I’m in Quito, Ecuador tonight, where I’ve flown—by way of a long detour to Panama City, thanks very much Continental Airlines—to report a story about one of the more innovative conservation ideas out there. Ecuador—which you can find nestled in the northwestern corner of South America, between Colombia and Peru—has two major …
Forests
Why Indonesia Still Can’t Say No to Palm Oil
If you’re eating a food that came in a wrapper while reading this, you probably eating palm oil — at least there’s a 50/50 chance you are. About half the packaged food found in a supermarket contains palm oil, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and a lot of that product comes from the lush archipelago of Indonesia.
In 2007, I …
What’s Behind the Southwest Wildfires
Remember that inconvenient truth from half a decade ago? Even if you don’t, it seems like most of modern science, politics, and popular culture does – though they are often wildly divided on the issue. These days it seems like everything is in some way linked to “climate change.” There was the extreme rain that may cause a …
Series on Tropical Forests Wins Environmental Reporting Prize
An eight-part series that appeared in the Economist has won this year’s prestigious Grantham Prize for environmental reporting. Journalist James Astill reported the 14,000 word story in the forests of Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Uganda, assessing the state of the world’s tropical forests and what’s being done to protect them. The …
Good News and Bad News for the World’s Tropical Forests
Another day, another global report on the world’s land use. This time a wide-ranging survey from the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO)—an intergovernmental body that promotes the sustainable use of forest resources—has revealed that the area of the world’s tropical forests that are under some form of sustainable …
In Cambodia, Monks Take on the Carbon Market
We’ve just posted an interesting story to Time.com about a group of monks in northern Cambodia who are lobbying for over a dozen protected forests to go onto the global carbon market.
This is exactly the kind of project that makes Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) so promising: protecting the forests …
The Planet’s Natural Air Filters
The Earth as one great organism has always been one of the most appealing metaphors of the green movement. From the moment environmentalist James Lovelock first articulated his so-called Gaia hypothesis—after the Greek goddess of the Earth—in the 1970s, the theory has continued to charm environmentalists.
It doesn’t stand up to …
Palm Oil Plantations Equal Deforestation
Another day and there’s another study that undermines the case for biofuels as an eco-friendly source of energy. This time it’s the booming palm oil plantations of Southeast Asia, which yield the raw ingredients for biodiesel, used most often in Europe. Activists have been warning for some time that the growth of palm oil is leading …
The New Science of Telecoupling Shows Just How Connected the World Is—For Better and For Worse
I’ve got one more tidbit from last weekend’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and it’s nothing less than a new scientific concept: telecoupling.
This is not, as you might expect, a particular risqué form of conference call. Telecoupling refers to how connections between nature and human …
UPDATE: Britain Halts Sale of Public Forests
Here at Ecocentric, we’ve been covering the British government’s plans to sell of national forests—and the huge public backlash to the plans. Today, David Cameron backed down, as his Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman announced to MPs in the House of Commons that she was halting public consultation into proposals to sell 650,000 …