Environment

More from the Series

WORKING PAPERS
Why Maintaining Tropical Forests Is Essential and Urgent for a Stable Climate - Working Paper 385
Rosa C. Goodman
and
Martin Herold
November 04, 2014
Tropical forests have the highest carbon density and cover more land area than forests in any other biome. They also serve a vital role as a natural buffer to climate change ―capturing 2.2–2.7 Gt of carbon per year. 
Blog Post
Can Brazil Stay the Course on Reducing Deforestation?
Frances Seymour
October 28, 2014
The results of Sunday’s runoff election in Brazil open a new chapter in the country’s fight against deforestation. Dilma Rousseff will have to overcome skepticism that she’s the right woman for the job, in light of perceptions that she privileged development at the expense of conse...
Blog Post
A Burning Issue for Indonesia’s New Jokowi Administration
Frances Seymour
October 24, 2014
On Monday October 20, Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) was inaugurated as president of Indonesia.  As I wrote at the time of the election in July, Indonesia’s deforestation rate—now the world’s highest—and its oversized effect on global climate emissions are ...
WORKING PAPERS
Trading Forests: Quantifying the Contribution of Global Commodity Markets to Emissions from Tropical Deforestation - Working Paper 384
Martin Persson et al.
October 22, 2014
This paper aims to improve our understanding of how and where global supply-chains link consumers of agricultural and forest commodities across the world to forest destruction in tropical countries. A better understanding of these linkages can help inform and support the design of demand-side int...
Blog Post
The Global Trade in Deforestation and Associated Emissions
Frances Seymour
October 22, 2014
Last month, I celebrated commitments to slow deforestation by Peru and Liberia announced at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in New York.  
Blog Post
Who Pollutes Most? Surprises in a New US Database - Kevin Ummel
Lawrence MacDonald
October 21, 2014
Pollution has no respect for party lines. In the US, Republican and Democratic districts may differ in many ways, but when it comes to the carbon emissions heating our planet, the differences are much smaller than you might expect. 
Blog Post
Nobel Laureate Jean Tirole’s Five-Step Plan to Fix the Climate
Jonah Busch
October 17, 2014
On Monday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, aka the Nobel Prize for Economics, to Professor Jean Tirole of the Toulouse School of Economics.