Ongoing deforestation reported in Borneo concession held by APP supplier. Up to 1,400 hectares of forest have been cleared in a concession belonging to an Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) supplier in Borneo, potentially putting the company in breach of the forestry giant's zero deforestation commitment, reports a coalition of local NGO's. In a report released Tuesday, Relawan Pemantau Hutan Kalimantan (RPHK), a coalition of NGO's in part supported by WWF-Indonesia, said that blocks of natural forest have been cleared in a concession belonging to PT Daya Tani Kalbar (DTK), an APP supplier. The clearing has taken place since APP's moratorium went into effect February 1, 2013.
"RPHK analyzed historical satellite images and conducted a field investigation in November 2013," states the report. "RPHK found that 'pulpwood plantation areas' A, B and C identified on APP’s 'moratorium map' still had blocks of natural forest remaining on the day before the moratorium deadline of 31 January 2013. These blocks had disappeared by November 2013. " Google Map of the concession area. Buddhist Monks Leading Movement To Save Areng Valley In Cambodia. A $3,000 grant through RAN’s Protect-An-Acre program is supporting Mother Nature, a Cambodian movement of Buddhist monks, environmental activists and remote communities fighting for the cancellation of the proposed Cheay Areng dam in the Areng Valley of southwest Cambodia.
The dam would flood up to 50,000 acres of forest, half of which is part of the Central Cardamom Protected Forest, while the additional area is home to more than 1,000 Khmer Daeum Indigenous peoples. Habitat for a vast array of rare fauna and flora, including the clouded leopard, would be lost and people would be forcibly relocated into a known elephant corridor, far from any major body of water, where rice growing is next to impossible. Construction would also open up adjacent rainforest to further logging, poaching and land encroachment. All of this destruction would be caused for very little return, in the grand scheme of things.
Find out more about the Save Areng Valley campaign at Mother Nature.
Palm oil company Bumitama under fire for clearing rainforest, endangering orangutans. Multiple allegations have been made against the Indonesian palm oil producer for setting up illegal plantations, violating its own commitments to stop clearing forests and misrepresenting its membership in the RSPO. Clearance for oil palm plantations near Tanjung Puting National Park.
An excavator constructs a canal in recently cleared land in an oil palm concession owned by PT Andalan Sukses Makmur (PT ASMR) concession, a subsidiary of Bumitama Agro Ltd. The area is near Kumai Seberang village, next to Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan. Taken 09/11/2013 © Ulet Ifansasti / Greenpeace Bumitama Agri, an Indonesian palm oil producer, is breaking the law by clearing forests and developing plantations without the proper licenses, a coalition of NGOs said in a report released on Nov. 21. The groups have called on financiers to either force Bumitama to shape up or cut ties with the company and with global palm oil traders such as Wilmar and IOI that do business with Bumitama. The world is still losing its forests, and these beautiful satellite maps tally the toll | Grist - Iceweasel. A little more than 300,000 square miles of forest was established or replanted worldwide between 2000 and 2012.
Unfortunately, almost 900,000 square miles was destroyed during the same time period — logged, ravaged by fire, or attacked by insects. Those are the main conclusions of a study that examined hundreds of thousands of images snapped by the U.S. government’s Landsat satellites. Academic researchers partnered with Google staff to produce stunning maps displaying the world’s forests and areas that have been deforested or reforested since 2000. Those maps were used to produce the following short videos: About a third of the deforestation occurred in the tropics, and half of that was in South America.
The tropics lost more forest cover during the study period than any other region. That wasn’t the only worrisome climate-related finding in the new paper. Here’s a non-interactive version of the online map: REDD. Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity. Author Affiliations Contributed by Eric F. Lambin, January 18, 2011 (sent for review November 21, 2010) Abstract A central challenge for sustainability is how to preserve forest ecosystems and the services that they provide us while enhancing food production. Land changes are cumulatively a major driver of global environmental change (1).
Globalization increases the worldwide interconnectedness of places and people through markets, information and capital flows, human migrations, and social and political institutions. Agricultural intensification or land use zoning in a country may trigger compensating changes in trade flows and, thus, affect indirectly land use in other countries. This paper analyzes the challenges and opportunities for preserving natural forest ecosystems while enhancing food production in tropical developing countries under conditions of scarcity of unused productive cropland and economic globalization. Conceptual Framework Land, an Increasingly Scarce Resource Table 1.