A new report published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s State of the World’s Forests suggests that improving co-operation between nations’ farming and forestry sectors will help to reduce deforestation and improve food security. The report shows that in more than 20 countries the increasing forest cover and food security can happen at the same time, and among those countries the common features are secure land tenure and effective land-use planning. As thus, the coordinated policies between forestry and agriculture are essential, which are lack in many countries actually.

Norway is now the first country committed to the zero deforestation, which precludes deforestation in public procurement. Any companies related to deforestation will not be able to have contract with the Norwegian government. For crops associated with large-scale rainforest destruction like soy, timber, palm oil and beef, if they are to be procured by the government, they will have to be produced in a sustainable way. In addition, now there are recommendations for Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GFPG), the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, to consider biodiversity when making investment decisions.

The Norwegian parliament have announced that their public procurement policy will be going deforestation-free. Norway is recognised as a leader in funding forest conservation around the world and are now the first country to commit to zero deforestation. Nils Hermann Ranum form the Rainforest Foundation Norway commended the pledge and acknowledged it as a victory in the fight to protect rainforests.

Fern have produced a report outlining China’s efforts in combatting the trade of illegally sourced timber. The report covers the forest policies and timber trade trends in China as well as the engagement from national and international bodies. Strategies for China-EU efforts in tackling illegal logging and forest governance failure and other drivers of deforestation are also shared. One recommendation includes a robust enforcement of the EUTR in imports from China.

President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s plan to ban new palm oil permits is being supported by Indonesia’s forestry ministry. The ban, announced in April, has spared 851,000 hectares of land from conversion with 61 proposals from palm oil companies being rejected. The rapid expansion of palm oil plays a key part in deforestation across the country and was also a prime cause of the fire and haze crisis in 2015.

A recent study released by 12 international and Indonesian NGOs reveal that Asia Pulp &Paper (APP) is building one of the world’s largest pulp mills without a sustainable wood supply in South Sumatra. This analysis indicates that the current planted area owned by APP is insufficient in supporting this new mill as well as the 2 existing mills. This report suggests that APP may fail to meet its ‘zero deforestation commitments’ made in 2013 which included ‘100% sustainable plantation wood for pulp’.

Greenpeace have released a publication outlining the economic exploitation issues of the Amazon rainforest and is demanding that the Brazilian government cancel hydropower projects such as the São Luiz do Tapajós (SLT) dam. This dam alone is expected to cause 2,200km2 of deforestation and to drown 400km2 of rainforest. Previous projects have led to huge habitats being wiped out causing significant impacts on the populations of fish, aquatic reptiles and the life cycles of local mammals.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s comments on the destruction of the rainforests in Indonesia are being criticised by Indonesia’s environment and forestry minister, Siti Nurbaya. Following his visit last month to the Mount Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra, DiCaprio posted on social media that ‘palm oil expansion is destroying this unique place’. Nurbaya shared that it was rather unfortunate that DiCaprio didn’t obtain comprehensive information about deforestations issues in Indonesia and that the current government are working hard to protect the environment.

Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), which manages $828 billion worth of funds, released its annual report for 2015 today, revealing that six palm oil companies, four pulp and paper companies, and one coal company were dropped from its investment portfolio. Lars Løvold, director of the NGO Rainforest Foundation Norway, said that the GPFG’s actions show that companies involved in deforestation risk being cut off from international investment.

Indonesia’s anti-graft commission said government agencies have agreed on a plan to combat corruption in the forestry industry that costs the state billions of dollars in lost revenue and is behind fires that pollute Southeast Asia. The plan leans heavily on technology to build an accurate picture of where illegal deforestation and conversion of peatland into farmland is occurring, using Landsat satellites, drones and LIDAR pulsed laser-based mapping.

Greenpeace have released a scorecard on 14 companies' progress on eliminating deforestation from their supply chains. Nestle and Ferrero scored the highest and Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo scored the lowest. Greenpeace has encouraged these companies to work with an implementation partner to recognise their commitments as well as seek third party verifications on their progress.

The Montagnes Blanches endangered forest has become a focus area for conservation organisations due to threats on its unique features by illegal logging. According to satellite data provided from 2000-2013, almost 50% of the intact forest landscape has been lost or degraded. Furthermore the species, woodland cari-bou within this forest is now being identified as threatened under Canada’s Species at Risk 2.

Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) discovered a sharp deforestation increase in the lower Las Piedras River area, which is in the far west Amazon rainforest of the Madre de Dios region of Southern Peru. This area is considered as an incredibly biodiverse area. The headwater of Las Piedras River is protected, however, the lower remains under threat largely due to the controversial Trans-Amazon highway, which brought loggers, hunters, gold miners, and settlers.

A group of scientists questioned whether sustainable forest management (SFM) is an effective way as commonly believed to protect tropical forests and the habitat and carbon reserves. They published a study in the journal Land Use Policy arguing that SFM may not actually lead to less deforestation based on the their analysis of timber concessions in the Central African nation of the Republic of Congo. According to their research, timber concessions operating under forest management plans (FMPs) showed higher rates of deforestation than concessions without them. The research was criticized by some scientists as overly simplistic. One of the authors was hesitant to extend the findings beyond the borders of the Republic of Congo.

The World Resources Institute released a new study, which finds that nearly all of the recent tree cover loss in several “frontiers of plantation expansion” is happening outside established plantation boundaries. The author hopes that the study can help in land-use planning that directs plantation development and expansion to already-degraded areas rather than supplanting forests.

A new study published on the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states that the role of agriculture in the destruction of mangrove forests in South-East Asia has been underestimated. The study is based on a 12-year assessment conducted between 2000 and 2012, which found that in South-East Asia mangroves were being lost at an average rate of 0.18%. Rice and palm oil plantations contributed nearly 40% to the lost. The author is calling for action as mangrove habitats in South-East Asia are highly biodiverse and are vital to the livelihood or millions of people.

A new report by the Rainforest Action Network provides further evidence of the benefits of greater local land rights in conserving tropical forests. The research follows a separate report published in 2014 by the World Resources Institute, an international environmental NGO. That study showed deforestation rates were 11 times lower in zones licensed to local communities than in other lands.

The Mongabay article reports that Indonesia targeted 2.5 million hectares of land for community-based forest management between 2009 and 2014 but only 13% of this had actually been allocated for community-based forest management by the end of 2013. The article points to criticisms by some that many licenses vulnerable to abuse with one commentator claiming that some loosely organized communities will simply sell their land to the highest bidder – often industrial companies.

Auditors say EU scheme to tackle $100bn global trade in illegal timber is poorly designed, badly managed and largely ineffective. Four EU countries – Greece, Spain, Hungary and Romania – have still not implemented an EU timber regulation proposed five years ago, allowing an easy passage to market for the fruits of deforestation. While on the supply side, part of the problem rests with a poor prioritisation of aid, the auditors say. Liberia received €11.9m to tackle illegal logging, when its yearly wood exports to the EU only averaged €5m.

After three years of campaigning, a coalition of activists, celebrities and civil society representatives crowded into the Brazilian Congress last week to submit a bill calling for an end to deforestation. The bill is part of a Zero Deforestation campaign led by Greenpeace.

The Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG) published a report showing the deforestation between 2010 and 2013 declined sharply across the Amazon basin. This is the first time the change in primary forest in the Amazon outside of Brazil is documented. Unlike Brazil, which owns advanced monitoring system, forest data from non-Brazilian countries are much less reported before. The report also includes a detailed deforestation map.