BBC – Half a million people will need to be moved from their homes in mountainous areas of Uganda because of the risk of mudslides, the government has said.Uganda has one of the highest population growth rates in the world but, as more people settle on the mountains, the trees have been felled to make way for agriculture – making mudslides and flooding more common. Read Article
AFP _ It is blamed for everything from deforestation to threatening the extinction of the orangutan, but palm oil is a vital source of income for many developing countries, the crop’s producers say. In Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer, where the plant provides work for three million people, the government is keen to promote the benefits of the crop. Read Article
Ed – The fact of the matter is however that most palm oil production is owned by big corporations (not the peasant farmers), that it leads to massive deforestation, and that despite this it still counts towards ‘carbon off-setting’ for corporations
Times of India – Opposition leader Manohar Parrikar has lambasted the state government, alleging that it is abetting deforestation even as rampant illegal mining continues. “For the past three years alone, 1,500 hectares of forest land has been converted to mining land. The forest department should be renamed as the de-forestation department,” Parrikar told the media at a press conference here on Thursday. “From statistics made available to me, about 18 to 22 per cent of iron ore exported from the state is being extracted from illegal mines. Goa is currently exporting 43 million tonnes of iron ore, which is double to the quantity of exports in 2005. The government is unable to give an account of the source of ore for more than 33 million tonnes,” Parrikar said. He also said that chief minister Digambar Kamat should be made accountable for growing illegalities in the mining sector. Read Article
The Times – Using fossil fuel in vehicles is better for the environment than so-called green fuels made from crops, according to a government study seen by The Times. The findings show that the Department for Transport’s target for raising the level of biofuel in all fuel sold in Britain will result in millions of acres of forest being logged or burnt down and converted to plantations. The study, likely to force a review of the target, concludes that some of the most commonly-used biofuel crops fail to meet the minimum sustainability standard set by the European Commission. Read Article
BBC – When was the last time you had a “rainforest picnic”? Or even, perhaps, an “all-day Amazon breakfast”? Next time you are in a supermarket picking up a chicken sandwich for lunch, or fancy tucking in to a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage and bacon before setting off for work, spare a thought for the Amazon. A new report by Forest Footprint Disclosure reveals for the first time how global business is driving rainforests to destruction in order to provide things for you and me to eat. But it does also reveal what companies are doing to try to lighten their forest footprint. Sadly, however, the answer is: not much, at least not yet. Consumers “eat” rainforests each day – in the form of beef-burgers, bacon and beauty products – but without knowing it. Read Article
Jakata Post – By declaring 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity, the United Nations has demonstrated its strong commitment to saving threatened biodiversity around the world. The fact that the most diverse ecosystem on Earth is the tropics should those us who live tropical countries more aware about threats to biodiversity. Tropical forests contribute to large portions of nature’s rich diversity, just as coral reefs are a major component of marine biodiversity. The massive destruction of these species’ rich ecosystems will lead to a global species extinction crisis. An ecosystem is an integrated living system. The loss of one species does not only mean that we just lose that species, but also means it is a decline for the ecosystem. Since humans are part of nature’s system, the loss will also affect human survival. The lost biodiversity may have medical importance or act as a biological control.Habitat degradation is the major driver of extinctions of many tropical species. In many tropical countries, including Indonesia, deforestation is the major form of habitat loss. Read Article
Mongabay – Business-as-usual agricultural expansion to meet biofuel production targets for 2020 will take a heavy toll on Brazil’s Amazon rainforest in coming years, undermining the potential emissions savings of transitioning from fossil fuels to biofuels, warns a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research suggests that intensification of cattle ranching, combined with efforts to promote high-yielding oil crops like oil palm could lessen forecast greenhouse gas emissions from indirect land use in the region. Conducting a spatially-explicit analysis of potential land-use change from biofuel feedstock expansion in Brazil, David M. Lapola of the University of Kassel (Germany) and colleagues find that while relatively little forest land will be directly converted for biofuel production, large swathes of rainforest and cerrado will be indirectly impacted through displacement of cattle ranching, presently the dominant form of land use in the Brazilian Amazon. Read Article
Jakata Post – Corruption was the root cause of the country’s rapid pace of deforestation, threatening to hamper the government’s effort to cut at least 26 percent of Indonesia’s carbon emissions by 2020, environment groups said at a meeting on Wednesday. Susanto Kurniawan, the coordinator of Forest Rescue Network Riau (Jikalahari), said that there were a multitude of brokers inside the central and local forestry offices that supplied the necessary land-use permits in exchange for bribes. “Nearly all permits issued by the Ministry of Forestry have indications of corruption. The number varies from one place to another and depends on circumstances,” Susanto told the Jakarta Globe. “Corruption occurs at almost every level, including securing permits, obtaining concessions and overlooking irregularities.” Read Article
PhysOrg – The biggest causes of deforestation in tropical countries are population growth in cities and agricultural exports, a finding that should shape decisions on preventing forest loss, experts said. A common theory is that pressure on forests can be eased by reducing the population in rural areas, or discouraging rural people from clearing land for fuel or food for their own use. The study, led by Ruth DeFries of New York’s Columbia University, looked at satellite data for forest loss in 41 countries from 2000 to 2005 and matched this against a host of other factors. Two much bigger causes accelerated forest loss, they found. Read Article
BBC – Brazil’s government has granted an environmental licence for the construction of a controversial hydro-electric dam in the Amazon rainforest. Environmental groups say the Belo Monte dam will cause devastation in a large area of the rainforest and threaten the survival of indigenous groups. Read Article
PHUKET Gazette – Human encroachment has laid waste to more than two-thirds of a large forest reserve in the north of Phuket, it emerged last week. The Bang Khanoon forest reserve in tambon Thepkrasattri originally covered more than 5,000 rai, but just 1,500 rai of virgin forest remain. Phuket Governor Wichai Phraisa-ngop last week accompanied an inspection team from the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MNRE) to the site of the latest devastation. Read Article
PhysOrg – Small-scale farmers who lease land from the Brazilian government are very much responsible for deforestation in the Brazilian state of Rondonia in the Amazon area. In most areas with agrarian projects, more than fifty percent of the land has been cleared of forests, while the Brazilian Forestry Code permits farming concerns in the Amazon to clear only twenty percent of the land. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – Using biofuel in vehicles could be destructive to the rainforest as well as leading to higher green house gas emissions than using just petrol and diesel, a fuels watchdog has claimed. Fuel providers are compelled to add an increasing proportion of biofuel to diesel and petrol under the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation. This year 3.23 per cent must be made up of biofuel and by 2020 that increases to 13 per cent. However, the first annual report by the Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) claims that fuel companies are exploiting a loop hole which means they are not required to disclose the origin of nearly half the biofuel supplied to filling stations in 2009. Read Article
Deutsche Welle – Ecuador’s proposal to have rich nations pay them not to drill for oil – in one of the most bio-diverse areas in the world – is under threat. President Correa accuses potential donor countries of setting too many rules. In no other nature reserve in the world is there so much plant and animal diversity as in Yasuni National Park, in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, according to a new scientific study published in the journal “PLoS ONE.” “These rainforests are extremely bio-diverse…scientists have counted more than 600 different tree species in just one hectare. It’s also the homeland of indigenous people,” Klaus Schenck of the German organization Rainforest Rescue told Deutsche Welle. But now its future appears to be in jeopardy after Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Fander Falconi – the man charged with the difficult task of protecting it – quit on Tuesday. Falconi had been spearheading a 2.5 billion-euro (3.5 billion-dollar) initiative, whereby wealthy countries would pay Ecuador not to drill for oil in the nature reserve. Read Article
Jakata Post – The pace of deforestation in Java from 2007 to 2010 has reached 10,000 hectares and has become a serious threat to people and protected wildlife on the island. East Java is recorded as the biggest contributor to deforestation in Java, at a rate of 438.1 hectares annually. ProFauna Indonesia campaign officer Radius Nursidi said recently the actual pace of deforestation is believed to be higher than the data issued by the government. The deforestation rate of 10,000 hectares is based on data issued by the Forestry Ministry and took place from 2003 to 2006. The deforestation rate in Java is recorded at 2,500 hectares annually, or 0.2 percent of Indonesia’s total, which is 1.17 million hectares annually. Read Article
USA Today – Haiti’s recent earthquake, combined with its widespread deforestation, heighten its risk of more landslides, scientists warn.In poverty-stricken Haiti, many people cut down trees to use as fuel, so its natural forests are almost totally destroyed, according to a National Geographic story. This poses a stability risk, because tree roots help keep soil from shifting.”If you remove the trees, you have no buffer. So the water” —and soil— “tends to very quickly move downhill,” Mark Ashton, a professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, tells National Geographic. Read Article
Business Week – Thirty years ago, Nepalese farmer Badri Prasad Jangam realized that the once thickly wooded hillside that overlooks his home had been transformed into a barren slope.Decades of deforestation had taken their toll, stripping away the topsoil, affecting vital underground water sources and threatening to bring disaster to a community entirely dependent on farming for its livelihood. Now the trees are back, thanks to an innovative government scheme that won international plaudits for handing responsibility for the preservation of Nepal’s forests over to local people. Read Article
Brunei Direct – Brunei is doing “very well” in protecting its inland forests, but should continue to be vigilant at the same time by promoting awareness of reforestation due to increasing impacts of human settlements along coastal areas, said an expert yesterday.With evident conservation efforts of forest protection, Prof K M Wong of University of Malaya said, “I think people in Brunei are aware that with an increasing population growth, there will be consequential impacts on the environment!’ Following his presentation on “Climate change consequences for rainforests and human health” yesterday, he told The Brunei Times that apart from conservation of inland forests, it was obvious that the coastal belts in Brunei have been the most impacted by deforestation. Read Article
The Nation – The United Nations is marking 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity to curb the unprecedented loss of the world’s species due to human activity at an alarming rate some experts put at 1,000 times the natural progression. In this connection, a slew of events highlighting the vital role of the phenomenon play an important role in maintaining the life support system on Earth, the Environment, Wild Life and Flora and Fauna related organisations informed The Nation on Saturday. “Humans are part of nature’s rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it,” the secretariat of the convention on biological diversity, which is hosted by the UN Environment Programme UNEP, said in summarising the year’s main message, with its focus on raising awareness to generate public pressure for action by the world’s decision makers. Read Article
Daily Telegraph
1. Tiger
2. Polar Bear
3. Pacific Walrus
4. Magellanic Penguin
5. Leatherback Turtle
6. Bluefin Tuna
7. Mountain Gorilla
8. Monarch Butterfly
9. Javan Rhinoceros
10. Giant Panda
Read Full Article
Ed – As we have noted before the Polar Bear entry on this list is potentially spurious and probably there for political reasons due to the cult of “man-made climate change”. The reasons behind the other 9 however are much more down to mankinds inability to (currently) live in harmony with the eco-system in which we live
Washington Times – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has ordered his staff to revise a computerized forecasting model that showed that climate legislation supported by President Obama would make planting trees more lucrative than producing food. The latest Agriculture Department economic-impact study of the climate bill, which passed the House this summer, found that the legislation would profit farmers in the long term. But those profits would come mostly from higher crop prices as a result of the legislation’s incentives to plant more forests and thus reduce the amount of land devoted to food-producing agriculture. Read Article
Ed – It is one thing not to deforest the world further, and to return recently deforested land back to nature, however to convert long existing productive agricultural land away from food production so to “fight global warming” is plain immoral when there are a billion malnourished human’s, irrespective on where you stand on CO2
New York Times – Raimundo Teixeira de Souza came to this sweltering Amazon outpost 15 years ago, looking for land. He bought 20 acres, he said, but more powerful farmers, who roam this Wild West territory with rifles strapped to their backs, forced him to sell much of it for a pittance. Raimundo Teixeira de Souza held the residents’ card of his stepson who was killed, probably in a land dispute.Then someone shot and killed Mr. de Souza’s 23-year-old stepson in the middle of a village road two years ago, residents said. No one has been arrested. In fact, the new police chief has no record that the crime was even investigated by his predecessor. It is hardly surprising, the chief said, considering that he has only four investigators to cover an area of rampant land-grabbing and deforestation the size of Austria. Read Article
Korea Times – A famine-prone, energy-starved North Korea has destroyed forests in its search for arable land to grow crops and vegetables.South Korea has seen a greater increase in urbanization but has better environmental protection than its northern neighbor thanks to its reforestation efforts. In a report by the Ministry of the Environment, “land cover mapping,” a method of showing geography by using satellite images and aerial photographs, showed that the North was chopping down forests to create farmland over a great deal of its territory, especially in areas near Haeju, South Hwanghae Province. The wood-for-land method is now rarely used in the South because of fears of landslides. Indiscriminate lumbering for cultivation is said to be a key factor behind flash floods in North Korea. Read Article
PhysOrg – A new article in the December 4 issue of Science addresses how the combined efforts of government commitments and market transition could save forest and reduce carbon emissions in Brazil. The Policy Forum brief, entitled “The End of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon” was authored by contributors from the Woods Hole Research Center, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia (IPAM), Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Aliança da Terra, Environmental Defense Fund, University of Florida, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, and the Universidade Federal do Pará. Read Article
Ed – A case of wishful thinking we fear
BioScience Technology – A new scientific organisation is needed to monitor the commitments that will be made by developing countries at Copenhagen to cut their deforestation rates, according new research at Leeds. Existing government agencies and research groups have failed to make full use of the thousands of satellite images of the Earth’s surface collected each week to monitor tropical forests. Read Article
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