The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has launched a learning toolbox as part of its Sustainable Wetlands Adaptation Mitigation Program (SWAMP), which aims to support policy makers and practitioners “to begin the daunting task of compiling evidence and crafting policy” to protect tropical wetlands.
The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) released an occasional paper on improving the management of small-scale timber industries in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The paper notes that small-scale activities extract thirteen times more timber than large enterprise and, as such, improving the sustainability of the sector would have a significant impact on forests.
On content focus were made about where the IPCC’s focus should be. The first was for more attention on monitoring, including of financing. The second idea was about better integration, not just between the panel’s various internal working groups, but also with the science community working at the interface with development studies. It was clear for instance, that Peter Holmgren, who heads the Center for International Forestry Research, had a mission to press for a closer working relationship between the consultative body CGIAR and the IPCC.
The main threat to tropical forests comes from poor farmers who have no other option to feeding their families other than slashing and burning a patch of forest and growing food crops until the soil is exhausted after a few harvests, which then forces them to move on to a new patch of forest land. According CIFOR, some 350 million people in tropical countries are forest dwellers who derive half or more of their income from the forest. Forests provide directly 10 percent of the employment in developing countries,” says Jeffrey Sayer, former Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Certification systems could stop illegal logging, some say the labels provide little environmental benefit while supporting an unsustainable industry. For example, in the Congo Basin, the Center for International Forestry Research found better working and living conditions for forest workers and their families in FSC certified forests.
According to a recent study in Biological Conservation, economic analyses of forests tend to neglect areas containing high biodiversity. Further study from The Poverty and Environment Network of the Centre for International Forestry Research indicates that up to one-fifth of household income comes from forests in tropical developing countries.
As reservoirs shrink and taps run dry in Brazil’s worst ever water crisis, some scientists are making a connection between Amazonian deforestation and the monster drought. The south of Brazil right now is supposed to be in its rainy season and you have some reservoirs that are down to five or 10 percent of capacity accordingLouis Verchot, of the Center for International Forestry Research,
Les luttes politiques et de pouvoirs expliquent en partie le problème, selon les spécialistes qui pointent des difficultés à concevoir – et appliquer – des politiques que des acteurs de plus en plus nombreux pourraient approuver. «La phase lune de miel est terminée», selon Maria Brockhaus, scientifique chevronnée du Centre de recherche forestière internationale (CIFOR) dans un interview récente. «Vous avez des acteurs qui n’adhèrent plus volontiers à l’idée générale, qui sont en profond désaccord avec la manière d’appliquer cette idée.»