrounding the release of the Accord, one decision was approved by the UNFCCC that will affect forestry and economic development. SBSTA, the UNFCCC body that directs scientific and technical advice for the Secretariat, approved a way forward on methodological issues surrounding deforestation. More...

Multilateral initiatives
Halfway through the conference, a number of developed economies - Norway, Australia, France, Japan, and the US - announced that they would assemble US$3.5 billion of REDD finance for the next three years, from 2010 to 2012. More...

The business response
The business presence of forest-based industries at Copenhagen was muted compared with previous years. Representatives from the industry in Brazil and Europe were visible, but few industry representatives were putting forward their case. More...

The future Green response
The NGO response to Copenhagen was predictable. International NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF labelled the exercise as a failure for the planet. However, the final outcome of the talks - a political agreement and a commitment to negotiating - will require Green campaigners to reassess their strategies on climate change. More...