The status of forest carbon markets in Latin America.

Tropical rainforests of Latin America (LATAM) are one of the world's largest carbon sinks, with substantial future carbon sequestration potential and contributing a major proportion of the global supply of forest carbon credits. LATAM is poised to contribute predominantly towards high-quality forest carbon offset projects designed to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, halt biodiversity loss, and provide equitable conservation benefits to people. Thus, carbon markets, including compliance carbon markets and voluntary carbon markets continue to expand in LATAM. However, the extent of the growth and status of forest carbon markets, pricing initiatives, stakeholders, amongst others, are yet to be explored and extensively reviewed for the entire LATAM region. Against this backdrop, we reviewed a total of 299 articles, including peer-reviewed and non-scientific gray literature sources, from January 2010 to March 2023. Herein, based on the extensive literature review, we present the results and provide perspectives classified into five categories: (i) the status and recent trends of forest carbon markets (ii) the interested parties and their role in the forest carbon markets, (iii) the measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) approaches and role of remote sensing, (iv) the challenges, and (v) the benefits, opportunities, future directions and recommendations to enhance forest carbon markets in LATAM. Despite the substantial challenges, better governance structures for forest carbon markets can increase the number, quality and integrity of projects and support the carbon sequestration capacity of the rainforests of LATAM. Due to the complex and extensive nature of forest carbon projects in LATAM, emerging technologies like remote sensing can enable scale and reduce technical barriers to MRV, if properly benchmarked. The future directions and recommendations provided are intended to improve upon the existing infrastructure and governance mechanisms, and encourage further participation from the public and private sectors in forest carbon markets in LATAM.

Ecotourism and mangrove conservation in Southeast Asia: Current trends and perspectives.

Mangroves in Southeast Asia provide numerous supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services that are crucial to the environment and local livelihoods since they support biodiversity conservation and climate change resilience. However, Southeast Asia mangroves face deforestation threats from the expansion of commercial aquaculture, agriculture, and urban development, along with climate change-related natural processes. Ecotourism has gained prominence as a financial incentive tool to support mangrove conservation and restoration. Through a systematic literature review approach, we examined the relationships between ecotourism and mangrove conservation in Southeast Asia based on scientific papers published from 2010 to 2022. Most of the studies were reported in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, respectively, which were associated with the highest number of vibrant mangrove ecotourism sites and largest mangrove areas compared to the other countries of Southeast Asia. Mangrove-related ecotourism activities in the above countries mainly include boat tours, bird and wildlife watching, mangrove planting, kayaking, eating seafood, and snorkeling. The economic benefits, such as an increase in income associated with mangrove ecotourism, have stimulated infrastructural development in ecotourism destinations. Local communities benefited from increased access to social amenities such as clean water, electricity, transportation networks, schools, and health services that are intended to make destinations more attractive to tourists. Economic benefits from mangrove ecotourism motivated the implementation of several community-based mangrove conservation and restoration initiatives, which attracted international financial incentives and public-private partnerships. Since mangroves are mostly located on the land occupied by indigenous people and local communities, ensuring respect for their land rights and equity in economic benefit sharing may increase their intrinsic motivation and participation in mangrove restoration and conservation initiatives. Remote sensing tools for mangrove monitoring, evaluation, and reporting, and integrated education and awareness campaigns can ensure the long-term conservation of mangroves while sustaining ecotourism's economic infrastructure and social amenities benefits.