Community leaders, including Serge Zoubga and Concepta Mukasa discussed their efforts to restore local landscapes, while Rwandan Minister of Lands and Forestry Francine Tumushine, UN Environment Executive Director Erik Solheim, Stefan Schmitz of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Director General Robert Nasi shared insights into the role of restoration in sustainable development and climate mitigation and adaptation.

“Unless urgent and concerted action is taken, land degradation will worsen in the face of population growth, unprecedented consumption, an increasingly globalized economy and climate change,” said CIFOR’s Nasi. “We must restore at least 12 million hectares annually simply to reach land degradation neutrality. And if we want to rectify errors from the past, then we need to run twice as fast.”

In the first week of July, Solidaridad joined forces with other NGOs and institutions in the Mesoamerican region to talk sustainable landscapes. The result? A joint action plan to enhance sustainability landscapes and promote a green and inclusive economy in Central America and Mexico.

Other institutions that also contributed through their participation in working groups were the Global Forum of Landscapes of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the German Corporation for International Cooperation  (GIZ), the initiatives Reforestamos Mexico, Rikolto, the Ford Foundation, the University of California-Berkeley and the World Resources Institute.

The Earth loses 7 million hectares of forest each year. An alarming situation that deserves to be addressed at global level. African countries are therefore committed to reversing the situation. Two international strategic meetings on forest restoration are taking place this week in Nairobi, Kenya: the meeting of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) from August 26 to 28  and the Global Landscape Forum (GLF) on 29 and 30 August. WWF’s global strategy is to help restoring 350 million hectares of degraded forest landscapes by 2030.

Wahana Lingkungan Hidup (Walhi) mengatakan jika kebakaran hutan dan lahan (karhutla) masih berulang terjadi di Indonesia, maka akan sulit memenuhi target penurunan emisi gas rumah kaca (GRK) yang menjadi komitmen pemerintah pada Conference of Parties (COP) 21 di Paris.

Sebelumnya, pakar perubahan iklim dan lingkungan Institut Pertanian Bogor (IPB), Prof Dr Daniel Murdiyarso mengatakan pemerintah perlu lebih fokus dalam mengelola lahan gambut untuk menyudahi kebakaran hutan dan lahan sekaligus mencapai target penurunan emisi gas rumah kaca (GRK).

Padahal dalam luasan kecil lahan gambut, menurut peneliti CIFOR ini, jumlah karbonnya sangat besar. Sehingga jika memang ingin menembak target menurunkan emisi harus relevan dan juga efektif, antara lain dengan memilih mengelola lahan dengan kepadatan gambut yang tinggi.

Esther Mwangi, the Principle Scientist of the Nairobi based CIFOR, says women in Rakia, Masaka and Mpigi districts are contributing greatly in tree planting and restoring the degraded environment resulting from illegal logging and farming.

The 2018 Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) Africa Conference is set to kick off in Nairobi, Kenya this week, bringing together representatives from both the public and private sectors, as well as scientists, indigenous peoples, youth, and others, in order to bolster efforts to combat deforestation and land degradation on the African continent.

The GLF, an initiative of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in partnership with the UN Environment Programme and the World Bank, regularly hosts global, regional, and local events that bring together key stakeholders to discuss issues around sustainable land use. The conference in Nairobi, which starts tomorrow, August 29, is particularly focused on implementation of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), which aims to restore 100 million hectares (a little over 247 million acres) of degraded landscapes across Africa by 2030.

Indonesia is down to its last tropical seasonal forests—and they’re entirely unprotected.

The forests are found in the Tanimbar archipelago in Maluku Province, due directly north of Darwin, Australia, on the border of the Banda and Arafura seas. One of the most unconnected parts of the archipelago, Tanimbar has no formal port of entry, and population lingers around 100,000 scattered across the 30 or so islands in the group.

“It’s very expensive to work and go there,” says Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Director General Robert Nasi, who has kept a watchful eye on the islands along with Yves Laumonier, scientist at CIFOR and the Center for Research and Agronomy and Development (CIRAD), since the early 2000s. “Once, we got stuck in Ambon on the way when all flights were cancelled.”

For thousands of families from Metro Manila, Calabarzon to Central Luzon, Ilocos region and up to the Cordillera Administrative Region, many may be familiar with the Biblical Noah’s Ark story.

But millions more have or are getting an experience of what it is.

To meteorologists at the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), the government’s weather agency, this is all part of climate change where a phenomenal rainfall volume in 2009’s Typhoon Ondoy (international code name Ketsana) was dropped in just one day.

To environmentalists, the floods are worsening because the people have destroyed nature’s first defense against it—the trees.

“If you have trees within and around  communities, you will not worry too much about flooding as those who have treeless areas,” ecologists at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NULS) and the Center for International Forestry Research (Cifor) would say.