Kiss your snorkeling trip goodbye: We’re wiping out coral. WWF timber scheme allows illegal logging, forest destruction and fails to prevent human rights abuses. Click here to read this release in French, Spanish, German, Norwegian, Bahasa. Click here to read Pandering to the Loggers Read WWF's response to the report, and Global Witness's reaction to this and other statements. Click here to read coverage of this report in the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde and the BBC WWF’s flagship scheme to promote sustainable timber – the Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) – is allowing companies to reap the benefits of association with WWF and its iconic panda brand, while they continue to destroy forests and trade in illegally sourced timber, a new briefing by Global Witness reveals. While GFTN is intended to reduce and eliminate such practices over the first 5 years of membership, systemic failures blight the scheme’s ability to deliver for forests.
Global Witness is calling for an independent and comprehensive evaluation of GFTN rules, transparency procedures and the scheme’s impact on forests. /Ends Contact: Notes to editors: Friday Finds: Bye, Bye Great Barrier Reef. BP cheapos, dirty air downplays, climate change illness Coral reef at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Photo courtesy of Jim Maragos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service UN top scientist predicts coral reefs' demise by end of century Coral reefs, often called the “rain forests of the oceans” due to their rich biodiversity, have been around for millions of years, but these ecosystems may be experiencing their last century, reports The Independent. Climate change and ocean acidification are the main factors causing coral reefs’ demise, says University of Sydney professor Peter Sale, who studied Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for 20 years.
Report finds BP’s cheapness, greed contributed to oil spill There are a lot of consequences of being cheap: alienating friends, missing out on amazing experiences, wasting time pilfering through shoddy clothes in bargain bins. Revelations in the Economist: The Queensway syndicate and the Africa trade. Revelations in the Economist expose how a syndicate of private companies based in Hong Kong has been able to secure access to vast tracts of Africa’s current and future natural resource wealth in deals struck behind closed doors with pariah regimes. The story reveals how a private group of investors from Hong Kong have struck some of the largest “resource-for-infrastructure” (RFI) deals ever made with the governments of Angola, Zimbabwe and the former government of Guinea, denying millions of citizens access to their natural resource wealth and dealing with brutal regimes in the process.
The syndicate secures access to resources by offering much needed investment in developing countries’ economies and infrastructure. However, very few of the promised benefits are materialising in the countries concerned, while the tiny elite behind the syndicate are making billions in profits. The conditions which allow deals of this magnitude to be hidden from view are often complex and localised. Stopping Desertification with Land Management Is U.N. Goal. Washington — Degradation of the land supporting human life and the food supply is an environmental threat that endangers the lives and livelihoods of more than 1 billion people worldwide. On September 20, world leaders met in a high-level U.N. forum for the first time to address desertification and drought. “Land is life, and our life depends on land,” said U.N.
General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of Qatar. Fully one-fourth of the planet’s land mass is on the verge of degradation and desertification, he said. Administrator Rajiv Shah of the U.S. “Addressing desertification through long-term sustainable land management and agricultural development is one of the most effective tools we have to prevent the crises that result from a lack of available food and nutrition,” he said.
Crisis takes form today in the Horn of Africa, where 13 million people are facing severe malnutrition, largely because of crop failure brought on by drought and poor land management. The U.N. BRAZIL: Farmers “Have Good Reason to Worry” BRAZIL: Farmers “Have Good Reason to Worry” By Fabiana FrayssinetIPS September 20, 2011 RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 20, 2011 (IPS) – Bananas are harvested where apples used to grow; cassava, a traditional crop, is disappearing from the Northeast; and the southeast is losing the fragrance of good coffee. This is the science fiction of a new distribution of crops in Brazil, South America’s agricultural powerhouse. The government is starting to get ready for this open-ended story of science fiction.
Only one thing is for sure: the bad guys are neither extraterrestrials nor robots, but the most fearsome human invention: climate change. In the midst of unusual temperature swings and increasingly intense and frequent natural disasters, weather patterns are modifying landscapes and will also start changing harvests. “It’s still early to categorically state that there are effects on agriculture,” said the Environment Ministry’s secretary of climate change, Eduardo Assad. There is in fact a recent example. Tribal leader to the UN: Indigenous peoples of the Amazon are in danger. Commentary by Almir Surui Narayamoga of the Surui tribe September 22, 2011Editor's note: the following statement was presented by Almir Surui Narayamoga of the Surui tribe to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 21, 2011. Translation by Rhett Butler. Amazonian indigenous peoples and their traditional territories are living under constant threat. Illegal deforestation — carried out by loggers, ranchers, miners and intruders on indigenous territories — destroys the forest trees, kills birds by destroying their nests, kills animals that live off the fruits that grow there, and threatens indigenous peoples that live in forests and depend on them.
My people, the Surui Paiter, are living proof of what I say. These invaders on indigenous territories expelled our people from their land and put our lives in danger. Every Indian leader who faces this model — beneficial only to those who destroy nature — receives death threats, attacks, slurs and suffers all kinds of threats. State Department Keystone XL Hearings Run By TransCanada Contractor. By Brad Johnson on September 28, 2011 at 1:30 pm "State Department Keystone XL Hearings Run By TransCanada Contractor" In a stunning conflict of interest, public hearings on federal approval for a proposed tar sands pipeline are being run by a contractor for the pipeline company itself.
The U.S. Department of State’s public hearings along the proposed route of the TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands pipeline this week are under the purview of Cardno Entrix, a “professional environmental consulting company” that specializes in “permitting and compliance.” Cardno is not only running the State Department hearings, but also manages the department’s Keystone XL website and drafted the department’s environmental impact statement. Cardno Entrix was contracted by TransCanada Keystone XL LP (“Keystone”) to do the work for the Department of State (DOS): “Section 106″ refers to the section of the National Historic Preservation Act that considers impacts on historic places. Update. Our Oceans Are in Dire Shape, But Without Them All Life on Land -- Human, Plant and Animal -- Is Totally Screwed.
October 6, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Global warming has often been discussed with regard to its effects for life on land: increased temperatures and heat waves, increased weather extremes, less but more intense rainfall, drought and forest fires. Water, however, remains less considered. Yet oceans, it is well known, cover three quarters of the earth's surface. Ocean Acidification Carbon dioxide (CO2) exists naturally in the air. As the oceans absorb carbon from the air, their chemistry changes. Oceanographers estimate that before the use of fossil fuels, the ocean's PH balance, which measures its acidity, had been relatively stable for the past 20 million years. But the current levels of carbon being absorbed by the oceans is far higher than the levels being absorbed then.
Ocean Acidification and Phytoplankton Already the increased levels of ocean acidification have led to a loss of phytoplankton and of coral reefs. Clean Burn: Can a Stove Save Lives, Forests, and Africa's Economy? - Business. Preparing food can be dangerous. The World Health Organization calls cooking "a threat to the lives of the great majority" of the world's population because so few households have a proper stove, instead cooking indoors over open flame. In sub-Saharan Africa, preparing a meal is too often a slow, dirty process that fills the home with smoke equivalent to puffing two packs of cigarettes a day. Danish biotechnology firm Novozymes is trying to combat these threats by building stoves that burn ethanol, rather than wood, in Mozambique.
The company announced an ambitious goal at the Clinton Global Initiative this week: to provide alternative cooking fuel to 20 percent of Maputo, Mozambique's capital, by 2014. The company, known for making enzymes for biofuels, is partnering with the "food, energy and forest prevention company" CleanStar Ventures to offer an alternative ethanol-fueled stove and a locally-based system for producing the fuel. Photos courtesy of Novozymes. ‘The Ocean Is Sick’ Wisconsin Becomes Part of Gas Industry's Land Grab. The methane gas industry is snapping up land across the United States, and it's not only regions with gas reserves its after.
Part of the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," which has become big business in the nation, requires a fine silica sand. The sand is most easily accessible in the state of Wisconsin, which means the industry is looking to scrape the Midwestern state of it's rolling hills by extracting its sand. This new scramble for sand mining has local residents concerned about the health and environmental impacts on their communities.
The industry of sand mining is booming along with the national increase in "natural" gas drilling. Wisconsin Sand Ideal For 'Fracking' Wisconsin's silica sand is deemed superior to other sands by the industry because of its round shape, strength, and how easy it is to wash. Sand mine located in central Wisconsin Wisconsin has huge deposits of this silica sand close to the surface.