Forests Could Provide Highlight of Cancún Climate Results

In this video, Rane Cortez, a forest carbon policy advisor for The Nature Conservancy, talks about the excitement of helping try to hammer out a forest agreement that would reduce the harsh impacts of climate change.

The relation between tropical forests and climate change is a really exciting aspect of the international summit happening here in Cancún, Mexico from November 29 to December 10.

Developing and developed countries are here together to think of new and innovative ways to protect tropical forests that are so important for forest-dependent biodiversity and local communities.

I’m pretty confident we can get an agreement on this aspect of the talks. A solid agreement would be really helpful to The Nature Conservancy and our partners who are actually implementing different activities to protect and restore tropical forests.

On example of what this work on the ground looks like is in the northern part of Brazil in a municipality named Sao Felix do Xingu, where we’re teaming up with several partners to help private landowners register their land and improve their agricultural practices.

We’re also working with indigenous communities to help monitor and enforce their territorial boundaries and create quality land-management plans. We’re also making sure forests in protected areas remain safe and standing.

We’re happy to be able to provide solid lessons-learned from our work on the ground – in the forests – to policy arenas like these UN climate negotiations. We want a global agreement that is “win-win” for multiple actors.

Video by: Paul Mackie/The Nature Conservancy