Madagascar passes decree banning rainforest timber trade

Madagascar's transitional government has finally signed a decree banning the logging and trade of precious hardwoods, a month after announcing the moratorium.

The decree comes in direct response to mounting pressure from the international community over ongoing destruction of Madagascar's national parks by illegal loggers. Timber trafficking was associated with an increase in commercial poaching of wildlife — including endangered lemurs ̬ and violence against conservation workers and local communities by marauding bands of loggers.

How to Repair the World

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What's Up With the Rainforest: Stopping Rainforest Destruction Can Cut World Emissions By 17%

Around the world rainforests are hurting. The deforestation of vast tracts of these precious lands does more than just ruin local ecosystems. The health and vitality of rainforests help maintain life for everything on the planet. Reason enough for all of us to contribute to ending their destruction and encouraging their growth. This is why, working with The Rainforest Alliance, we helped create The Rainforest and The Rainforest NewsLadder. Every couple of weeks I will check in to see what's buzzing in The Rainforest providing you with the latest news and media surrounding this priority issue.

How condoms could save the world's forests

Brazil's reputation as a "sexy country" dates back to the seminal work of Gilberto Freyre, who wrote a rather idealised account of how its sensuous and promiscuous past had produced a beautiful inter-racial population. Although the country's shocking levels of contemporary inequality and violence cruelly mock his central thesis of a 'racial democracy', the 'sexy Brazil' image lives on. It's there in Rio's famous carnival, in the beautiful bodies in bikini-floss that adorn its beaches and, more darkly, as home to one of the world's largest prostitution and sex trafficking industries.

But Brazil has also developed a highly effective anti-HIV/AIDS campaign, which is widely credited with having prevented the type of epidemic that has devastated other developing countries. It's succeeded despite the wrath of the Catholic Church, of the previous US Administration – which made health funding conditional on countries signing 'morality pledges' – and of the big drug companies, whose patents Brazil has flouted to bring down the cost of antiretroviral drugs. In the face of such criticism, Brazilian officials refused to change their approach, arguing that a key part of their success has been because they deal in an accepting, open way with high-risk groups. The Director of its national AIDS programme famously rejected the US Government's restrictions as "theological, fundamentalist and Shiite".