Recently Director James Cameron said that a real-life ‘Avatar’ battle is being enacted in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, where indigenous groups are trying to halt the construction of a huge hydroelectric project.

It was during an interview with The Associated Press that Cameron said that he was in Brazil’s capital to support the native people and environmental groups as they begin staging protests against the Belo Monte dam project.

It was just last month that Cameron was in the Amazon with the former US Vice President Al Gore attending an environmental summit. His return this month was primarily to promote the release of his blockbuster film ‘Avatar’ onto DVD. In the film the fictitious Na’vi race fights to protect its homeland, the forest-covered moon, Pandora, from plans to extract a substance equivalent to oil. Cameron says he came to Brasilia on his own initiative as he was drawn to the activist’s plight.

From the day it came out in the cinemas ‘Avatar’ has struck a chord with environmentalists all over the world, from China where millions have been displaced due to huge infrastructure projects to Bolivia, where the nation’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales praised the film for sending the message of saving the environment from exploitation.

“I’m drawn into a situation where a real-life ‘Avatar’ confrontation is in progress,” Cameron said in a telephone interview while en route to protests taking place in front of the Mines and Energy Ministry. “What’s happening in ‘Avatar’ is happening in Brazil and places like India and China, where traditional villages are displaced by big infrastructure projects,” he added.

If completed the $11 billion Belo Monte hydroelectric dam would be the world’s third largest. It was cleared for construction on 1^st February by the Environment Ministry and bidding for prospective builders is due to take place later this month.

It looks like it is unlikely that Cameron will be able to sway the government’s decision as the Brazilian government has already said that even should they not be able to find enough private investors for the dam’s construction then the country still has enough funds to finish the project themselves. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration argues that the dam will provide clean energy and is essential to meet current and future energy needs.

Not surprisingly environmentalists are sharply opposed. They argue that it will devastate wildlife as well as the livelihoods of 40,000 people who live in the area that is scheduled to be flooded. They claim that the energy generated by the dam will go to the big mining operations in the Amazon and not to the average person.

Cameron has said that he wrote a letter to President Silva requesting a meeting and urging him to rethink his position on the project, however he has not received a reply.

“I wrote to him that, ‘This is an opportunity for you to be a hero, a visionary leader of the 21st century, and modify Brazil’s path in such a way that you have sustainable economic growth instead of economic growth that has serious consequences for certain sectors of the population,’” Cameron said.

If he and Silva were able to meet Cameron said that he would tell him that he believes North America and Europe should help pay to preserve the rainforest, as it provides a service to the entire world by helping to fight global warming.

Arguably the world’s biggest defence against global warming the Brazilian Amazon acts as carbon ‘sink’ or absorber of carbon dioxide. But it is also a great contributor to global warming as about 75% of Brazil’s emissions come from rainforest clearing.

“If North America and Europe have been responsible for the carbon pollution that started us down this inevitable slide of global warming, then they should take financial responsibility for those services that nature naturally provides,” Cameron said.

Merica a sustainable energy firm based in Hawaii has begun investigating the potential for a biofuels industry drawn from wood waste in New Zealand.

Last week the company’s chief technology officer, Robert Rapier met government officials as well as research and forestry companies. Potentially Merica could offer both investment and technological support and any decision to go ahead could result in a major investment in New Zealand’s clean energy future, most likely in partnership with private local firms.

“We are trying to determine if our technologies mesh up with well with the biomass resources and the demand for power [primarily diesel and jet fuel] in New Zealand.”

Before anything can be done there are some important calculations to be made first, such as the costs of refining and transporting the wood compared to other fuels. There is a fine balancing act between growing enough sustainable biomass, leaving enough for the logging industry and having enough waste to nourish the soil.

In a few months the principals will be coming to New Zealand to see things for themselves while things are still in the ‘early due diligence stage’.

“But I think they’re both pretty committed to investing in New Zealand. They’re both familiar with New Zealand, they’ve spent time here, they like the country a lot, and they feel it’s ideally situated for what we’re trying to do.”

Mr. Rapier has claimed that New Zealand is a bright spot for being able to offset its own energy needs. It is similar to Hawaii, which also has a proportionately low population, big biomass sector and largely imports its fuels.

“Our theory is that we could be sustainable there on Hawaii and our view is New Zealand could be sustainable because of your remote location and the amount of biomass you have.”

Over the next three to five years Mr Rapier aims to build a large biofuel refinery.

“Ultimately we’d like to build a plant like that but … if the economics don’t work out we’re also looking at what I call enabling technologies.”

To make biomass more affordable to transport these technologies would be aimed at packing more energy into it. Then the wood could be turned into a charcoal like product or liquid fuel. This would be too dirty for diesel engines but would be ideal for power production.

“But your power here in New Zealand is very cheaply priced. So it may be hard to beat and use that for electricity generation.”

As well as being a holding company for various biofuel businesses, Merica is looking into setting up a biomass trading platform. Similar platforms are already operating in Europe and ensure security of supply.

“We feel like biomass costs will go up over time and we don’t want to be in the situation where our business becomes at the mercy of rising biomass costs.”

Mr Rapier has confirmed that he has spoken with the University of Canterbury and Crown research institute Scion. Also just last week he visited with Professor Shusheng Pang, director of the university’s Wood Technology Research Centre. Professor Pang said that Merica’s work was preliminary but ambitious and encouraging.

“We have the technology available, and we have been working with a number of companies to get the investment but in New Zealand it seems there are limitations in terms of investment to build a commercial-scale plant.”

Already the university has a large-scale model of a plant that converts wood waste into electricity and liquid fuel. A commercial-scale plant using four tonnes of waste an hour could generate 5 to 6 megawatts of power, enough for 40,000 to 50,000 homes.

Asked whether he had spoken to Air New Zealand, which is trialling a jatropha product as a jet fuel, Mr Rapier said that “without saying too much, I’d say they’re definitely interested in the kind of fuel we’re producing”.

A forestry project on the Jari River in northern Brazil is being praised as a model for preserving the world’s largest rainforest. Since harvesting began in 2003 every six months the Jari project is inspected and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international industry watchdog.

The public debate over saving the forest was renewed in January after evidence that the pace of Amazon deforestation had increased after falling for nearly three years. A rift was also opened in President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government.

Every year loggers create environmental havoc by illegally clearing vast swathes of forest for timber and farmland and yet they generate very little long term income. However a handful of forest management projects have surfaced as conservation models, which are able to extract resources while at the same time creating very little impact on the environment.

“Selling certified timber harvested in a sustainable way is the only solution for the Amazon,” said Augusto Praxedes Neto, a manager at Brazilian pulp and paper company Grupo ORSA.

Located on both sides of the Jari River in the north-eastern Amazon region ORSA has managed the world’s largest private tropical forest for over five years. Every thirty years they harvest 30 cubic metres (12,713 board feet) of timber per hectare (2.47 acres), which is just under the natural regeneration rate. Trees are felled and transported so as to cause minimal impact on the forest and are recorded in a computerised inventory.

“Illegal loggers kill 30 trees to get one. These projects protect far more trees than they extract,” said Ana Yang of the Stewardship Forestry Council (FSC) in Brazil.

“If the government were to put the same effort into sustainable forest management that it put into developing agriculture in the 1970s and 1980s we could preserve much of the Amazon,” said Judson Ferreira, a senior researcher with government farm research institute Embrapa.

However the government favours a more cautious approach, which is why it has selected three companies to manage 96,000 hectares (237,200 acres) of forest each, this is the first such tender of federal land.

“Forestry management is a great alternative and ORSA is a good example of it but we want to take things slowly,” Tasso Rezende, head of Brazil’s forestry service, told Reuters.

“We need several projects doing well over a long period — private ownership in the Amazon is controversial.” Yang went on to explain that in order for forestry management to really take off the authorities need to establish who rightfully owns the land, cut the red tape and tackle illegal deforestation. “It’s still easier to get a license to cut trees than to plant or manage them,” she said.

According to a report released last week there are signs that while the economy is recovering the forest, paper and packaging industry isn’t safe yet. An international panel of sector leaders told Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu for its Compass 2010 Global forest, paper and packaging sector outlook that while increased construction is good news for lumber producers in the US, growth is constrained by a continuing downturn in the housing market.

“Until there is a fundamental shift in the strength of the U.S. housing market, there will be no meaningful demand increase [for lumber] in North America,” the panel said.

The panel also commented that the North American newsprint market ‘has yet to hit the bottom’ and the overcapacity in the Europe segment is weighing on prices. Still, “the [European] paper market has shown positive signs so far in 2010,” the report says. “A better balance and more disciplined approach to demand have resulted from plant closures, enabling the market to rationalize capacity and adjust prices.”

The entire forest products industry is at risk of future shrinkage through consolidation and bankruptcy and smaller companies are vulnerable in particular. Because of this there are now few newsprint producers left in Europe and North America.

China’s economic stimulus money has created boom conditions and has for that reason has been identified by the panellists as a source of growing demand. “The demand for lumber and building materials is stronger now than it has ever been,” the report notes.

Also, “Northern European players are evaluating the investment potential in South America, particularly Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, because of the improved local economic conditions and as export markets for building materials and pulp.”

The report states that by not having green products the industry is at a competitive disadvantage. However development of environmentally friendly products depends heavily on the customer and pressure from society.

The report notes that the industry is already the world’s largest producer and user of bioenergy. Because of this biofuels will become an increasingly important part of the future growth for the industry.

“Growing investments in biofuels from wood residues could improve operating margins and create a lower dependence on fossil fuels for producing energy internally,” said John Dixon, paper & packaging leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP in the U.S. “Several European and North American companies are placing bets in biofuels for future revenue growth.”

If you want to make money quickly then IFM or Improved Forestry Management is not for you. Long term planning is required as well as careful monitoring of forests, which includes the culling of undesirable trees and the nurturing of vegetation along the waters edge to improve water quality.

Managed forests are divided into clusters of trees, which are managed as a unit and called ‘stands’. On forestry plantations stands usually consist of similar trees, however natural forests don’t grow that way. In some cases trees, such as the western red cedar thrive in the shade of much larger trees and can’t be grown in homogenous stands.

“You want to create a stand that has a number of different layers,” says Bettina von Hagen, President of Oregon-based Ecotrust Forest Management. “You need a canopy layer, an emergent layer, and a shrub layer; IFM is about setting up processes that will result in those changes.”

This makes improved forestry management much more labour intensive than traditional industrial forestry. On the plus side the work tends to be more consistent over time as it requires people to enter the forest more frequently instead of just during the final harvest.

Such procedures also open the door to other payments for ecosystem services, such as water quality credits. However, these are not currently planned for the Sooes project.

“The potential for biodiversity credits is low there, because there just isn’t that much development in the region that would lead to mitigation opportunities,” says von Hagen.  “But some of our forests are close to municipal watersheds, so there are opportunities for water quality credits associated with them, and this is certainly an area we will be exploring in future acquisitions.”

Cargill has become the latest US multinational food company to demand answers from the Indonesian palm oil giant Sinar Mas regarding claims that it is destroying forests rich in carbon and wildlife.

In recent months in response to protests by Greenpeace image conscious buyers Unilever and Nestle have dropped the company as a supplier. Cargill is more cautious or is at least willing to give Sinar Mas the benefit of the doubt and have asked them to respond to Greenpeace’s allegations. They have also asked the industrial body Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to investigate these claims.

“Cargill is keenly aware about the allegations made in December 2009 by Greenpeace about illegal forest clearance and the Indonesian palm oil company, Sinar Mas,” it said on its website.

“When we became aware of the Greenpeace report we contacted Sinar Mas’s senior management and we have communicated to them that we are looking to them to address the issues in the Greenpeace report. Additionally, we urged the RSPO board to review this issue. We are pleased the RSPO Board has instructed the RSPO secretariat to get a response from Sinar Mas to the allegations in the Greenpeace report.”

Answers are expected by the company at the end of this month.

“If the RSPO validates the allegations of improper land conversion or illegal planting in deep peat land as alleged in the Greenpeace report and Sinar Mas does not take corrective action, we will delist them as a supplier,” it added.

Daud Dharsono, Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology (SMART) president director said the company was in the process of verifying Greenpeace’s report.

“We are in touch with Cargill to assure them that we do not develop on high carbon stock and high conservation value areas,” he said.

Indonesia is considered the third largest emitter of greenhouse gas in the world and that isn’t down to car exhaust fumes but due to the rapid clearing of vast tracts of Indonesian forests for palm oil plantations.

Over recent years the deforestation rates in Brazil have been declining. However, during the period between August 2007 and July 2008 a worrying reversal took place where roughly 1.2 million hectares of rainforest was destroyed. The result of this was a diminished capacity for ecosystem services such as carbon stock retention, soil protection and climate regulation. What makes this more worrying is that it is thought that the majority of the timber coming from this region is illegally or irresponsibly harvested. This has underscored the need for improved forest management in the region.

GFTN has addressed this crisis by working with forestry companies in the Brazilian Amazon in order to assist their progress through the GFTN tailored stepwise approach to achieve credible certification. GFTN hopes to accentuate the ecological and economic benefits to be gained through implementing best practices by organising hands on training in responsible forest management techniques such as reduced impact logging.

Two of these training opportunities were held in November and brought together environmental law enforcers, logging companies, NGOs and managers of protected areas. The workshops were aimed at increasing the participant’s forest management capacity by learning how to reduce ecological impacts through the application of techniques and procedures that decrease damage and waste generated by conventional logging.

Often loggers focus on harvesting the highest quality of valuable species as fast as possible with little or no regard for the environmental and social implications. In contrast participants armed with this training are able to apply a systematic approach to planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating logging that has been proven to minimise impacts on forests. This technique sets clear conditions that maintain the ecological functions of the forest and also sustains their economic benefits.

Gaining the technical skills and understanding the financial implications are important tools in the fight to safeguard the rich biodiversity present in the Brazilian Amazon. Workshop presenters from the Tropical Forest Institute also provided information on financial costs associated with RIL, which stressed that in the long term; responsible forest management practices reduce costs and contribute to responsible forest management in the Amazon.

By May of this year the British Forestry Commission hopes to have planted more than 3.7 million trees by hand. Planting teams are hard at work in various locations in the North East such as the Kielder Forest, Northumberland and Hamsterley Forest, near Bishop Auckland in County Durham.

To help meet this ambitious target nine Canadian forestry workers have arrived to join the local planters in hitting the target. This isn’t the first time Canadians have come to the North East to work in Kielder. During the Second World War Canadians came to the North East to help manage forests while the local men served in the armed forces.

Their modern day counterparts are often woodsmen picking up work before the Canadian forests are replanted later in the spring or young people looking to gain experience of different cultures and tour the world. However, be they local or from abroad, each forester will need to hand plant an estimated 1,500 trees every day.

The new director of a Northumberland forestry business, Ben Tansey, has taken over as the new leader of Morpeth based Northwoods. This is an organisation, which backs forest businesses in the region with training and advice. They do this by supplying marketing products, securing grants, improving skills and encouraging inward investment.

Ben, who has a first-class degree in ecological science with honours in forestry, said:

“When it comes to working in forestry, I think forestry chooses you. But I have always been passionate about the outdoors and the natural environment. Wood is one of the fuels of the future and my job is to help make the most of the opportunities. Fossil fuel prices are unpredictable and have recently been increasing, but well managed woods can produce timber year after year. About 70% of our work at Northwoods is now devoted to the development of the wood fuel sector, showing just what an expanding area this is in terms of the economy and job creation.”

The United Nations guideline only defines trees (as carbon absorbers) based on height, without any detail of the species. Therefore the proposal by the Indonesian Forestry Ministry to include palm oil plantations in the forestry sector would allow Indonesia to receive more benefits from REDD based on the expansion of green areas.

Understandably this sparks huge controversy and several regional governments, such as the North Sumatra Forestry Bureau are against the plan. The essential point to REDD is to avoid deforestation and the incentives of this scheme are based on the ability of a country to avoid deforestation from its natural forest. As this is the case donors will not facilitate funding for areas that are not naturally forested. Looking at this from an objective point of view it looks like the Indonesian government would like to receive double benefits from palm oil. It seems bizarre that they should receive money from investors for plantation development as well as REDD compensation from its status as trees.

It is for this reason that REDD should not be confused with carbon trading. REDD is often thought to be identical to carbon trading where forests are only perceived as carbon captures. This thinking makes the mechanism dangerous. The importance of biodiversity will be neglected if forest rehabilitation doesn’t consider the forest as an integrated ecosystem.

The plan to include palm oil plantations as forests just goes to show how narrow minded the REDD scheme is. REDD is the middle option between preserving tropical rainforests and emission reduction from carbon trade. Therefore if REDD is to have any hope of success the national implementation standard of REDD must include biodiversity inclusive environmental impact assessments.

The conversion of forests for other purposes is inevitable due to the need of land for agricultural estates and the population increase. However without proper consideration plans such as defining palm oil plantations as forest will only legalise the continuous acts of destroying Indonesian forest. It is essential that ecologically important areas maintain their legal status as preserved forest. These preserved forests must also be protected from the change on its biodiversity composition due to illegal occupation. Forest conversions need not always be negative so long as accurate and comprehensive ecological considerations are taken into account.

Of the BRIC countries Russia is perhaps the least talked about and least invested in, even though it is in an acronym created to describe the next ‘big’ global economies. At the moment the world’s focus is on the debt problems facing Greece, Spain and the rest of the EU. But with their oil, gas and other commodity prices gaining momentum Russia is finally emerging as a major player.

This doesn’t mean that Russia’s economy still isn’t ranked as one of the most corrupt nations. Low innovation scores, swinging commodity prices and heavy government intervention make it a less than ideal investing situation. Despite this the risk to rewards ratio may be returning to the investors favour.

Russia covers nearly 11% of the planet’s surface making it the world’s largest and within it Russia keeps its crown jewels: commodities. The nation is rich in coal as well as various metals and timber and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas. The Russian economy is made up by 60% in commodity prices, which have been rebounding since the world’s economy pushes forward out of financial crisis.

Recently the President Dmitry Medvedev stressed the need for the country to expand its technology and innovation. As the telecom and financial industries have expanded considerably the economy has become more diversified. In addition steps have been taken by the government to reign in corruption, beginning with the imprisonment of energy billionaire Mikhail Khodorovsky. In order to appeal for foreign investors Russia is also moving to round up many former KGB agents who run its companies.

In addition, the Russian Ruble, represented by CurrencyShares Russian Ruble Trust (NYSE:XRU), has been a tear recently which could lead to interest rate cuts. According to Forbes, the ruble is at a 14-month high and any easing in monetary policy could see the economy move in real positive direction. Analysts are predicting round 5% GDP growth in 2010.

Russia is an ideal candidate to prosper from the growing world economy due to its rich natural resource reserves. But as a typical middle child of the BRIC nations Russia tends to be ignored. However with its recent steps to stem corruption the risk/reward ratio is finally moving into the investors favour. Investors looking to take the long term approach with Russian have one of two options. They could either add one of the two exchange traded funds to their investment portfolios or invest in individual companies, such as steel producer Mechel (NYSE:MTL).