Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Are missing palm trees causing more lighting deaths in Bihar appearing in ‘The Times of India’ dated 29.05.2025". The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Are missing palm trees causing …
Tropical forests provide global climate regulation ecosystem services and their clearing is a significant source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resultant radiative forcing of climate change. However, consensus on pan-tropical forest carbon dynamics is lacking. The researchers present a new estimate that employs recommended good practices to quantify …
Mega hydropower projects in tropical forests pose a major emergent threat to terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity worldwide. Despite the unprecedented number of existing, under-construction and planned hydroelectric dams in lowland tropical forests, long-term effects on biodiversity have yet to be evaluated. We examine how medium and large-bodied assemblages of terrestrial …
In December of last year, the Nicaraguan government began work on the much-debated interoceanic canal. The proposed project would divide Nicaragua’s biodiverse rainforests, coastal reefs, and the iconic Lake Nicaragua. Although construction has not proceeded beyond clearing and paving an access road, on May 31st of this year, the project …
On March 9th and 10th, 2015, an independent panel met for two days at Florida International University’s College of Law to discuss the likely environmental impacts associated with the proposed inter-oceanic canal through Nicaragua. The goal was to review some sections of the draft Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) …
In a year when targets on forest loss and restoration are likely to be set nationally and at the UN level, this study by WWF-UK and Climate Advisers quantifies the ambition of commitments currently stated by forest countries to slow and reverse their forest loss – individually and collectively. The …
Protected public lands are insufficient to halt the loss of global biodiversity. However, most commercial landowners need incentives to engage in conservation. Through an interdisciplinary study examining palm-oil plantations in Sumatra, we demonstrate that (i) joint consideration of both biodiversity and economic relationships permits the spatial targeting of areas that …
The Planting Empowerment project is restoring deforested land for future generations “During dry season you see huge trucks loaded with enormous logs rolling out of the Darien jungle every day. It’s disheartening,” says Andrew Parrucci who, after graduating from Virginia Tech, spent several years in Panama as a volunteer with …
The vast tropical forests of Amazonia account for almost one-fifth of the world's terrestrial vegetation carbon stock About 1% of all the tree species in the Amazon account for half of the carbon locked in the vast South American rainforest, a study has estimated. Although the region is home to …
Despite a large increase in the area of selectively logged tropical forest worldwide, the carbon stored in deadwood across a tropical forest degradation gradient at the landscape scale remains poorly documented. Many carbon stock studies have either focused exclusively on live standing biomass or have been carried out in primary …
Using the case of Costa Rica, this paper examines how 'carbon' became an identifiable problem for that state. We trace how, during the 1980s, rationalities of financialisation and security arose in this country that allowed for Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) to emerge as an economic and political mechanism. Our …
A group of large companies, mainly in the food sector, have promised to reduce their role in the destruction of the world's forests, and a new online portal launched on Wednesday aims to hold them to their word. Some of the biggest names in global food production, processing and retailing, …
A group of large companies, mainly in the food sector, have promised to reduce their role in the destruction of the world's forests, and a new online portal launched on Wednesday aims to hold them to their word. Some of the biggest names in global food production, processing and retailing, …
Fungal spores are ubiquitous in the Earth's atmosphere, especially in the environment of tropical rainforests with intense biological activities. To assess the impact of fungi on chemical components of atmospheric aerosols at a Chinese tropical rainforest site, size-segregated fungal spore tracers (i.e. arabitol and mannitol) were measured along with major …
Atmospheric carbon dioxide records indicate that the land surface has acted as a strong global carbon sink over recent decades, with a substantial fraction of this sink probably located in the tropics, particularly in the Amazon. Nevertheless, it is unclear how the terrestrial carbon sink will evolve as climate and …
Do the wet savannahs and shrublands of Africa provide a large reserve of potential croplands to produce food staples or bioenergy with low carbon and biodiversity costs? We find that only small percentages of these lands have meaningful potential to be low-carbon sources of maize (~2%) or soybeans (9.5–11.5%), meaning …
In 2005 and 2010 the Amazon basin experienced two strong droughts, driven by shifts in the tropical hydrological regime possibly associated with global climate change, as predicted by some global models. Tree mortality increased after the 2005 drought, and regional atmospheric inversion modelling showed basin-wide decreases in CO2 uptake in …
In yet another demonstration of the inter-connectedness of the planetary ecosystem, a study has shown that large-scale deforestation in the temperate and high latitudes can drastically affect rainfall in the distant tropics. It causes changes in atmospheric circulation resulting in a southward shift in the monsoon rains, leading to a …
Satellite images suggest tropical forests from the Amazon to the Philippines are disappearing at a far more rapid pace than previously thought, a University of Maryland team of forest researchers say. The annual rate of deforestation from 1990 to 2010 was 62 percent higher than in the previous decade, and …
There’s no other way to put it: Cutting down tropical forests is disastrous. The lush plant life in these areas sequesters huge amounts of carbon, pulling it out of the atmosphere to fuel plant growth. Chopping down a rainforest releases carbon back to the atmosphere, worsening global warming. But at …
