Strictly protected areas such as national parks and biological reserves have been more effective at reducing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest than so-called sustainable-use areas that allow for controlled resource extraction, two University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues have found. In addition, protected areas established primarily to safeguard the rights and livelihoods of indigenous people performed especially well in places where deforestation pressures are high. The U-M-led study, which found that all forms of protection successfully limit deforestation, is scheduled for online publication March 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Greg Keoleian, a professor of Sustainable Systems at SNRE and director of its Center for Sustainable Systems, was interviewed by SmartPlanet’s Ian Mount regarding plans by Uruguay to become the world’s biggest producer of wind power and one of the planet’s greenest countries.
Christoph Nolte, a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, has been selected as the first recipient of the Marshall Weinberg Population, Development, and Climate Change Fellowship. Nolte is studying the economic tradeoffs of land conservation in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.