Tod HynesCo-Founder, MIT Climate & Energy Ventures

Dr. Nadine T. Laporte, Associate Scientist and Dr. Glenn K. Bush, Assistant Scientist, WHRC

Name: Dr. Nadine T. Laporte, Associate Scientist and Dr. Glenn K. Bush, Assistant Scientist, WHRC
Uploaded: 2012-01-13T16:44:42+00:00
Duration: 2 min 35 s
Channel: Tod Hynes
Description: Dr. Nadine T. Laporte has spent two decades mapping carbon in African forests to measure deforestation emissions. She's been working with Congo's…

13 Jan 2012 · 3 min

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2:35

Dr. Nadine T. Laporte has spent two decades mapping carbon in African forests to measure deforestation emissions. She's been working with Congo's government since 2007 and plans to open a WHRC office there in 2012, using REDD financing to pay communities for keeping forests standing and their carbon intact.

Questions this video answers

20 years

Since 2007

Opening a new WHRC office in the Congo

Reduction of Emission from Deforestation and Degradation

Glenn Bush — natural resource economist (working with WHRC for the last three years)

Chapters

My name is Nadine laporte. I work at the Woods Hole Research center as a scientist. I've been working in Africa for the last 20 years developing forest monitoring systems. And more recently I've been working with scientists at the Woodsall Research center to map carbon. Why are we interested by carbon? As you know, a large proportion of carbon emissions are coming from deforestation. It's very important to quantify how much carbon is released in the atmosphere. We've been using satellite imagery to better quantify this quantity of carbon going into the atmosphere. And we have been working, especially in Africa since 2007 with the government of Congo. And we've been producing maps showing the distribution of emission that you can can see on this image. And these maps allow government to decide which area they would like to reduce their emission. 2012 is going to be a very exciting year for us since we are opening a new office in the Congo and we'll be working more on forest monitoring in the framework of redd. RED stands for Reduction of Emission from Deforestation and Degradation. It's a new finance mechanism that will allow forest communities to get compensated if they can keep forests standing carbon stocks, increase carbon stocks and also reduce our emission. We will be starting this work in the Congo with Glenn Bush. He's a natural resource economist working with us for the last three years. We'll be doing this work in collaboration with several NGOs, local NGOs, and also the Ministry of the Environment. It is very important to work in the Congo since most of the forests of Africa are actually in the Congo. And it's also very important for the people living there. Most of the people are dependent depending on the forest for their livelihood. And it's also very important for the climate because there is a lot of carbon stored in this forest and if released in the atmosphere, this will increase CO2 concentration and also increase global temperature.