Australia may have reputation for vast areas of wilderness, but in reality the continent’s ecosystems have been chopped and diced. Now we need to protect what’s left.
Forest conservation has been a contentious issue in international climate change discussions for years, but now developing countries are embracing the need to protect their forests.
China has experienced deforestation in some parts of the country placing valuable biodiversity at risk of extinction.
Shutterstock
Bat populations have been hammered by deforestation. Efforts like tree-planting schemes are a step forward, but they’re doomed to fail unless we apply a bit more local knowledge.
Forests are vital to life on earth.
Forest image from www.shutterstock.com
James Whitmore, The Conversation and Eliza Berlage, The Conversation
There are more than three trillion trees worldwide, but that’s only half as many were around at the start of human civilisation according to new research.
Save the rainforests? A new study shows mangroves matter too, as they can store three to five times more carbon than rainforests.
Daniel Murdiyarso for Center for International Forestry Research
Indonesia is ranked among the world’s top dozen contributors to climate change – but a new study shows that protecting the country’s mangroves could slash its greenhouse gas emissions.
Conservation action is needed to save the DRC’s forests and slow global climate change.
Julien Harneis, Creative Commons.
The mid year Bonn negotiations for the proposed new global agreement to tackle climate change have just concluded. They will be finalised at the end of the year in Paris. What progress is being made? What are the challenging issues that may end up being a focus of negotiations in Paris? What does the roadmap from here look like?
Eastern Australia’s forests could be a hotspot for deforestation in the future - just like these forests in south east Asia.
William Laurance
A new WWF report highlights Australia as a hotspot for future deforestation. Australia talks the talk on deforestation, but will it walk the walk?
Mangroves are still be cleared for aquaculture expansion. Since 1989, 6600 hectares of Tanjung Panjang Nature Reserve’s original 13,300 ha of mangroves have been converted.
Iona Soulsby
Mangroves, hectare for hectare, store more carbon than any other forests. But they are also among the most threatened. New projects in Indonesia show how mangroves might be restored.
Safeguarding rainforests is an area where the United Nations has made great strides - hopefully the Paris summit can deliver more of the same.
Sze Ning/Flickr.com/Wikimedia Commons
In the final part of his essay on the Paris climate talks, Nick Rowley explains how a successful deal, whether binding or not, needs to influence directly the domestic policies of the world’s nations.
UN lead climate negotiator Christiana Figueres (second from left) has been hailed as having the dynamism needed to drive the Paris talks.
EPA/AAP
The much-hyped 2009 Copenhagen climate summit yielded only a flimsy accord. But, as Nick Rowley writes in part 2 of his three-part essay on the 2015 Paris climate talks, there are several reasons why this year won’t see another flop.
Observations from space have shown the world overall is getting greener despite deforestation and drought.
Carl Davies/CSIRO
Land clearing in Queensland has tripled since 2010 after wind backs to regulations.
A ranger looks at the skull of an elephant killed by poachers - a frequent side-effect of development projects that open up remote forests to human access.
Ralph Buij
The G20 has pledged to spend more than US$60 trillion on new infrastructure in the next 15 years, much of which will affect pristine areas. Without a solid plan, the environmental toll could be huge.
Rainforests in trouble in Indonesian Borneo.
Bill Laurance
At the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit, which concluded yesterday in Sydney, environment minister Greg Hunt announced A$6 million to combat illegal logging. While the funding builds on legislation to ensure…
Rainforest cleared for oil palm plantations in Borneo.
Wakx/Flickr
How do the products we buy affect the world’s rainforests? In the lead up to the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit held in Sydney this week, The Conversation is running a series on rainforest commodities…