Latin America
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Thinking restoration? Think big and think inclusive
Pledges to restore millions of hectares of degraded land could lead nowhere without improved planning, prioritization and monitoring, warn the…
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Owning the Amazon: Individual titles might not be the answer
Holding formal individual property rights is widely seen as a boon for reducing poverty, conflict and environmental degradation. But in…
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Amazon rising: Adaptation begins at home
For hundreds of thousands of rural families eking out a living in Brazil’s Amazon estuary, living with flooding is a…
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Growth in Chile’s plantations may have spelled growth in poverty
Timber production is a $6 billion business and the economic mainstay in south-central Chile. But the people who live around…
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Timber vs. Brazil nut: The Amazon’s harvest dilemma
It’s a huge question for thousands of smallholders with Brazil nut concessions in the Amazon: Does timber harvesting affect the…
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‘Conservation matters, but we cannot ignore people’s needs’
Why is it important to see if timber can be harvested in Brazil nut areas? Why don’t we just leave…
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A little logging may go a long way
In one corner is the Brazil nut, the most economically important non-timber forest product in the Amazon Basin. It supports…
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In Mexico, it’s the politics…
In Spanish the word for politics and policy is the same – ‘política’ – reminding us that policy is always…
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REDD+ in Brazil: Coordination needed. Now
Farming and ranching remain the main drivers of deforestation in Brazil, a new study from the Center for International Forestry…
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The Atlantic Ocean holds the key to western Amazon rainfall
In 2010, catastrophic fires ravaged huge tracts of the western Amazon, a region of rainforest that until just a few…
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A little-known big producer: Will forest policy reform in Peru support farm-forestry?
Collectively, 20 farming households in a Peruvian Amazon village can easily produce 760 cubic meters of sawn lumber per year…
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Can farmers be forest custodians in the Amazon?
Agricultural activity and forest conservation have often had an antagonistic relationship and are usually discussed in terms of how the…
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Invest with confidence: Are planted forests in Latin America a good deal?
Subsidized by Mother Nature, society has consumed, for various reasons and over centuries, vast amounts of timber extracted from primary…
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Best predictor of severe fires in the Western Amazon? Drought
Drought is a better predictor of Amazonian fire frequency and severity than the extent of forest cover or other vegetation…
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Frontier expansion: Lessons from Bolivia and Pará, Brazil.
Land tenure rights have been widely considered as key to improving environmental governance. In the Brazilian state of Pará, and…
5 min read