01 | July | 2010 | Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist

By Stephen Leahy*

MONTPELLIER, France, Apr 7, 2010 (Tierramérica)

Billions of dollars are being mobilised to protect and increase the world’s forests under a climate protection mechanism known as REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). But many experts are unsure that it will work, and some fear it could end in disaster.

According to Anne Larson, who works in Nicaragua as an associate at the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), “REDD presents lots of risks.”

“Most countries are simply not ready. They do not have policies to protect the rights of local and indigenous peoples, to determine land tenure or even work out who owns the ‘carbon rights’ to a forest,” Larson told participants at an international conference on smallholder and community forestry in Montpellier, France, in late March.

Under the REDD initiative, richer countries would pay to maintain forests in tropical regions to offset their own carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide from human activities is one of the main gases that produce the greenhouse effect.

The wealthy countries would be granted “carbon credits” towards achieving their carbon reduction commitments to combat climate change. Continue reading →

This is the first study to assess the effect of real-world air pollution according to environmentalresearchweb:

“Air pollution is bad for your heart – particularly if you are elderly.”

This new animal study provides biological evidence of the well-known finding that air pollution increases cardiovascular disease and mortality.

Turns out that even relatively low levels of pollution — particulates from the burning of fossil fuels or wood — is “reducing the blood’s ability to carry oxygen and perhaps altering neural reflexes too. Meanwhile, the gaseous pollutants might be causing tissue inflammation, leading to less efficient uptake of oxygen through the lungs”.

The affects were worse with age. “It would seem prudent to work towards reducing exposure to these pollutants…”

Yet another compelling reason to end the addiction to fossil fuel use and to also help bring cleaner-burning stoves to the people who need them for cooking. — Stephen