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June 2014 BATFN: Deodorant, Diet, Dollars (@Stanford)

Riau rainforest

The June 2014 BATFN will take place from 6pm-8:30pm Jun 19 at the Carnegie Institution complex (260 Panama St, Stanford, CA 94305). The event is open to the public.

We’re pleased to announce that Sharon Smith of the Union of Concerned Scientists will present “Deodorant, Diet, Dollars—Recent Successes in Reducing Deforestation”.

    Description: In the 1990s, deforestation was consuming 16 million hectares a year—an area about the size of the state of Georgia—and was responsible for about 17 percent of the global warming pollution that threatens the world with dangerous climate change. But today the pace of deforestation is down; effective programs and policies—driven by individuals, communities, national governments and the private sector—have contributed to positive impacts for forest conservation, socioeconomic development and land-use changes. Sharon Smith, campaign manager of the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative at UCS, and Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at UCS, will discuss the organization’s work—and biggest recent tropical forest victories–centered on commodity markets and international finance for tropical forest conservation.

If you plan to join us, please RSVP via this form or the Facebook event page.

We hope to see you there!

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May 2014 BATFN: Palm Oil’s Impact on Indonesian Communities

The next BATFN will take place May 1, 2014 at 6pm at the RAN office, 425 Bush Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA (nearest BART stop Montgomery). The event is open to the public.

We’re pleased to announce that Ratri Kusumohartono from Sawit Watch will be presenting:

    Ratri Kusumohartono who works for Sawit Watch, one of Indonesia’s leading palm oil advocacy groups, will be discussing Sawit Watch’s work with local communities in Indonesia who are resisting or who have lost their forest and livelihoods due to large-scale oil palm expansion. She will also highlight some recent issues in Indonesia’s palm oil industry, including the latest fires in Riau, the forest moratorium and food security, and labor conditions on palm oil plantations.

    Sawit Watch was founded in 1998 and since then, has built a network of over 130 individual members and local contacts working with dozens of local communities in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, Papua and small islands. Sawit Watch’s beneficiaries are local communities, indigenous people, oil palm smallholders and labors. Sawit Watch’s first mandate is based on the call to support local communities who are fighting or have lost their forest and livelihoods because of large-scale oil palm expansion.

    As palm oil industry is growing, negative impacts due to its existence are expanding. Beside communities’ loss of lands and livelihoods, smallholders and laborers are also exploited by large scale plantations. In order to address this, Sawit Watch is currently also working and supporting smallholders and laborers to strengthen their positions./ul>

    Doors open at 6pm. The presentation will take place around 7pm.

    If you are interested in attending the event, it would be helpful if you RSVP via the Facebook event page. The event is open to everyone so feel free to forward to your friends.

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April 2014 BATFN: A Global Strategy for Road Building (@Stanford)

The next BATFN will take place April 27, 2014 at 4pm in Herrin T-175 at Stanford University. The event is open to the public.

This is a co-event held with the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology featuring a talk by William F. Laurance:

    The 21st century will see an unprecedented expansion of roads, with at least 25 million kilometers of new paved roads anticipated by 2050. Nine-tenths of all road construction is projected to occur in developing nations, including many regions that sustain exceptional biodiversity and vital ecosystem services. Roads penetrating into remote or frontier areas are a major proximate driver of habitat loss and fragmentation, fires, overhunting, and other environmental degradation, often with irreversible impacts on native ecosystems. Unfortunately, much road proliferation is chaotic or poorly planned and the rate of expansion is so great that it is overwhelming the capacity of environmental managers. In this talk I will describe a global scheme for prioritizing road building. This large-scale zoning plan seeks to limit the environmental costs of road expansion while maximizing its potential benefits, especially for agriculture. Our model identifies areas with high environmental values where future road building should be avoided, areas where strategic road improvements could markedly increase agricultural yields with modest environmental costs, and ‘conflict areas’ where road building could have sizable benefits but with serious environmental damage. This scheme provides a template for proactively zoning and prioritizing roads during the most explosive era of road expansion in human history.

Refreshments served at 3:45pm

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February 2014 BATFN: Conflict and conservation in the Congo (@Berkeley)

Greetings! The Bay Area Tropical Forest Network (BATFN) is back!

BATFN will take place Thursday, Feb 27, 2013 at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley (2607 Hearst Ave, Berkeley, CA).

We’re pleased to announce that Van Butsic will give a brief talk about the impact of conflict on forest loss in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

    Many tropical countries have experienced violent conflict in recent decades, which may pose an additional, yet poorly understood threat for forests. Conflict may decrease or increase deforestation depending on the relationship between conflict and other causes of land use change, such as mining expansion or protected area establishment. Here we examine the impact of conflict on forest loss in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Using a panel instrumental variables approach we find that: i) conflict increases forest cover loss, ii) mining concessions increase forest cover loss, but in times of conflict this impact is lessened, and iii) protected areas reduce forest cover loss, even if conflict is present. Our results thus suggest that policy interventions designed to reduce violent conflict may have the co-benefit of reducing deforestation and that protected areas can be effective even in times of war.

Doors open at 6pm for networking/conversation and Butsic’s talk will likely begin around 7 pm, followed by discussion. We’ll provide some snacks and drinks, but any food, drink, or other contributions would be appreciated.

If you are interested in attending the event, it would be helpful if you RSVP via this form. The event is open to everyone so feel free to forward to your friends.

We hope you can make it.

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November 2013 BATFN: Exploring Solutions to Deforestation (@The Rainbow Warrior)

The final BATFN of 2013 took place Sunday, November 17 from 6-8 pm on board Greenpeace’s ship, The Rainbow Warrior, which was docked at Pier 15 on the Embarcadero near the Exploratorium.

The theme for the event was “An Evening Exploring Solutions to Deforestation” and involved a panel of speakers who talked about one solution that has worked in the past to reduce deforestation.

    The structure for the night is that after 45 minutes of food/drink/networking, the panel will commence. Each speaker will get 5-7 minutes to do a quick overview of their solution to deforestation (and 2 minutes to answer questions), and then at the end the floor will be opened up for discussion.

Here is video from the speakers’ portion of the event.

BATFN Meeting: Solutions to Deforestation from Paul Stoutenburgh on Vimeo.