TFT published the following statement on their website with the full report: ‘TFT has carried out a thorough technical study into alleged allegations of APP suppliers clearing forest in West Kalimantan Province and has produced the below report which shows no evidence of any violation of APP's forest clearance moratorium.’

MPs and policymakers from 33 of the world’s major economies gathered at the first GLOBE Climate Legislation Summit in London. The Summit concluded with a pledge which recognises that forest loss contributes approximately 17 per cent of GHG emissions each year and commits the legislators to promote and advance the REDD+ mechanism in their own countries. REDD+ offers forest nations access to new finance in return for the development of effective and independently assessed forest protection schemes.

A synthesis report has been published for REDD+ policymakers at the current UN climate talks in Doha. It is the first report of its kind taking a comprehensive country-by-country look at the drivers of deforestation. Agriculture is judged to be the main driver of an estimated 80 per cent of global deforestation. REDD+ is a climate mitigation scheme that provides financial incentives to developing countries to avoid GHG emissions associated with forest clearance. The report classifies both direct (e.g. urban expansion, infrastructure, mining, logging or agriculture) and indirect (e.g. changes in economic growth, population growth, commodity prices and governance) drivers of deforestation and says the drivers conspire to influence the level of forest clearing. The authors believe that countries which would finance REDD+ want to see the money directed towards addressing the drivers of deforestation before committing large sums.

APP has received SVLK timber legality certification on its ninth and final mill. Indonesia’s Timber Legality Assurance System (SVLK) ensures that all exported products are traceable to verifiable points of origin. The EU Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) under which SVLK has been developed is expected to become operational in 2013.

The actor and environmental activist Woody Harrelson is putting his support behind the construction of a $500 million tree-free paper mill in Canada which would produce straw-based paper. Prairie Pulp and Paper, the company behind the project, already produce a copy paper which is 80 per cent waste wheat straw. According to a study they commissioned this paper has a lower environmental impact than 100 per cent recycled paper. However, a representative of the Forest Products Association of Canada thinks wheat paper will be a niche product due to limited availability of waste wheat and the need for the strength and quality in paper that is provided by wood fibres.

Brazil’s President has signed the new Forest Code into law. The Code dictates how much of their forest farmers and companies must leave intact. However, critics counter that it reduces the actual amount of forest preserved by extending the scope to river margins and steep hillsides. To comply with the Code some landowners who have previously cleared land in excess of the new limits will have to reforest an area of land totalling the size of Italy. Whether enforcement will be effective and successful is open to question. The main tool to support compliance will be a registry to which landowners must detail their compliance with the Code to remain eligible for state credit and support. The farm lobby says it may challenge the final version of the Code in court.

Analysis reflecting on the global state of illegal logging and the importance of Australia joining the EU and the US in implementing anti-illegal logging measures through its own Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill. It draws attention to the flood of illegal timber which is exported to Australia from South East Asia and the difficulty legitimate timber producers in Australia and New Zealand have in competing domestically and internationally.

The Forest Trust (TFT) has revealed that it is working with Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) on an overall framework for sustainability which includes and goes beyond legal compliance. TFT has previously worked successfully with Golden Agri Resources, Indonesia’s largest palm oil company which sits under the same ownership as APP. TFT plans to publish regular updates once it believes that APP is making significant progress.

An expert from the Forest Survey of India (FSI) claims that recent surveys overestimate the extent of India’s remaining forests. The Ministry of Environment and Forests reports biennially on the state of India’s forests but the FSI who are involved in the process are openly critical of the satellite imagery technology used which they say does not have the required resolution to identify small-scale deforestation. Furthermore, the technology is unable to tell the difference between native forests and bamboo grown on cleared forests. It is thought that there are particular problems with deforestation and a lack of response from the state government in Meghalaya state in northeast India.

Experts are warning that the focus on Brazil, which hosts 60% of the Amazonian rainforest, is deflecting attention from increasing Amazonian deforestation in neighbouring countries such as Bolivia, Peru, Columbia and Venezuela. The main driver is considered to be the commodities boom centred on exports to China and other Asian economies. Conservation International in Bolivia say that government policies and subsidies encourage business development in the Amazon which inevitably leads to deforestation.

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.

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+.

Production at the mill, which has a capacity of 240,000 tonnes, is being suspended indefinitely as of September 16th 2012 due to low price levels in the pulp market. Most of the pulp at the mill is shipped to Asia.

APP has announced that three of its mills in Java have achieved SVLK certification. The SVLK system creates a chain of custody process which aims to ensure that mills only receive and process timber from legal sources and that all export products can be traced to verifiable points of origin.

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.

Domtar has added some more products and an extra mill to its online tool which measures the environmental and social impacts of Domtar paper. The tool measures Domtar products across five categories: water usage, the distance its fibre travels to a paper mill, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, waste send to landfills and renewable energy usage.

Kimberly-Clark is investigating the use of plants which make more efficient use of land and resources without displacing food crops in its efforts to meet its ambitious goal of cutting the amount of wood fibre it uses by 50% by 2025. It is currently test marketing tissue products containing bamboo and is also exploring ways to use waste fibres that remain after agricultural crops such as wheat have been harvested.

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.