May 13, 2011
"It's a tremendously innovative program designed to address two critical problems – securing the environment and providing economic opportunities for people in rural, desperately poor areas," said co-author Gretchen Daily, a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and co-director of the Natural Capital Project at Stanford, in a press release.
SLCP was implemented by the Chinese government after horrific mudslides and floods in 1998 killed nearly 4,000 people and displaced some 18 million people. The extent of the disasters were in part attributed to clearcutting for agriculture on mountainous slopes.
The study, which describes the program as 'exceptional', found that SLCP had largely succeeded on its environmental goals, decreasing soil erosion by up to 68% in some places.
The over $40 billion reforestation program has also had important economic impacts in a poor region by paying for environmental services. Families who participate in the program received a subsidy of money and rice for foregoing farming and finding other jobs. Subsidies are received for 8 years. On average the study found that families receiving the subsidy made more than those who didn't. However, families that made the most in study did so by receiving the subsidy while both parents worked as laborers in the city.
Logging may be linked to landslide deaths in Malaysia says environmental group
(01/27/2009) Three people were killed and seven injured when a landslide swept through a logging camp in the Upper Limbang region of the Malaysian state of Sarawak. The Bruno Manser Fund, an NGO that campaigns on behalf of Sarawak's indigenous people, links the landslide to logging.
India commits $10 billion to expand forests
(02/25/2011) The Indian government has approved a bold plan to expand and improve the quality of its forests as a part of the nation's National Action Plan on Climate Change. The reforestation plan, dubbed the National Mission for a Green India (NMGI), will expand forests by five million hectares (over 12 million acres), while improving forests quality on another five million hectares for $10.14 billion (460 billion rupees).
Global campaign has planted 7 billion trees
(09/23/2009) The campaign to plant seven billion trees has achieved its goal, the United Nations announced Tuesday. 7.3 billion trees have been planted in 167 countries since the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) launched the initiative in 2006. The effort aimed to sequester vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere while generating benefits for human populations and wildlife.