Australia will commit $4.5 million towards helping neighbouring countries reduce deforestation. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said on Monday that up to $3 million would go to the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research. The other $1.5 million would help non-government organisations work with developing countries on large-scale pilot projects designed to reduce deforestation.

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After Libération and Le Monde, RFI continues coverage about logging in the Congo Basin. In Le Grand Reportage de 19 May, Paolo explains the history of forest exploitation in Cameroon, the forest law of 1994 and FLEGT

Frances Seymour, the director-general of the Centre for International Forestry Research, a non-governmental agency, said it had only been in the last six months that a consensus had developed that the solutions had to be connected. “It started with biofuels taking off as an issue because of climate change and now we’ve got food security too,” she said. “Recognising that all these are interlinked is significant progress but there’s still a long way to go to solving them.”

Le point focal de la convention cadre de l’Onu sur le changement climatique s’est exprimé vendredi dernier lors de la Journée de la forêt au Palais des congrès de Yaoundé.

Delegates from the Asia Pacific ended a meeting here Saturday calling for forestry policies to focus on people-centered development to help alleviate global poverty. They said the now much-debated climate change issues had been one of the vehicles to return forestry affairs to the top of the world’s agenda during the past two years. Indonesian climate expert Daniel Murdiyarso urged the speeding up of discussions about criteria for preparedness in implementing REDD projects. "We are in a hurry since we only have two years to discuss the REDD concept," he told the forum.

Discussions on strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change took centre stage when stakeholders of the Congo Basin Forests met in Yaounde on April 24 to celebrate Forest Day.

Initiated by the Central Africa Regional office of the Centre for International Forestry Research, CIFOR, the Forest Day aims to bring together regional stakeholders to chart ways of stemming the tides of a phenomenon that remains a bane of progress to humanity.

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The illegal timber trade, fuelled by poverty and corruption, is rife in much of Asia, where 78 percent of forests are state-owned and often managed by the armed forces, not the people who live in or near them, experts said. Tropical timber is relatively cheap because key functions of forests — clean air and water, and biodiversity — are not factored into market prices, said Dr Daniel Murdiyarso of the Center for International Forestry Research. "These services are underpriced or unpriced. It’s a market failure."

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In an effort to fight climate change, Vietnam will continue to work to increase forest coverage and importantly, ensure the quality of forest, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) said on April 23. Dr Daniel Murdiyarso from the Centre for International Forestry Research, said the strategy is a promising start to improvement and provides a solid policy tool to support further work.