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 Food security, forestry and climate change leading expert Peter Holmgren took the reins at the Center for International Forestry Research this month amid growing awareness worldwide of the critical role forests play in sustainable development and global warming.
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 “While the phenomenon of ‘land grabbing’ continues unabated, an increasingly subtle and arguably more ethically questionable movement has gathered momentum” says CIFOR scientist, Terry Sunderland in this month’s POLEX. Drawing from a recent paper, he highlights 'green grabbing' -- a new approach to conservation where large tracts of land across the globe are being appropriated for finance-driven conservation activities, such as PES and REDD+. He examines whether the commoditization of nature -- where the market defines and a dictates how nature is both perceived and managed -- is just another guise for the wealthy to preside over local rights and access to land.
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 The British government recently unveiled plans to make all publicly funded scientific research available to anyone by 2014 – for free. “This signals a dramatic change for British universities, whose current scientific research is only available through expensive subscription-based journals,” says Terry Sunderland, CIFOR scientist in this latest Science Dispatch. While all scientists want to publish in high impact journals whilst at the same time making their research accessible to a wider audience, he discusses that, for scientists in developing countries, “the open access movement could mean the world.”
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 For thousands of years, the people living on the banks of the Mekong river have been paddling through its treacherous waters in wooden cargo boats laden with freshly grown produce, ready for trade. But in the last few decades rising foreign investment and a rapidly expanding population has changed all that. Trucks carrying tonnes of commercially grown produce now trundle along newly built roads slicing through the forested slopes. As droves of aid and conservation projects move in to protect one of the world's great waterways, a new book co-authored by CIFOR asks – can they really succeed?
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 With 60 percent of the world relying on 30-40 of the world’s crops, the world’s food basket is shrinking at an alarming rate says a new CIFOR blog. Furthermore industrial agriculture consumes resources, contributes pollutants, and degrades resilient landscapes at levels that exceed the earth’s capacity to cope. Monitoring threatened wild crops, as well as the cultivated plants and domesticated animals that farmers depend on, will be vital to understanding how to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
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 The increased cultivation of açaí — the purple fruit that dangles from palms in the Brazilian rainforest and is touted by many celebrities for its ‘age-defying’ properties – may be one of the reasons for the country’s staggering increase in forest cover over the past two decades. But despite smallholder success in improving biodiversity and forest cover, there needs to be a greater understanding of how local people manage and market their produce in order to recognise their contribution to the economy and sustainable forest management.
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 Policy makers seeking to slow the pace of deforestation in lowland Bolivia need to prioritise two key areas of action, say experts: reduce the expansion of cattle ranching, which accounts for nearly a third of all forest loss, and enforce existing legislation that protects carbon-rich forests. In this CIFOR blog on land-use change in Bolivia, a new study found although large and small- scale agriculture was far more destructive to forests, targeting the expansion of cattle ranching would be less detrimental to the livelihoods of smallholders, especially those taking part in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation or REDD+.
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Eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity
8 - 19 October 2012, Andhra Pradesh, India. more
The Crawford Fund’s Annual International Conference, “The Scramble for Natural Resources: More Food, Less Land?”
9 - 10 October 2012, , Canberra, Australia. more
International Greening Education Event
10 -12 October 2012, Karlsruhe, Germany. more
The 2012 Conference on Sustainable Business in Asia
1 - 3 November 2012, Bangkok, Thailand. more
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