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raisely / NoHarm

Do No Harm software license - A licence for using software for good
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Deforestation #2

Closed chrisjensen closed 6 years ago

chrisjensen commented 6 years ago

@tommaitland I had some thoughts this afternoon so penned them. Wasn't able to do it without a definition, but it's a short definition that I think covers:

Allows

Disallows

tommaitland commented 6 years ago

I think this is good. Out of interest, does the 5ha limit for deforestation come from an official definition somewhere?

chrisjensen commented 6 years ago

I made it up, seems I was being too generous.

Just found this at fao.org

Land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds in situ. It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban land use.

I'll propose a change in the text.

I've omitted minimum height of 5 meters in our definition as I see no reason why we would want to exclude environments with only short vegetation.

tommaitland commented 6 years ago

@chrisjensen Let's merge this in :)

Knagis commented 6 years ago

the definition should at least include that the 0.5ha should be one continuous area (sector). Otherwise any large scale forest service will not qualify no matter how responsible because if you own 1000ha, you will definitely cut down more than 0.5ha every year. Alternatively exclude cases when forest is being planted right away in place of the cut trees.

tommaitland commented 6 years ago

@Knagis That's a good point – can you propose a PR?

Knagis commented 6 years ago

Sorry, I will not be suited for writing legal wording for this...

gargantuan commented 5 years ago

Can I suggest that sustainable forestry, — as defined by the Ministerial Conference on the protection of forrests in Europe, and adopted by the UN FAO — be permitted?

The stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in a way, and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic and social functions, at local, national, and global levels, and that does not cause damage to other ecosystems.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_forest_management

I fear the current terms relating to forrestry and deforestation might be too simplistic, to the detriment of good actors.

By deferring to an officially recognised definition of sustainable forresty, the licence can succinctly capture a complex issue, and bolster the efforts of the UN/FAO.