Zimbabwe’s Climate Change Ambitions May be Too Tall

With the U.N. Climate Change conference later this year in Paris fast approaching, Zimbabwe's climate change commitments face the slow progress on an issue that continues to stalk other developing countries – climate finance.

Small Victories at Bonn Climate Talks

As climate talks wind down in Bonn, Germany, observers of the negotiations say that despite some progress on a draft text, key issues remain unresolved and will carry over at least until the next round in August.

OPINION: Addressing Climate Change Requires Real Solutions, Not Blind Faith in the Magic of Markets

Norwegians know something of life in a climate change world. Migratory birds arrive earlier in spring, trees come into leaf before previously expected, and palsa mires (wetlands) are being lost as permafrost thaws.

Forest Rights Offer Major Opportunity to Counter Climate Change

The international community is failing to take advantage of a potent opportunity to counter climate change by strengthening local land tenure rights and laws worldwide, new data suggests.

Latin America’s Forests Need Laws – and Much More

Latin America’s parliaments have failed to protect the forests and to guarantee their sustainable use, despite the fact that a number of countries have laws on forests, legislators from the region said at a global summit in the Mexican capital.

Mexico Underlines Transformation in Global Climate Change Debate

It is now two years since Mexico passed the General Law on Climate Change, a landmark piece of national environmental legislation.

Wary of Climate Change, Indonesia Looks to Lawmakers for Solutions

Comprised of over 17,000 islands that are highly susceptible to rising seas, Indonesia is taking stock of its position as the world’s third leading emitter of greenhouse gases after the United States and China.

Mexico’s Climate Laws Ignore Women

The rural communities of San Miguel and Santo Tomás Ajusco, to the south of Mexico City, are preserving 3,000 of their 7,619 hectares of forest in exchange for payment for environmental services. But the inequality in the communities is far from ecological.

Carbon-Cutting Initiative May Harm Indigenous Communities

Civil society and advocacy groups are warning that a prominent carbon-reduction initiative, aimed at curbing global emissions, is undermining land tenure rights for indigenous communities, putting their livelihoods at risk.

South Scores 11th-Hour Win on Climate Loss and Damage

The U.N. climate talks in Warsaw ended in dramatic fashion Saturday evening in what looked like a schoolyard fight with a mob of dark-suited supporters packed around the weary combatants, Todd Stern of the United States and Sai Navoti of Fiji representing G77 nations.

Mining Takes a Bite Out of Guyana’s Amazon

Guyana is engaged in a balancing act to save its rainforest, regarded as a living treasure, from the destructive activities of miners digging their way to another kind of treasure buried beneath this fragile ecosystem.

Plantations Winnow Tigers Down to the Hundreds

The tiger population in the rainforests of Sumatra is vanishing at a staggering rate, reducing the number of the endangered species to as few as 400, warns Greenpeace International.

Forest Communities Draw a REDD Line

As the ink dries on a 3.6 million dollar agreement between Uganda and the World Bank to support the country's preparations for REDD, some analysts are pessimistic over the mechanism's potential.

Cameroonians See REDD

Uncertainty over property rights and access to forest land is potentially a major stumbling block for implementing the United Nations collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in Cameroon.

First Steps to Save Burkina Faso’s Forests

Burkina Faso has just received a grant of 30 million dollars from the Forest Investment Programme to help protect the country's forests and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with deforestation.

REDD a ‘False Solution’ for Africa

REDD – reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation – would seem to be a mitigation strategy that perfectly matches Africa's needs.

Forestry Programmes Bogged Down in Latin America

Issues related to the ownership of forest carbon and to prior consultation mechanisms threaten to derail plans for the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of Forests (REDD+) in some countries of Latin America, according to experts.

Critics Slam California “Forest Offset” Plan

More than two dozen environmental organisations are urging California Governor Jerry Brown to disregard recommendations from a United Nations task force to include so-called forest “offsets” in the state’s new emissions-trading scheme.

International Carbon Markets Expanding but Still Contentious

Nascent carbon emissions-trading exchanges in several countries are increasingly looking at options to interlink with one another, which advocates say would offer investors long-term stability, increase revenues for the development of renewable energy and strengthen corporate support for climate policy.

World Bank Unmoved on Auditor’s Criticism of Forest Policy

Officials at the World Bank are forcefully rejecting a new internal evaluation that is highly critical of the institution’s decade-long forest policy, expressing their “strong disagreement” with some assertions in the report.