I recently had the great privilege of travelling with World Agroforestry Centre Vietnam office Communications staff to the beautiful Ba Be Lake in the northwestern uplands of Vietnam. Ms Nguyen Ngoc Huyen, Communications Officer with the Vietnam office, and I were testing whether it would be possible for non-professional filmmakers, such as ourselves, to make a short video documentary for the RUPES project.

Can environmental markets provide real environmental and social benefits? Are the original objectives still valid? Why so much passion and outcry? What changed?

Meine Van Noordwijk from the World Agroforestry Centre, who led the early research and testing of RUPES, answered these questions posed to him in the forest carbon Asia article, "Forest carbon markets:Critical or evil?"

Follow the link below for the complete article:

http://www.forestcarbonasia.org/articles/forest-carbon-markets-probing-the-perceptions-and-objections/

In March, 2011, Dr Ir Yetti Rusli MSc, Forest Development Expert of the Minister of Forestry’s office, together with staff from the Ministry of Forestry and the Forestry Extension Agency, visited the RUPES’ voluntary carbon market (VCM) site at Nagari Paninggahan, Junjung Sirih subdistrict, Solok district, West Sumatra.

The rolling goat initiative may support the land conservation activities… How does this initiative support the land conservation…??