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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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…