WeForest, in collaboration with FAO's Forest and Water Programme and GIZ delivered a forest-water capacity building workshop in Mekelle, Ethiopia during June 2018. The workshop trained technical participants from a range of government, NGO and research organisations aiming to build the capacity and knowledge of forest-water monitoring in Ethiopia, as it relates to Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR).
"So what do we do ? It's simple. Be a hero (..) plant a tree...(...) But above all, remain hopeful".
Read the full article from "Global Citizenship REVIEW", 3rd quarter 2018 - p 28-29 here. Article written by Dr Cathy Symington, WeForest Advisor and Marie-Noëlle Keijzer, WeForest Founder and CEO
WeForest, in collaboration with FAO's Forest and Water Programme and the Federation, organised a Forest-Water Capacity Building workshop in Meghalaya, India. In response to community concerns about increasing water scarcity and spring contamination, the workshop was organised to develop the local capacity of the the Federation on forest-water interactions for improved decision-making and natural resource management of the East Khasi Hills' forest restoration project.
Pumas, and potentially other wild felids, could be helping to green the planet by planting trees.
Zoologists have been arguing for decades that large carnivores play a key role in natural ecosystem dynamics because they are apex predators, the top of the food chain. They control prey populations through predation and thereby set in motion a series of changes further down the food chain, a process known as a trophic cascade.
Trees have the opportunity to contribute to the sustainable development of communities across the globe while fighting climate change. They can empower women, provide food and secure incomes.
But careful consideration of the socio-economic context of any development and conservation approach must be taken to ensure that such development is socially just and that benefits are shared throughout the community.
The loss of biodiversity, wilderness and forest around the world in recent decades has been alarming. Published in Current Biology in August this year, Dr. Watson and colleagues have conducted the first ever assessment of global wilderness decline.
He defines wilderness as “any area on Earth which didn't have a human footprint”. This includes pristine rainforests, a habitat vital for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Natural resource management is conflict management.
This concept forms the basis of Pieter Vanwildemeersch award-winning 2016 Master’s thesis “Stakeholders blocking participatory natural resource management” (the original title is: “Los actores bloqueadores en la gestión participativa de recursos naturales”). It explores the relationship between participatory natural resource management (pNRM) and conflict management in an attempt to develop a process of integration and apply it to a restoration project.
In the wake of the Forest-Water Nexus monitoring workshop that took place in Sweden last week, the need for an integrated approach to forest and water management has been highlighted once more in an article published today by Dr Dalton and colleagues.
WeForest organised a three-and-a-half-day scientific meeting hosted by KU Leuven (Belgium) on 'Why Forests Matter for Water and Climate'. WeForest invited a group of 35 international experts in the fields of Earth and plant sciences.
The objectives of the meetings were:
1. To elucidate the current state of knowledge on the importance of forests for water and other Earth system processes.
In many parts of the world local people are convinced that forests, trees and rainfall are related in more than one way: forests and trees not only depend on rainfall but help to generate it. Scientists confronted with this perspective have always denied such effects, or at best been ‘agnostic’, as it seemed impossible in their data to find evidence. New evidence on credible mechanisms for forest and tree effects on rainfall is, however, emerging. It can revolutionize current climate negotiations that all focus on greenhouse gas emissions.
There is a growing realization that the private sector constitutes a promising funding mechanism for a wide community of players working to restore degraded forest landscapes. For non-governmental organizations (NGOs), an understanding of businesses’ needs, the motivations of private enterprises and appropriate engagement strategies all require careful consideration, particularly as traditional funding options are unlikely to suffice in an evolving environmental finance market.
The deforestation of old-growth forests is a huge problem for our climate. As trees are cut down, high levels of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere and we lose one of the most valuable tools for sequestering and storing carbon. However, all is not completely lost.
