Forests sustain and protect us in a myriad of ways. They absorb carbon dioxide and provide us with oxygen, they harbour more than three quarters of terrestrial biodiversity, and they support the livelihoods of millions of people worldwide. But the world has lost 420 million hectares of forest since 1990. …
The effectiveness of national energy policy will be decisive for achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Emissions from the production and consumption of energy need to reduce significantly, but government commitments in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) fall short of the action …
Pope Francis issued a ringing defence of the people and the environment of the Amazon on Friday, saying big business and “consumerist greed” could not be allowed to destroy a natural habitat vital for the entire planet. Francis, who has made the environment and climate change a focus of his …
Mobile technologies could help to improve service delivery to smallholder farmers, but whether such services are fulfilling their potential remains poorly understood. To address this gap, this article presents an exploratory literature review regarding the impact of mobile phone-enabled services on farmers in developing countries. The review highlights a dearth …
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges the world must meet today and in the future. Prolonged droughts and desertification are among the issues faced by many countries, especially in Africa and Asia, where the rural poor and smallholders are most heavily affected. If people are to survive in …
In the past five years, a group of miners from the Amazonas Region and Madre de Dios have destroyed about 20 hectares of forest, not including the constant contamination from the Pastacillo stream, in the Río Santiago district. Although two bans have been put in place, the Wampis community claims …
- Locals are more effective than governments in protecting the world's largest rainforest, a study said on Tuesday, amid efforts to crackdown on soaring illegal deforestation. Ranching and logging are rapidly destroying forests that have been home for centuries to indigenous communities in the Amazon, often dubbed the "lungs of …
Six farmers have been shot dead by a criminal gang who wanted to seize their farms to muscle in on the lucrative palm oil trade, according to indigenous Amazon leaders in Peru. Local leaders in the central Amazon region of Ucayali say the victims were targeted last Friday because they …
A team of scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science found that, between 1999 and 2016, gold mining expansion cost the region 4,437 hectares (10,964 acres) of forest loss per year. Miners were working an area in 2016 that was 40 percent larger than it was in 2012. The findings, …
A new report examines how to support the successful integration of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) into national development planning. The adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 signalled a major transition in the international climate change governance regime. The Agreement outlines the agreed global process for when the Kyoto Protocol …
The project "Facilitating REDD+ benefit sharing in Peru" (2013-2016) aimed to implement early REDD+ actions enabled by appropriate, efficient and equitable benefit-sharing mechanisms that are sufficiently robust to be mainstreamed into long-term national and international REDD+ frameworks. Among the main lessons learnt of the project: The need to establish a …
Over half a billion children are living in areas with extremely high levels of floods and nearly 160 million children live in areas of high or extremely high droughts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 26% of the annual 6.6 million deaths of children under-five are linked to environment-related …
A new study reveals that the loss of larger animals in tropical forests diminishes the overall ecosystem biodiversity because of subtle interactions involving those animals and the evolutionary strategy of the forests’ plants. These findings highlight the need for conservation efforts aimed at protecting these important animals. Why losing big …
This dissertation examines the performance of REDD+ MRV in terms of its implementation and institutionalization in developing countries, and the political processes by which such institutionalization occurs. Specifically, it examines: the institutional effectiveness of REDD+ MRV; how the concept of REDD+ MRV and associated ideas have materialized in new institutional …
Small and medium-scale agriculture is responsible for 80 percent of the deforestation between 2001 and 2015. According to experts of the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) controlling the deforestation will be difficult because “it is everywhere and in small patches.” Peru lost more than 1 million hectares of …
This brief explores how the design of water resources governance systems in Colombia and Peru affect stakeholder participation, drawing on insights from SEI projects in both countries. There is a growing interest in improving the governance of natural resources to ensure both equity and sustainability. Governance is not the same …
We mapped the inferred long-distance migrations of four species of Amazonian goliath catfishes (Brachyplatystoma rousseauxii, B. platynemum, B. juruense and B. vaillantii) based on the presence of individuals with mature gonads and conducted statistical analysis of the expected long-distance downstream migrations of their larvae and juveniles. Original Source
Severe droughts gripping Peru have given way to some of the country's most devastating downpours in decades, catching authorities off guard as they scramble to contain the kind of floods that climate change is expected to make more frequent. At least 20 people have died in rain-related events in Peru …
In our recent perspective article, we noted that most (approximately 60 percent) terrestrial large carnivore and large herbivore species are now threatened with extinction, and we offered a 13-point declaration designed to promote and guide actions to save these iconic mammalian megafauna (Ripple et al. 2016). Some may worry that …
Lima - Floods and landslides in Peru have killed 15 people and displaced more than 36 000 this month, authorities said on Monday. The latest casualties were six people caught in a mudslide in the southern Arequipa region, the National Civil Defence Institute said. Among others, six miners were trapped …
Revenues derived from carbon have been seen as an important tool for supporting forest conservation over the past decade. At the same time, there is high uncertainty about how much revenue can reasonably be expected from land use emissions reductions initiatives. Despite this uncertainty, REDDþ projects and conservation initiatives that …
