World Rainforest Movement
THE FOCUS OF THIS ISSUE: Biodiversity, forests and people
Biodiversity loss constitutes a major threat to millions of people throughout the world and particularly in the tropics, where peoples’ livelihoods strongly depend on forests and their biodiversity. At the same time, the increasing loss of biodiversity and forests puts a question mark on humanity’s future on Earth. The fact that the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Scientific Body (SBSTTA) has recently addressed the forest issue provides a good opportunity to highlight the problem seeking for solutions. We have therefore focused this WRM Bulletin on the problem, looking at it from different perspectives and particularly on how biodiversity loss affects people at the local level, who are in fact protecting –in many cases against their governments– what governments have committed themselves to protect.
The world is increasingly concerned over the disappearance of life forms on Earth and many organizations –governmental and non governmental– appear to be trying to find solutions to the problem. (Read More)
Governments should be directly responsible for the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of their respective countries and people. Nevertheless, what frequently happens in the South is that the (Read More)
Liberia hosts the last two significant blocks of the remaining closed canopy tropical rainforest within the upper Guinea Forests of West Africa, which spans Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea and (Read More)
Known by its historical past because of the vast and powerful empire that surprised European visitors in the XIV century, nowadays the Malian territory comprises more than 1,200,000 square kilometres (Read More)
Invasion of habitats by alien plants is one of the causes of the extinction of native species. Some plant species have developed the capacity to adapt to new sites and (Read More)
Bangladesh is one of the states signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Nevertheless, the three types of forests existing in the country –the evergreen and semi-evergreen rainforests in the (Read More)
Forest and biodiversity conservation mean different things to different people. In the case of Cambodia, village people throughout the country depend on farmland, fisheries and forests for their livelihoods. For (Read More)
Not long ago, the Nakai Plateau and the surrounding forest in central Laos was home to tiger, elephant, otter, rhesus macaque, tawny fish-owl, crested kingfisher, Siamese fireback and brown hornbill. (Read More)
Vegetation maps published in Geography books still show the archipelago of the Philippines, as covered by dense tropical forests. Unfortunately, this does not correspond to reality any longer. Over the (Read More)
Biological corridors are linear strips of vegetation that provide a continuous or near continuous pathway between habitats. They constitute a strategy used in nature conservation to cope with the problem (Read More)
In the last issue of our bulletin we included an article on Belize, calling it a country “where forests can still be saved.” We should have added: “if the government (Read More)
With an area of 2,791,810 square kilometres, Argentina is the second largest country in South America. Due to its extension in latitude –from 22 to 56 º SL– its territory (Read More)
In international processes related to forests and biodiversity, Brazil is one of the countries with a stronger discourse regarding the defense of countries’ sovereignty. Unfortunately, it is only a discourse. (Read More)
The Chocó Biogeographical Region comprises an area of some 75,000 square kilometres on the Pacific Coast of Colombia, spreading from Panamá to Ecuador. Due to a combination of evolutionary, ecological, (Read More)
The state of Papua New Guinea (PNG) comprises the eastern part of the island of New Guinea and a series of smaller islands in the Bismarck Sea and the Coral (Read More)
The so called “free trade” is in reality but the granting of unlimited power to transnational companies to govern the world to the detriment of the vast majority of humanity (Read More)
The Global Forest Coalition is an informal coalition of NGOs and Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations engaged in the global policy debate related to forests, established at the last session of the (Read More)
Verónica Yépez, from the Ecuadorian NGO FUNDECOL, sent us a message in relation to an article published in WRM bulletin 43 (“Ecuador: action to save the mangroves in Guayas”). She (Read More)