http://www.ecoearth.info/rss/alert.xml Curent Cyber Actions at http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts/ Earth Action Network a project of Ecological Internet, Inc. info@ecologicalinternet.org (Dr. Glen Barry) http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/images/eilogo85.gif http://www.ecoearth.info/rss/alert.xml ![CDATA[Indications are that UN Copenhagen climate talks will allow selective logging and plantation establishment in primary and old-growth forests as a means to "fight" climate change. In draft texts, European and African negotiators have removed safeguards against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations, and language ensuring first time industrial logging of primary rainforests is excluded from carbon finance has still not been included. This despite the fact no single international ecological policy initiative would protect global climate (and biodiversity and ecosystems) more effectively than protecting and restoring old forests wherever possible.   Old forest logging must end -- to maintain climatic stability and achieve global ecological sustainability. This requires a rejection of the myth of "Sustainable Forest Management" in old forests, acknowledging that fully-intact, natural old forests both remove and store long-term, far more carbon than natural forests that are selectively logged or replaced by plantations.  Timber industry propaganda -- claiming logging ancient forests somehow saves them -- has been greatly aided by large NGOs like Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace, who continuously greenwash unknown amounts of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) "certification" of old forest logging as desirable and even sustainable. Copenhagen represents a unique and hugely important opportunity to advance both climate and forest protections. Forests are unnecessarily becoming a long-term carbon source, and the protection and restoration of old forests is both a climate and ecological imperative. Global ecological sustainability, equity and justice depend upon industrialized nations committing to major emissions reductions, recognizing their historical carbon debt including past forest mismanagement. Concurrently, emerging economies must take responsibility for massive increases in emissions from industrialization; and deforestation, selective logging and plantations in primary forests.   We acknowledge the potential of REDD carbon finance to pay local peoples to protect forests and their carbon stocks, but recognize that ecologically and socially rigorous elements of "Good REDD" have not yet been defined, are not yet assured, and until the details are known, are not worthy of environmental movement support. In particular, we are outraged that REDD's original intent to only finance full protection (preservation rather than conservation) of ecologically intact old forest ecosystems from all industrial development including logging is not reflected in draft Copenhagen negotiating text.   The latest Copenhagen drafts include so-called REDD+ proposals falsely suggesting that selective logging and plantation replacement of old forests is worthy of international forest carbon finance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ecological science informs us that at least 40% of an old forest's carbon stock is lost with initial industrial first time selective logging, that the soil and its carbon are disrupted, and that carbon re-sequestration and full ecological regeneration take millennia. Most products produced by old and natural forests find their way to the landfill, and carbon back to the atmosphere, within a few years.  Final Copenhagen REDD policy must strongly commit to maintaining carbon stocks in naturally evolved old forests, able to continue removing carbon, while naturally adapting for some time. REDD must focus upon ending old forest logging by paying local peoples to ecologically preserve natural forests -- with all the attendant climate benefits, and also for biodiversity, ecosystems and water.  Other elements of "Good REDD" necessary for the international forest movement's support include science based forest definitions, explicit land tenure and human/indigenous rights, equitable benefit sharing for local communities and governments, and a focus upon governance, corruption issues and transparency. Ideally, there should be no carbon offset market mechanisms to fund any REDD agreement, and if there are, their contribution to total rich nation emission reductions must be capped. Ecological Internet has led the way in highlighting the ecological risks and opportunities offered by REDD, and we are pleased to see growing expressions of concern regarding efficacy of claims that old forest logging can ever be beneficial for climate or anything else. An Earth in ecological overshoot dramatically requires more, rather than less, fully functional and intact natural ecosystems including old forests. The letter below to key Copenhagen climate negotiators makes the same points as above. Failure at Copenhagen is not an option, and would indicate governments have in effect abdicated in the face of global ecosystem collapse.]] http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=protect_old_forests http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=protect_old_forests 05 Nov 2009 11:00:00 PST | | info@ecologicalinternet.org (Dr. Glen Barry) ![CDATA[Loggers and wildlife traders continue to violate Madagascar's biodiversity rich rainforests including protected areas. In March of this year controversy surrounding leasing of agricultural land resulted in a military coup. In the chaos that ensued, armed gangs funded by Chinese traders entered Madagascar’s Marojejy and Masoala National Parks, two world-renowned World Heritage Sites, and logged rosewood, ebonies, and other valuable hardwoods. NGOs operating in Madagascar report continued armed, open and organized plundering of precious wood from several natural forests, including these parks. Selective logging of precious old forest wood in Madagascar, such as rosewood and ebony, is known to be accompanied by increases in fire and hunting. There has been an intensified smuggling of wildlife species, especially reptiles such as tortoises, to the national and international markets. There has also been a proliferation of destructive practices such as illegal mining and slash-and-burn agriculture within protected and environmentally sensitive areas.   Only about 10% of Madagascar's marvelously rich and biodiverse rainforests, including about 100 species of lemurs, remain fully intact and standing.  The vast majority of Malagasy people live in extreme poverty, malnutrition and even starvation. Madagascar's biodiversity is essential to the daily lives of the rural majority of the population, providing them with water, food and energy.  These natural resources also underpin the agriculture, fisheries and tourism sectors. Illegal logging of precious woods has angered local communities by trampling on their beliefs and taboo. Madagascar's rainforests are nearly gone, and selective logging is finishing what remains. Trade in Madagascar's rapidly dwindling precious rosewood and ebony hardwoods do not receive any protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Extending CITES regulation to these species may be the only way to reduce unsustainable exploitation of precious wood in Madagascar. Otherwise, island wide ecological and social collapse appears inevitable. The situation highlights the importance of working to end protect and restore old forest logging globally, and continuing to confront those suggesting Sustainable Forest Management -- legal, certified or illegal -- is possible in primary forests. Old forests are life.]] http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=madagascar_landgrab http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=madagascar_landgrab 28 Oct 2009 11:00:00 PST | | info@ecologicalinternet.org (Dr. Glen Barry) ![CDATA[Malaysia's large, intact rainforests in the province of Sarawak, on the Island of Borneo, are nearly exhausted, and most of what remains is to be cleared and converted into industrial monocultures of oil palm and acacia trees, or flooded under hydro-electric dams. Malaysia is the world's leading rainforest destroying nation, globally exporting industrial ecocide to virtually every rainforest worldwide. But increasingly they are encountering resistance, as this network recently successfully stopped (for now) the Malaysian government's oil palm expansion into the heart of the Amazon. And for more than two years, the indigenous Penan community of Long Benali, armed with spears and blowpipes, have successfully prevented the bulldozers of the Samling group from encroaching onto their native customary lands. Since 1960, Malaysian timber and oil palm companies have mercilessly plundered Sarawaks's rainforests which are the rightful home of the Penan indigenous peoples. Malaysia's rainforests and fate of the Penan were once a cause célèbre amongst progressive activists -- yet sadly their plight has largely faded from global public view. Yet, Malaysia continued to lose 1.49 million hectares, or 6.6 percent of its forest cover, from 1990 to 2005. The last forested areas large enough to support the Penan's nomadic traditional hunter-gather lifestyles are now falling victim to bulldozers. Some 10,000-12,000 Penan are believed to remain in Sarawak, about 400 of whom are nomadic. Continued industrial rainforest destruction has driven many to settle down into rural poverty and caused increasing problems with disease, alcoholism and sexual assault. Driving this loss of species, genetics, ecosystems and peoples is the world's growing population and hunger for endless growth of consumption in cheap palm oil, paper and electricity. The Sarawak state government wants to expand the acreage devoted to oil palm to 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) by 2010, from 744,000 at the end of 2008. Companies that formerly chopped down hardwood trees and exported the timber are now moving into palm plantations. Oil palm can be used for food, chemicals, and biofuels; and acacia trees provide raw materials for the voracious paper industry. About 35% of the world’s cooking oil comes from palm, more than any other plant, and 90% of the world’s palm oil comes from Malaysia and Indonesia. Sarawak's rainforests and peoples are further threatened by ill-conceived plans for a string of rainforest destroying hydro-electric dams. Environmentalists have opposed the Bakun dam on the Balui River in Sarawak for years -- the first and largest of the dams -- as it will flood 700 square kilometres of rainforest. The area is already being cleared using fire, violating Malaysian legislation against open burning, and thickening the blanket of polluting haze that hangs over the region. Further plans call for a network of 12 hydroelectric dams to be built across Sarawak’s rainforests by 2020 with a capacity to produce 7,000MW. By 2037, as many as 51 dams could be constructed. The project will create one of the largest hydropower complexes outside China and will be developed by the China Three Gorges Project Corporation. Far from being a source of "clean" energy, such large dams flood massive pristine forested areas, produce large-scale carbon dioxide and methane emissions from rotting vegetation, severely affect river hydrology, displace thousands of indigenous people, and fragment forests affecting endangered and endemic plants and wildlife. Construction of the Bakun Hydroelectric Dam has been called a "monument of corruption." CMS -- like much of the timber and oil palm industry -- is owned by the family of Sarawak’s long-standing chief minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud. Development projects such as plantations and dams are not reducing poverty amongst local peoples. The courageous Penan are making a final valiant effort to protect their last forested areas from notorious criminal enterprises like Samling, Hill International, Shin Yang, KTS, CMS and Rimbunan Hijau. Recently some 3,000 indigenous residents have blocked several main roads leading to their rainforests, and are determined to do anything to resist. Please join with them and thousands of other global citizens, and write to the Malaysian government and ask for the recognition of land rights of the Penan and the immediate halt to the rainforest clearing in Sarawak for dams, paper and oil palm. Let them known intact, large old rainforests are a requirement to halt climate change, biodiversity loss, and to achieve local, regional and global community development and ecological sustainability]] http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=malaysia_penan_blockade http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=malaysia_penan_blockade 07 Sep 2009 11:00:00 PST | | info@ecologicalinternet.org (Dr. Glen Barry) ![CDATA[The largest and potentially most viable population of Asian elephants is found in the mountains of the Western Ghats where the three Indian states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka meet. You may recall that Ecological Internet's Earth Action Network first worked on Asian elephants in India, with some positive outcomes, in October of 2006. Of a total population of about 2000 elephants surviving in Peninsular India in various fragmented habitat islands, the largest single population which may number over 1000 individuals is found in a near contiguous habitat extending over this 4500sq km tract. The best forage is in the Tamil Nadu section but the elephants need to migrate to Kerala and Karnataka each summer when water and food become scarce in Tamil Nadu Direct movement from Tamil Nadu to Karnataka is no longer possible because of clearing and development and so now the only way for the elephants to migrate from the east to the west in the dry time and return during the wet season is via the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu, to the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala. But due to habitat fragmentation this route must now pass through a corridor which is only about 2.5 km wide extending from Mulehole in Karnataka to Muthanga in Kerala. The major inter-state highway linking Bangalore with Calicut passing through this corridor is used by hundreds of vehicles round the clock. Recently a decision was made to relocate four different Kerala government departmental check-posts to within the corridor involving all manner of infrastructure - building complexes, housing, offices, toilets and dormitories for drivers, a fuel filling station and so on. The checkpoint clearance takes hours, so there would constantly be hundreds of lorries parked along the road on either side of the checkpoints within the forests preventing elephants from using the corridor. A suitable alternative site for these check-posts exists outside the forest. In another part of this elephant population's range, the proposed establishment of the India Based Neutrino Observatory (INO) in Singara, within the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve and in the buffer zone of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, threatens to further fragment elephant migration routes. Singara is in a critical wildlife habitat and falls within the Sigur plateau that acts as a hub between three major wildlife habitats in the NBR - Mudumalai TR/Nagerhole TR, Coimbatore Division/Silent Valley and The Eastern Ghats (Sathyamangalam/BRT Sanctuary/Bannergatta NP), and adjacent to the site is a crucial wildlife corridor linking Mudumalai with the forests towards the North and East. This large network of protected areas is home to remnant populations of large endangered mammals, which are disappearing rapidly elsewhere. 'The project will undoubtedly affect the Asian Elephant and almost every other species in the area, but the bigger problem with a project like this is the massive infrastructure development that is going to happen in this fragile area. 'Their offer to offset the damage they are going to cause by putting a small percentage of the budget into conservation is ridiculous. Its like suggesting we kill off a few tigers and elephants, sell all their body parts and use the money for conservation,' says Ajay Desai, the co-chair of IUCN's Asian Elephant Specialist Group. The Wayanad Nature Protection Group (Wayanad Prakruthi Samrakshana Samati) has appealed to the world community to help prevent the severance of these critical corridors. Please note there are two different protest emails to send on this matter. It is much appreciated if you send both.]] http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=india_elephants http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=india_elephants 03 Mar 2009 11:00:00 PST | | info@ecologicalinternet.org (Dr. Glen Barry)