Today we’re going to try and help you understand one of the most vexing components of the climate challenge — namely, the overlapping, interlinking, and contradictory land titles that determine control of so many tropical forests — in this case, the Amazon, the lungs of the planet.  With no clarity over control and no realistic way of enforcing it, there’s no way to sustainably manage and protect this massive bulwark against climate change. Today’s episode centers around a few individuals, most notably a Japan-born physician named Jonas Morioka, who migrated to Brazil in the 1980s, purcha ..read more

Photo courtesey of  HH58 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70303656  This episode of Bionic Planet is entitled "The Mosaic, the Minefield, and a Manifesto."  The "Mosaic" reminds us that there is no single solution to the climate challenge. Instead, we have a mosaic of interlocking solutions that fit together like a clock. Carbon finance is just one part of it, and it's one of the few parts that have worked well, albeit imperfectly. The "Minefield" reminds us that the mosaic of solutions sits in an ideological minefield, and you never know ..read more

Tim Mohin wrote “Changing Business from the Inside Out: A Tree-Hugger’s Guide to Working in Corporations” back in 2012, after three decades in sustainability — first in government, with the US Environmental Protection Agency, and then at companies like Intel, where he served as director of sustainable development. He went on to head the Global Reporting Initiative, which administers the GRI standards for sustainability. He recently helped launmch ESG data provider Persefoni and hosts his own podcast, “Sustainability Decoded with Tim and Caitlin.” We look back on 40 years of sustaiability finan ..read more

Dr. Zorodzai Maroveke -- AKA "Dr Zoey," heads the Zimbabwe Industrial Hemp Trust, which is promoting the uptake of industrial hemp as a climate solution. The argument is a compelling one: hemp replenishes faster than wood, usese far less water than cotton, and it has almost no waste. Its ecological benefits are clear, and she hopes carbon finance can be used to overcome the financial challenges to scaling up. Supplemental Reading: "Commodities at a Glance: Special Issue on Industrial Hemp" https://www.mycannabis.com/cannabis-in-zimbabwe-conversation-with-dr-maroveke ..read more

Zimbabwean entrepreneur Chiyedza Heri runs the Ubuntu Alliance, a company that's helping farmers leverage carbon finance to shift to more sustainable forms of agriculture. She's one of more than a dozen young Africans I met at year-end climate talks in Dubai (COP 28) -- a new breed of entrepreneur that the late Ghanian economist George Ayittey calls "cheetahs" because they're nimble, quick, and hungry. Green Cheetahs pursue activities that are pro-nature as well as pro-growth, and today's guest certainly fits that bill ..read more

With just one full day of negotiations remaining, Pedro Venzon and Andrea Bonzanni of the International Emissions Trading Association summarize the remaining issues under Article 6 ..read more

Article 6 negotiations, which focus on international carbon markets, remain stalled in Dubai. Kelley Hamrick Malvar of The Nature Conservancy offers a look into the current state of play and the road ahead ..read more

Kenyan agronomist George Thumbi is helping farmers in the region between Tsavo East and Tsavo West improve their yields and their soil by shifting to agroforestry and other forms of sustainable agriculture.  ..read more

This piece, adapted from a piece that first ran in 2016, serves as the fourth installment in our continuing series on carbon finance in Kenya. Today, we look at how carbon finance supports Sustainable Agriculture Land Management (SALM), which has doubled the average income of more than 30,000 Kenyan family farmers while pulling more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by increasing the carbon content of soils.  ..read more

In part three of our continuing series from Kenya, we hear how the Chyulu Hills REDD+ Project helped people switch from burning trees for charcoal to conserving forests -- the their benefit and the benefit of us all.  ..read more