The international community should enable rainforest countries to halve deforestation by 2020 and make the global forest sector ‘carbon neutral’ by 2030. This is the recommendation of an independent report to the British Prime Minister published today. The Eliasch Review, Climate Change: Financing Global Forests, is an independent report commissioned by the Prime Minister and[…]
Payments from polluters in rich countries to tropical communities in exchange for slowing deforestation may soon play a bigger role in combating climate change if problems like measuring preservation efforts can be overcome. It’s a bit of a minefield,” Michael Brune, the executive director of nonprofit group the Rainforest Action Network, told the Reuters Global[…]
Wood chip costs in Western US, which have been some of the highest in North America, declined 13% in the 3Q, but are currently still 25% higher than a year ago. Another region in the US that has experienced substantial fibre cost changes this year is the Northeast, where hardwood log prices have increased for[…]
Wood fibre prices worldwide have been rising steadily for the past six years, reaching record levels in 2Q/08. Expanding demand for renewable energy may potentially drive prices even higher in many countries in the near future, according to Håkan Ekström, president of Wood Resources International. Since 2002, global average prices for pulpwood have risen 67%[…]
International efforts to combat climate change received a boost in mid September with consensus amongst a diverse group of global forest leaders on a new set of principles dealing with sustainable forestry. A two-day meeting in Washington, organized by The Forests Dialogue (TFD) in conjunction with the World Bank, covered a wide range of issues.[…]
ConFor has set out its case to UK MEPs opposing the moves by the European Parliament to amend radically the plant protection directive. The EC propose to change the approvals systems for pesticides in Europe from one based on risk assessment to one based on hazard criteria. The effect of these proposed changes will be[…]
Wood fibre costs, the major cost component when producing wood pulp, increased in practically all major pulp-producing regions around the world in the 2Q/08, according to the market report Wood Resource Quarterly (WRQ). This was both a result of a continued weakening of the US dollar against most major currencies and because of higher transport[…]
MagForestry recently commissioned wood chip plant located in the port of Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo is operating successfully (IFI, February 2008, pp32-35). Production has achieved a target rate of about 2,000 t/d of eucalyptus chips with total production to date of approximately 70,000 t. The annual production target is 500,000 t of wood chips. De-barked[…]
Congo, home to the world’s second largest tropical forest, has launched a review of all timber contracts in an effort to clean up a business rife with corruption and to recoup millions of dollars in lost taxes, according to a report by Environmental News Network (ENN). The World Bank-sponsored initiative will look at 156 deals,[…]
The news the sawmilling fraternity was waiting on has arrived, with major North American sawmill supplier USNR swooping in to snatch up fellow supplier Coe Newnes McGehee (CNM) for an undisclosed sum. The only stakeholders more pleased by the result than CNM’s customers would be the CNM employees and the community at the company’s Salmon[…]