This publication shows that carbon prices exceeding US$ 20 per ton of CO2 captured by the natural regeneration of deforested areas in the Amazon would be truly transformative for the region’s landscape. Offsets for captured carbon would ensure forest integrity, inducing extensive forest restoration and the capture of 16 Gt …
(Reuters) - Swathes of the Amazon may have been grassland until a natural shift to a wetter climate about 2,000 years ago let the rainforests form, according to a study that challenges common belief that the world’s biggest tropical forest is far older. The arrival of European diseases after Columbus …
A protest march of indigenous people from Ecuador's Amazon region and the Andean highlands reached the country's capital here Tuesday after an eleven-day walk from the Amazon. The protesters marched to speak out against a new water law they say will restrict their access to water. The march, led by …
Indigenous people call off action following meeting with ministers over their ‘failure’ to aid to contaminated communities Peruvian ministers have met with representatives of hundreds of indigenous people from the country’s Amazon rainforest after they threatened to go on hunger strike in protest at what they say is government failure …
Indonesia lost 840,000 hectares of forest in 2012 compared to 460,000 hectares in Brazil, despite its forest being a quarter the size of the Amazon rainforest Indonesia has greatly under-reported how much primary rainforest it is cutting down, according to the government's former head of forestry data gathering. UN and …
Poor air quality causes an estimated 2.6–4.4 million premature deaths per year. Hazardous conditions form when meteorological components allow the accumulation of pollutants in the near-surface atmosphere. Global-warming-driven changes to atmospheric circulation and the hydrological cycle are expected to alter the meteorological components that control pollutant build-up and dispersal, but …
The morning after I landed in the Brazilian state of Pará, I joined a pair of state government officials heading to an event in a municipality of Terra Alta, located 70 miles inland from the capital of Belém. It turned out they were honored guests, and as we approached we …
Climate change may be taking a hidden toll on intact rainforests in the heart of the Amazon, finds a new study based on 35 years of observations. The research, published in the journal Ecology, focused on the ecological impacts of fragmentation but unexpectedly found changes in the control forests. These …
Brazil’s government, the World Wildlife Fund and various partners are expected to unveil an agreement on Wednesday that would establish a $215 million fund for conservation of protected jungle in the Amazon rainforest. The fund, which seeks to ensure conservation of over 90 protected areas in the Amazon, comes as …
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa on Tuesday accused U.S oil company Chevron of deceiving the country's justice system in a decades-long trial over pollution in the Amazon by seeking to avoid inspections of areas contaminated by oil production. Correa said experts hired by Chevron Corp found evidence of contamination in areas …
Illegally logged timber in Brazil is being laundered on a massive and growing scale and then sold on to unwitting buyers in the UK, US, Europe and China, Greenpeace claimed on Thursday. After a two-year investigation, the environmental campaign group says it has uncovered evidence of systematic abuse and a …
Government says only 359,762 of 756,000 signatures were legitimate, meaning petition fails to trigger national referendum Nearly two thirds of the signatures on a national petition to stop oil being exploited on a large scale in one of the most biodiverse parts of the Amazon rainforest have been rejected, leading …
In late 2010, Haitian immigrants began to arrive at remote river border crossings in the western Brazilian Amazon. Attracted by the prospect of work in Brazil's burgeoning economy, thousands of Haitians paid large sums to people traffickers, known as “coyotes,” to arrange their journey to Brazil. They entered Brazil through …
The powerful Washington law firm Patton Boggs dropped out of an effort to force Chevron to pay a $9.5 billion Ecuadorean pollution judgment on Wednesday, expressing regrets for its involvement in the case and agreeing to pay the oil company $15 million in settlement payments. The settlement came as another …
Six environmental advocates from India, Peru, Russia and three other nations have won this year's Goldman Prize, which is awarded annually for grass-roots activism. India's Ramesh Agrawal received the prize for helping villagers fight a large coal mine in Chhattisgarh state, the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Foundation said Monday. Peru's …
Years of drier conditions in the Congo River basin in central Africa appear to be affecting trees in the region’s vast rain forests, scientists reported on Wednesday. Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers said the capacity of the trees to photosynthesize had declined. If this trend continues, they suggested, …
The Supreme Court of Canada agreed on Thursday to hear an appeal by Chevron Corp of a lower-court decision that said Ecuadorean villagers could pursue in Ontario their $9.51 billion lawsuit for pollution in the Amazon jungle. The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in December that Ontario was a proper …
Global warming will disrupt food supplies, slow world economic growth and may already be causing irreversible damage to nature, according to a UN report due this week that will put pressure on governments to act. A 29-page draft by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will also outline many ways …
A long-standing debate was resolved yesterday when a new Nasa-led study confirmed that natural forests in the Amazon remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they emit. This means that the 5.5 million square kilometer forest is a crucial factor in reducing global warming. Living trees take carbon dioxide …
Donor nations, rainforest-rich countries and multilateral institutions will have to spend tens of billions of dollars in the next few years to ensure that nations undergoing deforestation will have incentives to halt the practice, a report said. Without the money to buy forest-based emissions reductions, the mechanism known as REDD+ …
Retailer Marks & Spencer has announced a new partnership with a charity that will protect 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of rainforest in Peru. The retailer has signed a partnership with UK-based rainforest protection charity Cool Earth, that will ensure the protection of one million trees in the Amazon. In addition …
