Tackling Deforestation - Initiatives in Sierra Leone, Pakistan and Panama

A Sierra Leonian solution to deforestation has emerged with a young entrepreneur who is turning coconut shells into fuel briquettes, as an alternative to wood.

It is environmentally-friendly in two ways - removing coconut shell waste from Freetown and, hopefully, reducing the need for cooking fuel. The problem is in convincing people to use the briquettes for cooking fuel - the coconut bricquettes are four times more expensive than traditional fuels but burn at least four times longer.

Can Alhaji scale his production so that he makes the briquettes ever more cheaply.

This IMF clip looks at how Pakistan is trying to tackle deforestation via the Billion Tree Tsunami with the IMF sponsoring a scheme to plant a billion trees.

It's an interesting idea but I wonder whether it's good economics - yes, it might provide rural employment at the margin, but doesn't it also incentivise people to continue deforestation, on the basis that the social cost of their actions is reduced because of the ongoing tree planting campaign.

This World Bank clip looks at how the REDD+ programme can work to compensate indigeneous people in Latin America for their work as 'guardians of the forest' - countering the adverse effects of climate change, maintaining biodiversity and stopping deforestation.