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Under international climate change agreements, countries must estimate greenhouse gas emissions related to deforestation and forest degradation. In cases of deforestation—when trees are cut and replaced by annual crops, for instance—the change in land cover is clearly visible. Forest degradation, by contrast, is more subtle. Trees are lost but the land remains forested and often […]

Wood grown in the United States is being ground up, dried out, pressed into pellets, and shipped to Europe, where power plants burn it to make electricity.  Is this good for the planet? The answer is yes, according to the wood pellet industry and policymakers in the European Union and the United Kingdom, which consider […]

As we speak, firefighters in Northern California are battling hundreds of blazes across 775,000 acres, sparked by dry lightning strikes. Unfortunately, disastrous wildfire seasons in our state have become all too common, and conditions are ripe for rapid wildfire spread. Hot summers with little precipitation bring about drought conditions, increasing amounts of dead trees act […]

Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore has been in the news again of late, this time for his newest documentary, Planet of the Humans. The film has been criticized widely for its selective handling of facts surrounding various forms of renewable energy, the overall central topic of the film. Critics of the film, which include many prominent […]

Imagine walking into the small wooden building that serves as the home and office of a tribal community leader in a remote village in Vietnam. One of the last things you might expect to see would be that leader talking to a team of young villagers, with e-tablets in hand, ready to walk their ancestral […]

Carbon markets are based on the premise that sources (greenhouse gas-emitting power plants, vehicles, farm animal waste) and sinks (greenhouse gas-absorbing forests, biogas digesters, healthy soil) can be “traded” between states, regions and countries to help each other offset and reduce overall carbon emissions. While carbon markets are not a perfect solution to atmospheric carbon […]

The Sustainable Orinoco Pact sponsored a one-day Initiatives Fair just outside of the region’s major city Villavicencio yesterday.  The event brought together several organizations and individuals to discuss ongoing projects around sustainable development in the region. The larger Pact initiative seeks to reconcile development and conservation interests in what many consider to the last [...]

Followers of environmental issues in the Amazon scarcely go a week without seeing news about threats to the biome. The region has been devastated with countless and constant hazards. For example, each year it experiences natural hazards like wetland degradation, salinization, destructive flooding, and severe fires, all compounded by climate change. Man-made hazards like deforestation, […]

Decades of scientific research have been suggesting that humans accrue many positive benefits from nature, whether that nature be in an isolated preserve, in urban green space within the confines of a city, or simply with a look at a painting of a forest. As more than 70% of the world’s population will live in […]

The Mekong River is one of the world’s great river systems, flowing 4,909 km through six countries: China, Myanmar, Thailand, Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The Mekong is divided into both the Upper Mekong Basin, and the Lower Mekong Basin. The latter makes up 76 percent of the overall river basin; the Lower Mekong starts […]