governance

Originally posted on EUFORGEN Picture, in your mind’s eye, Iceland. You’re more likely to see ice and rock than green forests, and while you might think that the cold and lack of forests are connected, actually it is past land use, rather than climate, that made Iceland treeless. In the 9th century when the first […]

A Global Landscapes Forum National Policy Dialogue in Indonesia attempts to answer just that By Lynsey Grosfield “For the landscape approach there is no magic formula,” asserted Herry Purnomo, Senior Scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) during a recent Global Landscapes Forum National Policy Dialogue on Laws and Best Practices for Reducing Fire […]

In the Autumn of 2015, a thick yellow toxic haze — the likes of which had never been seen before — fell over Kalimantan. Peatland fires from slash-and-burn agriculture and their accompanying toxic smoke are by no means unprecedented in the region, but the exceedingly hot and dry El Niño event that year exacerbated the already-precarious […]

By Johan Kieft (UN Environment – Regional technical specialist) and Richard Wecker (UNICEF Indonesia – DRR specialist), originally published on the UN-REDD blog. Large-scale conversion of natural peatland and forests to croplands on the islands Sumatra, Borneo (Kalimantan) and Papua has radically altered the lives and livelihoods of millions of Indonesians in recent decades. Slash-and-burn […]

By Douglas McGuire, Coordinator of the Forest and Landscapes Restoration Mechanism, FAO Ravaged landscapes, parched riverbeds and destitute communities. These are maybe not the first images that come to mind when you think about forests. But every year forests are being degraded and lost by an area about the size of Belgium. In fact, the […]

The earth is crispy around here. Crunch, crunch, crunch—my every footstep made a crackling sound like a rustling bag of potato chips. Underneath the crunchy stuff was something almost fluffy. “It is the dried peat,” Nizar told me. He’s been working in this area for decades, acrobatically transitioning between the local community, government and private […]