From September 2012-March 2013 I compiled, set the direction for and wrote the majority of the text for the 2012 CIFOR Annual Report, titled ‘The Changing Face of Forestry”.
Download PDF here.
View HTML version here.
Examples of my stories in the Annual Report:
Scoping out solutions for Zambia’s charcoal trade
Increasing women’s participation in community forest management in Nicaragua
Emerging trade, emerging trends: Examining China’s engagement with Africa
A four degree rise in the world’s temperature can be prevented, but it requires governments around the world to focus on greener, more inclusive growth, said a World Bank climate change expert at a Development Policy Centre event.
“Climate change threatens to roll back decades of development and it will be the poor in every country who will suffer most,” said Rachel Kyte, the World Bank’s Vice President for Sustainable Development, at ANU’s Crawford School on March 21.
“Climate change is the rug that is being pulled out from underneath the poor today and will be pulled out from underneath all of us, rich or poor, in the next 20-30 years,” she said.
Blog post for Development Policy Centre.
A new study boosts support for the physics behind a controversial theory that forests play a significant role in determining rainfall, creating atmospheric winds that pump moisture across continents.
The model could revolutionise the way we understand local climates, and their vulnerability, with many major implications. It suggests, for instance, that by strategically replanting forests we could attract rainfall into desert and arid regions like the African Sahel, where drought has for years ravaged crops and induced famine.
Likewise, significant forest loss could transform lush tropical regions into arid landscapes.
“This theory provides us with yet another reason to protect and conserve forest cover,” said Douglas Sheil, co-author of the paper published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and a Senior Associate with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Blog story for CIFOR Forests News on controversial research on rainfall physics.
I conducted interviews for and co-produced a video on women and forests for the Centre for International Forestry Research to mark International Women’s Day 2013.
Support for a work program on agriculture is urgently needed at Doha to incorporate the growing sector into international efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change as well as address looming food security issues, said experts.
“Agriculture is still considered a sideshow in the climate arena and a decision has been lacking over several years of U.N. climate negotiations. Agriculture will be massively impacted by climate change, both the increase in extreme conditions and the rising temperatures. We need global action to ensure food security under climate change,” said Bruce Campbell, head of the CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) research program.
Read full post on CIFOR Forests News or Reuters AlertNet.
(Photo by Neil Palmer/CIAT)
British parliamentarian Barry Gardiner, a passionate advocate on environmental policy, talks to Forests News about REDD+ during the 18th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP18) in Doha, Qatar.
One of the key concerns about the U.N.-backed scheme is whether developing countries will be able to implement the legal and policy frameworks needed to make it a success. Legislators in developing and developed countries all have a significant role to play in creating these frameworks and need to use their oversight roles to ensure enough resources are directed towards the scheme, says Gardiner.
Read full post at CIFOR Forests News or Reuters Alertnet.