HISTORIC INDONESIAN FOREST PROTECTION DEAL AT RISK FROM INDUSTRY

Norway and Indonesia are about to make history. A 1 billion USD forest protection deal between these two countries could help set Indonesia on a low-carbon development pathway and become a positive model for the rest of the world. It could clearly demonstrate that lowering carbon emissions to address climate change does not mean sacrificing economic growth and prosperity. What’s more, this prosperous low-carbon development does not need to come at the expense of Indonesia’s natural forests and peatlands.

But this deal is at risk. Today we released a report - ‘Protection Money’ - which outlines how the deal is in danger of being undermined, unless action is taken to protect it from notorious industrial forest destroyers in the palm oil, paper and pulp sectors. There is a potential that international money intended for the protection of Indonesia’s forests and peatlands could end up being used to support their destruction.

The 1 billion USD pledged by Norway is meant to support the Indonesian President’s commitment to lead global efforts in shifting to a low-carbon development model and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The deal includes a two-year moratorium on the allocation of carbon-rich peatlands and natural forests for industrial expansion, and could also include a review of the lands already held by various industries.

These industries, including palm oil, pulp and paper, have ambitious expansion plans. If these plans go ahead in their current form it could lead to the loss of 40% of Indonesia’s remaining natural forest – an area around the size of Norway and Denmark combined - as well as the loss of half of all remaining forested orang-utan habitat in Kalimantan. Not to mention the additional GHG emissions that would result from continued destruction of carbon-rich peatlands and forest.

On the left is rainforest, on the right side of the image are Eucalyptus plantations. Image: Daniel Beltrá / GreenpeaceTragically, some of this destruction could actually go forward in the name of climate and forest protection if the negative influence of industry isn’t curbed. Industry who have interests in supporting business-as-usual are looking to rebrand industrial activities that drive deforestation as ‘rehabilitation of degraded’ lands. This ‘degraded’ land is often actually natural, carbon-rich forest or peatland merely given that label, as there is no clear definition of ‘degraded’.

Calling this ‘rehabilitation’ implies that replacing natural forests with plantations is good for the climate, for biodiversity, and for local communities and low-carbon development. In reality this ‘rehabilitation’ means loss of natural forests, loss of the economic and social value that those forests have for local communities, and results in habitat destruction and further GHG emissions.

This continued destruction goes against the low-carbon development model that Indonesia’s President aims to champion - with the support of forest protection deals like the one with Norway – and it is also completely unnecessary.

The key lies in improving the productivity of the land already held by industry. With improved productivity - according to Government figures - no additional land would be needed to meet production targets in the pulp, paper and palm oil sectors. They should be able to meet their economic targets, which include doubling palm oil production and a four-fold increase in pulp production, without further forest destruction. It means making better of use of the land already held by industry, rather than allowing continual expansion into ever more forested areas.

In a new oil-palm plantation near Sungaihantu, in South Kalimantan, the skeleton of a tree is the last relic of the rainforest that once was. Image: Daniel Beltrá / GreenpeaceHow can we ensure that the palm oil, paper and pulp industries make better use of the land already allocated to them in Indonesia? A strong moratorium on deforestation and peatland clearance would push industry to dramatically increase productivity within existing plantation areas – because it would remove the option of further expansion into forests - and therefore remove the option for further forest and peatland destruction.

The announcement of the Indonesia-Norway forest deal is due to be made during international climate negotiations beginning in Cancun, Mexico next week. It has the potential to usher in an historic era of low-carbon development in Indonesia – and in a world facing runaway climate change this has global implications. A strong moratorium is the best way to ensure that this fund does not become ‘protection money’ for forest destroying industry, and remains ‘protection money’ for Indonesia’s bio-diverse and carbon-rich peatlands and forests.

Greenpeace is calling for immediate protection of all peatlands and a temporary halt on all further natural forest clearance, not only in new areas, but also in areas already held by industry.

Read more on the press conference and report launch in Indonesia below.

Download the report:

*UPDATE:

On the press conference and report launch in Indonesia - November 23, 2010:

Pak Heru, an Indonesian Minister from Indonesia’s REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) Task Force went as far as rescheduling a flight to Oslo to attend the press conference, and following a presentation from Greenpeace Southeast Asia Forests Campaigner Bustar Maitar he stood to give his opinion of the report.

Heru gave some general updates on the REDD+ task force and its challenges before voicing his appreciation of Greenpeace’s work, and stating that he shares the same views.

He applauded the 'Protection Money' report and Greenpeace’s efforts to expose some of the inconsistencies in government policy, and added that Greenpeace's position and commitment to save Indonesian forests is in line with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s vision.

As reported by AFP this morning, Greenpeace is very supportive of the deal between Indonesia and Norway, provided the issues raised in the report are addressed.

At the press conference Heru also remarked that although a lot of work is required to save Indonesian forests, we need to be optimistic, ending his remarks with the latin “Si vis pacem, para bellum”, meaning: “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.” Peace through strength, and forest protection through formidable policy, financial support and good governance.

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What's hiding inside your tuna tin?

You know that colourful tin of tuna you drop into your supermarket basket every week? Ever wonder what’s in it? Probably not; in a matter of decades, tuna has gone from being exotic mystery to an almost generic foodstuff, as ubiquitous as bread and milk – there’s even one brand of canned tuna called “chicken of the sea”. No disrespect to chickens, but the many species of formidable, predatory tuna that charge around our oceans in large schools are in a different league altogether.

But back to the tinned variety; Greenpeace recently commissioned the first ever independent, public genetic tests into tinned tuna, to find out what was really going on inside 50 brands of tinned tuna. Analysis of products from 12 countries, including the US, Canada, Australia, and several European countries, turned up some pretty dodgy things inside some of them.

Inside some tins (brands Calvo, Campos in Spain), two different species of tuna were found, which is illegal in several jurisdictions, including in the EU, while in others (for example Clover Leaf in Canada and Nostromo [owned by Calvo] in Italy), tins from different batches were found to have different species inside separate tins.

While this apparently sloppy behaviour should set alarm bells ringing from a consumer point of view, there’s actually even more to be concerned about; the tinned tuna industry, through what appears to be lazy disregard for both its customers and future tuna availability, is forcing consumers and retailers into involvement in a trail of destruction.

>> TAKE ACTION: Demand marine reserves to protect species under pressure.

It starts with a fad. That’s FAD, or a fish aggregation device– an elaborate name for an object placed in the water, which attracts lots of fish. FADs allow the fishing industry to catch a lot of tuna at the same time, but since different species are all attracted, including young fish it also causes a lot of bycatch.

Turtles, sharks, and various species of tuna, including juveniles of species under pressure like yellowfin tuna or bigeye tuna are caught in the same nets. This is not only killing hundreds of thousands of sharks, which are either drowning in the nets or dying an agonizing death once they have had their fins cut off and are thrown back into the sea, but it is also killing turtles and non-target fish species.

Ocean destruction in tuna tins

Previous Next 1/13 Play After genetic tests of tuna in tins, Greenpeace has found that many contain evidence of bycatch and unsustainable fishing practices. The use of fish aggregating devices (FADs)is one of the main reasons for this.

Now, we’re not saying there’s turtle or shark in your tuna tin, at least not literally. But when the juvenile tuna are sent ashore for processing and frozen, identification and sorting is apparently very difficult, resulting in species being mixed in the tinning process. We say apparently, as it may just be a case of it being financially uninteresting for the tuna industry to separate the species.

Whatever the reason, the problem keeps coming back to FADs. By using these fish-attractors in tandem with purse seine nets, the tuna industry is destroying its own future and pushing towards the collapse of tuna stocks. By catching small, young fish, it’s ensuring that there will be fewer large tuna in the future. That’s bad news for your tuna salad, bad news for the fishing industry, and dismal news for the “chicken of the sea”.

Greenpeace is calling for a ban on FADs in purse seining – we want them banned for using tuna fishing throughout our oceans. Fishing with seine nets only would help minimise the bycatch of other animals, as well as drastically reduce the amount of juvenile tuna ending up in tins.

To help support such a ban we need to take action in the supermarket. Consumers don’t want dodgy tuna, and neither do retailers. Every industry fears the wrath of consumer opinion; and we can use this to persuade the tuna industry to clean up its act, and to stop forcing dodgy tuna down our throats.

Note from AZTI-Tecnalia, who performed the tests for Greenpeace: Analytical results performed by AZTI-Tecnalia under its patented method for discrimination of Thunuus obesus and Thunnus albacares. AZTI has not participated on the sample collection and the design of the experiment and is not responsible for the use of the results delivered, or any information derived from its analysis and interpretation.

Deep Green: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities

Cities at sea level around the world – including Bangkok, New Orleans, Shanghai and Amsterdam – are bracing themselves for rising seas and sinking ground. Populations on river deltas, atolls and islands face flooding and displacement. Sea-level rise accumulates slowly, measured in millimetres a year, but the incremental pace can deceive us. Sea-level rise, particularly when combined with sinking land, presents a growing problem.

Consider that the rate of sea-level rise is itself rising. Sea rise remained virtually zero over the last several millennia. Then, in the 20th century, the sea rose about 20 centimeters. Now, today, the rate has reached about 30 centimeters per century, and still increasing. Recently, oceanographers have boosted their predictions of 21st century sea level rise from about 20 centimetres to a metre or more.

Sea-level rise is not uniform around the world. Gravitational forces, including the gravity of ice caps themselves, cause uneven fluctuations. Meanwhile, some coastal plains sink as others rise, so exaggerating sea-level rise in some regions and cancelling it in others. Furthermore, if humanity cannot change its hydrocarbon habits quickly enough, we risk runaway warming that could accelerate sea-level rise.

In an extreme runaway scenario, a complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet would add 7 metres to the world’s oceans, and a complete melting of the Antarctic sheet would add 60 metres. Those scenarios would require a massive restructuring of human civilisation as we know it. However, even a one-to-two metre rise in sea level will inundate certain port cities, islands, atolls, flood deltas and coastal plains, obliterate vulnerable species and displace millions of people.

Sea changes in history

Earth’s coastal plains and inland seas have dried out and flooded many times. Historically, sea-level changes disrupt marine shallows, intertidal zones and coastal ecosystems - the most productive habitats - leading to substantial species loss. About 235 million years ago a massive ecosystem collapse, associated with warming and sea rise, obliterated 95% of all living species, the greatest diversity loss event in Earth history. Sixty-five million years ago a meteorite struck the Gulf of Mexico region and initiated a long cooling trend. As water froze, the sea level dropped and 75% of all species, including the dinosaurs on land, perished.

Over the last 20 million years, during the Miocene period, the Mediterranean basin dried and flooded several times. The basin finally filled with a catastrophic flood about 5.3 million years ago, when human ancestors Kenyapithecus and ‘Toumaï’ (Sahelanthropus tchadensis) roamed the forests of east Africa.

Later floods affected human settlements. During the most recent glacial maximum, 20,000 years ago, sea levels dropped about 125 metres. The Mediterranean basin partially dried and was re-flooded in about 16,000 BCE. The Caspian and Black Seas may have flooded later, about 13,000 BCE, from melting Scandinavia ice sheets. The Black Sea likely flooded twice again about 10,000 and 7,600 years ago as the world’s oceans rose.

The Dogger Banks and other shallows around Britain and Ireland were dry lowlands during the last glaciation. The plains provided reindeer for human hunters and a land link from the European mainland to the British Isles. Human encampments have been identified on the ocean floor. During the post-glacial melt, sea water and fresh water from ice-dammed lakes flooded Doggerland and separated Britain and Ireland from Europe.

The lower Tigris-Euphrates valley also flooded during the post-glacial melt under the rising Persian Gulf. Lowlands around Indonesia, Australia, New Guinea and East Asia also flooded. Many of these floods submerged human settlements and hunting regions, likely inspiring the universal deluge and flood stories found in most human cultures. There may be a thousand submerged Atlantis-like cities, still undiscovered, and there may be more in the future.

Modern sea rise

August 11 2010: After breaking off the Petermann Glacier six days earlier, a massive ice island floats slowly down the fjord toward the Nares Strait. Scientists warn that loss of the ice from this glacier is almost certain to speed up the rate at which ice from the Greenland icesheet melts into our oceans. Image: NASAAfter the last ice age, as Earth warmed, melting ice raised sea levels by an average of about one metre a century, peaked at four metres a century, until about 7,000 years ago when Earth’s sea level stabilised. During the 2,000 years between 200 BCE and the year 1800, Earth’s sea level only rose about 20 centimetres, one centimetre a century, not enough to disrupt human coastal settlements.

However, after 1800 - during a century of human hydrocarbon industrialisation - the seas rose ten times faster, 10 centimetres a century. In the 20th century, this rate doubled to 20 centimetres, and now stands at 30 centimetres a century, 30 times faster than any period during the previous 7,000 years prior to 1800.

The rate of sea rise continues to increase, and this acceleration makes predictions challenging. We do not know how fast the sea may rise in the future. Most oceanographers last century believed the rise would be about 20 centimetres a century. By 2007, the IPCC assumed an average rate during the 21st century of 50 centimetres. Oceanographers now estimate that the seas will rise between one and two metres this century.

But we must keep in mind that the seas won’t suddenly stop rising in 2100, and the rate could be much higher by then. Sea-level change follows what mathematicians refer to as ‘compound integration’. First, human carbon emissions drive temperature change, which in turn melts ice and drives sea-level change. This double integration means that there could be a centuries-long lag between the initial carbon emissions and the final sea-level effect.

Furthermore, global heating from greenhouse gasses can be jolted by non-linear effects, dramatic jumps in impact from relatively small carbon emissions. One such non-linear effect is dynamic ice response, whereby melting creates cavities in ice sheets that increase the melt rate. Other ‘runaway’ factors include methane released from permafrost, the reflective power of water versus ice, forests dying in the heat, and so forth. If humanity triggers runaway global warming, then Earth could enter a long warming period independent of human mitigation efforts. If such a heating period melts the world’s glaciers and both poles, the seas would rise by some 70 metres, creating another thousand Atlantises and a billion displaced people.

Sinking Cities Today

Anjana Koyal lives in Satjellia island, India and is one of the many people affected by sea level rise: "I am a student and my school is flooded with water. There are too many mosquitoes, flies, and a bad smells comes from the water." Image: Peter Caton / GreenpeaceThere is a big difference between a 1-metre and a 70-metre sea-level rise, but even at current sea-level rise rates, some major cities already face urgent and expensive adaptations. Water does not negotiate. It does not compact, and it relentlessly obeys the law of gravity. Even one millimetre of sea water over the top of a levee can fill a vast coastal plain or flood a city. The citizens of the Netherlands, New Orleans and Bangladesh can attest to this.

Amsterdam and Venice, for example, face both rising seas and sinking land. Venice has sunk about 30 centimetres over the past 100 years, doubling the effect of the Mediterranean sea-level rise. The Italian government has budgeted several billion euros to preserve Venice with flood defences, but engineers warn that even this may not be enough to save Venice in its current location.

The Netherlands land base is sinking, as deep mantle rock flows from this region, adding to the effect of sea-level rise. Amsterdam sits four metres below sea level. The Dutch Veerman Committee for coastal maintenance expects the sea level to rise between 65 and 130 centimetres over the next century, requiring a billion-euro annual budget in coastal maintenance and dam construction. Each year, crews deposit some 14 million cubic metres of sand on the intertidal zones just to combat erosion.

Other cities, such as Houston, Texas and Shanghai, China, battle rising seas and sinking ground caused by human activity. Houston is sinking from both groundwater and oil extraction, which undermines the coastal substrate foundation. Shanghai, on the Yangtze River delta, grew from a fishing village to a city of over 20 million people. The city is simply too heavy for its swampland foundation. Aggravated by water extraction, the city sank 2.5 metres between 1921 and 1965, and continues to sink. According to China's State Oceanic Administration, ‘Sea level rises worldwide cannot be reversed’ so China must ‘adapt to the change’ by building levees and dykes.

A topographical study at the University of Colorado, concluded that ‘most of the world’s low-lying river deltas are sinking from human activity ... putting tens of millions of people at risk’. Vulnerable river deltas include the Ganges-Brahmaputra in Bangladesh, Pearl River in China, and the Mekong in Vietnam, and 24 of the worlds’ 33 major deltas. Regions such as Florida, Belize, the Bahamas and the Maldives, and cities such as Trieste, Bangkok and Dacca, also remain vulnerable.

Sinking cities and rising seas are symptoms of unsustainable human activity and habitat overshoot. Humanity has grown beyond the biological and physical limits of its Earth habitat. These limits manifest as global warming, rising seas, sinking cities, drained aquifers, disappearing species, dying forests, human starvation and islands of floating plastic.

Meanwhile, the cost of adapting – billions of dollars for new levees, dams and climate change mitigation – demands scarce resources that are needed to expand education, food production and social services. To meet the costs of adaption, industrial nations will push their economies to grow, adding to the root problem of habitat overshoot. Every millimetre of rising sea water, every drop of water from the melting ice, is a message from Earth to humanity.
Rex Weyler

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German legal victory a slap in the face to the genetic engineering industry

Blogpost by Stephanie Töwe-Rimkeit - November 25, 2010 at 15:40 3 comments
The genetic engineering (GE) free movement in Germany and all farmers, producers and consumers who don’t want GE on the fields and in the food have a big reason to celebrate!. The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany reaffirmed that the existing German GE law that handles the marketing and cultivation of GMOs in Germany is in line with their constitution. The Court also acknowledged the unknown long-term risks of GMOs.

In more detail, during 2005, one of Germanys 16 federal states - Saxony Anhalt - supported by a lawyer of Monsanto (Freshfield &Co) - challenged the German GE-law. The epicenter of complaint was the liability rules and the public register which is a tool to inform the public where GE crops are grown. They claimed that these provisions of the law prevent farmers who want to cultivate GE crops to do so and that it is incompatible with the constitution. It may sound unbelievable but the former government of the state of Saxony-Anhalt took the side of the GE industry.

After 5 years, the top court’s decision comes to give a big blow to the GE industry intensions to abolish democratic provisions. The court confirmed that long-term risks of GMO are unknown because of the current scientific state of art. Therefore the government has a special obligation of executive care. Furthermore the government cannot handle this subject with a simple cost-benefit analysis. It is the government's responsibility to take care of the conservation of nature for future generations. In its decision the court several times pointed out that genetic engineering take a hand in the structures of life and the outcome/the aftermath could be irreversible. Hence there has to be a high level of precaution concerning the cultivation and the marketing of GMO products. (Read more in German)

One of the issues of the complaint was the fact that Germany has a public cultivation register where all farmers have to declare the locations of their GE fields and all data related to their cultivations. The court acknowledged that this register is very important for a democratic, pluralistic society. The register is a tool to inform the society and contribute in the process of forming public opinions. Another issue was the strict liability rules – and the court approved them completely. For instance, GE-farmers have to pay if GE-pollen contaminates neighbor fields. The court has also identified that GMO has especially drawbacks for the GE-free agriculture.

We know that GE organisms (plants, animals, micro-organisms) are living organisms that can multiply and cross-breed and pose a threat of irreversible damage to biodiversity and ecosystems; furthermore their effects on human and animal health are unknown. Therefore, there is an urgent need to adopt the precautionary principle and stop this high risk experiment.

This decision of the German court should be taken very seriously from all the governments in Europe as well the European Commission that aims to authorise more GE crops in Europe without addressing the risks and the liability issue. The future of agriculture is about ecological farming aligned with nature and should not include GE crops.