The Lubin Files

International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition

FAO is hosting the International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition this week, May 13-15, 2013.  Partners in this conference are CIFOR, Bioversity, and World Agroforestry Centre.  The objectives of the conference are to:

• Highlight the ways in which forests, trees on farms and agroforestry systems
  contribute to food security and nutrition
• Explore policy options and innovative approaches for increasing the role of
  forests, trees on farms and agroforestry systems in food security and nutrition
• Identify key challenges and bottlenecks hindering that
  contribution

Live webcasting of the conference is available here.

Or you can follow the conference on CIFOR's blog

Background papers associated with this conference are available here.

What carbon offsets pay for

Locals in the southeastern part of Brazil are being paid not to cut down trees, according to this article from The Economist.  Inspectors will visit the area to make sure the trees are still alive, and if they are, money will be credited to the debit card accounts of locals.

The funds come from carbon offsets paid by polluters in developed countries.

This strategy is known as “avoided deforestation” or “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation” (REDD).  The David Lubin Memorial Library's catalogue lists several items on this topic.

Agroforestry Congress promotes 'green' agriculture

The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have called for worldwide adoption of sustainable farming practices.  Such practices, they said, would not only combat climate change, but also increase production and provide sustainable timber sources.  The topic will be discussed further at the 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry, to be held in Nairobi from 23-28 August 2009.

Reducing forest emissions

The Science and Development Network has published a series of articles on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation.  The series tackles the topic of compensating countries for reducing deforestation and forest degradation (or REDD), which will be  discussed in the Copenhagen climate negotiations later this year.  

African tropical forests are still absorbing carbon dioxide

A study published in the last issue of Nature magazine finds that African Tropical forests are still increasing in biomass, which makes them net absorbers of CO^2_.

Read Sink in the African Jungle, published in print on February 19,2009.

Where the rubber meets the garden

In China’s southwestern province of Yunnan, the Tropical Botanical Garden of Xishuangbanna is facing a hard time. Originally surrounded by a beautiful rainforest it is now being quickly approached by an intensive rubber plantation. 
 

Though this tropical paradise was actually discovered by scientists sent from the government to check if rubber trees could be planted at such high latitute, it is now put in peril by the ever increasing need for this material. 
 

By 2010, China is planning to increase its natural-rubber production to 780,000 tonnes per year to meet the needs of its car and tyre industry.
 

"The large-scale rubber cultivation has taken a heavy toll on the local environment," says Zhu Hua, an ecologist at the XTBG, also thinking of the hydrological systems which will be hardly hit, of the climate changes in the area (due to carbon emissions) and of other problems that will follow this intensive deforestation.
 

To know more and enjoy some beautiful photographs of the contrast from a rubber plantation and the rainforest canopy, read this article from Nature
 

Published online 14 January 2009 | Nature 457, 246-247 (2009) | doi:10.1038/457246a

 

Nature is provided to FAO staff via Library subscription.

Fire-Derived Charcoal Causes Loss of Forest Humus

Scientists have long supposed that charcoal tree remains left behind after forest fires were a long lasting, stable form of carbon storage.

Results of a study published in Nature this week seem to prove otherwise.  Once in the soil, the charcoal is apparently broken down by microbes, releasing more carbon into the environment than was previously believed.

Read the study results here.  Nature is provided to FAO staff members via library subscription.

Computerized forest protection

In March of this year, Liberia will put into practice a new computerized system capable of tracking each log of timber commercially traded in that country, in hopes of eliminating unauthorized and illegal logging practices.

Read Protected by bars, from the Economist.  The Economist is available to FAO staff members via library subscription.

Deforestation, Forest Degradation, Biodiversity Loss and CO2 Emissions in Riau, Sumatra, Indonesia

Deforestation, Forest Degradation, Biodiversity Loss and CO2 Emissions in Riau, Sumatra, Indonesia (published by the WWF) analyzes deforestation and forest degradation over the last quarter century, between 1982 and 2007. It documents pulp wood and palm-oil driven deforestation and degradation of natural forests and shows how it has caused the decomposition and burning of carbon-rich soil in Riau's vast and deep peatlands.  This soil loss has resulted in globally significant CO2 emissions and the much-reported trans-boundary haze across the Malacca Straits...

Carbon sequestration in China's forest ecosystems

This is the title of a special issue of the Journal of Environmental Management - available to FAO staff through the library's print and electronic subscription.  It looks at the results of the Canada-China project "Confronting global warming: embracing China's carbon sequestration" which involved over 50 Chinese and Canadian scientists from 2002 to 2006.