The US Government and 20 of the world’s largest companies from the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) have announced a partnership to eliminate deforestation from supply chains by 2020, starting with palm oil, soy, paper and beef. Production of these four commodities in four countries alone causes 50% of global deforestation. Leaders from the CGF companies, the US and other governments and NGOs will meet in the Autumn to identify practical actions to achieve the deforestation commitment.

FSC has appointed a new Director General. Kim Carstensen succeeds Andre De Freitas and brings with him 20 years of experience at WWF Denmark and WWF International focussing on conservation, development and global climate issues.

The US House of Representatives will vote this week on a bill called the RELIEF Act (The Retailers and Entertainers Lacey Implementation and Fairness Enforcement Act) which would significantly weaken the use of the Lacey Act to regulate against illegal logging by allowing manufacturers to keep illegal wood and limiting the species and country declaration requirements to solid wood (i.e. pulp and paper would be excluded). The article points to World Bank estimates which suggest that government and businesses suffer more than $10 billion in lost revenue each year due to illegal logging, $1 billion of which is lost by the US.

The Russian government has committed up to $12.4 billion over the next eight years to be spent on forestry protection. This will include restoration and improvement of species composition in forests, reducing illegal logging and addressing the black market in timber, improving aerial monitoring, cultivating trees for restoration and creating fire ponds to protect against wildfires. In response to the announcement of the policy, the CEO of the forestry company RusForest called for privatisation of the country’s forest, saying that this would incentivise longer term investment in the management of Russia’s forests. The current model is for companies such as RusForest to manage areas of forest on relatively short-term leases from the government. Russia currently imports more paper than it produces despite having around 700 million hectares of forest.

The Global Canopy Program is promoting the use of smartphones by indigenous communities to protect their forests. The strategy would see smartphone apps used to collect geographic data and photographs. This local data would then be linked to remote sensing data to enhance the monitoring of forest management. Up until now the effectiveness of community forest management projects in halting deforestation has been brought into question. The hope is that smartphones would play a significant role in helping local communities to manage their forests though there are some concerns that this would reduce the role of communities to simply collecting data without having input using their local knowledge on how their forests should be managed.

A study published in Science modelling species extinction in the Brazilian Amazon has concluded that the extinction of many species in certain regions is inevitable. The study models several future scenarios ranging from “business as usual” to a “strong reduction” and found that even in the best case scenario deforestation will lead to the extinction of around 38 species locally. Future threats to the Amazon come from planned hydroelectric power plants and the risks of deforestation which might follow the changes to Brazil’s Forest Code.

Local officials have blamed flooding in Indonesia on illegal logging in the area surrounding a dam which overflowed. Residents were forced to flee as their homes were submerged by up to five metres of water. The officials are working with police to crack down on illegal logging and there are plans to reforest some areas later in the year.

Representatives of NGOs and government agencies from Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and Peru took part in a special technical training session on monitoring deforestation, forest degradation and biomass organised by the Governors' Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF). The week-long training aims to improve the measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) systems which are an integral part of REDD+.

The Viet Nam Administration of Forestry announced that over 13,700 violations of forest protection and timber management laws were reported in the first six months of 2012. Around 623ha of forest land have been lost in this period as a result of changes in forest use purposes, illegal logging and forest fires. Government ministries working on the issue aim to tighten controls on the wood processing industry and local authorities have been ordered to review existing forestry projects and ensure that forest protection programmes are adequately funded.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Indonesia on Tuesday to meet with President Yudhoyono to discuss deforestation and the environment. She previously visited the country seventeen years ago when she was environment minister. The visit comes as Germany explores ways to make its financial aid to Indonesia conditional on Indonesia conserving its remaining rainforests.

Two forest managers and a businessman have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the illegal logging of 500 cubic metres of protected forests along the Laos border. The arrests follow those of six others who the Vietnamese police have proposed charging with violations of forest management and bribery.

PEFC has cleared Forestry Tasmania of unsustainable harvesting practices and re-certified the company for another three years. The audit came after allegations that the company was logging native forest at twice the rate of sustainable yield. The outcome was met with criticism from Kim Booth of the Australian Green Party who said, “the PEFC auditing that's done on Australian forestry standard harvesting methods is not worth the paper it's written on because the market's rejected it and that's the essential problem that Forestry Tasmania has fallen into”.

Press release by WRI for their new Forest Legality Risk Information Tool. The risk tool provides details about where forest products come from and what issues a buyer might encounter. The tool allows searching by country or species to find specific information. Future additions to the tool will provide interactive supply chain profiling tools, such as decision trees.

CIFOR highlighted the need for a new approach to enabling smallholder and community-managed forests to achieve certification in a side event organised by FSC at the RIO+20 Conference. They used an example in Bolivia where cases of theft were reported among the members. CIFOR believe that one of the reasons for this is due to insecurity as a result of formalising property rights which have cut some community members off from their traditional harvesting area. Additionally, the requirement to rotate no-take zones could lead to conflict within the community. CIFOR is in the process of collaboratively developing a new paradigm for smallholder and community forest management which will take into account the differing uses community members have for the forest and acknowledge that collective decision-making in a community may not be feasible.

An article covering a new report from the Centre for International Forest Research (CIFOR) on how REDD+ is facing major implementation challenges. One of the major issues is ‘who gets paid?’ It can create a perverse incentive for some actors to say ‘I intend to deforest; pay me not to’. Added to this, it is being supported by voluntary markets. To take off in earnest requires firm global targets to be set on reducing emissions; then an effective cap-and-trade system can be put in place which would see major investment in REDD+ projects. However, the authors still conclude that REDD+ has a future due to the realities of climate change and the role preventing deforestation has to play in mitigating climate change.

The State of the World’s Forests 2012 (SOFO 2012) report will be officially presented at Rio 20+ this week. The report argues that more sustainable use of forestry resources is key to meeting many of the core challenges being discussed at Rio 20+. This is through the role it can play in creating jobs in rural areas and the possibilities of recycling and carbon storage offered by sustainably managed timber products.

In a speech at CIFOR Indonesian President Yudhoyono admitted to mistakes in policy in the past which encouraged deforestation, but asserted that Indonesia is now set to become a leader in "sustainable forestry". However, CIFOR’s Daniel Murdiyarso pointed out several concerns which weren’t addressed by the speech, including the fact that a reduction in the deforestation rate does not correlate directly with a reduction in emissions: much of Indonesia’s deforestation is happening in carbon-dense peat forests which are targeted for palm oil estates and pulp and paper plantations and deforestation of these areas has a greater impact on emissions than deforestation in other areas.

In a speech at CIFOR Indonesian President Yudhoyono admitted to mistakes in policy in the past which encouraged deforestation, but asserted that Indonesia is now set to become a leader in "sustainable forestry". However, CIFOR’s Daniel Murdiyarso pointed out several concerns which weren’t addressed by the speech, including the fact that a reduction in the deforestation rate does not correlate directly with a reduction in emissions: much of Indonesia’s deforestation is happening in carbon-dense peat forests which are targeted for palm oil estates and pulp and paper plantations and deforestation of these areas has a greater impact on emissions than deforestation in other areas.

A partnership between the UN Environment Programme and Interpol called Project leaf (Law Enforcement Assistance for Forests) has been announced. The initiative recognises the transnational character of many cases of illegal logging. It is intended to support enforcement agencies in countries with the biggest problems.

A partnership between the UN Environment Programme and Interpol called Project leaf (Law Enforcement Assistance for Forests) has been announced. The initiative recognises the transnational character of many cases of illegal logging. It is intended to support enforcement agencies in countries with the biggest problems.