The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has given the Indonesian province of Aceh the dubious title as the country’s worst performer when it comes to protecting Indonesia’s dwindling forests, according to the Jakarta Post.
Southeast Asia’s Greater Mekong sub-region – a biodiversity hot spot – risks losing more than a third of its remaining forest cover within the next two decades if governments fail to boost protection, value and restore natural capital, and embrace green growth, warns a new WWF report.
WWF’s analysis reveals the Greater Mekong has retained about 98 million hectares of natural forest, just over half of the region’s land area, but further rapid loss is expected if current deforestation rates persist. Between 1973 and 2009, the five countries of the Greater Mekong lost just under one-third of their remaining forest cover.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has called on one of its members, Asia Pacific Resources International (APRIL), to clean up its act and cease its on-going large-scale destruction of Indonesia’s rainforest.
An estimated USD7.3 trillion a year in damage is being inflicted on the environment, health and other vital benefits for humankind by primary production and processing in such sectors as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining, oil and gas exploration and utilities according to a new report.
Natural Capital at Risk – The Top 100 Externalities of Business was launched at the Business for the Environment summit in New Delhi yesterday by the TEEB for Business Coalition (TEEB4B), a global, multi-stakeholder open source platform for supporting the development of methods for natural and social capital valuation in business.
Indonesia’s House of Representatives yesterday passed two international conventions aimed at protecting the country’s biological diversity and the environment and is expected to pass another controversial bill against deforestation within this week.
Three companies with economic land concessions in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province have allegedly been logging a wildlife sanctuary since late last year, resulting in the loss of thousands of protected trees and the livelihoods of dozens of families.
Controversial forest products group Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) is once again embroiled in a public relations battle with NGOs over deforestation.
In February the company finally called a halt to the clearing of virgin forest, committing itself to using only farmed trees grown on plantations and embrace monitoring by outside groups to ensure transparency.
Late last month, however, APP received a complaint from Eyes of the Forest (a consortium of local NGOs including WWF and Friends of the Earth Indonesia) that two of its suppliers, PT Daya Tani Kalbar and PT Asia Tani Persada were clearing natural forest in West Kalimantan Province. APP and The Forest Trust (TFT), a non-profit group that is working with APP on its Forest Conservation Policy, said it would look into the charges and publish the findings.
In an exclusive interview with environmental website BusinessGreen,Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) has thanked Greenpeace for the work the activist NGO has done over the past decade to help the company come around to halting its deforestation activities in Indonesia.
The conservation of one of the world’s most critical but threatened forest areas in the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo is to get USD4.5 million financial support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
The Asia Pulp & Paper Group (APP) – one of the world's largest paper companies – has pledged to stop its suppliers cutting down natural forests in Indonesia. It hopes this will help preserve the threatened habitats of endangered species, increase respect for the rights of the region’s indigenous peoples and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from carbon-rich peatland.
APP worked with environmental NGOs Greenpeace and the The Forest Trust (TFT) on the plan, which came into effect at the beginning of February.
The Indian government is yet again reassessing the environmental licensing for the country's mines. This time a nine-member group of ministers headed by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar will look at the environment ministry's report on identifying inviolate forest areas where mining should be barred.
Palm oil companies are grabbing more than 1.5 million acres of land in Liberia and are violating human rights of local communities, warn Liberian NGOs including Friends of the Earth Liberia (SDI - Sustainable Development Institute), Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU) and Social Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development (SESDev).
As if there wasn’t enough controversy surrounding palm oil in Asia already, environmental groups in the Philippines are now raising alarm bells over a plan to establish a one-million hectare plantation on top of what is thought to be the region’s largest wetlands in the Philippines.
According to a report in the Manila Bulletin, quoting Mindanao Development Authority Secretary Lualhati Antonino, the plantation is backed by a Malaysian group led by the Putraya Chamber of Commerce and Industry and will be located least partially on Liguasan Marsh in Mindanao.
Vietnam's General Forestry Department has reported that the country lost over 3,000 hectares (ha) of its forest cover in 2012. A conference was told that 27,671 violations of forest protection laws were discovered last year, including 5,724 cases of deforestation, 13,550 cases involving illegal transportation of forestry products, 905 wood processing violations and 928 cases of wildlife hunting and trading.
China leads the world in investing in the protection of its watershed, according to a new study by US-based NGO Forest Trends. The report, State of Watershed Payments 2012, is described as an effort to globally track the size, scope, and direction of investments in watershed services as well as the ecological infrastructure from which they flow.
The study was dominated by looking at China and the US which had 61 and 67 programs of the 205 tracked, respectively. China accounted for 91 percent of the 2011 investment, supported by government money.
This report by the World Bank spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
Companies in Asia reveal expectations that regulations that could lead to rising costs for reporting and reducing GHG emissions will also be the main sources of climate-related business opportunities.
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