Dangerous climate change ‘to kill Amazon rainforest’

Global warming will wreck attempts to save the Amazon rainforest, reports the UK’s Guardian newspaper.
It says a study presented at a major climate science conference in Denmark has predicted that one-third of its trees will be killed by even modest temperature rises.
The research, by some of Britain’s leading experts on climate change, shows that even [...]

Norway to pay Guyana to protect rainforests

Norway will provide financial support for Guyana’s ambitious plan to conserve its rainforests, reports Mongabay.com.
During a meeting in Oslo, Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg signedan agreement to establish a partnership to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).
It is also understood that the leaders will also push for the [...]

Amazon rainfall projections ‘underestimated’

Amazonian forests may be less vulnerable to dying off from global warming than feared because many projections underestimate rainfall, Reuters reports.
A study by UK researchers suggested that Brazil and other nations in the region would also have to act to help avert any irreversible drying of the eastern Amazon, the region most at risk from [...]

Ranching ‘biggest driver of deforestation’ in Brazil

Cattle ranching is the biggest driver of deforestation in Brazil, says Greenpeace.
In evidence presented at the World Social Forum, hosted by Belem in the heart of the Amazon, the environmental group said it showed that cattle ranching was the biggest driver of Amazon deforestation.
Greenpeace Brazil has produced a series of maps which it said showed [...]

Amazon deforestation trend ‘on the increase’

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon forests has flipped from a decreasing to an increasing trend, ScienceDaily reports.
Commenting on the figures released by the country’s space agency INPE, Brazilian environment minister Carlos Minc confirmed that the government was set to announce forest related carbon emission reduction targets.
He added that he hoped that the scheme would link halting [...]

Forests face fiery future, warn UK’s Met Office

Climate change is putting further pressure on forests, with less rain and increased drought leading to increased risk from fire, the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre has warned.
Deforestation is already a major cause of carbon emissions, it warns, and is currently estimated to exceed those from the global transport sector.
Hadley Centre scientists attending the UN [...]

Brazil government ‘worst logger’

Brazil’s government has been named as the worst illegal logger of Amazon forests by one of its own departments, the BBC News website reports.

The Environment Ministry has drawn up a list of the 100 worst offenders and says all of them will be charged.
Topping the list was the Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), [...]

WWF drops opposition to REDD

Global conservation group WWF that it will now support a scheme to compensate tropical nations for reducing carbon dioxide emissions by reducing deforestation and forest degradation, Mongabay.com reports.

The group’s president told a gathering, which included Al Gore and Wangari Ma’athai, that WWF would not oppose efforts to include forests in international climate negotiations.
“The Amazon, if [...]

Minister: Brazil’s deforestation ‘not on increase’

This year’s rate of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest will be comparable with 2007, the nation’s environment minister is reported as saying.
Mongabay.com reports Carlos Minc as being more optimistic than earlier this year, when he forecast the highest level of felling of trees since 2004.
In April, Mr Minc had estimated that up to 15,000 square [...]

Half of Amazon’s trees could be lost forever

New roads, agriculture, logging and mining are claiming an increasingly large area of once pristine Amazon forest, observe an international team of researchers.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they assessed how accurate the extinction rate of tree species in the South American biodiversity hotspot.
Using projections in the UN’s Millennium Ecosystems [...]