Wanting to preserve biodiversity in tropical forest areas without involving the local and indigenous communities that live there is neither fair nor effective, say ecologist Jacques Tassin and geographer Christian Kull. This was the tag line for our recent opinion piece published in the French newspaper Le Monde. Thanks so much to my friend and collaborator Jacques Tassin for involving me in this project. Below, I’ve made an English translation of the article, and also inserted some of the references that inspired us.
Read the rest of this entry »Recognition of community land rights: a tool against tropical deforestation
March 23, 2023
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Conservation, Development, Political ecology, Sustainability | Tagged: community land rights, deforestation, indigenous people | 
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Posted by christiankull
Les feux en Amazonie et ailleurs
September 2, 2019The recent media storm over Amazonian flames recently caught up with me – here’s the result, in French, published in La Liberté (Fribourg), Le Nouvelliste (Sion), and Le Courrier (Genève), and in pdf. I laud the journalist Thierry Jacolet for his efforts to understand and not just populate preconceived soundbites with academic authority. Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | Fire | Tagged: Africa, Brazil, deforestation, grassland, wildfire | Permalink
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Peatland deforestation for acacia in Indonesia
September 27, 2014Oil palm gets all the attention, but what about acacia? Oil palm has become synonymous with deforestation in Indonesia and resulting losses of orang-utan habitat, increased carbon emissions, and unhealthy smoke haze. But equally large areas of peatland are being converted to pulp and paper plantations of tropical salwood wattles like Acacia crassicarpa and A. magnum, trees that now cover many millions of hectares in South East Asia. In Riau province, Sumatra, the two big pulp mills (operated by Asia Pulp and Paper [APP] and Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd [APRIL]) have around 75 and 45 per cent (respectively) of their pulp plantations located on peatland. The ways in which such forestry concessions have been granted and implemented have inspired dramatic protests: 28 residents of the Meranti Islands in Riau Province stitched their lips shut while demonstrating in front of government buildings in Jakarta (Jakarta Post; Transparency Int.). Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Acacia, Conservation, Development, Political ecology, Research, Sustainability | Tagged: deforestation, forestry, Indonesia, peatland, protest | Permalink
Posted by christiankull
Why we can’t say Madagascar is 90% deforested
April 25, 2014If stated often enough, a fact becomes truth. That seems to be the case with the oft-repeated figure that “Madagascar has lost 90% of its original forest cover”. The problem, as Bill McConnell of Michigan State University and I point out in a letter just published in Science magazine, is that this fact cannot be proven.
Slash-and-burn tavy clearing near Andapa, Madagascar (photo by C. Kull)
5 Comments | Conservation, Madagascar, Political ecology, Research | Tagged: conservation, deforestation, Madagascar, remote sensing | Permalink
Posted by christiankull
Christian Kull 