INFO REDD

REDD Programme Plus Return Discussed in Palangkaraya

2011-09-19T23:43:00.000-07:00

Program Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) will not work properly if it does not involve the local community. This statement was delivered William Boyd, Senior Adviser GCF (Governor's Climate and Forest Task Force), in a press conference to reporters, Monday, September 19, 2011 evening in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan.

"GCF is a unique collaboration," said Boyd is a researcher at the University of Colorado, United States. GCF, he said, was formed to provide input on a comprehensive program of REDD plus or reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This scheme was launched since the UN Conference on Climate Change in Bali in 2007.

At 20 to 22 September 2011, Central Kalimantan to host the fifth meeting of the Task Force on Climate and Forest Governor (GCF). This institute is an association of 15 states or provinces that have forests around the world. U.S. states that joined the California and Illinois, while in Brazil are Amazonas, Acre, Amapa, Mato Grosso and Para.

In Mexico, states that participate are Campeche and Chiapas. In Nigeria there is Cross River State. While there are four provinces in Indonesia who join, the Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Central Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, and Papua. Forest area of all members of the GCF is 20 percent of forests worldwide.

Boyd hopes the states and provinces are joined in GCF leads the world in the development of REDD programs plus a strong and sustainable. "Not a lot of forum for dialogue between provinces in the national and international levels to develop REDD architecture," said Avi Mahaningtyas, GCF Coordinator for Indonesia.

GCF Coordinators Brazil, Mariana Nogueira Pavan, explaining the benefits of the GCF is able to grow public awareness of REDD. "The forum is to be a means of exchanging experience implementing programs to reduce emissions through the woods," he said.

Indeed, during the three-day discussion meeting will be filled by various international experts on issues of social and environmental protection, funding, and alignment plus the REDD program. The task force will also announce the establishment of a new funding mechanism for members of the GCF. UNTUNG WIDYANTO | Tempo Iteraktif

Criticized, Kelapa Sawit So Forest Tree

2011-09-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

Greenpeace condemned the release of the Minister of Forestry (Permenhut) which accommodates the oil palm as part of forest plants. This could potentially increase the destruction of peatland forests and increase carbon emissions.
That policy contained in Permenhut Number 62/Menhut/II/2011 on Forest Plantation Development Guidelines on Various Types of Business License Timber Utilization in Industrial Forest Plantation (IUPHHK / HTI) issued August 25, 2011 and promulgated on September 6, 2011.
"We consider that the Ministry of Forestry to lie and not consistent in its commitment to maintain Indonesia's remaining forests. Permenhut discharge is a form of failure of the government in enforcing the law relating to breach of the expansion of oil palm plantations in forest areas, "said Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace forest campaigner, on Monday (9/19/2011), in Jakarta.
According to him, with the inclusion of forest plantations in the category, it is feared will lead to the growing emissions from the destruction of forests and peatlands which are now very large. Moreover, it also justifies dibabatnya forest to be used oil palm plantations. "This is clearly contrary to the commitment of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for Indonesia to reduce emissions 41 percent by 2020," said Bustar.
Consumption of crude palm oil (crude palm oil / CPO) and the increasing use of palm oil for biofuels in the international market has resulted in widespread destruction of forests and peatlands in Indonesia. Minister of Forestry of this step will exacerbate the destruction of Indonesia's natural forest remains because it gives the opportunity to hide behind the plantation forest category.
For information, Indonesia is the country with the fastest rate of deforestation throughout the world, so placing it as the country's greenhouse gas emitter in the world's third largest. Greenpeace analysis has identified there are about 5.4 million hectares of oil palm plantations that overlap with areas of forest and peat. On March 18, 2011 the government also has revoked the licenses principle of the release of forest land for oil palm plantations covering 182 companies throughout Indonesia because it allegedly has penetrated the forest area without a legitimate procedure.
"Minister Zulkifli Hasan Permenhut should immediately cancel this and start focusing on how to protect Indonesia's remaining forests, biodiversity, and communities dependent on forests. If passed, enormous destruction of forests will continue to occur and the minister will be responsible for the failure of Indonesia to meet emission reduction commitments that have been made President, "he said. | Sains.Kompas

Stop the Project REDD Indonesia - Australia

2011-09-19T03:07:00.000-07:00

Stop the Project REDD Indonesia - Australia At Territory Indigenous Dayak of Central Kalimantan
We the undersigned, Mantir Peoples in Kadamangan Mantangai Kapuas in Central Kalimantan, has conducted serious talks on 7 - June 8, 2011 held at the Village Katunjung Mantangai Kapuas district of Central Kalimantan, the results of monitoring and evaluation of development of REDD projects of cooperation between Indonesia and Australia that was done by KFCP since 2009 to date June 2011, providing ratings and critical notes of the development projects, among others:

REDD projects signed since the beginning even before the review field (setting down on paper / map) has been in the area of Indigenous Dayak communities covering 14 village / hamlet in the district and subdistrict Mantangai Timpah Kapuas district. The appointment of the project site area 120,000 hectares + without notice and prior consultation with the Dayak communities. Appointment location by letter dated December 20, 2010 No. KT.12/II-KIM/2010 which was signed by the Secretary General of the Ministry of Forestry Republic of Indonesia.
During the presence of the REDD project to make citizens become restless and conflicts between fellow citizens that have an impact on the loss of brotherhood, mutual suspicion and no longer the peace that is created in the villages.
Implementation of REDD projects, often times put pressure on people both physically and MONEY fisikologis and promising millions to every citizen when the supports. Models like these make people more too intimidated and seduced by promises of MONEY. This is not good for the community's customary law in the process of self-help spirit of cooperation in the rehabilitation and reforestation of ex post PLG 1 million hectares.
REDD implementation and referral program conducted by the project executing agency KFCP using BOS Foundation, CARE International, Wetlands, Universities, giving more pressure on residents to close the access to and neglect of indigenous forests, plantations, fisheries and livelihood is the claim area REDD.
REDD project from the beginning never provide a guarantee in writing on the recognition of the indigenous Dayak peoples. But more emphasis on indigenous legal community to recognize the existence Ngaju REDD project area. This is an act does not have justice, we can not accept. REDD project is to be owned by Australia as a dirty industrial absorbent Australia (emissions) and obviously foreign-owned. On the contrary we are a born and raised since before the state became independent had not received justice for territory management.
Implementation of REDD projects give more sweet promises to the indigenous Dayak community Ngaju law, when in fact all the more lies at the field level. Report to supervisor all good, but in fact not true. This act of manipulation of the REDD project to the adat law community.

With the evolving situation REDD projects, the stance taken by Mantir are:

We Mantir Indigenous Kadamangan Mantangai Kapuas regency in Central Kalimantan, reject the presence of the REDD project because it threatens the rights and life of the Dayak in the REDD project.
Urged Mr. President. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Australian Prime Minister to stop the project, which has ignored the rights and threaten the livelihoods Dayak community.
Mr. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono immediately set by a decree of the right to manage the Dayak communities in the Watershed (DAS) Kapuas, which has long contributed to the climate crisis solutions in the areas of Central Kalimantan Peat.
Mr. President. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono immediately recognize the initiative of Dayak indigenous people in managing peat through planting, rehabilitation, pemeriharaan river, tatas gardens, indigenous forests as an integral part of the solution to the climate crisis (outside the REDD mechanism).

Dayak communities have made protection of peat resources with their local wisdom. We do not require the presence of REDD, we do not need promises. What we are doing to the climate crisis solutions for the salvation of mankind in the world - not looking for carbon funds. What we need now free health care, free education, increased skills and knowledge, provision of adequate technology and appropriate, adequate capitalization policy and support rehabilitation of the gardens and indigenous forest that burned last 3 years.
Thus we submit this statement. For your attention and cooperation we thank you.
Katunjung, June 8, 2011

1)Umbie Ipe Desa Mantangai Hulu, 2) Arthen. U. Sampah Desa Mantangai Tengah, 3) Yanmar Kurius Desa Kalumpang, 4) Sambung Desa Sei Ahas, 5) H. Arben anus Desa Katunjung, 6) Mudin Jaman Desa Katunjung, 7) Kanisius. B Desa Katunjung, 8) Tinus Desa Tumbang Muroi, 9) Zuda Dusun Tanjung Kalanis, 10) Simpei Desa Katimpun,

Information In Indonesian

Many Bolder Blocks in Singkil Swamp Are No Longer Accurate

2011-09-16T06:17:00.000-07:00

The Singkil Swamp is an important part of the Leuser Ecosystem, and is well known for its value in conserving biodiversity. In particular it holds the highest densities of orangutans in the world, and supports viable populations of python, crocodiles, and large turtles. Tigers also inhabit the area during the dry season and prey on the numerous deer, and pigs that live there. The Singkil swamp is also important as a significant carbon store (contained in its peat) and its value to neighbouring marine fisheries is also important for the economic welfare of the local fishing communities. Being part of Leuser Ecosystem it is automatically part of the National Strategic Area which covers the Leuser Ecosystem in Aceh. The boundaries of the Singkil swamp were put in place in 2000 and were acknowledged in the Ministerial Decree No 190 2001.

Based on Ministerial Decree 190/2001, the Singkil Swamp covers an area of more than 100,000 ha. It is an important for its role as effective barrier against natural disaster such as Tsunamis, while continuously providing various ecosystem services that contribute directly to local livelihood such as acting as freshwater reservoir,and fish breeding ground.

Unfortunately, despite its ecological and economic importance, the Singkil Swamp still has to face perpetual threats from timber poaching, ever-expanding plantations, and road development. In order to safeguard the area and to avoid unnecessary conflicts it is important to have the area clearly demarcated in the field - and in fact this is something the neighbouring district governments call for regularly. For this reason BPKEL undertook an eight day survey to check on the condition of the boundary markers The field trip produced significant information; many of the boundary markers are now located underwater due to receding coastline, while many others are in a deteriorated condition (see photo).

Recognizing the the importance of making the boundaries as clear as possible BPKEL is now planning to reconstruct the boundaries around the Singkil Swamp - a challenge because of the waterlogged topography and because of the unstable coastline - but necessary to help protect this unique part of the Leuser Ecosystem.

http://leuserecosystem.org/en/news/recent-news/306-many-bolder-blocks-in-singkil-swamp-are-no-longer-accurate.html

Govt Determined to Fight Forest Fires As Hot Spots Proliferate

2011-09-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

The Indonesian government appears to be determined to reduce the number of forest fire hot spots by 20 percent annually in order to help meet the country`s pledge to cut its gas emissions by 26 percent by 2020. “Indonesia has successfully reduced the number of forest fires over the past three years, and this year, the government is determined to do a similar thing as the National Meteorological, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has predicted a prolonged drought since May,” the forestry ministry`s Forestry Protection and Nature Conservation Director General (PHKA) Darori said here on Wednesday (Sept 7).

The government has anticipated forest fires by among other things allocating funds amounting to about Rp160 billion to tackle forest fires in ten provinces. Darori said earlier that the number of hot spots in Indonesia since the January 2011 were 8,082. “The hot spots in Indonesia are found in six provinces which are prone to forest fires, and the highest is recorded in Riau with 2,159 hot spots, West Kalimantan 809, North Sumatra 600 and Central Kalimantan 543, Jambi 455, and South Kalimantan 259 hot spot,” Darori said.

Around 77 percent of forest fires in Indonesia have occurred in plantation and agricultural areas, and only 23 percent in forest area, as fire has been considered the cheapest, fastest, and most effective a land clearing method. In general, fires in peat land area were set intentionally. “The fires are due to illegal logging, plantations,and land clearing for agriculture purposes,” he said. Darori stated that the forestry ministry is ready to deal with forest fires currently occurring on Sumatra and Kalimantan Islands.

The government has emphasized preventive measures by urging the community not to use fire as land clearing methods, according to the director general. The coordination with the regional administration authorities has also been intensified because most of the fires are located outside forest area under the responsibility of the regional administrations, Darori said, adding that he regretted, however, that the funds allocated by the regional governments for forest fire handling were too small.

As the number of forest fire hot spots is increasing in this current dry season, the central government has decided to deploy personnel to help put out the fires. Forest Fire Operation Teams were sent to three provinces – South Sumatra, Central Kalimantan and Riau, from Jakarta on Thursday. “The forest fire operation team will be working for three months,” Coordinating Minister for People`s Welfare Agung Laksono said when seeing off the departure of the teams at Halim Perdanakusuma airport, eastern Jakarta.

Forest fire hot spots in swamp and peat land areas are particularly rampant in Jambi, South Sumatra, and Riau Provinces known as the triangle of forest fires in Indonesia. “In Jambi, the forest fires hit Muaro District, and three peat land spots at the Berbak National Park conservation area,” Darori said, adding that a human-induced fire razed around 8,000 hectares of Kerinci Seblat National Park in Jambi Province. The Jambi fire has entered the first level status of alert because it has spread from around 500 ha last week to more than 1,000 ha currently.

The fire hot spots were detected in 12 peatland locations, including three inside the Berbak National Park in Tanjung Jabung Timur District, and one inside protected peat forest area in Tanjung Jabung Barat District. The forest fires have been going on since two months ago in Jambi and South Sumatra. The transitional condition from dry season to rainy season has triggered the hot spots in Riau as the temperature was quite high, according to Yudhistira Mawaddah, an analyst of the Riau Meteorological, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) .

On Tuesday (Sept 6) alone, the US NOAA (the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellite detected a total of 73 hot spots on Sumatra Island, including 20 hot spots in Riau Province. The number significantly increased from only three hot spots in Riau on the previous day (Monday, Sept 5), Yudhistira said in Pekanbaru on Thursday (Sept 8).

In addition to the 20 in Riau Province, there were also 12 hot spots in Jambi Province, two in Aceh Province, three in West Sumatra Province, three in Lampung Province, and one each in North Sumatra and Bengkulu Provinces, he said. And the highest number of hot spots was found in South Sumatra, namely 31 hot spots.

In Central Kalimantan Province, 40 forest fire hot spots were detected in Kotawaringin Timur District, by Terra and AQUA satellites between August 30 and September 6, 2011. “The 40 hot spots indicate forest and plantation fires,” Ian Septiawan, the head of the Region II Conservation Section of the Regional NatureConservation Agency (BKSDA) said in Kotawaringin Timur on Wednesday (Sept 7).

The number of hot spots, however, had decreased lately due to rainfall. Previously, the Terra and AQUA had detected 188 hot spots during the August 19-26 period in Kotawaringin Timur, he said. Most of the hot spots were detected in large oil palm plantations and not easily put out despite rainfall, he explained. “The regional and provincial governments in Central Kalimantan have so far blamed local people for the forest fires. In fact, the main perpetrators of forest fires are large oil palm plantations which have so far escaped legal sanctions,” he said.

During the current dry season, hot spots have been detected in six provinces prone to forest fires, namely Riau, West Kalimantan, North Sumatra, Central Kalimantan, Jambi, and South Kalimantan. The latest fires are currently razing on the slope of Mount Sumbing in Central Java Province, and at Panaikan village in South Sulawesi. Forest fires caused by plantations and traditional farming methods have been blamed for the choking haze which shrouds the region annually during the dry season.

Given the increasing number of fire hot spots in the country, Rofi Munawar, a member of the House of Representatives (DPR RI)`s Commission IV, has urged the government to tackle the fires seriously. The government must be on alert to prevent business-driven forest fires and must not work half-heartedly, Rofi, a member of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) said in Jakarta on Thursday.

It was possible that the commercial fires had been started intentionally to clear land for plantation or mining businesses, he said. “The forestry ministry must act fast to anticipate more hot spots and to prevent the fires from spreading out of control,” Rofi said. As most of the fires were human induced, the government must intensify environmental campaigns, empower local people and improve the economic condition of people living surrounding forest area, the legislator urged.

“The worst disaster where the number of hot spots reaching up to 146,264 in 2006, must not be repeated,” he said. Indonesia`s forest area reaches over 130 million hectares, the world`s third largest after Brazil and Congo. In 1982-83 and 1994, El Nino-induced forest fires had destroyed around 6.4 million hectares of forest, especially in East Kalimantan.

Antara | By Aditia Maruli

Sustainability is the new buzzword

2011-09-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

Dire forecasts about climate change and the global failure to rein in the growing carbon footprint has made it imperative for both industry and grassroots movement to not only advocate sustainability but embrace it.

"Unfortunately for many decades, we have delayed taking action to protect our environment, which is now at the edge of collapse. We have been brushing our problems aside to dream of solutions tomorrow . But now there are no easy options left," said Times Group MD Vineet Jain in a grim warning.

In an address at the Earth Care the awards ceremony on Friday evening, Jain called for striking a balance between development and environment sustainability. "There are no 'either-or ' solutions. We cannot choose one option over another. We have to find a way of accommodating both. This requires imagination, innovation and determination."

ITC Group board member Nakul Anand, in a presentation peppered with figures on the state of the environment, said India lost about 2% of its GDP to environment damage.

Speakers at the gathering of industry honchos, activists and bureaucrats, emphasized unequivocally the urgent need for reforms if the earth was to be saved for the future generation. Minister for rural development, and water & sanitation Jairam Ramesh hailed The Times of India for being the first to make environment "news" .

"The Times of India has made environment front-page news, and it was the possibly the first newspaper to have a full page every Friday dedicated to green issues," he said.

Ramesh also brought up the issue of livelihood sustenance and environment. "We need not lifestyle environmentalism but livelihood environmentalism. What you see are protest movements because land, water and employment is involved. We should be sensitive to these issues," he said.

Elaborating on an inclusive approach, Rajendra Shinde from UNEP Paris, stressed the need for more programmes like the Earth Care Awards that would serve as an encouragement for industry to adopt cleaner practices. "We need millions of these. It's not just about annual events at Cancun and Durban," he said. Talking about the awards, Shinde said it was not just about measuring the carbon footprint or emission reduction. It was also about the process which the participants had gone through to build their own concepts and put them into practical reality.

JSW group chairperson, Sangita Jindal, while lauding the efforts of industry giants, also praised grassroots environmentalists who won the award. "We salute these silent crusaders working for the environment," she said.

New proposal aims to put more green shackles on developing economies

2011-09-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

The meeting was meant to review the work done two decades after the famed Rio summit or the UN meet on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. But the Rio+20 conference is turning into another global ground to put green fetters on developing economies.

A proposal floated in the run-up to the main meeting has suggested "sustainable development goals" along the lines of millennium development goals. But the goals could turn into green chains on growth in emerging economies with goals like carbon emissions and fixed renewable energy content in energy mix being forced down in the name of sustainable development.

The proposal mooted by Columbia in a recently concluded meeting in Brazil in the run-up to the big jamboree has stirred heated debate about new channels being found to break the principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" and imposing common standards and targets for greening the economy across developed and developing world.

While another meeting on the issue is slated to be held in China this month, a ministerial round to be hosted in Delhi will see the new "green" game play out more openly with India and other developing countries bringing forth counter proposals.

The proposal from Columbia, which is likely to slowly see support from European countries in the coming days, could also take forward the attempts of the developed countries at the UN climate change convention. At the climate convention too, the developed countries have been fighting hard to break or redefine the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities to impose mandatory carbon cuts on emerging economies.

At the Brazil meeting, India did put up a preliminary counter proposal pointing that sustainable development and poverty eradication were at the heart of the Rio summit and that they should remain the goals and other elements a via media only.

India too had commissioned three studies from non-government agencies on the issue which are likely to be in soon. The government will have to take a call on these studies as well as green benchmarking or accounting of the economy which have raised some concerns. Any national level accounting of green parameters could lend itself to a global regime with standards and targets, they have warned even at the climate talks.

The Times Of India

Nitin Sethi, TNN

$40bn a year could halve deforestation worldwide

2011-09-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

Investing just 0.034 per cent of global GDP could transform the world's forestry sector, halving deforestation rates, slashing carbon emissions and creating up to five million new jobs by the middle of the century.That is the conclusion of a major new report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which argues that investing an average of $40bn a year in forest protection would allow forests to absorb 28 per cent more carbon from the atmosphere than they do now.

The report says extra finance can be raised from the public and private sectors using mechanisms that pay landowners for maintaining ecosystems such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Payment for Ecosystem Services.

The report says that starting with $15 billion of investment in 2011 and increasing to about $57 billion by 2050 could cut in half the speed at which the planet's forest are being felled over the next 20 years.The investment would also encourage a 140 per cent rise in the number of new trees being planted and swell employment in the forest sector from 25 million currently to 30 million by the middle of the century.

Annual net forest loss since 1990 has fallen from about eight million hectares – around four times the size of Wales – to about five million hectares, the report says, noting that international efforts mean that in some regions of Asia, the Caribbean and Europe the amount of forested area has actually increased over those 20 years.

The Republic of Congo has announced plans to plant one million hectares of trees by 2020 to restore degraded forest and provide wood for paper and fuel.Participants in a recent Three Forest Basins Summit in Brazzaville, which hosted 32 countries from the Amazon, Congo and Borneo-Mekong regions that make up 80 per cent of the world's equatorial forests, also said they would work together on scripting a forest protection agreement in time for next year's Rio+20 UN Conference in Brazil.

But despite recent successes, governments still need to support forest-based investments through policies such as credit, microfinance, leases and certification schemes, the UNEP report said.

"Supportive social, legal and institutional settings are key to the sustainable management of natural resources," said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, chairman of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests. "Optimal land use, further life cycle analysis, ecosystem landscape management, and governance are all key themes that will help unlock the full potential of forests in creating green economies."

The report, entitled Forests in a Green Economy, also references the work of the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity report, which sought to calculate the value of the natural world to nations' economies and was followed by a UK equivalent.

It found that natural capital such as forests can represent up to 90 per cent of the GDP generated by the rural poor, citing schemes that seek to put a value on natural capital, such as a project to restore natural mangrove forests in Vietnam, which cost $1.1 million but resulted in the avoidance of sea dyke maintenance costs worth $7.3 million.

A related report published in the online journal PLoS One identified that UN efforts to put a price on forests and issue tradable credits for slowing the rate of deforestation should take into account the size of trees in a forest and not just the area covered. The survey of 68 countries found the amount of carbon stored by forests in Europe and North America has increased from 2000 to 2010 despite no real change in forest area, while African and South American forests saw the total amount of carbon stored fall at a slower rate than deforestation. However, the study said there was not enough data to estimate an overall trend.

An analysis from an Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study has shown that the economic value of the services provided by the natural world, such as water purification, pollination of crops and climate regulation, currently amounts to between $2 trillion and $5 trillion a year.

The report, entitled Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature, focuses on potential solutions to the rapid rate of global biodiversity loss, which some scientists have characterised as equivalent to an extinction event.

It sets out a series of top tips for policymakers and businesses detailing how to better measure the true value of ecosystems to the economy; a value it claims is currently invisable.
That "invisibility" needs to change, Pavan Sukhdev, said TEEB study leader recently.

"Unfortunately, the lack of an economic lens to reflect these realities, has meant we have treated these matters lightly that they are not centre-stage when it comes to policy discussions nor centre-stage when it comes to business discussions."

The report drew on the example of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, urging businesses to take steps to avoid similar disasters happening to them.Brazil and India have already endorsed the report's conclusions, stating that they would use the TEEB findings as a guide, while the European Union, which part funded TEEB, also agreed to incorporate recommendations in its policy decisions.

Will Nichols

Deep-Sea Fish in Deep Trouble: Scientists Find Nearly All Deep-Sea Fisheries Unsustainable

2011-09-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

A team of leading marine scientists from around the world is recommending an end to most commercial fishing in the deep sea, Earth's largest ecosystem. Instead, they recommend fishing in more productive waters nearer to consumers.

In a comprehensive analysis published online in the journal Marine Policy, marine ecologists, fisheries biologists, economists, mathematicians and international policy experts show that, with rare exceptions, deep-sea fisheries are unsustainable. The "Sustainability of deep-sea fisheries" study, funded mainly by the Lenfest Ocean Program, comes just before the UN decides whether to continue allowing deep-sea fishing in international waters, which the UN calls "high seas."

Life is mostly sparse in the oceans' cold depths, far from the sunlight that fuels photosynthesis. Food is scarce and life processes happen at a slower pace than near the sea surface. Some deep-sea fishes live more than a century; some deep-sea corals can live more than 4,000 years. When bottom trawlers rip life from the depths, animals adapted to life in deep-sea time can't repopulate on human time scales. Powerful fishing technologies are overwhelming them.

"The deep sea is the world's worst place to catch fish" says marine ecologist Dr. Elliott Norse, the study's lead author and President of the Marine Conservation Institute in Bellevue, Washington USA. "Deep-sea fishes are especially vulnerable because they can't repopulate quickly after being overfished."

The deep sea provides less than 1% of the world's seafood. But fishing there, especially bottom trawling, causes profound, lasting damage to fishes and life on the seafloor, such as deep-sea corals, these experts say.

Since the 1970s, when coastal fisheries were overexploited, commercial fishing fleets have moved further offshore and into deeper waters. Some now fish more than a mile deep.

"Because these fish grow slowly and live a long time, they can only sustain a very low rate of fishing," says author Dr. Selina Heppell, a marine fisheries ecologist at Oregon State University. "On the high seas, it is impossible to control or even monitor the amount of fishing that is occurring. The effects on local populations can be devastating."

The authors document the collapse of many deep-sea fishes around the world, including sharks and orange roughy. Other commercially caught deep-sea fishes include grenadiers (rattails) and blue ling.

"Fifty years ago no one ate orange roughy," said author Dr. Daniel Pauly, a fisheries biologist with the University of British Columbia (UBC). "In fact, it used to be called slimehead, indicating no one ever thought we would eat it. But as we've overfished our coastal species, that changed and so did the name."

Orange roughy take 30 years to reach sexual maturity and can live 125 years. Compared with most coastal fishes, they live in slow-motion. Unfortunately for them and the deep-sea corals they live among, they can no longer hide from industrial fishing.

"Fishing for orange roughy started in New Zealand and grew rapidly through the 1980s and 1990s. However, most of the fisheries were overexploited, and catch levels have either been dramatically reduced or the fisheries closed all together," says author Dr. Malcolm Clark, a New Zealand-based fisheries biologist. "The same pattern has been repeated in Australia, Namibia, the SW Indian Ocean, Chile and Ireland. It demonstrates how vulnerable deep-sea fish species can be to overfishing and potential stock collapse."

There are very few exceptions to unsustainable deep-sea fisheries around the world. One is the Azores fishery for black scabbardfish. There the Portuguese government has banned bottom trawling, which overfished black scabbardfish elsewhere. Azores fish are caught sustainably with hook and line gear from small boats. In most deep sea-fisheries, however, trawlers fish outside of nations' 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones, outside of effective government control.

"Deep-sea fisheries can be sustainable only where the fish population grows quickly and fisheries are small-scale and use gear that don't destroy fish habitat," said Dr. Norse. "With slow-growing fish, there's economic incentive to kill them all and reinvest the money elsewhere to get a higher return-on-investment. Killing off life in the deep sea one place after another isn't good for our oceans or economies. Boom-and-bust fisheries are more like mining than fishing," Dr. Norse said.

The lawlessness of the high seas adds to overfishing in the deep. So do nations' fisheries subsidies.

High seas trawlers receive some $162 million each year in government handouts, which amounts to 25% the value of the fleet's catch, according to Dr. Rashid Sumaila, an author and fisheries economist at UBC.

The authors of this Marine Policy paper say that the best policy would be to end economically wasteful deep-sea fisheries, redirect subsidies to help displaced fishermen and rebuild fish populations in productive waters closer to ports and markets, places far more conducive to sustainable fisheries.

"Instead of overfishing the Earth's biggest but most vulnerable ecosystem, nations should recover fish populations and fish in more productive coastal waters," says Dr. Norse. "Deep-sea fishes are in deep trouble almost everywhere we look. Governments shouldn't be wasting taxpayers' money by keeping unsustainable fisheries afloat."

Info ScienceDaily

Malaysian court blocks rainforest tribes' fight against mega-dam in Borneo

2011-09-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Hance Activist Mongabay.com

Indigenous tribes in Borneo suffered a stinging defeat Thursday after Sarawak's highest court ruled against them in 12-year-long legal battle. Tribal groups had challenged the Malaysian state government for seizing indigenous lands in order to build a massive hydroelectric power plant, dubbed the Bakun dam, but the three-person top court found unanimously against the tribes.

"It is an unfair decision. I have not been fully compensated," said Ngajang Midin, 50, of the Ukit tribe, told the AFP as he cried. "My cocoa and pepper trees are underwater. My ancestors' graves are buried under the sea of water."

The $2.3 billion dollar dam has displaced over 10,000 indigenous people in its path and flooded an area of untouched rainforest the size of Singapore (around 700 square kilometers).

Bakun dam in Sarawak. For details see David Tryse's Flooding Borneo's rainforest: Sarawak's confidential dam plans 2008-2020 [Google Earth KMZ file]

While the decision by the judges was unanimous, they cited different reasons. Only one judge dismissed the appeal because they said the government had not violated the indigenous peoples' rights; the other two judges sided with the government largely due to technicalities.

The court did little to lift the confusion around indigenous land rights in Sarawak. The issue has flooded Sarawak courts with some 200 land rights cases currently making their way through the legal system.

The 2,400 megawatt Bakun dam could hardly be called a success story thus far. Its construction has been plagued with delays and cost overruns. The Sarawak government has argued the dam was needed to power the state, but the dam supplies twice the amount of power used in Sarawak. The additional power is planned to go to a aluminum smelter run by Cahaya Mata Sarawak (CMS) and Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, currently in construction.

The Bakun dam is a part of Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) initiative, which will turn the state's rivers into dammed reservoirs, and its forests into open pit mines, wood-pulp plantations, and oil palm estates. Under the initiative the state has plans to build 12 massive dams in total, even though Bakun dam alone provides ample energy for Sarawak. However, the government announced today that one of the dams, Baram dam, was being put on hold due to its impact on indigenous people. If built some 20,000 local people would need to be relocated.

According to critics, the SCORE initiative also provides plenty of opportunities for corruption.

Chief Minister of Sarawak, Adbul Taib Mahmud, who is currently under investigation by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) for alleged timber corruption, has been accused of hiding away hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in corrupt money during his 30 years of power. His family controls properties worth hundreds-of-millions of dollars throughout the world despite his annual salary of around $200,000.

The construction company, CMS, which will run the aluminum smelter and supplied materials to the Bakun dam, is closely linked to Adbul Taib Mahmud and his family.

The Great Rainforest Heist: Greenpeace, WWF, RAN, FSC and REDD+ Conspiracy to Log Earth’s Last Primary Forests for Their Protection

2011-09-10T22:49:00.000-07:00

WHEN GOOD RAINFOREST GROUPS GO BAD you get monoculture and secondary forest plantations where ancient intact primary rainforests once stood, called sustainable forest management and carbon forestry, by BINGO’s (big NGOs) and United Nations greenwashers, paid for with your membership fees and taxes. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is primary forest logging greenwash by money-sucking environmental bureaucracies. Rainforests and other old forest must be protected and restored for local and global ecology and local eco-development from standing forests.

Please donate now to Ecological Internet’s “End Primary Forest Logging Campaign” at http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/donate/end_primary_forest_logging/ in order to help turn this draft document into a polished, photogenic, researched and footnoted report on BINGO’s Increased Old Forest Greenwash. Relax, there are typos, but wanted to get this out right now in draft.

INTRODUCTION
What would you say to me if I told you the world’s pre-eminent environmental organizations, widely perceived as the leading advocates for rainforests and old growth, have for decades been actively, indeed intimately, involved in logging the world’s last old forests. Would you call me a liar? Tell me I am mentally ill? Or because of the cognitive dissonance would you simply ignore me, thinking it impossible? Well here goes nothing…

There is a global conspiracy to log the Earth’s last primary forests – destroying ancient forests for disposable consumer items – while claiming it is “sustainable forest management” and “carbon forestry”. A number of public forest advocacy groups are going so far as to actually claim that industrial first-time primary forest logging is good for climate, ecosystems and local peoples.

This essay is not the result of top secret research – it is all public record. For three years of campaigning and this essay, Ecological Internet, the organization I head, has been simply connecting pieces of public record information to see just how big NGOs (BINGOs), and the United Nations have been selling out old forests under the radar. They have been selling out primary rainforests and other old growth in broad-daylight, the perfect crime, for decades – and things are getting much, much worse as moves to allow primary rainforests to be cleared for toxic monoculture plantations gain strength.

If you are a Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), or World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund (WWF) member – you are funding the greenwash destruction of 320,000,000 acres of primary rainforest and other old forest logging. These groups co-founded and have been active members in the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for two decades, an organization that exists to build markets for primary and other old growth forest timbers. Some 70% of FSC forest products – supposedly the best of forest certification – come with primary forest timbers in them, destroying an area of primary rainforests and other old forests across an area the size of South Africa (or two times the size of Texas)!

Primary rainforests cannot be logged in an ecologically sustainable manner – or for that matter even acceptably. Primary forests logged industrially for the first time – FSC certified or otherwise – are destroyed. What remains is permanently ecologically diminished in terms of composition, structure, function, dynamics, and evolutionary potential. Logged primary forests' carbon stores, biodiversity and ecosystems will never be the same in any reasonable time-span. Selective, industrially logged primary rainforests become fragmented, burn more and are prone to outright deforestation.

FSC certified forestry destroys ancient naturally evolved ecosystems that are priceless and sacred. Old forests have a prominent role in making the Earth habitable through their cycling of energy, water, and nutrients. The Forest Stewardship Council is a non-democratic, unaccountable, unrepresentative organization that exists solely to greenwash the final first-time industrial logging and marketing of Earth's original, naturally evolved, and last primary rainforests and other old forests – in order to turn them into tree plantations.

Increasingly both FSC and REDD+ are moving towards certifying and funding the conversion of natural primary forests to be cleared and replanted as plantations. They call it carbon forestry and claim it is a climate good. We ecologists know this destroys primary forests when they become greatly ecologically reduced from first time industrial logging, and are on their way to being plantations. Toxic mono-cultures of trees are not forests, much less when planted on cleared primary rainforests. There is far more carbon stably stored in old forests than toxic monocrop tree plantations, most of whose timbers are in the landfill decomposing within months of harvest.

There is no doubt that these groups – Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace and WWF – are involved in this primary forest logging. Five minutes on Google can confirm this for anyone interested, as each of the old forest logging apologists takes credit for founding and supporting the FSC publicly on their websites. Despite claiming credit, there is little justification for doing so. The logging apologists are closed-mouth regarding their justifications for doing so – but presumably they believe that by industrially logging primary forests they are ending deforestation, and claim that their rules for doing so make it acceptable and superior to other ways of murdering primary forest ecosystems.

But being the best ecocidal rainforest destroyer is nothing of which to be proud. All such deadly old forest certification schemes must stop in order to ensure enough intact terrestrial ecosystems exist to power Earth’s biosphere. For nearly 20 years the FSC has certified as "well-managed" and “sustainable” primary old forest logging on a massive scale. Competing certifiers make similar claims, as do old school non-certified primary forest loggers. FSC legitimatizes this larger trade in old forest timber products, and a false market for green products from the destruction of ancient trees.

FSC is primary forest logging with Greenpeace, RAN and WWF greenwash, corruption, conflicts of interest, bad ecology, and ecocide. 500 year old trees in 60 million year old primary rainforests and other old forests are chopped for toilet paper, lawn furniture and other such “necessities” with these groups’ greenwash and marketing clout. The rainforest logging apologists – with little or no accountability, transparency, or openness are killing Earth’s last old forests. They – particularly WWF – boast they are creating markets for ancient trees industrially pillaged from primary forests, and such market forest logging campaigns are thus little better than illegal logging, which at least is honest that it is about the money for old forest timbers.

After 20 years of working prominently with various stakeholders in the rainforest movement, I have seen a whole generation of promising activists and groups sell out for good paying jobs, saying logging old forests protects them. None have fallen as dramatically or treacherously as Greenpeace and RAN and their staff (you sort of expect this corporate greenwash bullshit from WWF and the United Nations) who suckle on the teat of rainforest logging everyday for decades. The UN’s “Avoided Deforestation” work – which is now known as REDD+ – is to pay to marketizes rainforests claiming "sustainable forest management" of primary forests – turning them into secondary forests and always ultimately into tree plantations – is a public good and helps ecology.

Ecological Internet and others feel strongly based upon the urgency of emerging ecological science and our closeness to global ecological collapse that it is better to fight like hell in any way we can to fully protect and return to native tenure standing old forests as the most desirable forest protection outcome. The Earth is already undergoing global ecological collapse and it is deeply irresponsible for organizations committed to the environment to carelessly make false old forest logging prescriptions that worsen the problem.

The BINGO old forest greenwashers sound just like get-out-the-cut forest managers – we need these resources, better to log them legally than legally, primary forests exist to be logged. Where is their former channeling of the spirit of Edward Abbey, John Muir and the other conservation greats upon whose back they stand? Somewhere along the line these groups lost sight of ecology truth, didn’t keep up with the science, had no metrics or systems to identify, monitor and handle their failed forest policy, perhaps didn’t think it mattered because it was win-win and economical.

So the rainforest logging apologist lent their names and logos to those murdering rainforests, ecosystems, their plants and animals, to wipe our asses. They turned to the dark side, using business and PR techniques to market ill-gotten old forest timbers as sustainable. They sold their souls. They have bullied critics, censored and stonewalled their brothers’ and sisters’ forest protection. They have lost their souls and legitimacy as old rainforest protection voices. And they must be stopped from doing so any longer with public monies.

BINGO COMPLICITY IN FSC LED PRIMARY RAINFOREST ECOCIDE
FSC was created in 1993 to “promote responsible management of the world’s forests”, yet has failed miserably. FSC certifies as “sustainable” the logging of over a hundred million hectares of primary and old-growth forests – hundreds of year old trees in millions of year old naturally evolved ecosystems – for lawn furniture, toilet paper and other throw-away consumer items. Many environmentalists initially supported FSC, expecting it would reduce logging of primary and old growth forests, and result in more community based eco-forestry. Instead, FSC and members have built a massive market for continued business as usual industrial primary forest timbers – with minor, cosmetic changes – in order to certify as acceptable murdering old forests for consumption.

FSC has become a major driver of primary forest destruction and forest ecological diminishment. Despite certifying less than 10% of the world’s forest lands, their rhetoric and marketing legitimizes the host of other ghastly certifiers like PEFC, SFI and others, as well as traditional non-certified ancient forest timber. It is expecting far too much of consumers to expect them to differentiate between the variety of competing claims to being green and environmental sustainability – when in fact none are as they all include old growth forest timbers.

FSC and old forest logging apologist pals policies seeking to prevent primary forests from being deforested, by allowing them to be heavily industrially and selectively logged for the first time, becoming either secondary forest or toxic mono-crop tree plantations, is not old forest protection. Deforestation and ecosystem diminishment of forests are both of profound concern ecologically – much of great importance is lost when primary forests are logged for the first time.

Standing old forests are a requirement for global ecological sustainability and local advancement. Yet, FSC is about getting out the primary forest cut – recall best estimated as 70% FSC timber and fiber from planned and past logging of 320,000,000 acres (120,000,000 hectares) – and is particularly threatening now as FSC and old forest logging apologist friends claim carbon forestry (logging primary forests to plant new plantations) is a climate change solution.

FSC’s relatively minor improvements upon the murdering of old rainforests legitimate the entire trade, FSC certified or not. While other certification schemes may be even worse, this is not the issue, as industrial first-time primary forest logging cannot be done ecologically sustainably and should not be happening at all. FSC’s claims to being the best destroyer of primary forests is like killing someone more humanely, treating your slaves better but refusing to release them, or being half pregnant. Like past battles to end monarchy and slavery before them, and continuing efforts to resist their recent forms found in fascism and human trafficking, the task before us is to fully END the stripping of Earth of its protective covering. Not doing it marginally better.

These independent estimates of FSC’s dependence upon old forest logging, one published in German already and the other by myself in publication, were able to make reasonable estimates from FSC’s own national certification data which is collate and released, and what is known about each country’s forest types and industry. If they are wrong after three years of complaint, they would have trotted out the figures and shown us. Conveniently, none of the culprits say they collect information regarding whether any particular FSC certified forest that was logged was primary, old growth or other old forests.

After years of campaigning against Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network – two key co-founders and supporters of FSC’s primary forest logging – and FSC itself; Ecological Internet’s genuine forest ecology concerns have been met with nothing but stonewalling, censoring and vilification. No one within FSC will say how many hectares of primary forests FSC has certified for industrial logging, how much more is planned, and explained in detail how logging primary forest protects them.

Despite tens of thousands of people from around the world asking, none of the organizations who routinely campaign against other close-lipped forest destroyers, feel obligated to explain how logging primary forests protects them. Nor can they provide any other reason to justify, or to otherwise defend, the ecology, strategy and tactics of continued prominent membership in FSC primary forest logging.

WWF, Greenpeace, and RAN's forest campaigns have been perhaps mortally compromised. Their forest advocacy efforts are a corrupt shell of their former selves. The rainforest logging apologists have chosen power, prestige and money coming from sitting at the old forest logging mafia's table, rather than and over protecting rainforest and other primary forests. With rainforests threatened as never before, RAN targets Disney and the Girl Scouts, Greenpeace Barbie dolls, and WWF runs a bad-boy logger club which they call the Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN). Posers like Greenpeace and RAN don't get it because by and large they are marketers and accountants, elite liberal arts grads, and not ecologists.

WWF forest campaign is composed of resource managers, not deep ecologists, and it shows. Not only is WWF perhaps the most power BINGO totally enmeshed with FSC, it also partners with the World Bank and companies that destroy rainforests, and threaten endangered species. Some 20% of the timber industry has lined up to pay WWF $50K, for which they can use the panda logo and continue to log as they were. This is unethical, corrupt and destroying global ecology and local options for advancement.

Greenpeace’s forest protection campaign is all over the place, full of contradictions, and it is nearly impossible to see the strategy of divergent and countervailing forest protection campaign tactics. Greenpeace not only co-founded the Forest Stewardship Council, until recently Greenpeace held the international chairman of the board position for FSC for six years! Greenpeace's quirky new rainforest campaign says Ken is leaving Barbie (Mattel's dolls) because of rainforest destruction, yet they leave the door open for "certified" primary rainforest paper pulp for toy packaging. Two years ago Greenpeace openly embraced Kleenex's clearcut of Canadian old growth forests for toilet paper. Now they condemn Barbie doll for tiny amounts of packaging from primary forests!

The Rainforest Action Network is the smallest of the lot, yet they are a well-known rainforest protector organization in the United States, soaking up most of the money for doing so. RAN similarly says is against primary forest logging, yet promotes FSC paper – full of old-growth – for Disney’s children books. The group is ridiculously under-qualified to be determining global rainforest policy. Their staff is mostly liberal arts grads and accountants that wouldn’t know a rainforest if it bit them in the ass. They are great at raising money, throwing lavish parties, being seen with the right celebrities, trashing opponents, and working to end coal – but their rainforest campaign is in shambles. For the first decade they worked strongly against old forest logging, but now target the Girl Scouts and Disney for relatively small amounts of rainforest destruction, as global stores of ancient rainforest temples burn and require a much larger, more urgent response.

Greenpeace, RAN and WWF must continue to be encouraged to resign from FSC greenwash; and work to end primary forest logging, protect and restore standing old forests, for local and global advancement and ecology. These groups’ vision of sustainable rainforests is logging, turning them into both secondary diminished forest (essentially plantations) and fully replanted mono-crop tree plantations, rather than working to fully protect and restore as much as possible. The rest of the grassroots global rainforest protection movement thinks we need to implement proven ways to keep old forests standing intact for local advancement and global ecology (and vice versa).

Rainforest Action Network continues to censor – and along with Greenpeace stonewall – legitimate global protest by tens of thousands of grassroots forest activists regarding their greenwash complicity in logging 320,000,000 acres of primary old forest for such necessities as toilet paper. I really don’t think young adults with liberal arts degrees should be seeking to discredit PhD professionals on the question of whether primary forests should be logged or fully protected for local community development.

At FSC recent tri-annual General Assembly in Malaysia – the "sustainable" old forest logging greenwash worsened, as FSC voted (seconded by Greenpeace) to start the process to begin certifying plantation timbers from land cleared of primary rainforests as being "sustainable". FSC Motion 18 which was approved furthers the process of industrial toxic plantations being established on rainforests cleared since 1994, to be certified as sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Just before the vote Ecological Internet’s global network’s carried out a large email protest, which led to the motion’s wording going from essentially preparing to certify plantations on cleared rainforests, to studying it, to the latest revisionary history of completing an unnamed earlier report. Despite how it is packaged, FSC decided last month to begin trying to certify monocrop plantations on land cleared of primary rainforest since 1994.

By crossing the rubric, FSC’s embrace without merit the ideas of carbon forestry – that it is better to log well stored and carbon rich old forests, in order to plant fast growing carbon removal species – they have gone from being misguided on forest policy to being downright dangerous. FSC has already lost European NGO FERN on the issue of carbon forestry – which sees the potential peril of essentially geo-engineering the world’s old forests upon community and ecology – one of the last mighty naturally evolved ecosystems.

FSC plantations on cleared primary rainforest had rightly been excluded since FSC inception in order to not promote primary rainforest being converted specifically for later planting of depauperate plantations, but now the flood gate is wide open. FSC is continually changing the wording of Motion and downplaying its importance, and as usual Greenpeace and RAN aren't talking, but I reckon they think tree plantations –are better than outright deforestation of primary and old growth forests. So they are trading away ecological jewels – primary forests – to become managed forests and plantations, thinking slowing outright deforestation justifies destroying wild forests.

REDD+, FSC and other certifiers, sustainable forest management, and carbon forestry are all myths and meaningless catchphrases to allow continued western market access to primary rainforest logs. Standing and intact primary rainforest and other old forests are a requirement for sustaining global ecology and achieving local advancement. We must end their logging for full protection and restoration. REDD+ has become all things to everybody – forest logging, protection, plantations, carbon, growth – when all we need is funding to preserve local old standing forests.

These organizations believe their own PR that they are so special – so hip and groovy – they can establish and avidly support with impunity an organization that facilitates the logging of rainforests and other old forests. They don’t have to answer questions about their role in rainforest destruction like others supporting logging do. It is really an abuse of power and trust. The old forest logging greenwashers all follow the same playbook and personally attack the messenger (me!). Shameful, as more old forests and terrestrial ecosystems have been lost than the biosphere can absorb and continue to make Earth habitable. This dispute is about ecological science and not personalities.

Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace and WWF are engaged in a con game for money and influence at the expense of old forests that must remain standing for local peoples and global ecology. Global ecosystem collapse is being abetted by these so called protectors. These organizations’ policies are a carefully calibrated effort to be seen as reasonable by the growing logging industry machine and benefit in donations for doing so. None make a decision without thinking how it affects their bottom line. The only way this old forest greenwash logging machine will be stopped is to make doing so too expensive to them in terms of lost donations, grants, and other support – whose sources are usually unaware of the great rainforest heist.

WHY FSC AND OLD FOREST LOGGING MUST END FOR A NEW FOREST PROTECTION VISION
Here is the honest to Gaia old forest ecology science narrative. The human family must protect and restore old forests – starting by ending industrial-scale primary forest logging – as one keystone response to biodiversity, ecosystem, climate, food, water, poverty and rights crises that are pounding humanity, ecosystems and plants and animals. When naturally evolved old forest ecosystems are logged in any manner other than appropriately small-scaled local community traditional uses and eco-forestry – their ecological function, structure, dynamics, and composition are destroyed forever.

Protecting and restoring old forests – which means ending their industrial harvest – are a keystone response to climate, biodiversity, food, water ecology crises. You can’t take a bulldozer for a rumble through intact natural rainforests, cutting all the big merchantable timbers, and causing huge amounts of collateral damage – and not rip the hell out of ecosystems, plant communities, wildlife populations, species biodiversity, local forest dependent communities advancement potential, and carbon holding potential.

Old forests are a vital part of the biosphere's eco-infrastructure. Along with other terrestrial, water, ocean, and atmospheric ecosystems, old forests makes Earth habitable and ensure it is fed and watered.

Old forests are perhaps the most important global ecosystem as intact primary, old growth, and regenerating old forests are at the hub of the nutrient, energy, heat, and water transfers and fluxes which power global ecosystems. It is clearly past time for an end to primary forest logging to protect these global ecological processes and local advancement potential from standing old forests.

Industrial old forest logging must end in order to protect and restore ancient forest ecosystems necessary for a habitable Earth. Primary rainforests that have been logged for the first time are on their way to being scraggly secondary forests that are in fact tree plantations, and might as well have been deforested, as their full natural ecological patterns and processes have been destroyed. When primary forests become secondary must is lost and diminished and many local and region ecological processes fail. The impacts of seeing primary forests only as resources to be whacked down has impacted a large enough area globally, with over 80% of old forests being gone or logged for the first time, that old forest logging’s impact is aggregating to diminish, damage and destroyed our one shared biosphere. Old forest logging is one of a handful of ill-advised industrial processes leading to global ecosystem collapse.

There is no such thing as well-managed, sustainable primary forest logging – first time industrial harvest always destroys natural evolution and intact ecosystems. Humanity can, must and will meet wood product demand from certified regenerating and aging secondary growth and non-toxic, native species plantations. Any lesser vision that includes "sustainable forest management" of primary forests is worthy of virulent opposition, as such greenwash destroys local livelihoods and global ecosystem services associated with standing old forests, for throw-away consumer items.

FSC should meet market demand for well-managed forest timbers by certifying only 1) small scale community eco-forestry practiced by local peoples in primary forests, 2) regenerating and aging secondary forests, and 3) non-toxic and mixed species plantations. Further, reducing demand for all timber and paper products is key to living ecologically sustainably with old forests. Only 10% of any given FSC certified product’s content need come from a certified source anyway, this is mixed with conventional fiber sources, and the 10% that is certified content is mostly murdered primary forest.

In light of current and emerging ecosystem, biodiversity and climate science; it is clear that FSC certification for industrial primary and old-growth logging is antiquated and dangerous. By logging old forests and now moving to certifying plantations established on cleared rainforests as being “sustainable”, the Forest Stewardship Council and allies are no longer a force for good, and like all primary forest logging apologists, must disband and be forcefully encouraged and assisted in doing so.

Industrial primary forest logging must end to herald in era of old forest protection and restoration based upon standing forests for local advancement and global ecological sustainability. Logging and otherwise destroying ecosystems is an 8,000 year old disease upon Gaia now perfected and terminal with RAN, Greenpeace, FSC, WWF, and REDD+ greenwash. Like slavery, industrial old forest logging for throw away consumption is a global evil that must end, not be slightly reformed. Old forest diminishment when first industrially logged is nearly as ecologically damaging as outright deforestation, as naturally evolved ecosystems that make Earth habitable are on the path to becoming tree plantations.

There is a zero chance of protecting and ending first time industrial logging of primary rainforests when RAN, Greenpeace and WWF say it is sustainable, even desirable, and continue to greenwash FSC markets for old forest timbers through their presence in the organization. Old forests must be protected and restored in order to sustain global ecology and local well-being. This NGO complicity with rainforest murder must end in order to collapse FSC and all other old forest certifiers, and move onto stopping old forest timber producers and consumers from continuing to do so using whatever means are necessary.

From the perspective of a 60 million year old primary rainforest with 500+ year old trees, it does not matter if being destroyed by illegal or legal logging, certified or not, the Asian timber mafia or WWF, Greenpeace and RAN. There is no such thing as well-managed, sustainable primary forest logging – as first time industrial harvest destroys natural evolution and intact ecosystems. Humanity can and must and will meet wood product demand from certified regenerating and aging secondary growth and non-toxic, native species plantations. If all BINGOs greenwashing FSC withdrew, old logging may well collapse as ratchet up pressure together on even lesser certifiers and old forest logging industry in general.

Together we must end primary forest logging, protecting and restoring old forests. The unholy trinity of REDD+ finance, FSC and BINGO pals for greenwash and "sustainable forest management" are clearing the biosphere's last old forests. Please Greenpeace, RAN, WWF, and REDD+ tell us how your FSC's logging of 500 year old trees in 60 million year old rainforests is sustainable and offers any real protection. You tout this as ending deforestation. Yet, are you aware of the tremendous damage and, by definition, ultimate destruction of primary forests that are heavily industrially and "selectively" logged for the first time?
There are others like EI that understand we have already lost more intact terrestrial ecosystems including old forests than the biosphere can bear. We will fight for each old forest and their peoples as resources and people allow, understanding when ecosystem collapse comes, having as many intact ecosystems for restoration as possible will be key to any sort of ecology and human recovery. We ecologists know that primary forests are destroyed when greatly ecologically reduced from first time industrial logging, and that plantations are not forests, much less when planted on cleared primary rainforests.

As Earth burns, any groups engaged in greenwashing primary forest logging and offering no defense of doing so are seriously misguided and in crisis themselves. If you are a RAN, Greenpeace or WWF member your donations support participation in logging primary forests and converting to plantations! Greenpeace, RAN and others' PR stunts and market campaigns have become old, stale, ineffective and even dangerous. They are inadequate to the ecological crises on hand, and do not use these organizations' resources and organization well.

Campaigning groups need an overall ecology vision of how to achieve global ecological sustainability, to campaign more on sufficient ecological policies (whether initially photogenic or not), and work more to mobilize people protest – and less on quirky, token stunts to raise awareness and funds for themselves.

Local community development based upon standing old forests including small scale eco-forestry is fine. Small scale community eco-forestry has a context of intact primary forests as its context for seed and animal sources, and management mimics natural disturbance and gap species establishment. It is the industrial first time logging – selective logging defined as selecting all merchantable, mature trees – turning primary forests into plantations that is problematic. Ruling elite and their bought shills will not manage, invest, certify or greenwash their way to global ecological sustainability. There is no way other to global ecological sustainability than people power ecology, protecting old forests, powering down, and returning to the land.

The human family – if need be as part of a people's power Earth revolution – must end primary forest logging, and protect and restore rainforests and all old forests, as a keystone response to biodiversity, climate, ecosystem and poverty crises. Together we will end primary forest logging, herald in an era of old forest protection and restoration, to benefit local people and sustain global ecology. We will fight for each old forest and their peoples, saving and delaying old forest industrial destruction and diminishment, and understanding when ecosystem collapse comes, having as many intact ecosystems for models and seed sources for restoration as possible will be key to any sort of ecology and human recovery. Ecological Internet puts our faith in truth and ecological science over looking good and PR greenwash.

WHAT NEXT TO SUSTAIN OLD FORESTS AND THEIR ECOLOGY
Ending primary forest logging is Ecological Internet's number one commitment to sustaining global ecology. We will not rest until dead or an end to trade in ill-gotten forest timbers by murdering natural evolved forest ecosystems for trinkets, curios, and ass wiping. Please join with Ecological Internet and others to oppose all forces working to industrially cut or otherwise develop rainforests and other old forests, laying bare the illogical, greedy and lying rhetoric for doing so. Doing so is crucial to our and many species' survival including Gaia, the Earth System.

As a movement, we must return to the goal of a ban on industrially harvested primary forest timbers. This means continuing to resist and obstruct old forest harvest, businesses involve, timber marketing, purchase, storage, milling, product construction and marketing. The entire supply chain for ecocidal primary forest timbers must be destroyed. More of us must return to the forests to work with local communities to build on-the-ground desire for ecologically inspired advancement from standing old forests, and blockading and physically obstructing the practice of old forest logging.

We must make ill-gotten old wood from life-giving ecosystems to become an unacceptable taboo, like gorilla hand ash-trays only worse. Ending primary forest logging further requires greater international affinity made possible by transnational advocacy networks on the Internet. There is a long proven track-record of using the boomerang effect – whereby local forest protection advocacy efforts that are being stonewalled are expressed simultaneously by the international community. The dual voices make the concern hard to ignore, the first step to ending old forest logging.

The rainforest movement has become split between those logging primary rainforests and others working to fully protect and restore for local and global benefit. I'm old enough to remember when the rainforest movement worked to protect ancient forests and ban their logging, not abet their 'sustainable' destruction. What these rainforest logging apologist groups are doing is every bit as alarming as loggers and governments, and they will not be given free rein to continue in their not thoughtful, self-aggrandizing manner any longer. The rainforest, forest, and ecological protection movements must unite behind effort to end primary forest logging for full protection and restoration.

And to those that say these concerns are splitting the movement, just shove it. There is no benefit to Earth from unity in support of ecocidal rainforest policy. Just as working to better the conditions of slaves is no substitute for working for total emancipation, we cannot log and have our old forests too. Even as we protest the loggers and government policies, we must continue to confront our wayward brethren that think that logging primary forests protects them – or risk becoming irrelevant as global ecosystems collapse. Rallying around a false and ecologically destructive global forest policy of logging primary forests for plantations is a must.

Rather than participating in old forest logging, it is better for the rainforest movement to fight to work to protect each old forest and their peoples, understanding that when ecosystem collapse comes, having as many intact ecosystems for restoration as possible will be key to any sort of ecology and human recovery. The grassroots global forest protection movement has to commit to fully protecting and restoring old carbon, species and ecosystem service rich forests as a keystone response to achieve global ecological sustainability.

The goal must remain to maximize the extent, size, connectivity of core terrestrial ecological areas –largely but not exclusively forested – to maximize global and local ecosystem processes, and local material and other advancement from standing old forests. By dragging out the forest protection fight on a forest by forest basis, until ecological collapse becomes publicly acknowledged, we can hold onto more ecosystems, biodiversity, and carbon than logging them now. Soon the human family will catch up with the ecological science and realize old forest destruction and diminishment must end as we ramp upreforestation and ecological restoration for large, connected natural forests adequate to power the global ecosystem.

We must continue to call upon all BINGO FSC members to reject the certification of primary forests by resigning immediately, as many others have recently done. We must continue to call upon Greenpeace, WWF, and RAN to resign from FSC, to fully account for its founding and 20 years of membership, including detailing expenditures and benefits received for greenwashing old forest logging. Further, we must demand FSC immediately stop certifying primary forest logging or disband itself.

Greenpeace, WWF and RAN have been revealed as corrupt greenwashers of the final harvest of Earth primary rainforests and other old forests, and must be stopped for global ecological sustainability and local benefits from greenwashing the destruction of standing old growth forests. This means boycotting these organizations, even their other work as what to do with old forests is such a fundamental ecological issue, until they stop greenwashing the final loss of old forests. And it is past time for the groups’ members to end their memberships as ultimately these big NGO businesses are more concerned with their image and money than having global forest policy that is ecologically valid and correct.

The worst part regarding Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace and WWF greenwash membership in Forest Stewardship Council is their secrecy, lack of transparency, censorship, stonewalling, vilifying critics. Who do they think are? What are they hiding? What benefits are they receiving from old forest logging? Their stonewalling is reprehensible and alarming. Like all public entities they have a responsibility to defend your public positions.

Despite best attempts to portray Ecological Internet campaign and ecological science concerns as being personal and political motivated, this essay and continued growing global protest demonstrates in fact efforts to resist those supporting primary forest logging is a reasonable ecology dispute that must be redressed. We have had bad experiences with the head of RAN’s forest campaign for years, before he worked for RAN and this campaign started, so this is immaterial and we deal with his debilities. There have been a series of personal attacks coming from the other side which refuses to have a specific debate, or even provide any justification, in defense of this ecological travesty known as FSC.

Given RAN and Greenpeace's irresponsible behavior when questioned on their rainforest 'protection' policy that is of global ecological importance how can they be trusted? These liberal arts under-grads and accountants think they are qualified to set policy because they have money and influential friends, but are making dreadful mistakes. Despite founding and actively supporting, they can’t say how much primary forests are being destroyed by FSC. This is ignorance, duplicity, or corruption. These groups are dangerous enemies to old forests and biosphere, profiting from their demise, while acting like and being paid well as the publicly viewed good forest protection groups.

This old forest logging corruption will not stand, it must and will be fully investigated, and end with widespread resignations. Ecological Internet calls upon Greenpeace, WWF and RAN staff to protest their organizations' greenwash of primary forest logging from within, and resign immediately if they are not heard and NGO primary rainforest ecocide continues. It is time to investigate all three organizations' involvement with FSC and other activities to support primary forest logging with the timber industry. Until then the awareness building and resistance to greenwash of BINGO old forest logging must continue, tarnishing the not good old forest protection names. EI remains willing to negotiate terms of their resignation from FSC and debate the importance of doing so in a public arena at any time.

In the meantime, Ecological Internet is writing a grant to do a report on the matter based loosely upon this essay. We have a good lead on a funder to investigate BINGO complicity in FSC old growth logging, but need a couple thousand dollars to prepare and do the initial research. We would really appreciate your help turning this document into a fully referenced report based upon FSC logging site visits and full of pictures by donating to our “Ending Primary Forest Logging” campaign at http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/donate/end_primary_forest_logging . This is a draft document, put out hurriedly in draft form, before I go to vacation and decide upon Ecological Internet’s future.

Ecological Internet challenges Rainforest Action Network and/or Greenpeace to debate any time and any place of their choosing (which can afford to get to) regarding the efficacy and ecological sustainability of first time industrial logging of primary forests for toilet paper and other consumer items. From dialogue comes truth, reduction in conflict and hate, and right action. Their greenwash of old forest logging will not stand. The secret of their having been compromised is out and nothing can save their policy of logging old rainforests for their protection.

No excuse for Greenpeace, RAN and FSC for not having answered a three year global protest demanding details regarding how their forest campaign policies see logging primary forest as benefiting ecology.

Hundreds of thousands of protest emails and a dozen protests have been ignored simply because the guilty organization are bigger and think they can get away with ignoring us. Even as we protest and demand they resign, let's hold out our hands to help rehabilitate our fallen brethren. WE have truth, ecology, old forests, Gaia and Internet on our side. Forward!
Greenpeace International and Rainforest Action Network in particular would rightly never accept rainforest or other environmental destroyers unwilling to defend their policies, they would protest until they got answers and it ended. The same is true with the more grassroots, transparent rainforest protection movement regarding RAN and Greenpeace's failure to defend in detail their support and membership in FSC, which greenwashes the destruction of massive tracts of primary rainforests, old growth and other old forests for consumer products.

The Greenpeace and RAN Out of FSC Primary Forest Logging Now! campaign on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/oldforests/ has been going on for nearly 3 years with picketing and online protests. We will protest there and elsewhere at the time and place of our choosing – as the old forest logging apologists do against the orders of magnitude smaller rainforest destruction by Barbie, Disney and Girl Scouts – until old forest logging apologists unconditionally resign from FSC greenwash of ancient primary forest logging.

ANY continued deforestation or diminishment of old forests – legal or illegal, certified or not – are not ecologically or socially acceptable. At risk is Earth’s continued habitability if old forests continue to be lost and are not restored. Old forest logging certification schemes are ecocidal certified madness as these standing old forests are needed for global ecology and local advancement. BINGO’s will resign from FSC and forest certification of primary forest logging end or protests continue against the greenwashers and all perpetrators of these ecocidal practices. For Earth, we must end old forest logging now.

CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org

Papua New Guinea Begins Commission of Inquiry into Rainforest Land Grabs

2011-09-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

Once again Ecological Internet’s true global rainforest action network contributes to questioning and obstructing the dominate paradigm that primary rainforests exist to be industrially logged

Papua New Guinea has launched a Commission of Inquiry into foreign land grabs of pristine, indigenous owned primary rainforests for clearcut logging and supposed oil palm development. PNG has the world’s third largest rainforests [search], but sadly industrial logging and oil palm are booming, and large, intact old rainforest ecosystems are dwindling fast. An entrenched and voracious Malaysian timber-mafia has until now virtually owned the government and the nation’s rainforests.

“Special Agriculture and Business Leases” (SABL) covering 5.2 million hectares (12.8 million acres) were granted 74 times in recent years by former Prime Minister Michael Somare. These agriculture projects skirted forestry laws and customary land ownership, allowing clearcuts of primary rainforests on customary land without consent, for oil palm which may or may not get planted. Local national led NGOs such as the highly successful ACT NOW![1] and others expressed concern that SABL leases were improperly executed and would result in large scale logging without providing agricultural development.

After nearly a year in country, patrolling and investigating the situation, Ecological Internet’s global network launched an affinity alert in support of local NGO demands in June of 2011, whereby 3,197 people from 81 countries sent 137,133 protest emails to PNG rainforest decision-makers in a short time[2]. Past evidence and scholarship has shown displays of global concern when closely supporting local rainforest protection demands are highly effective. The start of the investigation has been aided by the transition of government from Michael Somare’s deeply corrupted government to new Prime Minister Peter O'Neill.

“Thankfully PNG’s once great founder, but recent foreign corruption shill, Michael Somare is off of the PNG political stage. It is shocking that Somare-era grotesque stealing of customary land for clear-fell rainforest logging have taken so long to stopped and investigated. This foreign land grab has undermined landowner customary land rights which are largely respected. These standing rainforests are priceless and landowners must resist foreign occupation to instead pursue indigenous protection and community eco-forestry. Let’s be watchful and ensure the investigation is done properly,” comments Dr. Barry, Ecological Internet’s President.

While ACT PNG and Ecological Internet acknowledge there is reason for optimism and celebration, there is good reason to remain skeptical. The Commission of Inquiry has been given only three months to complete its work, which is unrealistic given PNG’s challenging logistics, particularly given many files have already been identified as having gone missing. This is not enough time to identify and fix failings in the Department of Lands and the truth about foreign ownership of land titles. Yet Ecological Internet believes it is important to acknowledge success and forward movement in rainforest protection campaigns, while remaining eternally vigilant.

### MORE ###

“Special Agriculture and Business Leases” (SABL) have been misused to take control of land from local peoples, granting 99 year leasehold title over huge tracts of customary land to foreign companies. Former acting Prime Minister, Sam Abal, had called for a Commission of Inquiry into the SABLs earlier in the year, and had suspended their further issuance. Yet the forces of rainforest destruction successfully pushed back for months, led by logging giant Rimbunan Hijau of Malaysia and a deeply corrupted PNG government still led by Michael Somare.

In Ecological Internet’s home province of Madang, PNG, an area totaling 112,400 hectares of important primary rainforest was granted as an SABL in March, 2011. This joins Madang’s illegal tuna development, new Nickle mining ocean waste disposal, and Rimbunan Hijau’s struggling Ramu logging concession. At the same time, logging giant Rimbunan Hijau is diversifying, developing a large oil palm scheme in the Kikori plains in the Gulf Province. With Michael Somare gone, ending decades of corruption in rainforest management will also require sacking Wari Iamo, chief of PNG’s environment department and forestry board, and Somare’s corrupt bagman for rainforest crime.

### ENDS ###

CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org

REDD Lights: Who Owns the Carbon in Forests and Trees?

2011-09-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

This paper argues in favor of the ownership by indigenous peoples and local communities of carbon in forests and trees and that such ownership could be the basis of social accountability that should be mainstreamed in implementing what is popularly known as the REDD-Plus mechanism.

REDD-Plus stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, and the conservation and enhancement of existing forest carbon stocks. The mechanism was formally adopted by the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during its 16th session in Cancun, Mexico held last December, 2010 (La Vina et al 2011). In that meeting, governments agreed to the scope of the mechanism, the components of a national REDD-Plus program, and what could be the phases of such a program. They also also agreed to a set of safeguards that would accompany REDD-Plus implementation at the national level, which included assurances that the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities will be recognized and respected. Still pending and currently being negotiated in the UNFCCC is the system of information that needs to be established to ensure that the REDD-Plus safeguards are implemented and respected.

In making the case that indigenous peoples and local communities have ownership of carbon in forests and trees, the authors review the evolution of the international law on the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities and use examples from all over the world and especially from the Philippines. While asserting such ownership, the authors recognize the authority of governments to co-manage and to exercise joint control over such carbon. Certainly, REDD-Plus programs are national programs and are implemented in the context of treaty and other international obligations.

The paper should be read with an accompanying monograph Implementing the REDD-Plus Safeguards and Monitoring REDD-Plus Finance: The Role of Social Accountability authored by Antonio G. M. La Viña and Lawrence G. Ang. In that paper La Viña and Ang explores and articulates the role of social accountability in implementing REDD-Plus safeguards and argue that, without mainstreaming social accountability mechanisms in such implementation, REDD-Plus programs are likely to fail in producing not only the desired climate change and environmental outcomes but also in avoiding unjust and inequitable results. Likewise, citizen monitoring of REDD-Plus finance is critical – to ensure integrity and accountability in these programs.

Download paper here

Photo of forest by Micky, used under a Creative Commons License.

RI committed to realizing post-Kyoto Protocol climate deal

2011-09-07T06:52:00.000-07:00

As the Kyoto Protocol expires this 2012, nations are rushing to prepare its successor.

Indonesia, the world’s second largest forest nation and a major player within the developing nations’ faction, holds a leading role in negotiations, officials and environmentalists here say.

National Council for Climate Change (DPNI) chairman Rachmat Witoelar said Indonesia is totally committed to Kyoto’s successor, whatever it may be.

“Climate change is everyone’s concern. To save the earth, we have to save its people — not to rely on a high-cost mitigation program, but to provide help to the public for understanding and eventually adapting,” he said.

The introduction of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and Enhancing carbon stocks (REDD+) initiative saw the most defining element in the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol’s successor, Rachmat said.

He said any form of future agreements would be expected to incorporate the initiative despite controversial policies that deal with complex issues of human rights, finance, corruption and national sovereignty.

The countdown to the 17th Conference of Parties in Durban to be held from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9, 2011, had begun with heated discussions in Bonn.

The conference was held in preparation for Durban. Many groups, however, raised doubts about the speed of reaching an agreement to Kyoto’s successor.

“As one of the larger nations of the G 77, Indonesia has an important role to play in negotiations leading up to Durban,” Rachmat said.

The Bonn conference saw Indonesia and other developing nations praised for their National Economic, Environment and Development Study for Climate Change (NEEDS) report, which described adaptation and mitigation needed in each country.

Indonesia has also stated the need to promote transparency in order to realize “fast track finance” that would help the world to see through long-term climate change funding.

Kerri Pandjaitan, The Jakarta Post

Global warming brings crab threat to antarctica

2011-09-07T06:48:00.000-07:00

The sea floor around the West Antarctica peninsula could become invaded by a voracious king crab, which is on the march thanks to global warming, biologists reported on Wednesday.

The worrisome intruder is a bright-red deep-sea predator that previously had been spotted only in the Ross Sea, on the other side of West Antarctica.

Taxonomists identified the crustacean just five years ago, bestowing it with the lengthy monicker of Neolithodes yaldwyni Ahyong and Dawson and placing it among the 121 species of king crab.

It is known as an "ecosystem engineer" because it digs into the sea floor to feast on worms and other tiny animals, an activity that in large numbers can have repercussions across the marine food web.

A team led by Laura Grange of the University of Hawaii at Manoa lowered a remote-controlled scoutcraft as part of a long-term probe into biodiversity in the waters off the Antarctic peninsula.

They looked at Palmer Deep, a mud-floored basin in the Weddell Sea located 120 kilometres (75 miles) from the edge of the continental shelf.

The robot`s camera, trailed over two kilometres (1.2 miles), spotted 42 crabs, all of them at depths lower than 850 metres (2,760 feet), where the water was a relatively balmy 1.4 degrees Celsius (34.5 degrees Fahrenheit).

By extrapolation, the crab population in Palmer`s deep -- an area measuring 14 kms (nine miles) long by eight kms (five miles) wide -- could be more than 1.5 million, says Grange.

That density is the same as commercial crab fisheries in Alaska and the British South Atlantic island of South Georgia.

The images gave a glimpse of the kind of damage caused by the foraging crustaceans.

The crabs, their shells measuring roughly 10 centimetres (four inches) across, had dug gashes up to 20 cms (one foot) into the soft ocean floor and thrown up lumps of sediment. The robot also retrieved a pregnant female crab, as proof that the species was reproducing.

None of the crabs was found at shallower depths, where the seas are colder.

The implication is that as global warming heats the frigid coastal-shelf waters, which lie at depths of 400 and 600 metres (1,300 and 1,950 feet), the way will be open for the crustacean to continue its creeping advance.

The evidence from sea-floor sediment is that no so-called lithodid, or crushing, crabs have inhabited the cold shallow waters of the West Antarctic peninsula for 14 million years.

Previous research has already named the peninsula as one of the most vulnerable regions in the world for global warming. The waters of its continental shelf are warming at the rate of 0.1 C (0.14 F) per decade.

"If N. yaldwyni is currently limited by cold temperatures, it could spread up onto the shelf within one to two decades," warns the study, published in the British scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
(U.C003)

Editor: Priyambodo RH
COPYRIGHT © 2011

Seeing REDD in Indonesia

2011-09-07T06:45:00.000-07:00

Without notice or explanation my guide, Syahrul, from WAHLI, an Indonesian environmental coalition, pulled over our motorbike and dismounted. We were burning under the North Sumatran sun and he’d stopped for no apparent reason beside an open field. Looking around, I asked him why we’d stopped. He turned back and addressed me solemnly, shaking his head to express something between sadness and frustration. "This is national park," He said. I stared around in astonishment. "This is national park?" I parroted. He nodded, "this is Gunung Leuser." The field stretched before us, burnt and yellow. It gradually bled into hillsides covered with young oil palms planted in neat rows. A lone, giant blackened tree stump stood on one hill like a tombstone placed in memory of the old rainforest that used to exist there.

In a world where rainforest coverage is shrinking, 10 per cent of what remains can be found in Indonesia. Not only are these forests full of endemic and endangered species, they also store approximately 11,800 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon, both in the trees themselves and within extensive peat swamps that run up to 10 metres deep beneath many areas of forest. Deforestation now contributes to 85 per cent of Indonsia’s carbon emissions, making it the third biggest emitter after the US and China.

Despite this, logging continues in Indonesia at an approximate rate of 1,205,650 hectares per year, driven by the lucrative palm oil and pulp and paper industries, as well as pervasive illegal logging. With so much at stake, the last 10 years have seen Indonesia’s rainforests become a battleground between economic gain and environmental conservation, with local communities and indigenous groups caught somewhere in the middle.

Logged national park in Northern Sumatra

Seeking to solve this dilemma, the United Nations have spent the last several climate talks developing whatappears to be a simple and ingenious solution. It’s called the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program, and it’s basically a framework through which developed countries can pay developing countries to preserve forest in exchange for carbon credits. The idea is to develop an ongoing alternative income for communities who would otherwise be reliant on logging and palm oil, while also funding a variety of conservation programs. To some, it represents the greatest hope for the world’s remaining forests. To others, it is an unmitigated disaster.

Since 2009, when the Indonesian Minister of Forestry signed the "Forestry Regulation P.30/2009 on Procedures for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation," the Indonesian government has invested its energy in establishing the country as a laboratory for the REDD scheme. In 2010, the government announced ambitious new targets to reduce emissions to 26 per cent below business-as-usual levels by 2020. REDD featured as a significant component of their plan to reach this target. In cooperation with the UN and bilateral "client" countries – such as Australia, New Zealand and Norway – Indonesia has already established a number of REDD pilot programs in conservation hot spots. And, perhaps most significantly, on May 20 this year, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed an unprecedented decree issuing a two-year moratorium on logging in exchange for $US1 billion from Norway under the REDD program.

But with the REDD scheme still relatively new and controversial, are the international community and the Indonesian government putting all their eggs in one uncertain basket? I met with Teguh Surya in the offices of WAHLI in Jakarta two weeks before the announcement of the moratorium. I asked him if he believed it would be possible to implement a well managed and successful REDD program. He replied, flatly, "no." According to WAHLI, existing REDD programs in Indonesia, including the Australian program in Jambi province of Sumatra, have already demonstrated the failure of REDD to prevent deforestation and reduce carbon emissions. He was adamant that the REDD scheme fails to recognise several harsh realities of politics in Indonesia and internationally. When I pressed for further explanation, he responded with the following five major criticisms.

Firstly, there is ambiguity in Indonesia over the legal definition of terms such as "forest." This ambiguity means that under REDD, a palm oil plantation could potentially be given the same value as primary forest in terms of its value as a carbon sink. Secondly, the REDD program amounts to a deal between two central governments. But the reality is that land tenure in Indonesia is often contested between local communities, indigenous groups and four different levels of government. By dealing with central government, foreign donors may inadvertently take power away from local and indigenous communities. Thirdly, there is little evidence to support carbon offsetting as a mechanism for reducing global emissions. Fourth, REDD agreements have limited time frames, while forests need permanent protection. Finally, the REDD process in Indonesia is open to corruption and manipulation as money filters down through all each level of government. Often there is little or none of the original money left by the time it reaches the communities who were intended to be delivered from poverty by the REDD mechanism.

While not as entirely dismissive of the potential of REDD, my enquiries among other local conservation groups in such as Yayasan Ekosistem Lestari (YEL) found similar critiques of the program. Debate over the value of carbon offsetting aside, the consensus seemed to be that internal politics and a legacy of corruption in the management of forests dating back to the Suharto era had been overlooked in the development of the international agreements. For example, from 1993 to 1997 the country’s reforestation fund lost $5.2 billion through mismanagement and fraud, according to an audit by Ernst and Young. Provision also needs to be made for education, enforcement, monitoring, anti-corruption measures and for the institutional restructuring that REDD requires. Without adequate resources for education and policing on the ground level, untended land and protected areas alike become a target for illegal logging and REDD conservation programs fold.

By way of illustration, I heard from one environmental worker, who declines to be named, that locals in some REDD projects in Jambi province had actually thought carbon was a resource, like coal, and by signing up for REDD they would be paid to extract it. When money was not immediately forthcoming from central government they were naturally annoyed and now want nothing to do with the scheme. The palm oil companies, meanwhile, pay up front for the delivery of oil nuts.

Palm oil trucks

Just like its jungles, the dark situation of logging in Indonesia becomes more tangled the further you go into it. Trying to follow each path of enquiry into corruption, industry, policy and poverty you can become easily lost. Lingering in the background of this confusing political maze is the palm oil industry. The reality is that this is a sector whose influence in Indonesian politics remains akin to the influence of the mining and fossil fuel industries in Australia.

The recent logging moratorium serves as an appropriate example. The decree was subject to huge amounts of lobbying in the five months that its release was delayed. A Malaysian planter with assets in Indonesia, who declined to be identified, told Reuters after the moratorium was released, "There was lots of pressure on the Indonesian government from the palm oil industry about this ban since we bring in significant investments. Today's final details show that agreeable concessions have been made." In contrast, the feedback from environmental groups on the decree was less cheerful. Paul Winn of Greenpeace Australia-Pacific told Reuters "This is a bitter disappointment… 75 per cent of the forests purportedly protected by this moratorium are already protected under existing Indonesian law, and the numerous exemptions further erode any environmental benefits."

Unsurprisingly, like many development programs, when REDD is held up to scrutiny its many flaws are made obvious. This doesn’t mean that it is incapable of helping to protect Indonesia’s forests. REDD is just a sprout in terms of international programs and it still has a chance to grow into something worth saving.

When I asked Teguh one month ago what he thought Indonesia needed to preserve it’s forests, he told me that they really need a moratorium on logging. Last Thursday, President Yudhoyono signed the decree issuing a moratorium, under the REDD program. While the decree has been critiqued as inadequate, it does also have some support. Daniel Murdiyarso, a scientist at the Indonesia-based forest research institute, CIFOR, told Mongabay last Friday, “This will see a large area of natural forest protected from being cleared and it will help preserve the country’s carbon-rich peatlands.” Similarly, Bustar Maitar from Greenpeace has conceded that the moratorium represents “an important political shift towards protecting our forests." Several years ago, however, this would have been unthinkable.

In addition to encouraging a more eco-friendly political climate, REDD supporters claim that the scheme can help to push through institutional and governance reform that is needed for conservation efforts to be successful. Part of the REDD agreement with Norway, for example, will involve the development of a "degraded lands" database. Environmental groups, such as WAHLI, advocate the use of "degraded" lands for the expansion of palm oil as a substitute for expansion into forested areas. Degraded land is land which has been deforested but which is not utilised, for various reasons.

Confusion over tenure and the rights of local communities, many of whom are actually using degraded land for smallholder farming, has made degraded land unattractive to industry, so far. Agus Purnomo, Special Staff to the President of Republic Indonesia for Climate Change stated recently that the database will “allow expansion of agriculture and timber plantations as well as provide legal certainty for the businessman in expanding their business while avoiding deforestation." Furthermore, the presidential instructions attached to the moratorium streamlines policy by delegating coordination and monitoring responsibilities to one agency, the President's REDD Plus Taskforce.

There is also hope that the moratorium will provide an opportunity for government and stakeholders to work on mechanisms for forest protection. "The two‐year suspension gives time to improve agricultural productivity, solve land tenure issues related to overlapping concessions and the rights of local communities, strengthen enforcement of sustainable logging and mining practices, reduce illegal logging and decrease the clearing of land through fires," said Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, head of the President’s delivery unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight and Chair of the REDD+ Taskforce, in a recent statement. Companies such as SMART Palm Oil and Asian Pulp and Paper have also suggested they will use the opportunity to revise unsustainable practises.

According to the UN, the REDD program is primarily an "effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests," and it is perhaps in this capacity that it can be the most valuable in assisting conservation efforts. As Dr Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, chief of Indonesia's REDD Plus taskforce recently stated, “The shift in paradigm to underscore that forests are worth more standing, along with strong law enforcement and a high transparency process as a tool to turn the tide of the history of corruption, are clear ways to save the forests.”

Norway’s "One Billion Dollar Pledge" has set a precedent in Indonesian and global politics by contributing to that shift and proving that compensated forest protection is a reality in international politics. Critics of carbon trading argue that assigning a market value to forests merely perpetuates the problem by ignoring the intrinsic or biodiversity value of forests. But in Indonesia, the lack of a middle class means that those with political clout are usually involved in resource extraction, so trying to put a value on forests that doesn’t involve cash is pretty difficult, politically. Furthermore, they are the ones with the resources and capacity to get real results – even if it is simply by slowing down or halting their own operations. In this context, companies need to be brought on board if conservation is to succeed. Showing them the money is a sure way to get their attention.

In the same week that I’d been cruising round illegal logging sites in Gunung Leuser National Park, a meeting was being held three hours south in Medan. Kusnadi Oldani, deputy secretary of YEL, attended the meeting alongside representatives from other environmental groups, national parks staff, military, police, politicians and industry figures. Kusnadi later told me what went on.

The Guest of honor was Mr Dorori, the general director of Forestry Protection and Nature Conservation who had come from Jakarta to talk with North Sumatran chief of National Parks, Andi Basrul. The aim of the meeting was to come up with a new strategy for protecting the national park; and they did. If all goes to plan – and that is a big if – next year the military and the national parks body will start killing illegal palm oil plantations in Gunung Leuser or taking the fruit. Local government will then employ locals to plant trees as a substitute income. I asked Kusnadi why the government in Jakarta went to all the trouble of sending Mr Dorori out to Medan to develop local strategy. He laughed and said simply, "Jakarta is getting serious."

In March last year, Australia announced plants to launch a $A30 Million REDD program in Sumatra in cooperation with the UN and the Indonesian government. The agreement is scheduled to start becoming a reality this year. Whether or not that program will have positive impact will depend on how many of the issues listed above are addressed between now and then. By choosing a stringent set of conditions like the ones imposed by Norway, Australia could further contribute to the important cultural shift already occurring. Or even further, why not regulate the import of or reduce demand for unsustainable palm oil products at home, instead of focusing solely on the responsibilities of supplier countries. We’re the ones buying the stuff after all.

If we’re serious, then we need to ensure that our REDD program is designed around local community needs and is accompanied by adequate resourcing, monitoring, education and enforcement if we’re to avoid the mistakes made in previous REDD programs such as the so far unsuccessful one we began in Jambi Province in 2009. As Teguh reminded me when I discussed the Australian agreement with him, “It’s your money. You Australians should be asking where it’s going.” If the Government in Jakarta is getting serious, then we need to start considering in more depth how we can encourage them in that from Canberra. REDD can potentially help us to help them, provided we get serious about it too.

Lillian Morrissey is founding director of GroundRoots – www.groundroots.org

www.climatespectator.com

Indonesia's Green Economy Corridor Initiative

2011-09-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

Mists swirl at 3,000 meters in the forest of Takengon, Aceh

The recent World Economic Forum on East Asia in Jakarta projected a transformation of Indonesia’s economy from its present levels to be in the top 10 economies in the world by 2020. The government recognizes this potential, but is equally conscious of the climate change challenges in pursuing a fast-paced growth. In the words of Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, “We need solutions that will make economic growth and technology not the nemesis but the ally of our climate stability. And we need solutions that will serve the practical needs to slow, stop and reverse the process of climate change… I believe Indonesia can implement green economy to achieve seven per cent economic growth and 26 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from business as usual scenario in 2020.”

In an effort to translate this vision, the Presidential Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight (UKP4), headed by Dr. Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, is collaborating with the United Nations and a cross section of stakeholders on the development of an action plan to facilitate a Green Economy transition and support the REDD+ Implementing Agency to achieve its mandate of reducing forest based greenhouse gas emissions in Kalimantan, specifically the pilot province of Central Kalimantan, while at the same time generating multiple benefits for people’s livelihoods, the economy and conservation.

As a first step, a panel of eminent and world renowned experts on climate change mitigation and sustainable development converged in Jakarta on 12-13 August at a workshop to discuss possible scenarios, review successfully operating models elsewhere and explore possibilities of adapting these to the advantage of Indonesia.

Setting the context was the review of Indonesia’s recently launched Economic Master Plan Framework (MP3EI) that rests on three pillars: Economic Potential; National Connectivity; and Capacity of Human Resources, Sciences and Technology. The plan outlines six region-specific activities in the form of economic corridors and 11 national priorities. Green Economy as a transformation goal would rest on the five pillars of Indonesia's REDD+ strategy: institutions and processes; legal and regulatory framework; strategic programs; cultural shift and stakeholder management. The challenges to the transformation goal include, unprepared capacity to handle the new concept; recognition of local and indigenous community rights; investment; strong regulations; and a paradigm shift.

The workshop was led by UKP4 and supported by UN-REDD Programme agencies, UNEP and UNDP, with participation from FAO, the UN's International Labour Organization, the World Wildlife Federation and other national and international organizations. It focused on the Threshold 21 (T-21) sustainable development model which is designed to support integrated long-term development planning using a variety of factors across sectors. T-21 works more effectively once a country identifies its vision and key goals and is customized to capture different elements critical to the country’s development and the consequences of the proposed strategies. The model has been applied with varying degrees of success in countries such as Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jamaica, Bangladesh and others. Although Kalimantan is the current focus the development of the model, the aim is to make it replicable across Indonesia.

The initial output of this exercise is to develop a “roadmap for transformation”, including process, timeline, budget, roles and milestones. The roadmap is expected to realize the transformation investment package, with pledges, institutional arrangements and capacity to deliver. The workshop succeeded in strengthening the enthusiasm participants have regarding the possibility of a green economy transition in Indonesia.

Participants in the recent Green Economy workshop in Indonesia included Pavan Sukhdev, McCluskey Fellow at Yale University, founder-CEO of GIST Advisory and head of UNEP’s Green Economy team; Mr. Andrea Bassi from the US-based Millennium Institute; representatives from UNEP, FAO, UNDP, ILO, WWF; several donor representatives; national experts from various sectors including academia, NGOs, CSOs and other key stakeholders. UN-REDD

Volkswagen Investing One Billion Euros in Wind Energy

2011-09-04T10:41:00.000-07:00

Wind Farm in Neuenkirchen, Germany

In an attempt to hedge against future rising energy prices, Volkswagen announced last week that it will invest up to one billion Euros (US$1.45 billion) in renewable energy. The announcement follows the company’s decisions earlier this year to invest in other clean energy projects as well as to launch new electric vehicles.

According to the German language edition of the Financial Times, Volkswagen will become a large investor in two offshore windparks in the North Sea. The investment accomplishes two objectives: to help the car manufacturer meet its renewable energy goals for 2020 as well as give a boost to Germany’s flagging wind power sector.

Borkum, Germany, soon to be neighbor to an offshore windfarm

While Germany has been a leader in solar energy the past decade, wind power has been a different story. Ambitious projects to build wind power farms in the North Sea have suffered from the lack of investors who saw the proposed projects as too risky. Volkswagen had been in talks with wind power developers for several years but had hesitated to commit to the industry. But the moves of other companies, including the American private equity firm Blackstone, helped open the door to increased investment. Blackstone closed a deal on one wind farm last month. Now WV is set to invest in two wind power farms, including one 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Bokum (pictured left), an island off of Germany’s northwestern coast.

For Volkswagen, the investment goes beyond scoring a few corporate social responsibility (CSR) points. True, VW has pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions 40 percent by 2020. But energy security is a concern for European countries, and companies, who have been rattled by volatility in the Middle East and North Africa as well as Russia’s shutdown of its gas supplies to Europe two years ago. And with Angela Merkel’s promise to phase out nuclear energy by 2022, the time for energy intensive firms like Volkswagen to find different sources of power is now.

To that end, the two wind energy projects to which Volkswagen has committed promise to provide about 400 megawatts of electricity of full capacity, or 40 percent of the capacity of a nuclear power plant. The upshot is that the quest to find sources of energy to complement what currently fuels most companies’ operations will be a long, painful one on both sides of the pond. http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/09/volkswagen-investing-one-billion-euros-wind-energy

What is the carbon trade?

2011-09-04T10:38:00.000-07:00

The carbon trade came about in response to the Kyoto Protocol. Signed in Kyoto, Japan, by some 180 countries in December 1997, the Kyoto Protocol calls for 38 industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions between the years 2008 to 2012 to levels that are 5.2% lower than those of 1990.

Carbon is an element stored in fossil fuels such as coal and oil. When these fuels are burned, carbon dioxide is released and acts as what we term a “greenhouse gas” (GhG).

The idea behind carbon trading is quite similar to the trading of securities or commodities in a marketplace. Carbon would be given an economic value, allowing people, companies or nations to trade it. If a nation bought carbon, it would be buying the rights to burn it, and a nation selling carbon would be giving up its rights to burn it. The value of the carbon would be based on the ability of the country owning the carbon to store it or to prevent it from being released into the atmosphere. (The better you are at storing it, the more you can charge for it.

A market would be created to facilitate the buying and selling of the rights to emit greenhouse gases. The industrialized nations for which reducing emissions is a daunting task could buy the emission rights from another nation whose industries do not produce as much of these gases. The market for carbon is possible because the goal of the Kyoto Protocol is to reduce emissions as a collective.

On the one hand, carbon trading seems like a win-win situation: greenhouse gas emissions may be reduced while some countries reap economic benefit. On the other hand, critics of the idea suspect that some countries will exploit the trading system and the consequences will be negative. While carbon trading may have its merits, debate over this type of market is inevitable, since it involves finding a compromise between profit, equality and ecological concerns. http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/04/060404.asp#axzz1WzFUs4Vh

Indonesia could earn $100-$180 million from carbon trading

2011-09-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Indonesia says it hopes to soon see millions of dollars from carbon trading, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) in its latest update.

Director General for Forest Protection, Hilman Nugroho, said that Indonesian forests could earn between $100 million and $180 million from carbon trading at $3 and $5 per ton under the clean development mechanism (CDM). In order to capitalize on the opportunity, Nugroho said the country would have to “shift its focus on forest development from timber to non-timber because the economic value of timber was only some 5% from the forest total economic value,” stated the ITTO.

“Non-timber economic value includes environment services such as water and hydrology services, climate protection through carbon absorption, and biodiversity protection,” it added.

Indonesia has the third most forest cover of any tropical forest country, but has the second highest deforestation rate due to logging, clearing for agriculture, and forest fires. The country has expressed interest in a proposal to compensate tropical countries that reduce their deforestation rate. http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0528-indo.html

Can carbon trading save Indonesia’s forests?

2011-09-04T10:28:00.000-07:00

According to Greenpeace, Indonesia had the fastest rate of deforestation in the world between the years 2000-2005. This rampant destruction – both illegal and legal – is fueled by the worldwide demand for palm oil, paper and tropical wood. Deforestation of Indonesia’s rainforest and peatlands contributes to rising greenhouse gases in multiple ways, including eliminating carbon sinks, releasing CO2 trapped in peat and from slash and burn methods of agriculture.

Political journalist Andre Vltchek describes the dilemma in Indonesia – heedless environmental wreckage against a backdrop of desperate poverty – in his story ‘In the Tropical Forests of Sumatra: Notes from Climate Change “Ground Zero”‘.

Rural Indonesia is extremely poor and underdeveloped — moral and ethical questions here are simply perceived as odd. Caring for the environment and the world are luxuries most impoverished Indonesian can’t afford, while for the rich rulers of this nation they are simply not profitable enough.

Can forest protection ever become profitable enough? Some entrepreneurs in Indonesia think so. Investors are seizing the opportunities they are anticipating to be brought about by carbon trading schemes like the UN’s REDD program. Though systems such as REDD are not yet in place, these Indonesian investors see them as a way to preserve vital forestland while bringing development and economic growth to the area. What benefits such plans will have for the nation’s poor are as yet unknown.

Al Jazeera English reports on hopes in Indonesia to make money by preserving forests.

watch?v=jqqGAUT0CK8
http://www.greenfudge.org/2010/02/20/can-carbon-trading-save-indonesias-forests/

Can REDD Keep Indonesia’s Forests Green?

2011-08-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

Joe Cochrane |

It’s the hottest acronym going in the world of climate change. The UN-backed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is being touted as both the savior of rain forests and a new natural resource commodity that will bring untold riches to the developing world.

The concept, also known as REDD, is both simple and ingenious: Countries can sell credits on the amount of carbon their forests and rain forests soak up to industrialized nations that need to reduce emissions, thereby protecting their environment, stopping global warming and ensuring a sustainable future income without having to chop down the trees.

The reality is more complicated. The proposed UN carbon trading scheme remains just that, a proposal. It’s also very complex, would be open to abuse and corruption and can leave local forest-based communities with nothing.

“If I can save forests and get paid for it, that’s much better than not saving forests,” said Timothy H Brown, senior natural resources management specialist at the World Bank in Jakarta. “If you want to save the forests, make some money out of it. Don’t just encourage somebody to love biodiversity. That doesn’t pay the bills.”

Indeed, a key facet of the REDD scheme is to provide a new and lasting source of revenue for developing nations, in particular regional administrations and local populations. Any new international protocol on climate change, whether it’s reached in Copenhagen this month, or sometime in 2010, is likely also to produce a comprehensive agreement on REDD — in effect, making carbon a commodity on a par with oil, natural gas or coal.

The rain forests of Indonesia, which has several pilot REDD projects currently under way, and those in Brazil, are being touted as the future of carbon trading. But that’s not necessarily a good thing, according to experts and environmental activists.

“Indonesia hasn’t shown the ability to prevent deforestation,” Brown said, adding that 1.1 million hectares of Indonesian forests vanish each year.

A Human Rights Watch report released on Tuesday said Indonesia lost up to $2 billion annually between 2003 and 2006 due to illegal logging, unpaid taxes and royalties from forestry and hidden subsidies for timber companies. That figure did not include the billions likely lost each year from unreported timber smuggled abroad.

The report questioned Indonesia’s ability to set up what might be the world’s largest carbon trading market to protect forests, given huge corruption in the industry. “In the absence of safeguards, the carbon finance market will simply inject more money into an already corrupt system, short-cutting needed reforms and exacerbating the situation,” the report said.

Among the biggest fears is manipulation by foreign carbon brokers who wave cash in the faces of provincial and district government leaders. Called “carbon cowboys,” they can sign deals that give Indonesian districts only a fraction of what they should be getting.

Fitrian Ardiansyah, program director for climate and energy at World Wildlife Fund Indonesia, said carbon brokers have already signed deals or made approaches in East Kalimantan, Papua and Aceh.

“They say, ‘Sign this. For 100,000 hectares for REDD, you will get $2 per hectare,’ ” Fitrian said. “But you’re not supposed to count the hectares, you count the carbon.”

That’s where it gets tricky. The mathematical and scientific calculations to determine how much carbon a given area of forest absorbs are extremely complex, likely far beyond the educational level of a local district chief, experts say. And although they can receive as much as $2,500 per hectare of protected forest, local communities must first invest millions of dollars or more up front to establish an internationally verifiable way to show that their preserved forests aren’t still being chopped down or otherwise misused.

“To have an international commodity, you have to have this scientific basis and certification process, because you’re selling something that doesn’t exist,” Brown said

Another major issue, especially for Indonesia, is who owns the forests in which carbon is stored, and thus has the right to sell the credits. Local communities from Sumatra to Papua are ingrained with the belief that the forest belongs to them, while local, provincial and even the national government have the legal right to lease the land to companies.

“There’s no recognition of indigenous people’s rights,” said M Teguh Surya, head of advocacy at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).

Walhi, which is arguably the country’s leading environmental group, has lobbied against REDD, saying the current scheme needs to be amended to require prior consent from indigenous populations before any deals are struck. The group is also calling for a ban on market-based trading of carbon credits — meaning no public selling on stock exchanges — and an international agreement on reducing developed nations’ demand for raw materials such as timber.

“REDD is CO2 colonialism,” Surya said. “We still need a long debate before we decide anything.”

The Ministry of Forestry has a lot to answer for in its woeful management of the nation’s forests over the decades. But it has received kudos for its ongoing preparation for REDD, which wouldn’t go into effect until 2013 at the earliest.

The ministry has, among other things, developed a national carbon accounting system, a strategic development plan, a monitoring plan and a forest resource inventory system. The oversight must be in place, experts say, to prevent Indonesia’s carbon from going the way of its depleted forests.

“It’s a difficult, arcane subject matter. The science, the policy, the economics of it. It’s a daunting task,” said Todd Lemons, from Infinite Earth, a Hong Kong-based company going through a government certification process to sell REDD options on an orangutan sanctuary in Central Kalimantan.

Nur Masripatin, head of social, economic and forestry policy at the Forestry Ministry, said the government was also preparing programs aimed at “improving the management of national forests, and not encouraging the conversion of forest land to palm oil.”

Commodity prices, specifically those of palm oil, could be the spanner in the works for REDD. Given that carbon credits will eventually be traded publicly on international markets, the scheme is at the mercy of crude palm oil prices.

If the price of palm oil goes higher than the price of carbon credits, all bets could be off and the REDD scheme could be quickly consigned to the dust bin of history — along with the forests it is meant to protect. | JakartaGlobe

Forest experts to meet in Jakarta

2011-08-28T02:41:00.000-07:00

Forest experts were scheduled to gather in Jakarta on Sept. 27 for an international conference on forest and carbon economics.

Titled “Indonesia’s Forest: future alternative to fulfill necessity on food, wood, energy and REDD+”, the conference will discuss challenges and opportunities pertaining to the usage of natural resources in Indonesia.

Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), business groups, NGOs, ministries and neighboring countries have announced their participating in the conference.

“More people are realizing that we do not use land appropriately in Indonesia. Now the country should have an alternative reference to fulfill its national goals, which are so varied,” CIFOR Director General Frances Seymour said on Monday.

Thirty-nine experts are slated to speak at the conference, including World Bank special envoy for climate change Andrew Steer, Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan and Chief of the Presidential Work Unit for Development Monitoring and Control (UKP4) Kuntoro Mangkusubroto.

They would express their opinions on how Indonesia can manage its forest during the transition to low carbon economy. | JakartaPost

Is There a REDD Solution to the Palm Oil Problem?

2011-08-28T02:29:00.000-07:00

By Tonka Dobreva Co-Author: John Alexander Adam

According to a 2011 report by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), deforestation, mainly clearing forestry lands for agricultural activities, has been estimated at a rate of 13 million hectares per year between 1990-2005. Deforestation results in immediate release of the carbon stored in trees as CO2 emissions - a direct cause of climate changes.

So what do biscuits have to do with global warming?

One of the main ingredients in the biscuits is palm oil (sometimes disguised on the ingredients label as "vegetable oil"). The popular vegetable oil has been subjected to criticism due to the environmental damages that palm oil companies cause through massive rainforest deforestation, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. According to a 2011 report by ProForest for the UK Government Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), in 2009 the UK imported a total of 643,400 mt (metric tons) of palm oil. The food industry uses approximately 68% of the total import of p. oil. Combined with the 23% used for animal feed, the food sector as a whole eats up over 90% of the imported palm oil. Now, here come the biscuits - they make up the largest share of this, likely using over 20% of the total import of p. oil.

Palm oil and its derivatives have been under fire over the past years for the damages they do to rainforests, primarily in Indonesia and Malaysia. Palm oil companies use forests lands as palm plantations. Cutting the trees to produce oil and sell timber impacts negatively not only the environment, but also the animal species that call these forests home. At the same time, global demands for edible oils have been increasing and dragging deforestation rates up. In 2004, the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was set up with the goal of establishing a sustainability standard and a certification system to ensure that the production of palm oil is regulated and the damages to the rainforest environment and its inhabitants are minimized. RSPO statistics for 2010 show, however, that only about half of the globally available certified palm oil was purchased in 2010, raising questions about the effectiveness of the system.

Would palm oil companies and their massive deforestation practices be willing to stop at a REDD light? In 2008, the United Nations launched their Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD Programme) with the purpose of empowering developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while promoting forestry conservation and sustainability among local communities. The UN defines REDD as "a cutting-edge forestry initiative that aims at tipping the economic balance in favour of sustainable management of forests." The international community officially recognized the initiative at the 2010 Cancun Climate Summit, and the attending counties pledged to invest $30 billion between 2010 and 2012 in REDD initiatives. In June of 2011, the UN-REDD Programme Policy Board made a commitment to an additional $8.7 million to fund global activities aimed at supporting national REDD+ efforts.

REDD initiatives can earn carbon credits through their capacity to extract and store greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the atmosphere. Each REDD carbon credit is equivalent to the removal of one metric ton of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. These REDD carbon credits might just be the profit alternative that can make palm oil companies abolish deforestation and instead focus on conserving the forests they own while generating revenue though REDD carbon credits sales.

An interesting recent study by Oscar Venter from the University of Queensland looked to compare the profits from palm oil and timber sales a company would make versus its revenue if it were to sell REDD carbon credits and actually commit to conserving the rainforest. The study focused on the forested region of Kalimantan, Indonesia, where deforestation has been causing an outrage among environmental groups. Oscar Venter and his team calculated the amount of potential REDD carbon credits that the plantation can produce and estimated that if each credit can be sold for $10 (£6), conserving the forest could be more profitable than clearing land for oil palm.

Such implementation, while it might seem like a good solution, will surely raise concerns and cause resistance among p. oil companies, which have already invested significant amounts in production establishments and processes. But the positive impact that the potential switch from forestry consumption to conservation, combined with a compatible revenue, will provide for a more comprehensive business practice that benefits all parties involved - the companies, the local communities and the environment. This may finally allow palm oil companies to have their biscuits and eat them too.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tonka_Dobreva

Balancing growth with environmental sustainability

2011-08-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told CNN recently that Indonesia was committed to achieving a 26 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 while concurrently maintaining its rapid economic growth.

This is certainly a laudable goal considering Indonesia is now the third-largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. The question now is how do we achieve this goal of emissions reduction without compromising economic growth?

Indonesia has lost 0.5 million hectares of forest every year for the last 10 years due to agricultural expansion, shifting cultivation, illegal logging and forest fires. As a result, three-quarters of our total CO2 emissions come from land use. Achieving the President’s goal will require the enacting of a balanced policy that curtails total emissions from land use, promotes job creation and encourages sustainable forestry.

Indonesia has three contradictory laws pertaining to forest management — the 2004 Law on Regional Governance, the 2004 Law on Fiscal Balance and the 1999 Law on Forestry — which makes this difficult.

These laws result in conflicting legal interpretations by forest communities, regional governments and the central government, which destroys the incentive to practice sustainable forest management and promotes illegal logging.

Meanwhile, Presidential Instruction No. 4/2005, which calls on all relevant government agencies to more firmly enforce existing laws, has not been effective in bringing clarity.

The international community could benefit from Indonesia keeping its forest carbon stocks undisturbed. In fact, Indonesia has leverage to negotiate fair compensation in return for reducing logging and land clearing for oil palm plantations. Indonesia recently signed a letter of intent with Norway to begin a two-year moratorium on new logging, in which Indonesia will be compensated up to US$1 billion.

And programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) are working with forest-rich countries like Indonesia to help provide financial incentives in return for maintaining our forests.

The effectiveness of an agreement to keep our forests intact depends on how the compensation is distributed among all stakeholders. During the New Order era, forest management was controlled by the central government, but under the current regional autonomy scenario numerous actors are involved in the forestry sector.

A massive vertical and horizontal integration of coordination across central government, regional governments and forest communities is necessary to develop a fair compensation plan for each, and to find a way to keep forests standing. Leaving even one party behind will undermine the integrity of such an international agreement and negate the incentives, through policies such as REDD, to slow down the deforestation process.

Beyond this, one must consider the capability of the Indonesian government to negotiate fair compensation comparable to the cost of slowing down deforestation. Harvesting our forests and related products contributes roughly 7 percent to our GDP and roughly 9 percent of our trade. Slamming the brakes on deforestation without compensation would likely slow down economic growth and job creation.

Some international compensation, either through bilateral agreements or REDD, can be used to reforest degraded land, adopt sustainable agriculture practices, train local labor forces, create more jobs and offset economic growth.

Part of this innovative policy should include a strategy to eliminate the most important driver of deforestation: poverty. Roughly 35 million Indonesians live below the poverty line, with many living in close proximity to forests. Many poverty-stricken communities clear land and plant crops without even bothering with the sale of cleared mixed tropical hardwood.

If forests were to remain intact, these individuals could develop new oil palm plantations utilizing already degraded non-forest land instead of clearing existing forests. Oil palm looks good from an economic standpoint, generating more employment and income than low-intensity cultivation or logging. Oil palm also absorbs carbon dioxide and releases water vapor as it grows. It also stores more carbon than the degraded land.

Rather than destroying more rainforest for shifting cultivation, local traditional farmers could go into the oil palm business and benefit from its higher returns. Certainly, we need a huge investment for infrastructure, initial capital, and the training of thousands of local subsistence farmers to embrace the new ways to manage palm oil plantations sustainably.

Yet, this strategy would enable Indonesia to substantially reduce poverty and increase the sale of sustainably produced palm oil to European and American corporations, which are increasingly concerned about buying palm oil that has been harvested as a result of forest destruction. Indonesia can sustain rapid economic growth while reducing emissions, but requires an intelligent, holistic shift in its pursuit of economic progress.

We need to craft an innovative economic strategy that integrates environmental concerns from the highest (macroeconomic) to the lowest (microeconomic) levels and seek new opportunities that can be translated into implementation. While some think this is a mammoth challenge, in reality this is an opportunity to improve our standard of living while keeping our forests intact.

The writer is an economist focused on energy and the environment at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University, the US. | Jakarta Post.