‘Forgotten guardians’: Local communities in natural resource management
Late last year, there was publicity about the plight of the San (bushmen) of the Kalahari in Botswana – part…
7 min read
Shades of green: Balancing Indonesia’s conservation and development
It’s the familiar story of Indonesian environmental issues: the battle between economic development reliant on natural resource extraction and fears…
6 min read
Catching the ‘big fish’: How banks can stop environmental crime in Indonesia
It was the US$100 million in his bank account that gave him away.There was no legitimate reason why Labora Sitorus,…
6 min read
Why is it so incredibly hard to stop deforestation?
Who really holds power over land use decisions? Why are efforts to keep forests standing, such as REDD+ and other…
5 min read
Watch and read: Making timber plantations attractive for smallholders
BOGOR, Indonesia — Encouraging Indonesian smallholders to view timber plantations as an attractive business opportunity could have far-reaching economic and…
5 min read
Wild food means good food: CIFOR study
In Tanzania, women supplement their families’ diets by collecting foods that grow wild near their homes.They gather edible species while…
5 min read
Carbon or biodiversity conservation – you can’t have the best of both worlds
When trying to protect carbon stocks and biodiversity, the expression “to kill two birds with one stone” seems hardly appropriate.And…
5 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
Where, when, why: Human-orangutan conflict in Borneo
BOGOR, Indonesia—A 90 kilogram full-grown male orangutan is sitting in your garden, eating mangoes stolen from your mango tree. You…
5 min read
REDD+: The implementation challenge in the Congo Basin
REDD+ is now moving into countries’ implementation arenas after final agreements by parties over its modalities during the42nd session of…
5 min read
REDD+ in Laos: Think big or fail
REDD+ is at a crossroads in Lao PDR, and needs to “think bigger” to survive.As the anti-deforestation project nears its…
5 min read
Monty Python and tropical forests. Really?
In your best John Cleese voice: “All right… all right… but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and…
6 min read