The Mexican environmental campaigner Martha Isabel ‘Pati’ Ruiz Corzo has won the Collaborative Partnership on Forests Wangari Maathai Award 2014 for her pioneering work to preserve forests and alleviate rural poverty in her native country. The Wangari Maathai Award recognizes extraordinary efforts by an individual to improve and sustain forests and the people who depend on them. Ruiz Corzo is recognized for making conservation profitable for rural communities in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, one of the most ecologically diverse areas of Mexico. [more]

The Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) is awarding one extraordinary individual USD20,000 for improving our forests and the lives of people who depend on them. The CPF launched the first Wangari Maathai Award in 2012 to honour and commemorate the impact of this extraordinary woman who championed forest issues around the world. In 2014, the CPF will award another individual for their outstanding achievements for forests. Nominations close Friday 18 July 2014 (new deadline). [more]

The Collaborative Partnership on Forests and the Government of Finland held a well-attended side event on integrating forests in the sustainable development goals (SDGs), on the fringes of the 8th Open Working Group meeting at UN Headquarters in New York. CPF Chairperson Eduardo Rojas-Briales and H.E. Jarmo Viinanen, Permanent Representative of Finland to the UN, opened the session explaining the interconnectedness and importance of forests to other issues being discussed in the SDGs – namely oceans, biodiversity and mountains. Participants noted the complexity of integrating forest issues in the SDGs, but noted that with coherent and incentivized goals, forests targets could be included in future SDGs. CPF members will soon issue a document with proposed forest targets, indicators and other background material. [more]