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 [...]
Investor interest in forestry is building. This trend is being driven by the growing market for forestry products and climate change concerns, which has the world looking towards sustainable fuels.
Biomass is beginning to be favoured as a sustainable energy source by climate change politics and legislation. Addressing deforestation is being prioritised and in addition pension [...]
For the first time since 2008 the Central Bank has raised interest rates and against a back drop of the developed world frantically trying to fend off a wave of sovereign debt defaults in Europe. The real GDP growth is at its best performance since 1986, having reached 6% and forecasts are predicting it could [...]
During an interview published last Monday, chief executive Benjamin Steinbruch said that Brazilian integrated steelmaker CSN is planning to invest R$34 billion in its operations in 2016.
According to Steinbruch approximately 80% of the planned investments will be allocated in the steel and iron ore areas, clearly news which Greenwood Management, the sponsors of this blog [...]
Like a debutante out for the first time Latin America finds itself surrounded by many suitors. Recently China’s Hu Jintao and Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev have been paying court to Latin America with the US as ever a constant presence.
With so many countries vying for its commodities and friendship Latin America is now one of the [...]
During his presidency Lula has driven Latin America’s biggest economy from the edge of default and transformed the nation of 193 million into an emerging financial power.
In 2009 the Brazilian real reached 33%, which was the biggest net gain among the world’s 16 most actively traded currencies. In March annual inflation dropped from 14.5% when [...]
The state of Tocantins has the advantage of having the highest rate of growth in Brazil, which a company representative called to the attention of Eucatex when he came to look over the potential and productive conditions of the region.
Eucatex is the leading manufacturer of products for the construction industry and owns one of the [...]
Brazil has been attracting a lot of attention lately from major multinationals who want to ride the wave of Brazil’s economic boom that has been fuelled by oil and agriculture. They are attracted to Brazil’s stable, growing, middle-class and increasingly IT-literate workforce.
Still it did come as a surprise when Goldman Sachs introduced Brazil into the [...]
From 1983 up until a few years ago the Bhutanese bragged about having over 72.5% of its land under forest cover. It wasn’t until 2005 that the forestry department’s updated figure showed that figure to have suddenly dropped to 64.35% and in the process causing a few eyebrows to rise during their annual forestry conference.
The [...]
The Cannes Film Festival takes place this month and that is where a company in Ecuador is planning to take its innovative forest carbon financing initiative in the hope of showcasing the project to prospective investors. It might just be me but surely a film festival is an odd place to present a forest carbon [...]
A picture of economic growth and optimism was painted by three related working papers released by the University of Oregon’s Ecosystem Workforce Programme of the emerging field of forest and watershed restoration.
According to one of the papers as traditional forestry services such as tree planting are declining restoration work is on the up. The same [...]
