In West and Central Africa, home to 25% of the world’s tropical forests, the climate challenge is set against the threat of deforestation. In light of this threat, national laws and regulations seek to protect, restore, and manage the use of these forests for national development.

International initiatives such as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) have identified that strengthening national laws to improve forest governance is an important tool to strike a balance between protection of forests and national development.

This executive summary offers recommendations based on lessons learned from Ghana, Liberia and RoC, for other countries of West and Central Africa who are considering how to embed REDD+ social safeguards into their national laws.

The full report is available from here.

Climate change is shaped and understood through assumptions of causality and temporality that enable and constrain feasible approaches to environmental governance, approaches that may reproduce inequalities. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) provides an entry point to examine the intersecting assumptions and politics around climate change and how it is managed. Actors in the REDD+ regime promote particular assumptions about the causality and temporality of climate change, which are often privileged over local ways of being and knowing.

Flooding is a routine occurrence throughout much of the monsoonal tropics. Despite well-developed repertoires of response, agrarian societies have been ‘double exposed’ to intensifying climate change and agro-industrialization over the past several decades, often in ways that alter both the regularity of flood events and individual and community capacity for response.

Pacto de Leticia, reunión infructuosa para la Amazonía
 
Oscar Bazoberry Chali
 
El día 6 de septiembre, se llevó a cabo una Reunión de Jefes de Estado y Jefes de Delegaciones en Colombia. El fuego y la devastación de los incendios para la deforestación en la región sudamericana, ya se habían difundido a nivel mundial, y en especial, la población de los países amazónicos mostraba su preocupación por las políticas y la responsabilidad de sus gobiernos en estos fenómenos donde confluyen causas climáticas con acciones humanas.

The climate crisis demands urgent action, yet we live in a politically polarized and paralyzed world. As governments and other actors struggle over climate change, our environment is irreversibly changing. A United Nations report on the Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services revealed that three-quarters of the earth’s land-based environment has been significantly altered by human actions.

A resource on why land matters to Illovo, their approach to address land rights, their focus on community land and main outputs.  

Presentation on Measurement of the Costs of Land Degradation in the Mountains of the Republic of Tajikistan delivered during the CACIP Regional Consultation Meeting held in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

This blog is part of Global Forest Watch’s Global Insights series. Although many parts of the world are experiencing forest loss, the factors motivating these losses differ between countries and regions. Global Insights takes a local look at historical and current trends in forested countries across the world to highlight the diversity of forest issues. To read other posts in the series, click here.

Le Tchad est considéré comme le pays le plus vulnérable au changement climatique. Une combinaison de pauvreté élevée, de conflits fréquents, de systèmes de gouvernance faibles, à laquelle s’ajoutent les risques de sécheresse et d’inondations, font que le pays est confronté à de nombreuses urgences humanitaires et lutte notamment pour faire face aux onséquences du changement climatique. Le pays connaît des conflits internes et frontaliers récurrents qui aggravent encore davantage ses vulnérabilités, en mettant sous pression les infrastructures limitées et la cohésion sociale.

Global climate change policy enforcement has become the new driving force of resource grabbing in the context of the “scramble of resources” in Africa. Nevertheless, the environmental crisis should not be seen as an isolated phenomenon amid contemporary capitalism. On the contrary, a very distinct feature of the current wave of land grabs is the convergence of multiple crises, including food, energy/fuel, environmental, and financial. The Southern Mozambique District, Massingir, is an area with high potential regarding water sources and biodiversity.

Land is already under growing human pressure and climate change is adding to these pressures. The Special Report on Climate Change and Land, launched by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 8 August 2019, looks into land resources as critical for the climate, and highlights the importance of sound land management for addressing climate change. The report will be a key scientific input into forthcoming climate and environment negotiations.