Environmental activists are hoping that the changes to the Brazil Forest Code will not go through the Brazilian parliament.
The code has attracted a huge amount of criticism from farmers and land owners in Brazil, who claim that it is too heavy handed. However, environmentalists claim that – should the code be relaxed – [...]
A recent article in the Financial Times by Nyree Stewart has advised those investing in timber to think about the risks and establish their expectations at the correct point in order to get the best from the asset class.
The article explains that investing in forestry has become more popular in light [...]
Don Miller of Money Morning has recently written an article pointing out the gains to be made through investing in timber stocks.
He writes that timber has outperformed equities and that returns have averaged some 14 per cent per year between 1987 and 2010. His argument is that timber investment offers a low-risk chance to make [...]
A move by the Australian government to abolish the laws protecting forests in Victoria from logging have been welcomed by the forestry industry.
The government insists the focus will be on sustainability while the moves are intended to safeguard the long-term future of the industry in the region. It plans to do this by increasing the [...]
Investment is the key to cutting deforestation, according to a report published by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) that has – not surprisingly – attracted much praise from the forestry industry
The report, published in early September, argues that through an investment totalling just 0.034 per cent of global GDP, the world’s forestry sector could [...]
A cutting report by the NGO Global Witness, claims that the World Wide Fund’s Global Forest and Trade Network (WWF’s GFTN) is not strict enough and lacks transparency.
The GFTN was originally established 20 years ago to try to help create a global marketplace for sustainably produced timber and other forestry products. It has almost 300 [...]
Alberta’s forestry companies say Tuesday’s federal budget would help the beleaguered industry develop new markets and products and become more energy-efficient.
The federal government announced it plans to provide $60 million in 2011-12 to help with forestry innovation and accessing new overseas markets.
The budget will also support a program called the North American Wood First Initiative, [...]
Welsh foresters are planning to grow new exotic tree species such as the Giant North American Redwood and the Macedonian Pine.
These species are known to be drought tolerant and are considered for plantation as the Welsh National Forest tackles the challenges of climate change.
“Challenges in climate are going to create more opportunities for forestry as [...]
After last week’s climate change meetings in Cancún, Mexico produced two important developments on forestry, which is a key issue for Indonesia.
Independent research discovered how deforestation is not a major generator of greenhouse gas emissions. Secondly, industrialised countries and the World Wide Federation alongside Greenpeace failed to win an agreement for their proposals that the [...]
Thousands of trees are felled each year in the Brazilian Amazon forest. One way to track the location, size and who was responsible for the action is to attach a microchip to the tree base.
Using a hand-held device, a forestry engineer can pull up the tree’s vital statistics stored on the chip. Currently this project [...]
A steel mill being built by 30,000 people and costing an astounding $8.2 billion is being announced at Brazil’s biggest private sector investment for 15 years. It is expected that this mill alone will boost Brazil’s annual steel exports by over 40%.
This is yet another electoral boost for President Lula, who was at Santa Cruz, [...]
Brazil’s Labour Ministry said on Monday that Brazil’s economy had added more payroll jobs in May than expected and a record number of payroll jobs were expected to be added in June.
In total the number of payroll jobs added in May come to 298,041, which is the fifth straight month of increases and is a [...]
Environment ministers of the Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) bloc met in Cape Town last month to look at how to fast track a deal to curb global warming. This group of developing countries are among the world’s fastest growing carbon emitters and according to them a legally binding global agreement to limit [...]
It is widely agreed that the REDD payment mechanisms could halve forest destruction in the Amazon. What is not so well publicised is that the majority of the money set aside to conserve the forests would be going to the region’s wealthiest landholders.
These landholders are responsible for 80% of the deforestation still going on in [...]
A UN top climate official has said that governments must acknowledge that the UN’s Kyoto Protocol for fighting climate change is in danger of falling apart since no agreement has been forthcoming regarding a successor treaty.
After the UN summit in Copenhagen last year fell short of reaching a binding accord it is likely that the [...]
Given the strong prospects for economic and corporate earnings growth the Latin American equity market continues to offer good investment value even though the region is not longer at bargin basement levels.
According to Dean Newman the head of emerging market equities at Invesco Perpetual, Brazil and Columbia off the most stable economic and political frameworks.
The [...]
For some such as Canfor Corp the economic downturn that significantly reduced the US demand for Canadian lumber has had an upside. Instead of wallowing in the doldrums Canfor Corp turned their attention to Asia and during the first quarter discovered ‘exponential growth’.
“There so many opportunities in China, it’s really a stretch of the imagination,” [...]
Over 70 people have been arrested in Brazil in a crackdown on illegal loggers in the Amazon. The arrests followed a two year investigation in six Brazilian states and police estimate that the illegal logging operation had caused damage costing up to $500 million.
Of those arrested several were officials employed to protect the rainforest. These [...]
On Tuesday environment ministers said that the highest octane political gathering on climate change since the Copenhagen summit has helped restore trust but delivered no notable breakthroughs.
“The ice is broken,” Germany’s Norbert Roettgen told journalists as the two-and-a-half day brainstorming session outside Bonn ended. “This meeting was a very important contribution to building trust and [...]
The World Bank is so concerned about the lack of forests remaining in the small country of Armenia that they have warned that it could one day become a desert.
The loss of the country’s forests can be traced back to their energy crisis in the early 1990s. Since then the Massachusetts based Armenian Tree Project [...]
