Cerrado towns terrorized to provide toilet paper for the world
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A long article posted in the web portal Mongabay reports about the wave of land-grabbing and violence caused to produce pulp for global tissue brands. For decades, dozens of families lived peacefully in the small traditional community of Forquilha (pronounced Fork-quill-ya) in the Cerrado, Brazil’s vast savannah biome. As is typical in rural Brazil, the homesteaders lacked land deeds, leading a subsistence lifestyle, in tune with the seasons, annually planting crops and raising animals.
120 environmental groups says: biomass a dangerous ‘delusion’
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Over 120 groups from about 30 different countries have signed the position statement “The Biomass Delusion”, declaring the use of forest biomass for renewable energy to be a false solution for climate change mitigation. The broad NGO coalition, which includes organizations such as Greenpeace, NRDC, BankTrack and the Federation of Community Forest Users in Nepal, calls for an end to all finance, subsidies and policy support for large scale bioenergy.
Brazil: Bolsonaro threatening to wipe out the Amazon and its peoples
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The favourite presidential candidate of Brazil made clear promises: he will abolish the ministry of environment, cancel the environmental legislation, open indigenous land to mining, abandon the Paris Agreement and pave a highway in the middle of the Amazon, to open it to cattle ranching. His intention are clear: he will wipe out the Amazon forest.That man is Jair Bolsonaro, who just received 46% of the vote last week.Elephants at risk: 55 killings every day
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As world leaders and conservationists descended on London last week for the Illegal Wildlife Trafficking Conference, the burning question in their minds was: How can trade in ivory, especially in Asian countries be contained? The fear is that Africa’s elephants could go the way of dinosaurs. Some 20,000 jumbos are killed each year — 55 every single day — mostly for the illegal ivory trade.
Amazon: looking for a place in the shade
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The CEIBA Biological Centre (CEIBA), in Madewini, Guyana, under its executive director Dr. Godfrey Bourne, is investigating the impact of global warming on tropical ectotherms, namely, butterflies and lizards, whose body temperatures are determined by the environment. They also found that the postman butterfly maintained “relatively stable temperatures during fluctuating” outside temperatures.