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…
5 min read -
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…
5 min read -
In Mexico, it’s the politics…
In Spanish the word for politics and policy is the same – ‘política’ – reminding us that policy is always…
6 min read -
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…
5 min read -
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…
5 min read -
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…
7 min read -
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…
4 min read -
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…
5 min read -
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…
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That tricky gender thing: Lessons from Amazonia
There are enormous gaps in our knowledge about how gender relations shape the lives of people living in the forests…
6 min read -
Satellites can mislead: policy makers beware!
The loss of old-growth tropical forest area through fire and agricultural expansion has for decades challenged many of the sustainability…
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Health is in the dish: bush meat or tinned meat?
LIMA, Peru—In the rural border areas where Colombia, Peru and Brazil converge, bushmeat provides nutrition and a strong connection with…
4 min read -
Study: As forests, grasslands gave way to farms, soil carbon emissions soared
BOGOR, Indonesia — The conversion of pasture to agricultural land has released more carbon from the soil in several South…
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REDD ink: Forest efforts in Peru all but absent from news media
BOGOR, Indonesia—Peru has received international recognition for pushing ahead with programs to tackle climate change and deforestation, but those efforts…
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Destiny in density: Afro-Colombian women struggle to sustain landscapes, livelihoods
The Colombian Pacific region is a rich and complex landscape—ecologically, economically, politically and culturally. Rapid and often controversial changes in…
6 min read