FORESTS NEWS
SPECIAL COVERAGE
COVID-19 poses challenges for forest communities
Learning to live with SARS-COV2 coronavirus
Chasseur Zorro Ndeli dans la réserve de Tumba – Ledima en République démocratique du Congo. Photo : Ollivier Girard/CIFOR
Investigative work into deadly viruses and wild meat in Africa shines light on the conundrum faced by communities dependent on wild meat for their dietary protein, fat and micronutrients. Learn more about the way deforestation and forest degradation exacerbates the spread of such diseases as COVID-19 and Ebola as they are transmitted from animals to humans, then person to person and what governments can do about it.
21 Feb 2022
New research details complexity of growing risks to endangered pangolins
A dietary delicacy in some countries in Africa and Asia, the pangolin is also prized for its scales, which are used in folk and traditional remedies to treat various ailments. Although pangolins are protected by international laws under the Convention...
15 Dec 2021
Wildlife clubs teach children in Guyana’s Rupununi about life and livelihoods
A box of chocolates seems completely out of place as a tool for teaching kids about wildlife, but Susan George makes it work. George, a member of Guyana’s North Rupununi District Development Board (NRDDB), used the chocolate strategy when she started...
12 Jul 2021
COVID-19 makes it harder for charcoal producers and traders to make ends meet
In Kisangani — Democratic Republic of Congo’s third-largest city — COVID-19 has had an impact on the charcoal industry that its more than 1.8 million inhabitants rely on to meet their daily energy needs, putting forests at greater risk....
24 Jun 2021
La urgente tarea de abordar los riesgos que trae la caza de vida silvestre
El incremento en la demanda de alimentos y medicinas tradicionales, la proliferación de guerras y conflictos, y la expansión de mercados legales e ilegales han exacerbado la crisis de la fauna silvestre, afectando ecosistemas y llevado casi a la extinción...
11 May 2021
Forest-dwellers, global community must address tropical wildlife hunting risks
Increasing demand for food and traditional medicines, multiplying local wars and conflicts, an expanding legal and illegal market trade have exacerbated the wildlife crisis in recent years, damaging ecosystems and driving many species to the verge of...
6 May 2021
Scientists urge greater role for forests in policies on food security and nutrition
A new policy brief demonstrates the role forests and trees play in sustaining food production and food security and nutrition (FSN). Featuring four dimensions of FSN, including availability, accessibility, utilization and stability, it aims to inform...
14 Apr 2021
Rethink diet-land use connections to prevent future pandemics, scientist says
Terry Sunderland on CBC radio's "The Current"
20 Mar 2021
Britain’s Prince Charles says circular economy powered by nature crucial for recovery
The crisis provoked by the coronavirus pandemic offers a chance to shift from a fossil-fuel based economy to a nature-based circular bioeconomy, said Britain’s heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles on Friday. Speaking at the “Nature at the Heart...
13 Jan 2021
Harness ‘power of landscapes’ to fix health and environmental challenges, report says
Governments must act on the vast benefits of conservation and support the rights of people living in biodiverse landscapes to re-establish environmental equilibrium and protect humanity from the consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss, a...
17 Nov 2020
As the pandemic pushes millions toward poverty, forests and trees can safeguard livelihoods
Daniel C. Miller is associate professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With the coronavirus pandemic driving millions of people into poverty, no stone should go unturned in the search...
29 Oct 2020
U.N. expert urges transformative change to bend curve on biodiversity loss
The rate of deforestation has dropped by a third over the past 10 years compared to the previous decade, according to a landmark report on international biodiversity targets. The achievement, which falls short of a goal agreed by governments, offers a...
29 Sep 2020
COVID-19 pandemic offers opportunity to rethink status quo conservation efforts
The coronavirus pandemic creates an opportunity to rethink generally accepted underperforming business-as-usual approaches to conservation, say more than 20 conservation and development professionals in an editorial published by environmental news provider...
25 Sep 2020
Insecurity, COVID-19 hit women-led shea sector on eve of Africa free trade deal
Women have dominated shea production and sales for centuries in West Africa, managing trees, gathering nuts, roasting and crushing kernels to create rich butter used in cooking, cosmetics and medicines. This women-led shea market value chain now faces...
19 Sep 2020
U.N. green cities initiative to promote forestry and sustainable food systems
A new green cities initiative will encourage governments to kickstart large-scale transformative changes to improve food security, nutrition and the wellbeing of people in and around urban centers, said the director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture...
14 Sep 2020
Can healthy ecosystems prevent pandemics?
Charlotte Milbank is an interdisciplinary Ph.D. candidate in epidemiology and geography at Britain’s University of Cambridge. Any views expressed are her own. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown deserved spotlight on the complex interactions and interdependencies...
10 Sep 2020
‘Land and seascapes’ approach gives Galapagos an edge in confronting coronavirus outbreak
Scott Henderson is the vice president of the Sustainable Landscapes and Seascapes program at Conservation International. Any opinions expressed are his own. A visitor to the Galápagos Islands at the turn of the millennium would have found an archipelago...
20 Aug 2020
Earth Overshoot Day 2020 arrives later due to pandemic-related slowdown in clearing forests
The global coronavirus lockdown has delayed Earth Overshoot Day mainly because of a decrease in wood harvesting and CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, according to the Global Footprint Network. This year, the day lands on Aug. 22, more than three...
17 Jul 2020
Q+A: Rollback of environmental protections continues during COVID-19 pandemic, expert says
As the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown limits civic participation, some officials are dismantling ecosystem protections, an environmental governance expert has said. Rachel Golden-Kroner, a social scientist with Conservation International who studies the cyclical...
10 Jun 2020
In their own words: COLANDS and landscape collaboration during COVID-19
Family interruptions, poor Internet access, concern for contacts in the field and broad uncertainty — these are just a few of the challenges facing researchers working while under quarantine. Team members from the Collaborating to Operationalize...
6 Jun 2020
Jane Goodall and Robert Nasi: Put forests at forefront of COVID-19 recovery
One of the major problems in the world today is food security and the growing human population, said primatologist Jane Goodall on Friday in an address that was broadcast as part of the Global Landscapes Forum from Bonn, Germany. Goodall first gained...
3 Jun 2020
Defining the role of forests, trees, agroforestry to help curb COVID-19 food crisis
The emergence of the coronavirus has put the world on the brink of a major famine, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), which says food insecurity is expected to almost double this year to 265 million people. Already, more than 820 million people...
18 May 2020
Will COVID-19 put the kibosh on major in-person conferences for good?
The COVID-19 global lockdown has made a big dent in daily carbon emissions, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change. At the peak of social-isolation measures introduced by governments in early April, they decreased by...
5 May 2020
Terrain through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic: Blueprint for a healthy planet
Scientists have demonstrated that such diseases as the new SARS-COV2 coronavirus COVID-19 and Ebola can emerge due to ecosystem imbalances in forests. Over the past few months, this hypothesis has flourished through coverage in the mainstream news media,...
28 Apr 2020
COVID-19: cómo la naturaleza interviene para volver a llenar los ‘bosques vacíos’ cuando los animales desaparecen
“No debemos dejar que un bosque lleno de árboles nos haga creer que todo está bien”. Esta advertencia de Kent Redford dio un giro a las ideas sobre la conservación forestal cuando fue publicada en un estudio titulado “El bosque vacío”, en...
23 Apr 2020
COVID-19 and what it means for wild meat
Tune in to get the highlights from the previous webinar that addresses timely issues around wildmeat in the wake of current COVID-19 pandemic.
17 Apr 2020
COVID-19 pandemic: How nature steps in to refill ‘empty forests’ when animals disappear
“We must not let a forest full of trees fool us into believing that all is well.” Kent Redford’s cautionary statement turned prevailing views on forest conservation inside out when it was published in an essay titled ”The Empty Forest,”...
30 Mar 2020
COVID-19-led ban on wild meat could take protein off the table for millions of forest dwellers
Conservationists have greeted China’s recent clampdown on wild animal hunting and consumption with enthusiasm. The government made the move based on scientific theories that COVID-19 was transmitted from a pangolin or a bat to humans in a market in...
