By John Michael Greer
263 pp. New Society Publishers – May 2011. $18.95
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Agro-ecological methods of farming have been shown to increase food production
Thailand is hosting the first Mekong River Summit, marking the 15th anniversary of the Mekong River Commission which consists of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
The prime ministers of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam arrived in Hua Hin Sunday for bilateral meetings amid tight security.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is to chair Monday's summit in Hua Hin, 130 kilometres south-west of Bangkok. In the capital, anti-government protestors over the weekend seized a main shopping and hotel district in a bid to force new elections.
The Mekong River, South-East Asia's longest waterway, is at its lowest level in 50 years, raising key questions about how to equitably share the regional resource.
The 4,350-kilometre-long river originates in southern China and meanders through Laos and Thailand into Cambodia, where it feeds Tongle Sap Lake before reaching southern Vietnam and emptying into the South China Sea.
Neither China nor Myanmar are members of the commission, which was set up in 1995 to gather data on the river and bolster regional cooperation in harnessing the waterway.
The first Mekong River Summit comes at a crucial time.
An unusually severe drought in southern China and South-East Asia has brought the river's level to its lowest level in 50 years, halting boat traffic on the waterway and depleting fisheries and irrigation systems on which millions of people depend for their food.
Non-governmental organizations and environmentalist have also blamed China, which has built four hydroelectric dams on the upper Mekong, for contributing to the unusually low water level.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao has joined the Mekong summit in Hua Hin to defend China's dams, which Beijing claims are purely for hydroelectricity generation and therefore do not deplete the river's flow downstream.
"If they have data to prove the dams have no impact on the river's level then they should release it at the Mekong Summit," said Carl Middleton, coordinator of the the Bangkok-based International Rivers Mekong programme.
"Why should they keep it a secret?" he said.
Some 250 Thai activists protested outside the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok on Saturday against China's dams on the Mekong.
People’s Coalition for Justice in Fisheries (Kiara) said Sunday the expansion of brackish fishponds was the main cause of the dwindling mangroves.
Kiara’s secretary general M. Riza Damanik said the deforestation had tipped the environmental balance in coastal areas, especially the declining fish production and rapid abrasions due to high waves.
“The government sees mangrove simply as a commodity that benefits a few people. The mangrove issue has demonstrated the government’s lack of environmental concern.”
The Royal Society, a science academy in Britain, recently released a report about the rapid loss of mangroves all over the world.
In Thailand, each hectare of brackish fishpond yields only US$9,600 for the owner. But the Thai government has to shoulder $1,000 in pollution cost, $12,400 in the loss of ecological functions, $8,400 in subsidies for local community and $9,300 to restore the mangrove forest.
Kiara notes the recent aggressive expansion of oil palm plantations had also worsened the situation because in some areas, the project affects coasts. — JP
But even a highly experienced and hardworking rice farmer like Nguyen Tu is finding it a great challenge to grow crops in the Mekong Delta these days.
"I spent a whole day and whole night pumping water into the rice field, but the little amount of freshwater I got could hardly wash the five hectares of rice immersed in saltwater," Tu tells IPS.
"Every year, I have to wash off saltwater (from our field), but things become worse year after year," he adds, complaining about the build-up of salt on the soil as a result of the intrusion of saline water into the rich river area. "Last year, I got more freshwater for a smaller contaminated area."
Like other South-east Asian countries, Vietnam has a wet and a dry season. In the last decade or so, the dry season seems to have been coming earlier each year – and then staying far longer.
This has spelled disaster for farmers in the six Vietnamese provinces in the Mekong Delta, where saltwater from the South China Sea can intrude as far as 30 kilometres inland during the dry period. Tu is not sure his winter-spring crops can survive the prolonged dry spell as these are being soaked too long in "so much salt", which destroys soil fertility.
Experts say that rice can grow in water that contains no more than a two- thousandth part of salt, but Kien Giang already has a salinisation of twice that level at present.
The Mekong Delta is Vietnam’s ricebowl, producing half of its annual rice output. Majority of the country’s fruit crops also come from this region. Then again, that was before the changes in weather patterns wreaked havoc on the crops here.
"Weather changes have made a clear impact," Pham Van Du, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture Cultivation of Can Tho, Hau Giang told ‘Vietnam News’ recently. "This means the meteorological conditions of the Lower Mekong have changed slightly; drought becomes severe while water scarcer. This results in more saline water encroaching all parts of the Lower Mekong."
The dry season this year alone came some four months in advance. According to the Institute of Irrigation, there was even saltwater in areas situated from 50 to 70 km off the sea as early as the third week of January.
By February, which used be a month when people still enjoyed cool weather, several "summer" days had many Vietnamese running for fans as temperatures rose to as much as 37 degrees.
There has also been less precipitation compared to previous years. During February, Hanoi had just 60 percent of rain compared to the same period last year, while the Central Highlands and south-west provinces have received no rainfall at all.
Here in the Mekong Delta, no rain has fallen for months now, reducing the volume of underground water. This has not helped the serious salinisation of soil that is now threatening 620,000 hectares of winter-spring crops, based on data released in a workshop presided over by Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat on Mar. 12, at the southern province of Soc Trang.
The Southern Institute for Irrigation also says that the dry spell, shortage of water, and salinisation will worsen by April and May.
Many Mekong Delta farmers, however, say that Mother Nature is not solely to blame for their predicament. They say dams – especially those built by China – on the Mekong River upstream have caused lower water levels downstream, along with reduced river running speeds and altered ecosystems.
Officially, pointing a finger at China is not encouraged in Vietnam, and even experts here usually choose to remain silent on such matters. But recently, Vietnamese experts quoted the online VietnamNet considered the matter on record, although they were also careful to note that other countries, such as Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, had built dams on the river or had plans for such on the Mekong mainstream as well.
Prof Ngo Dinh Tuan, chairman of the Institute for South-east Asian Water Resources and Environment’s Scientific Council said that "the first impact" of Chinese dams built for the production of electricity "would be a remarkable reduction of aquatic resources and the volume of alluvium in the delta, resulting in landslides to balance the alluvial volume. It would be very dangerous for people who live in the lower section."
"If China builds dams to transfer water from the Mekong River to the northern region," he also said, "it would be very dangerous because the water volume going down to the lower section would be reduced considerably."
Deputy director of the national weather service Le Thanh Hai meanwhile told the ‘Tuoi Tre’ newspaper that while the primary cause of the drought is the El Nino phenomenon, "the hydropower plants made extra effort to store up water behind the dams when rainfall proved inadequate to supply these". "When they produce power," he added, "water is released from the dams but not enough to restore the flow in the rivers to normal levels."
Chinese officials who have heard worse from irate Thai farmers have said that the drastic drop in the Mekong has nothing to do with China retaining water upstream. To prove this, China recently invited lower Mekong countries to visit its Jinghong dam to observe how it is being run and why it could not cause any harm to downstream countries.
Vietnam has received and accepted the invitation, said Le Duc Trung, chief executive officer of Vietnam’s Mekong River Commission Office who will lead the country’s delegation to China.
In an interview with ‘Tuoi Tre’ last week, Trung also said that he plans to ask China to strengthen cooperation with downstream countries by supplying more information on its dams, especially documents regarding their resource management data and guidelines. But the date for the visit has yet to be set, Trung said.
On Wednesday, though, Trung used sharper words in an interview with ‘Saigon Tiep Thi’ newspaper. "China could no longer hide the information (about the dams). No country could play alone on its playground, close off information to the outside world."
Earlier this year, Mekong Rice Institute Director Le Van Banh told Radio Free Asia that it was crucial for all Mekong countries to work together to devise methods of sustainable use for the water source. "If each country takes its own action for its own benefits, then all will suffer and the Mekong Delta will endure more damage," he said.
Banh is well placed to comment on selfish behaviour, having witnessed such in the Mekong Delta.
To help farmers make use of the annual cycle of flooding and salinisation, local experts had been promoting a new method of cultivation: alternating the culture of shrimp with that of rice.
During the winter-spring season from January-June, farmers would use saltwater to raise shrimps in their fields. Once the rainy season in June to December came, rainwater would "wash" the fields to make them suitable for rice planting.
A system of dams was built to store floodwater and push back saltwater during the dry season. Unfortunately, some greedy farmers destroyed several of these dams to drive the saline water to their shrimp farms. With the dam system damaged, saltwater has thus now submerged the crops of rice farmers like Nguyen Tu. (END)
Sawadogo, an illiterate peasant farmer in Burkina Faso, has become a celebrity in his village.
He traverses the world's capitals in his open Sahelian sandals to share his expertise with policy-makers.
Undaunted by neighbours who were burning his crop and calling him a madman, this man "single-handedly has had more impact on conservation than all the national and international researchers put together," claims geographer and natural resource management specialist, Dr Chris Reij of the Netherlands, who has followed Sawadogo's agricultural innovation for over 25 years.
Building on a soil nurturing technique known as Zaï handed down from his ancestors, Sawadogo has enabled his village to reclaim the biological and economic productivity of their land, and in the semi-arid Sahel region.
In the language of experts, they have figured out a way to beat land degradation in the drylands, a process referred to, in such regions, as desertification.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the technique has also been used to plant trees in the region and in other villages in Niger.
The results are astounding. Up to 1.5 million people have benefited and 5.2 to 5.3 million hectares of land made suitable for cultivation; an area almost equal to Togo's territory.
Sawadogo's story captures the essence of the environment ministers' message to the African Community last week at their two-day gathering on Wednesday and Thursday, 3-4 March, at the East African Community headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
Meeting at the observance event to mark the African Environment Day held on March 3 every year since 2003, they chose the theme, Africa Resilience to Climate Change: Biodiversity Conservation and Enhancing Traditional Knowledge.
The decision by the ministers to focus on climate change is a bold move for not only is the scientific basis of climate change now under serious attack, but sceptics also claim that climate change has become the scapegoat of any and all of the world's environmental problems, especially in Africa.
Sceptics are correct to the extent that desertification, land degradation and drought remain the primary threats to Africa's future economic, human and environmental wellbeing, as Sawadogo's struggle for survival demonstrates.
Also consider that land degradation costs Africa up to $9.3 billion every year, affects about half of the population, and that by 1990, an area covering 17 per cent of Africa, twice the size of Sudan, was degraded.
Therefore, Africa must not be distracted from its primary focus on combating land degradation and desertification and recovering such land.
There are good economic reasons for this too. With this level of land degradation and a growing population that stands at over 1 billion people today, the region's food security is under serious threat.
Second, and fortunately, the demand for food is set to increase globally in the next 40 years, and Africa and Latin America are the two regions with the greatest potential to increase food production to meet this global food demand.
This is a big opportunity for Africa's agricultural sector.
With a little support, self-motivated people like Sawadogo and Mati can achieve unimaginable economic fortunes.
Experts agree that agriculture remains the most effective route out to eradicate poverty in Africa.
Lastly, there is strong evidence that the recovery of land is possible.
In fact, a large proportion of the degraded land recovered over the last two decades is in the dryland regions.
The constraint to rapid and vast progress is the lack of trust and faith to invest in peasants like Sawadogo who dominate land production in such regions.
The threat of climate change, however, is a challenge Africa must not ignore because the gains made so far by Sawadogo and others are still not sufficiently widespread to absorb the anticipated climate shocks such as high moisture loss, more intense and frequent droughts, water scarcity and increased pressure on the land.
Meantime, and as scholars debate these issues, the achievements of Africa's peasants and farmers who have painstakingly made incredible gains with modest support risk being rolled back by peculiar droughts such as that which hit Africa last year.
Africa must take measures to climate-proof all the sectors that could be adversely affected by a warming climate.
So how do biodiversity conservation and traditional knowledge fit into this equation?
There are four ways to deal with climate change.
One is to cut down emissions, but Africa's contribution is miniscule at the moment, so its investment needs to be channeled elsewhere.
Inaction is an irresponsible response because it makes room for future political instability, should the crisis eventually unfold at the projected levels.
Waiting to respond as events unfold, which is adaptation, is a reactive and expensive tactic; an incoherent firefighting approach with short- and medium-term solutions.
A country may also opt for resilience, the comprehensive national approach to planning measures that will safeguard the economic basis and wellbeing of the people and environment against climate change shocks, so that long-term sustainable development in the country is not hampered.
As is evident from the African Environment Day theme, the ministers call for resilience, with traditional knowledge and biodiversity conservation as centrepieces.
Ironically, the value of traditional knowledge and the role of local populations are in the Copenhagen accords.
But as demonstrated by peasants in West Africa, the continent has affordable technologies that can be built upon to help its economies to withstand the climate shock.
But these have to be accompanied by a determined effort to scale up and to scale out this experience and knowledge. But it is a race against time.
Experts agree that in Africa, land degradation often takes the form of soil erosion and loss of organic matter, the same challenge that Sawadogo's Zaï technique seeks to rectify.
His ancestors had long discovered that digging pit holes to bury manure attracts termites that break down the organic matter which produces needed plant nutrients that enhance land productivity.
But given the climate crisis, prospects are dim for climate-vulnerable island nations like the Seychelles. Half of its population lives in coastal areas directly exposed to rising ocean levels, coastal erosion, flooding, and erratic rainfall. The island is also heavily dependent on agriculture, with 70 percent of crops located in the coastal areas and subject to increasingly common saltwater tidal surges. The rising waters thus threaten the livelihoods of the people of Seychelles, as well as the existence of the island itself.
According to projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, many of these island nations are likely to disappear by the end of 21st century. One reason may be the increasing scarcity of fresh water sources. “The Seychelles, in particular, is almost entirely dependent on surface water and therefore highly vulnerable,” revealed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The future of this paradise isn't as immediately dire as the Maldives, its fellow member of the Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS) formed in the lead-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. The lowest country on the planet, the Maldives has a maximum ground level of 7.5 feet (one inch below the height of Chinese basketball player, Yao Ming). But the Seychelles would be one of the next islands in line if the water level doesn’t stop rising.
The sad irony, however, is that despite producing little in the way of carbon emissions, both island nations may have contributed to their own demise. After all, the Seychelles and the Maldives share the same secret underpinning to their respective economies. More than 50 percent of AOSIS members are secrecy jurisdictions, misleadingly labeled as offshore centers and tax havens. These economies — characterized by opaque legal and financial services ensuring little or no disclosure, high levels of client confidentiality, and few requirements for substantial economic activity — are recipients of illicit capital. These laundered profits have been siphoned from resource-rich but artificially impoverished developing nations.
Such island hubs act as key facilitators of the network by providing offshore financial services, remotely controlled from onshore head offices such as the City of London. Mobile units of lawyers, bankers, and accountants serve as the intermediaries between white-gloved multinationals and black-gloved political elites. The money that could otherwise go toward reducing the carbon footprint of multinationals and funding sustainable development in developing countries is instead sunk in island accounts. And that money may well end up sinking the islands themselves.
Presently, almost $13 trillion in secrecy-protected wealth is held offshore and out of reach. If moderately taxed, these funds would yield over $250 billion. Such funds could more than finance the Millennium Development Goals, which are estimated by the World Bank at $40-$60 billion annually through 2015. They could also go toward the adaption and mitigation funds needed by developing and emerging nations, which the UN puts at $4-86 billion annually.
But the recovery of this illicit capital will be difficult. The islands that host these accounts are dependent on this revenue. The economy of the Seychelles is dependent on the financial sector for 11 percent of its GDP. This puts the Seychelles not far behind the notorious Cayman Islands, the world’s fifth largest financial center, where financial services account for 14 percent of GDP. Switzerland, which launders one-third of all illicit capital, depends on financial services for 15 percent of its GDP.
Most island economies are politically and economically dependent on major economies like the United Kingdom and the United States. They compete to be the offshore repository of choice by offering opaque financial and legal services and low or zero tax rates. Through these secrecy services, developed governments are also on the final receiving end of illicit flight from regions like sub-Saharan Africa, which is a net creditor to developed nations.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and the fifth largest exporter to the United States. Since the 1960s, the country’s political and military elite has stolen more than $400 billion in oil revenues from Nigeria’s citizenry and deposited it in secrecy jurisdictions such as Switzerland. Meanwhile, despite the extravagant promises of multinationals like Chevron operating in the country, Nigeria’s people have become progressively poorer. The extractive industries have generated considerable opposition, human rights violations, and violence. And the mass ecological degradation is pegged at $5 billion per annum.
Africa does not share much responsibility for global warming. The continent only contributes 3 percent of global greenhouse emissions. But the extractive industries that operate in Africa are major emitters. Shell, for instance, emits more greenhouse gasses than many countries: Its carbon emissions of 102 million tons in 2005 exceeded the emissions of 150 countries.
Although Africa occupies a small carbon footprint, the continent’s autocratic regimes in Angola, Nigeria, the Congo, and Gabon are located at the base of the commodity chain and depend primarily on the capital-intensive extractive industries that supply the world’s largest carbon-intensive engines with a significant share of fuel. But neither the corrupt regimes nor the corporations that financed and facilitated global warming made it to the Copenhagen agenda.
The discussions at the climate change conference in Copenhagen last year focused on “developed” and “developing” nations, and the new market for carbon offsets. Industrialized governments created these carbon permits from thin air and allocated them to the largest multinationals with the largest carbon footprints. The latter architects of the system, Goldman Sachs, with foreign subsidiaries criss-crossing the globe from the Bermuda to the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong to Jersey, Ireland, the British Virgin Islands and Africa’s own world-famed hub, Mauritius, not only designed the huge carbon market, but also hold a 10 percent share in Al Gore’s Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) — the pilot carbon trading program in the United States.
Gore’s CCX, whose board includes top VIPs such as the UN’s Kofi Annan and the World Bank’s James Wolfensohn, had advocated for the privatization of the atmosphere as far back at the Rio Earth Summit.
One well-publicized engine of the new carbon trade is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which enables polluters to circumvent caps by financing projects in the developing world that emit little or no carbon. Yet, according tostudies by Stanford University’s Energy and Sustainable Development Program, “between a third and two-thirds” of CDM projects do not represent real reductions.
Meanwhile, G20 governments subsidized fossil fuels to the tune of $300 billion in 2009. So, as the G20 spends its time creating a carbon trade market that does little to reduce carbon emissions, multinationals continue to expand their extractive enterprises, dictators continue to siphon off capital, financial firms cash in on pollution credits, and this illicit capital continues to flow into offshore locations that are themselves threatened by the rising waters associated with global warming.
China needs electricity. But what does this mean for the Nu River,one of only two major rivers in China yet to be dammed? Credit:Gordon Ross/IPS
It was here that Christian missionaries from Burma first entered China, and today communities of ethnic Nu and Tibetans remain passionately Catholic, attending mass in small churches and chanting under pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
It is one of the country’s most remote and fascinating places, and one of only two major rivers in China yet to be dammed.
But that may not last.
In 2003, a consortium of power companies proposed building 13 dams along the Nu (the name means "angry", referring to the river’s spring surge), a project that would produce more electricity than the Three Gorges Dam, which spans the Yangtze in Hubei province. The move brought together China’s fledgling environmental movement, which launched a vocal campaign to keep the Nu free-flowing.
National and international press picked up the story, and in 2004 Premier Wen Jiabao ordered a halt to the project and a full environmental assessment – a crucial victory for China’s environmentalists.
The victory was shortlived. The environmental assessment was never released to the public. The government claimed that because the Nu is an international river – known outside of China as the Salween – development plans fell under state secrecy law.
The project was scaled down from 13 dams to four, and preliminary work went ahead despite Wen’s edict. In March 2008, the State Development and Reform Commission published its five-year plan for energy development, which listed dams on the Nu as key projects.
Today, the construction of a small dam on a tributary to the Nu, just south of the Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), is nearly complete.
In 2007, residents of Xiaoshaba, a village of some 120 families upstream from the city of Liuku, were relocated into newly-built apartment blocks to make way for a power station. Meanwhile, in Burma to the south a planned dam project will produce electricity that will be sold back to China.
Last May, Premier Wen once again stopped the projects until a full environmental assessment is completed. But observers say that when the 67-year-old premier steps down in 2012, the projects will resume.
While environmentalists remain staunchly opposed to damming the Nu, the controversy is not black and white. China is hungry for energy and 80 percent of the country’s electrical supply is currently provided by dirty coal-fired plants. Hydropower, which accounts for just 15 percent of China’s electricity, is seen as a cleaner – albeit controversial – alternative.
The dams could also bring much needed jobs to the impoverished Nu region. The local government has estimated that just 20 percent of residents in the region have electricity, something the dams could remedy.
Along the Nu, opinion varies. Kristen McDonald, an American who interviewed 200 villagers along the river for her graduate thesis, found that roughly one third support the project, one third opposes and one third are undecided.
In Xiaoshaba, the relocated village made up primarily of Lisu people, residents said they are generally happy with their new homes – rows of spacious two-storey apartments a few kilometres from the old village.
"The old village and the new one are pretty much the same," says Li Yu Xin, a 40-year-old mini-bus driver who receives a monthly relocation subsidy of 800 renminbi (117 U.S. dollars) along with his apartment. "The only problem is we can’t keep animals – there’s no room for them. But I like the new one fine. I support the central government’s decision."
Further upstream, near the town of Bingzhongluo, one villager, a Tibetan trekking guide, is less certain about the benefits of damming the Nu. The villager, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals, is in the fifth year of what he hopes will be a 20-year video documentary project chronicling the impact of the dams.
"People are more and more aware of the changes that would come from the dam, and they know they’re not good," he says. "I worry about how we’re going to keep these villages alive."
Indeed, local culture will be jeopardised should the project go ahead, says Wang Yongchen, a journalist and co-founder of the Beijing-based NGO Green Earth Volunteers, a group that was actively involved in the initial fight to save the Nu. Many villagers will have to be relocated from their traditional homes to cities up- and downstream. In one area near Liuku, a traditional Lisu bathing site will be washed away.
"If you dam the river, their culture, their tradition, disappears," Wang says.
Dam opponents are hoping that an ongoing public awareness campaign will rally increasingly environmentally-conscious Chinese to call upon their government to protect the Nu and other areas like it.
Travis Winn, a 26-year-old American who, with McDonald, co-founded China Rivers Project, a non-profit that aims to protect China’s river heritage, hosts rafting trips to the Nu and other rivers with influential and wealthy Chinese who are in a position to take action.
"The science is there – the dams don’t make a lot of sense. But unless there’s a more personal aspect to this, the science isn’t very useful. That’s what we’re trying to do, make a personal connection," Winn says. "The universal response is, ‘I’ve never had this experience before. I never thought China had such beautiful places.’ It’s the time of their lives." (END)
Indonesia's forests are home to a wealth of species and are one of the world's biological treasures. But the rate of deforestation there is faster than anywhere else in the world.
Deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gases
The study by the Rights and Resources Initiative said the funds could place "unprecedented pressure" on some areas.
Six nations offered $3.5bn as part of global plans to cut deforestation, which accounts for about 20% of all emissions from human activity.
Campaigners warn the scheme fails to consider the rights of forest people.
The money - tabled by Japan, Norway, Australia, France and the US and UK - was made available under the UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd) scheme.
However, delegates in the Danish capital failed to reach agreement on the mechanisms needed to monitor and manage the framework.
"One of the things that the world has learned over the years is that Redd is far more difficult than many people imagined," said Andy White, co-ordinator of RRI, a US-based think-tank, and one of the report's lead authors.
"The forested areas of the world - by and large - have very high levels of poverty, low levels of respect for local rights, and a very low level of control among local people to shape and control their destiny.
"So the rather simplistic notion that money from the rich North can control or limit deforestation was unrealistic."
Redd was developed as a global concept that would provide developing countries with a financial incentive to preserve forests.
The Copenhagen conference was expected to finalise an international Redd finance mechanism for the post-2012 global climate change framework.
The RRI's report, The End of the Hitherlands, said that there would be "unparalleled" attention and investment in forests over the coming year.
It asked: "But who will drive the agenda and who will make the decisions?"
The authors said studies showed that there was the potential for "enormous profits", but this would lead to increased competition for forest resources between governments and investors on one hand, and local communities on the other.
Dr White told BBC News that the UN-Redd scheme still had "tremendous potential".
"It requires, from our perspective, that the governments who tabled the $3.5bn quickly get together and decide on the standards and mechanisms that they will set up," he suggested.
"This would send the necessary signals to the private sector, as well as forest-rich nations, about what is expected from them in order to comply with the policy.
"Sorting out the institution arrangements in developing nations in order to manage the forest market is a huge undertaking."
But the report said that the "unprecedented exposure and pressure" on forest regions was being met by a rise in local groups setting up co-operatives and representative bodies.
The authors added that it gave "nations and the world at large a tremendous opportunity to right historic wrongs, advance rural development and save forests".
© MMXHobart, Tasmania -- Along with over 400 other people, I turned up to the Wrest Point Casino here to attend the premiere of The Burning Season on June 1. I had the film’s headline -- “As inspiring as The Inconvenient Truth was frightening” in the back of my mind, hoping for a good news story. Instead I sat through a well-orchestrated promo for a carbon trading company, set up by a young Australian-based millionaire whose message was that it is possible to make money and save the environment at the same time.
By setting up a carbon trading company called Carbon Conservation, and brokering high-level deals between big banks and provincial Indonesian governors, the film’s “star”, young entrepreneur Dorjee Sun, was able to secure the protection of large areas of forests that may otherwise have been logged or burnt.
The plight of orangutans that are dying through loss of habitat was a heart-string pulling sideline. The audience was invited to join in the panel discussion at the end with a request for positive comments and an appeal to go beyond the standard, divisive “two-sided forestry debate”. We were implored to see that greenies and woodchippers could find a win-win solution in Tasmania, if only we embraced the innovative new world of carbon trading.
In April 2007 in Bali, Dorjee Sun obtained the support of three provincial governors, Yusuf Irwandi (Aceh), Barnabas Suebu (Papua) and Abraham Atururi (Papua Barat), who subsequently signed an agreement giving Sun the rights to trade the carbon credits represented by their forests. The main project showcased in The Burning Season is the protection of 1.9 million acres of the Ulu Masen forest in Indonesia’s Aceh province, with a scheme whereby companies and individuals can buy credits from the protected forest to offset their own emissions. The project forecasts that the preservation of the Ulu Masen forest will avoid 100 million tons of carbon dioxide over 30 years.
In The Burning Season we watch Sun try and sell his scheme to managers of Starbucks, eBay and other companies, finally clinching a deal with the huge investment bank, Merrill Lynch (now taken over by the Bank of America). We see him take part in behind-the-scenes negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2007 in Bali, where the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) scheme was given provisional support, thus giving his project solid potential.
Deforestation and land use change are responsible for between 18-20% of global greenhouse gas emissions and there is no doubt that Indonesia has a problem with largescale logging and burning of forests. According to the UN 2005 Global Forest Resources Assessment, Indonesia’s deforestation rate from 2000-2005 was the second highest in the world, estimated at approximately one and a half million hectares per year. In 2007, Greenpeace announced that Indonesia had ``won’’ the dubious distinction of having the world’s highest rate of deforestation, then up to around 1.8 million hectares per year. Across the archipelago, 72% of forest has been lost due to legal and illegal clearing, and agriculture-related arson.
Using fire to clear land is a cheap but destructive method and The Burning Season documents the period from August to October 2006, when smoke from burning cleared forests and underlying peat beds in Indonesia spread over much of Asia. The film identified the issue of palm oil production and its financial appeal to locals, but failed to discuss the reasons why – the huge increase in demand from industrialised countries, such as those in Europewhich aim to supply 10 per cent of all vehicle fuel from biofuel by 2020.
Interestingly, The Burning Season’s website explains that decentralisation of power – i.e. the implementation of regional self-government, which takes some of the autonomy back from Jakarta – has been of benefit to the forests in provinces like Aceh, Papua and West Papua, stating that “these traditionally separatist areas are taking control of their forest resources and attempting to find innovative ways to preserve and manage them sustainably. However, lack of capital to manage long-term programs is an issue; and overseas investment is being sought.”
The film includes scenes of local farmers talking to the Indonesian environment organisation WALHI, and points out that WALHI produces public information leaflets about the destructive impact of illegal forest burning as part of an education campaign designed to discourage farmers from unsustainable practices.
Ellen Roberts, member of the Friends of the Earth (FOE) climate justice collective in Melbourne, spoke to me aboutThe Burning Season. She said that WALHI is the name of FOE Indonesia and that it (along with FOE International) is opposed to any market-based REDD. “We are concerned that by including WALHI activists in a film which is promoting market-based REDD schemes, and by not making their opposition clear, the filmmakers have misrepresented WALHI’s stance on the issue, implying that they support the scheme”, Roberts said. “In fact WALHI has released a document called REDD Wrong Path: Pathetic Ecobusiness.”
Roberts pointed out that “unless you deal with demands that have been driving the deforestation, (in Indonesia’s case massive demand for timber and pulp from the USA, Japan and China) then locking up one forest may just mean that another forest gets logged, whether this is in another part of the same county, or a different country.”
The WALHI report states: “Another concern with linking REDD to markets relates to the issue of national sovereignty over natural resources. Both at the national and community levels we may see a loss of autonomy over natural resources as third parties gain increasing influence over natural resource decisions. Also, as REDD increases the value of forests, governments may be discouraged from conceding customary land rights to Indonesia's indigenous forest-dependent peoples.”
How much say indigenous people have over these proposals is also an issue of contention. In a presentation to the Asia Pacific Climate Change Conference in March 2009 in Bangkok, Thailand, the Indigenous Peoples Network of Malaysia Working Group on Climate Change pointed out that under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination, the right to their land and the right to determine development, many of which are being ignored by the REDD schemes. They call for indigenous peoples to be able to determine for themselves whether to participate or benefit from REDD and to have a mechanism for ``opting out’’ their forest from national accounting if the indigenous community so requests.
According to Michelle Chen in an April 27, 2009, article on Race Wire, the Indigenous People’s Global Summit on Climate Change, held in Alaska in April 2009, “highlighted indigenous opposition to conventional carbon trading schemes” and expressed alarm that the World Bank will play a key role in financing and implementing REDD. In a December 2008 interview, Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network criticised REDD as a kind of "corruption of the sacred", saying
"To be involved with a system that defines something that we hold sacred, and that is the sacred element of air, to be part of a neo-colonial system that privatises the atmosphere, to put a money value to it, creates resistance from our heart.”
Mongabay.com in its April 21 news story about a newly discovered species of chameleon from Tanzania being named after Dorjee Sun(!), stated that Sun’s Aceh deal could eventually generate more than $400 million in carbon finance.
According to WALHI, which investigated the project’s sales and marketing agreement signed in July 2008, 30% of the credits generated will be set aside as a "risk management buffer" (presumably to account for concerns over permanence) and the remaining 70% sold. The proceeds from the sale of these credits will be managed by a "collection agent" to be jointly selected by Carbon Conservation and the Aceh government. After the collection agent has taken its fee (the amount of which is not clear), the remainder is distributed 15% to Carbon Conservation as a marketing fee and 85% to the project account. The project account will be used to distribute funds to the local communities. Both the collection agent and Carbon Conservation potentially stand to make large amounts of money out of the scheme.
Approximately 130,000 people live in and immediately adjacent to the Ulu Masen project area, and around 61 villages will be affected by the project. The project claims it will contribute to sustainable economic and social development and biodiversity conservation through the use of land use planning and reclassification, increased monitoring and law enforcement, reforestation, restoration and sustainable community logging. Interestingly, Sun said that about 1000 former Free Aceh rebels will be employed to guard the forests. But the distribution of project account funds will be managed by a steering committee on which WALHI states that local people are “grossly under represented”.
According to the film’s website, “The carbon trading market is now worth about $30 billion, but could grow to $1 trillion within a decade. In its flourishing, wild-west exhilaration, the carbon trading boom resembles the gold rush and the dotcom explosion of the early ‘90s.” It goes on to say “Ultimately, REDD’s conservation of forests is a happy by-product of the real motivation: profit. Carbon traders investing in ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration are hoping to reap the rewards of the rising value of the forest, offsetting pollution against purification. For this reason, some traditional conservationists regard carbon trading with skepticism -- after all, wouldn’t it be better just to stop polluting, rather than trying to compensate for it after the damage is done?” The filmmakers push these issues aside, arguing that “while this question is being debated, time is running out for standing forests. Irrespective of its palatability, the profit motive is an effective way of saving the forest today.”
By making a one-sided film on such a controversial issue, the filmmakers have attempted to hide the debate, and instead try to convince us that a simplistic solution is possible – pay the locals to protect rather than log their forests.
The Burning Season includes just one short acknowledgement of the widespread concern among environmentalists about carbon trading and carbon offsetting, in the form of a statement from an environmentalist based in Indonesia. He pointed out the major flaw in such schemes – the way they allow big polluting companies in the developed world to continue polluting by simply paying to reduce emissions elsewhere.
WALHI says in its report: “There lies an inherent danger in market-based REDD. By allowing Northern countries to use market-based REDD they will be able to evade responsibility for reducing emissions in their own countries. This must be recognised as a serious and fundamental flaw with allowing REDD credits to be included in carbon markets. “
If companies can simply offset their pollution by buying carbon credits through this scheme, the overall level of greenhouse gas emissions is not going to fall. We are being asked to satisfy ourselves with saving forests in the short term even while knowing that it is not linked to reducing overall emissions. There may be some merits in saving our virtually irreplaceable old-growth forests that store way more carbon than plantation forests, but scientists are telling us that we are in a climate emergency, and we need to reduce emissions drastically now. So we need to accept nothing less than saving our forests and reducing the emissions of the polluting companies.
The film’s website even tries to scare us into thinking this carbon-trading model is our only option if we want to preserve our quality of life, saying: “The alternative to 'cap and trade' is that we just pollute less by sacrificing the things we have that make pollution. Number one on that list is fossil fuel and anything that runs on it: your car. Your TV. Your air-conditioner and central heating. Your kettle. Your computer and iPod.”
Actually there are many other strategies for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, especially in developed countries. What about the straight-forward approach of harnessing our taxes and using government regulation and nationalisation to make a fast transition to renewable energy, public transport, organic agriculture, energy efficient production and building standards.
With the recent deep crisis of the capitalist market system, it is hard to believe that some people support creating a new market (trading carbon credits) in an effort to deal with such a fundamental issue as stopping climate change. Can we leave such a thing up to a market system? In a June 8, 2009, article on the website of Mother Jones magazine, Rachel Morris warns that the proposed US carbon trading scheme “will generate, almost as an afterthought, a new market for carbon derivatives. That market will be vast, complicated, and dauntingly difficult to monitor. And if Washington doesn't get the rules right, it will be vulnerable to speculation and manipulation by the very same players who brought us the financial meltdown.”
The WALHI report warns that “Carbon markets have already proven to be not only complex, but also subject to significant volatility. If the price of carbon were to collapse, payments to local forest dependent communities could quite conceivably plunge below subsistence levels.”
Roberts pointed out that “Australia is pushing the scheme because it’s an easy way of making emissions reductions. Garnaut supports it as a way of Australian businesses covered by CPRS [Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme] being able to meet their targets. In the final draft of the CPRS, the federal government removed any cap on the use of international carbon credits, and Treasury modeling predicts that by 2050, imported permits will be offsetting 200 million tonnes of Australian Co2. These 200 million tonnes will cut Australia's emissions by half from 400 million tonnes.”[1] But, if by helping to fund reduced deforestation in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, Australian companies are not doing anything about their own emissions, it’s a farce. “The more time and energy we spend on offset schemes the more we delay the transformation to a low carbon society”, Roberts said.
Gemma Tillack, climate change and forests campaigner for the Wilderness Society Tasmania (TWS), recently returned from the UN climate negotiations for the post-Kyoto climate deal in Bonn. She spoke to me about the REDD schemes.
Tillack said that there is a shared understanding that the next climate deal must ensure the reduction of global emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. In order for a REDD mechanism or the next climate treaty to work it needs to focus primarily on helping developing countries and indigenous peoples and local communities protect their intact primary forests, end deforestation and stop industrial logging of primary forests.
Tillack said that as negotiations go on and countries realise the large sums of money that could be available through REDD schemes, many countries are pushing for the scope of REDD to be broadened from focusing on avoiding deforestation and forest degradation to including afforestation and reforestation (plantations), sustainable forest management (logging) and conservation.
This has happened because some countries want to be paid to establish plantations and tree crops, including palm oil trees. Other countries that have protected their forests want to receive some form of compensation for foregoing previous and future development opportunities, including industrial logging and mining. Other countries want to get paid for planting and harvesting timber, palm oil and other crops (afforestation and reforestation).
The inclusion of plantations is a worrying development because if this type of activity is included in REDD, it may lead to a subsidised increase in logging of primary forests, and the conversion of natural forests to palm oil and fibre plantations, like what is currently happening in Indonesia. This would be a climate and biodiversity disaster.
This perverse outcome is possible because the current definition of forests used in the Kyoto Protocol is likely to be used in the next climate deal. This definition is inaccurate and doesn’t differentiate between native forests and plantations. This means that a country can convert a natural forest to a plantation or a palm-oil tree crop, and as far as the climate treaty is concerned the tree crop is still a forest, and deforestation (or the permanent removal of the forest) has not occurred.
Tillack said that a natural forest is a biodiverse, resilient ecosystem that stores a lot more carbon than a plantation or agricultural tree crop. It is vital that if REDD is part of the climate deal it includes safeguards that would rule out the conversion of natural forests to plantations, ensure the protection of the human rights and the free, prior and informed consent and involvement of indigenous peoples and local communities, and protects biodiversity and water supplies.
There are of a number of trial REDD schemes that have begun since the UN talks in Bali. These ``REDD readiness’’ projects are at various stages of development in more than 25 countries, including countries that have high forest cover or high rates of deforestation. Most of these projects are using funds managed by the World Bank and are aiming to prepare countries to run REDD schemes to help mitigate climate change in the next climate treaty commitment period, which begins in 2012. Some of these trial projects have had significant impacts on indigenous peoples and local communities.
It is vital that the global community, governments and NGOs understand that REDD has the ability to be a positive opportunity for developing countries, indigenous peoples and local communities if it has a clear scope and the right safeguards and funding mechanisms are used. Without adequate safeguards and a focus on forest protection, REDD could drive the displacement of local communities, neglect indigenous peoples’ needs and rights and it could have a negative impact on the natural environment and its contribution to reducing the impact of climate change.
At the moment a majority of countries are supporting the market-driven financing model for REDD. They believe a market mechanism would provide larger amounts of money than a fund. A market mechanism would mean that the market drivers -- corporations and governments -- would control REDD initiatives, instead of local communities, and would exclude the involvement of civil society. This is a concern because of the high prevalence of corruption and the lack of good governance structures in some developing countries. It could also result in perverse environmental outcomes, especially if adequate rules and safeguards are not included in REDD.
Most NGOs and indigenous peoples’ groups are more supportive of a fund-based mechanism as it is considered to be a lot safer and makes it easier for local communities to be involved in protecting their forests. For example, Greenpeace is proposing a fund called ``Forests for Climate’’, which could make funds available to protect tropical forests as early as 2009. Industrialised countries would be allowed to meet some of their overall emission-reduction targets by helping developing countries protect forests, in addition to making deeper cuts in their domestic energy and industrial emissions,
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz and Parshuram Tamang, in their paper commissioned by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, dated May 2007, wrote that “The International Panel on Forests cites, among others, discriminatory international trade, trade distorting policies, structural adjustment programmes, external debt, market distortions and market failure, perverse subsidies, undervaluation of wood and non-wood forest products, and poorly regulated investments as the international underlying causes of deforestation.” WALHI says that “the problem of deforestation in developing countries cannot be divorced from discussions on international trade and Northern patterns of consumption”. Global climate justice demands that industrialised countries take responsibility for this issue, first by addressing their own deforestation problems and second by funding forest preservation projects in developing countries.
Speaking of addressing our own land-clearing and logging problems, according to the Wilderness Society, an average of 20,000 hectares of native forest is logged and burnt each year in Tasmania, around 5000 hectares of which are high-conservation value old-growth forests. Only 4 per cent of our wood ends up as sawn timber products and 85 per cent of the wood from these forests is sold as woodchips to produce paper. Paper is a short-lived product and results in the carbon being released into the atmosphere within an average of three years.
Recent research from the Australian National University shows that cool temperate forests, like those in Tasmania and Victoria are some of the most carbon-dense in the world.Tasmania’s tall wet eucalypt forests can store up to 1500 tonnes of carbon per year. On average logging can reduce the carbon stored in these forests by 40-60% (over two logging rotations). According to a graph in the Tasmanian government’s 2006 Draft Climate Change Strategy for Tasmania, “Land use change and forestry emissions” are the single biggest cause of greenhouse gas emissions in Tasmania.
We have our own “burning season” in Tasmania, usually in autumn when the conditions are right for the state forestry department Forestry Tasmania to use helicopters to drop napalm-like petroleum jelly onto the piles of wood and debris left in logging coupes to create a high-intensity fire, described by the industry as “regeneration burns”. Forestry Tasmania executive general manager Hans Drielsma stated that they did not need to measure the emissions from these burns, telling a Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy on April 23, 2009, "There's no precise work that's been done around that and frankly it's not of any great scientific interest for us to do that."
The question was thrown up to the audience by Sun and the writer/director and co-producer Cathy Henkel at theHobart premiere: Can something similar be done here to save Tassie’s forests?
When asked how you could determine what price to place on these forests, Sun said that it would need to be a price that made it more appealing for business to protect them for their carbon rather than turn them into woodchips.
However, unlike Indonesia, Australia is a wealthy country. With a proper progressive tax system we could easily afford to use taxpayer money to permanently protect and manage our forests. We could generate a modest income from sensitive eco-tourism, certainly more than we gain from selling our forests dirt-cheap to big wood-chipping companies like Gunns Ltd. Most of the forests due to be logged in Tasmania are publicly owned forests and are managed by Forestry Tasmania (on behalf of the Tasmanian government ), and should therefore be managed in the public interest, and in the interests of our children and future generations,
Australian Greens party leader Bob Brown, speaking at a forest campaign fundraiser in Hobart on June 5, made the very good point that if only a fraction of the A$7.4 billion promised in free permits to the fossil fuel industry in the first two years of the CPRS was instead allocated to saving our forests, we could protect them in an instant and see a big drop in overall greenhouse gas emissions.
Tillack said that developing countries want to see the rich industrialised countries like Australia protect their own forests and accurately account for and reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions from logging and land clearing. She also pointed out that “REDD is only for developing countries. It’s up to the industrialised countries to reduce their own emissions asap.”
There are some examples of avoided deforestation in Australia being used to voluntarily offset carbon emissions. Sun’s company Carbon Conservation is involved in a project called Minding the Carbon Store which has enabled Rio Tinto Aluminium to offset some of its emissions by buying stored carbon from a consortium of Queensland farmers who have agreed to forgo their land-clearing permits and keep forests on their land intact. They claim that the projectsaved 12,000 hectares of native Australian vegetation from being cleared and burnt, avoiding around 1,250,000 tonnesCO2e greenhouse gas emissions. It seems that 70–90 per cent of the original vegetation has been cleared or extensively modified prior to the project’s commencement.
With the latest science on the pace of arctic ice melts and the ever-increasing threat of passing crucial climate tipping points, it has become clear that taking strong and urgent action on climate change is imperative. What could be easier than placing a moratorium on logging of native forests to ensure one of our most effective carbon stores are protected?
Tillack believes that the best way to help secure a safe climate is to take action to convince our politicians to make sure Australia adopts strong emissions-reductions targets. “Australia should help peak global emissions by 2015 by making deep and early cuts in our domestic industrial emissions and immediately protect our biodiverse forests. We also need to undertake a full account of the biodiversity values and carbon storage in our forests and native vegetation”, she said.
“We could create a biodiversity fund to support local community-based projects for restoring degraded forests and natural ecosystems across Australia. This could also fund a just transition for forestry workers currently logging biodiverse carbon dense forests, so they can gain long term employment in a plantation based forestry industry that could provide us with all of our domestic wood and paper needs.”
At the moment we don’t account for our emissions from ``managed forests’’ or the logging of native forests. Tillack said that “the proposed CPRS scheme aims to include forests in 2010. This could result in economic incentives for big companies to plant plantations for carbon credits and log native forests for ongoing woodchips exports and wood products. Hence most environment groups do not want forests included in the CPRS, and have asked the government to ensure that the protection of forests is a complimentary measure, and part of a suite of measures to solve the climate change problem.”
The Burning Season plugs a website called ``Ten Things You Can Do’’, which claims that sustainability and abundance can ``co-exist’’ and “the businessman and the environmentalist can join forces”. It promotes many actions related to changing our own lifestyles or donating money, such as using your car less, choosing energy efficient appliances, reducing meat consumption and donating to various rainforest conservation or orangutan protection schemes. Fortunately, it also promotes broader action such as becoming “a visionary leader in your community”, checking out the Australian Conservation Foundation Green Collar Jobs website, signing Greenpeace’s petition for a 100% renewable energy future, encouraging school tree-planting schemes, taking part in debates around the Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference and joining the Australian Youth Climate Coalition.
However throughout the film it promotes the idea that one person can make a difference. The idea of collective political action is not even hinted at. Of course, it is true that one person can achieve a great deal, but faced with the biggest global crisis in history, what we need most of all is system change. We need to change how things are produced (especially electricity), how people travel from A to B, how food is grown and how our natural resources are used
Powerful corporate interests currently have a lot of influence over these things, meaning that we need to use the untapped power we all have when we join together – people’s power -- to plot our path towards a new sustainable society and to push our governments to act. Discussing and debating the issues presented by The Burning Seasoncould be a helpful step along this path.
[The Burning Season was screened in 2008 by broadcast partners ABC (Australia), BBC (UK), CBC (Canada) and distributed worldwide by National Geographic International. It is produced by the Film Finance Corporation Australia and Hatchling Productions and narrated by popular Australian actor Hugh Jackman. It is currently being screened in some cinemas in Australia. Susan Austin is a climate campaigner in Tasmania, and is a member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, a Marxist organisation affiliated to the Socialist Alliance of Australia.]
[1] Chart 3.6 Australia’s Low Pollution Future: The Economics of Climate Change Mitigation,
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Native farmers from Paru Paru in Cuzco's "Potato Park". Credit:Milagros Salazar/IPS
VIENNA, Jul 6 (Tierramérica) - Indigenous peoples risk losing control over their traditional knowledge if the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) insists on strict standards for managing access to information.
Patents and other forms of restricting access to knowledge are very worrisome in a time of climate change, says a new report by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
The study was presented at meetings of the WIPO - a United Nations agency - held Jun. 23-Jul. 3 in Geneva.
"Intellectual property standards restrict use of genetic resources when we need flexibility and adaptability to cope with climate change," said Michel Pimbert, director of IIED's Sustainable Agriculture, Biodiversity and Livelihoods Programme.
WIPO aims to develop rules for protecting rights over traditional knowledge, such as indigenous knowledge about medicinal plants, which conventional intellectual property laws do not cover.
However, according to IIED's Krystyna Swiderska, who coordinated the research in Africa, Asia and Latin America, "WIPO’s call for consistency with existing intellectual property standards is a flawed approach as these have been created on Western commercial lines to limit access to inventions such as drugs developed by private companies."
Intellectual property is about restricting access, creating monopolies and eliminating competition, and it is being pushed by transnational pharmaceutical and seed companies, said Pimbert.
Biotechnology companies are using climate change and promises to develop drought-resistant and heat-tolerant crop varieties, but only if they get tough intellectual property protections, he added.
"Intellectual property standards are in conflict with flexibility and adaptability" necessary for the world to confront climate change, said Pimbert.
IIED report co-author Alejandro Argumedo, a plant scientist for the Quechua-Aymara Association for Nature and Sustainable Development (ANDES) in Peru, believes that traditional communities protect knowledge and resources in precisely the opposite way.
Ideas, seeds and life forms cannot be privatised and access to them must remain non-exclusive and benefits widely shared, he said.
The Quechua communities in the Cuzco region of southern Peru have used their customary laws to manage more than 2,000 varieties of potatoes in what is considered the centre of origin of this important food crop, Argumedo told Tierramérica.
During the 1970s, many of those varieties were taken and stored at the International Potato Centre (CIP), located outside of Lima.
Meanwhile, government policies for modernising agriculture led to the widespread use of pesticides, fertilisers and new varieties in large monocultures, which resulted in the loss of many traditional potato varieties.
To counter that trend, six communities formed the 10,000-hectare "Parque de la Papa" (Potato Park) and have "repatriated" 400 of their varieties stored at the CIP under a special agreement. Another 300 varieties will be planted in October, he said.
"The CIP understands that the intellectual property is in the community and that customary laws are important for the management of seed variety," Argumedo said.
The communities developed their own agreement for sharing the benefits derived among themselves, based on traditional principles. Potatoes are more than food; they are a cultural symbol and important to all aspects of life for the Quechua, he said.
"To have potatoes, there must be land, people to work it, a culture to support the people, Mother Earth and the mountain gods," Argumedo said.
Like many other indigenous peoples, the Kuna of Panama have developed their own protocol for access to traditional knowledge, based on customary norms.
A proposal from a researcher outside the community, for instance, has to be submitted to the Kuna general congress, discussed with the authorities of its 49 communities, and accepted by the community and traditional knowledge holders, the IIED report says.
The report also warns that the loss of such customary approaches would lead to a loss of biological diversity and traditional knowledge, and would ultimately limit the abilities of poor communities to adapt to climate change through, for instance, sharing climate-resilient plant varieties.
"In the face of climate change, keeping diverse, resilient ecosystems is one of the strongest tools for adaptation," said Argumedo.
"Indigenous peoples' worldviews don't have a place within WIPO," he added.
While WIPO does offer an international forum to debate these worldviews and their implications, countries can circumvent any rules to protect traditional knowledge by setting up bilateral trade agreements.
In its free trade agreement with the United States, Peru ignores the Andean Community trade bloc agreement regarding the protection of traditional knowledge, said Argumedo.
This bilateral agreement opens the door to bioprospecting by U.S. companies and the growing of genetically engineered crops, which Argumedo says have the potential to "destroy the richness of our landscapes."
According to Pimbert, even if WIPO were to establish rules favourable to indigenous knowledge, the United States, Canada and European Union will happily bypass them.
At the same time, traditional knowledge and customary rules are not frozen in time, but are highly dynamic and incorporate new ideas and concepts such as human rights on their own terms, he said.
"What we have here (at WIPO) is a huge clash of values," Pimbert said.
This is by no means a new battle: in fact, Tasmanian industrial foresters and environmentalists have been fighting over the issue of clearcutting the island’s forests for decades. The battle—some would probably prefer 'war'—is over nothing less than the future of Tasmania.
Some Tasmanians see the rich forests that surround them in terms of income, dollars and cents; they see money literally growing on trees, or more appropriately growing on monoculture plantations and government owned native forests. They see the wilderness of Tasmania as an exploitative resource.
Others see a wild and unique place that is vital for the preservation of biodiversity, river health, and mitigating climate change. They see a place that has an intrinsic value beyond ecosystem services or natural resource extraction: a place of beauty and spirituality. In their eyes it is an ecosystem that should remain largely untouched.
Clear-cut in Tasmania. Photo by: Pete Godfrey.
Finally others, probably a minority, believe it could be both—that given the right managers forests could be harvested in a carefully selected way and still preserve the biodiversity, water, air, and unique beauty of the island.
Frank Strie, ecological forester and president of Timber Workers for Forests, is in the last category. While he is profoundly upset by the system of forestry employed in Tasmania—what he describes as "wanton destruction"—he does believe in the ability to use forests as resources, while at same time maintaining a healthy vibrant diverse forest.
German born and educated, Strie moved to Tasmania in 1987 to work as a Training Development Officer for the forestry industry. "I resigned from my position after just 18 month in disgust," he says, adding that "I know this industry very well and I am doing [everything] in my power to expose the mismanagement and corruption."
The issue is so hot that protests have continued steadily over the past decade. Thousands have taken part in marches against a new proposed pulp mill, while more intrepid activists have established camps in logging areas or practice sit-ins in trees. The camps have been raided by police several times with arrests following. Allegations fly on both sides. Activists claim that police have used violence against them; the forestry industry accuses activists of laying potentially deadly booby traps. Clearly, communication has broken down.
Clear-cut at Caveside near Chudleigh in Tasmania as seen from Google Earth. Image courtesy of Pete Godfrey.
One wonders if the polarization of the two sides would have developed had not Forestry Tasmanian (the government corporation in charge of forestry) and Gunns Limited (the powerful corporation heading up industrial forestry on the island) been increasingly seen to be engaged in what critics consider poor stewardship and corruption at the cost of Tasmania’s wildlife and people.
"The decades of mismanagement and deliberate conversion of mixed age, mixed species forests to simplistic tree crops has massive impact on social, environmental and in fact commercial impact on other industries and employment in the forest / timber industry," Frank Strie says.
According to Strie this mismanagement has cost Tasmanian ecosystems greatly: for one thing, he says, the loss of diverse forests has impacted rainfall in a region where many believe climate change has already led to longer and more intense droughts.
"Today [June 1st] we learned from the weather bureau that the North East third of Tasmania only had between 10 percent to 20 percent of the monthly rainfall. However as we know from other regions of massive climate change events, when the heavy rain returns it will fall on a reduced landscape surface area, thus the runoff is rapid and will erode more and more land, valuable soil and nutrients get transferred from the upper catchments downstream and they ultimately end in the estuaries of the island and the sea," Strie explains. In addition, he adds that there is a "major direct impact on the hydrology of streams and rivers."
Forestry Tasmania immediately counters against such accusations. "We harvest around 1 percent of state forest for wood products each year, and all harvested areas are regrown," Meaghan Newson of Forestry Tasmania says. "Native forests are regrown without the use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers."
Plantation at Chudleigh. Photo by: Pete Godfrey.
She goes on to point out that "Tasmania is one of the most protected places on earth. No less than 45 per cent of Tasmania's forests are protected within the World Heritage Area, national parks, forest reserves and other reserves. One million hectares, or 79 per cent of all old growth forest, is protected in reserves in Tasmania. This level of conservation exceeds international benchmarks."
In Tasmania the term 'old growth forest' means that it "is equal to / like 'virgin forest', meaning untouched by white man. Mature mixed native forest is a better term for old growth-like forest that may have or may not had any disturbance / tree felling since white settlement," says Strie.
It is clear that Forestry Tasmania and critics like Strie have a fundamental difference in how they view Tasmania’s forests. For Strie, the clear felling of forests—where the entire area is logged in one go—is an archaic form of forestry that should no longer be viable.
"The present kind of forestry / logging / woodchip export industry was established over a period of some 36 years, at first to 'clean up the rubbish on the forest floor' but ultimately to get a maximum commercial short-term gain out of the rich forests and catchments, but […] this is now for fewer and fewer people and companies," Strie says.
Certainly, Tasmania's clearcutting brings in money and creates jobs—but what does this mix of mature native forests and plantations eventually go on to produce?
A report called 'Oldgrowth for Export' by The Wilderness Society and Still Wild Still Threatened found that 86 percent of Tasmania's extracted wood ends up as woodchips for export. Most of the woodchips make their way to Asia. At least 20 percent go to Tasmania’s biggest customer, Japan. These woodchips are then made into paper.
Gunns Ltd. woodchip mill in Tasmania. Photo courtesy of the Wilderness Society.
In 2007 the trade suffered further embarrassment when a report from RAN (Rainforest Action Network) showed that the Japanese corporation Nippon Paper had misled its consumers about its source for paper. While the company claimed that it was not sourcing from old growth (or mature mixed) forests, the investigation found that in fact old growth forests in Tasmania had gone to make Nippon’s paper.
"The Australian government has publicly stated that at least 2,500 hectares of old growth forests are logged annually in Tasmania," Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Green Party, told RAN. "Any claims that Tasmania’s old growth forests are protected are patently untrue."
Less than 5 percent of Tasmania's wood becomes solid wood products. According to 'Oldgrowth for Export' 78 percent of the original tall-eucalypt forests have already been cleared or are currently open to logging.
For critics the fact that Tasmania's forests are being ground down to wood chips for paper appears to add salt to the wound, making it even more difficult for the sides to see eye-to-eye.
Napalm is a gelled flammable liquid, developed in the US during World War II and employed heavily in the Vietnam War. One doesn't usually connect napalm with forestry, but allegedly Tasmania's forestry industry is using napalm (or something similar) to firebomb areas that have been clear-felled for plantations.
Burning of forests by helicopter near Meander Dam. Photo by: Pete Godfrey.
They have been "doing it for decades," alleges Strie, "and it turns our normally crystal clear air and sky into terrible, global pollution. The day temperature […] of logging burn-offs by helicopter and drip torch is simply a criminal act to all on this planet."
Newson told mongabay.com otherwise: "Forestry Tasmania does not use napalm to clear forests." However, the government-owned company does say that they employ controlled burning after logging. "Eucalypt forests are fire-adapted and regenerate through the use of fire. In wet eucalypt forests, an ash bed must be created through planned regeneration burning to provide the young trees with light and nutrients to grow," Newson explains.
Despite their claim that they do not use napalm—perhaps it is simple matter of 'nomenclature', since the term 'napalm' relates both to a specific type of gelled flammable substance or any general gelled flammable substance—the process of firebombing is a matter of course in Tasmania’s forestry industry.
"Logging occurs, napalm is dropped and instantly huge mushrooms clouds of smoke, greenhouse gases are released to the atmosphere. Many people are surprised that a practice such as this occurs in a developed country like Australia," Paul Oosting explains.
Oosting, a Pulp Mill Campaigner for The Wilderness Society, Tasmania, is involved with the most recent battle between environmentalists and the forestry industry. This fight is over Gunns' proposal for a new pulp mill in the Tamar Valley in northern Tasmania.
A pulp mill in New Zealand. Photo courtesy of The Wilderness Society.
"[The proposed mill] is a major Australian environmental issue due to the far reaching impacts the project would have on jobs, climate, biodiversity and communities," says Oosting. "Gunns […] made statements that they would abide by the independent assessment of the pulp mill but they later pulled out of the independent assessment and since then there has been NO assessment of the pulp mills impact on native forests, wildlife or climate change."
One of the criticisms that have occurred again and again—including regarding the proposed mill in Tamar Valley—is the perceived coziness between the forestry industry and the government, both local and national.
"Gunns has received a lot of support from the State Government," Oosting explains, using the mill as an example. "When it looked like the independent assessment of the pulp mill would not approve Gunns project they pulled out of the assessment. The government then rushed legislation through parliament and approved the mill without an independent assessment or public input. It was then revealed that Gunns own lawyers were involved with the government in drafting legislation to approve the pulp mill. Gunns also has an ex-Premier of Tasmania on its Board."
Strie sees the relationship between Gunns and the government as inherently corrupt.
"Gunns and Forestry Tasmania and other large companies working hand in hand with the Forestry Union (CFMEU) and the Tasmanian Forest Industries Association (FIAT) are so powerful that they have for the last two decades converted the Liberal and Labor [parties] into lame supporters of the wanton destruction. It is greedy, grubby and third world banana republic stuff!" he says. "The collusion of the Tasmanian Government and the Forest Industry mafia has established with great effect and public expense a process that divides the community and exploits the opportunities."
Helicopter taking off near Meander Dam. Photo by: Pete Godfrey.
While unwilling to comment on its relationship to Gunns, Forestry Tasmania claims it has successfully managed a rare thing in the developed world: a climate-friendly industry, one that is a carbon sink rather than a carbon emitter.
"Research carried out by independent consultants MBAC Consulting of Melbourne for Forestry Tasmania estimates that between now and 2050, Tasmania’s state forest will absorb 31 million tons more atmospheric carbon than it will release, making Tasmania’s state forests a net sink of carbon," Newson says. "That represents an average annual increase of 720,000 tons, or 24 per cent of the total of the state’s carbon emissions. The Australian Government Department of Climate Change acknowledges that forestry is the only carbon positive sector of the Australian economy."
A recent study showed that forests in places like Tasmania and Australia actually store more carbon than tropical forests, with the world’s most carbon-rich forests in Victoria, Australia.
"Unlike substitutes such as steel, aluminum, concrete and coal, wood products provide many carbon benefits," Newson adds.
But one could argue that since 86 percent of the wood ends up as woodchips for paper, the large majority of Tasmanian wood is not in fact replacing carbon intensive industries at this time.
Critics contend that the burning is harmful to the climate. Burning by air at Meander Dam. Photo by: Pete Godfrey.
Strie does not for a minute believe the argument that Forestry Tasmania and Gunns Limited are helping the climate.
"They even claim to be the only industry that is doing good things for the global climate/carbon balance!" he says. "Their slippery spin doctors have the funding to run glossy promotions on TV, radio and in print, here in Australia and in Japan and China, they have propaganda machine established that steamrolls any opposition or alternative attempt."
In order for critics to believe the forestry industries claims regarding carbon emissions, the first thing that would have to change would be the firebombing of forests.
"The use of napalm to start fires to burn areas after they have been logged is archaic and a major driver of climate change," Oosting says. "This practice releases greenhouse gases that have been sequestered and stored in these natural ecosystems over hundreds of years."
Those who crave change in Tasmania’s relationship to its forests, see glimmers of it in the global economic fallout.
Strie believes that the economic crisis, as well as changes in society and resource availability, will inevitably make forestry in Tasmania, as it is currently managed, no long viable. Change is coming.
"The industry will rapidly run into ruin now, as the international commercial world is changing and the global climate is rapidly changing and the transport fuel and hydrocarbon costs go up. The peak oil issue […] will soon end the 36 years of greed driven binge," Strie says. "[Gunns’] years as a greedy, arrogant and selfish company executives will (have to) come to an end. They will learn it the hard way, just like so many other high flyers around the world that crashed down over the last few months, weeks and days."
Clear cuts south of New Norfolk as seen through Google Earth. Image courtesy of Pete Godfrey.
Oosting agrees that the forestry industry is hurting due to less demand for paper—and he sees the current downturn as a chance to make significant changes. "We are pushing to have this downturn taken as a positive opportunity to reform the industry out of native forest destruction into plantations and carbon storage."
However, Newson contends that the industry is doing fine.
"Forward orders from our customers are promising. There has recently been an upturn in demand for high quality saw logs, which has eliminated the saw log stockpile to the point where there is now a shortage of good quality logs," she says, adding that, "it may be expected that the economic value of timber to Tasmania will continue to grow as more people recognize the value of wood in reducing carbon emissions."
Regardless of whichever side you’re on, the conflict has produced its share of tragedies. A notable one is Roelf Roos. Like Strie, Roos was born and raised in Germany. After experiencing childhood during World War II in Berlin, Roos moved to Australia at the age of 21 and then Tasmania. According to those who knew him, Roos loved the Tasmanian woods.
"Roelf’s regular contributions to a variety of newspapers and the Tasmanian Times website indicated how profoundly disturbed he was by the broad scale clearfelling of the beautiful native forests (and poisoning of wildlife) which became a beloved part of his life," wrote Dr Frank Nicklason, spokesman for Doctors for Forests, in a letter to the Tasmanian Times. Nickalson goes on to write that Roos was a proponent of sustainable forestry, but "he was implacably opposed to the conversion of biodiverse forests to highly chemical dependent, genetically modified, monoculture pulpwood crops." Such plantations were appearing all around Roos’ home.
More clear cuts. Photo by Pete Godfrey.
"The death and destruction involved in current Tasmanian forestry must surely have evoked dreadful visions of Roos’s childhood. In despair and feeling powerless Roelf Roos took his own life on Remembrance Day 2004." He was 71.
Nicklason concludes his letter: "the mental health consequences for people who experience these feelings of hopelessness and oppression as a result of corporate domination and carelessness are yet to be fully recognized."
Certainly, Roos’ life and death are testament to the importance of the natural world, beyond utility, profit, and even the services important for humans—such as clean water, air, biodiversity—which healthy ecosystems provide. It is this intangible quality of forests and other ecosystems that nature-lovers have a hard time communicating to those who don’t experience it. It is an experience for which language falls short.
Given the complexity of the issues, the long history of emotional clashes, and the deep divisions it has created, one finds is difficult enough to comprehend the present situation in Tasmania, let alone the future.
"Forestry Tasmania has invested considerable funds and expertise in the development of alternatives to clearfelling in old growth forests. Research has shown that the aggregated retention system of harvesting retains habitat for a wide range of birds, mammals, insects and understory plants. This system of harvesting also retains old growth trees with hollows," Newson says, pointing toward a possible future for Tasmanian forestry.
Clear cuts at South Mole Creek as seen through Google Earth. Image courtesy of Pete Godfrey.
Oosting, representing the environmental movement in this case argues for protection over exploitation.
"Tasmania's native forests are recognized as one of the biggest stores of greenhouse gases on the planet. These forests have an incredible ability to store greenhouse gases in vegetation, soil and wood debris," he says. "These 'carbon banks' as they are called are unique in that not only do they trap greenhouse gases protecting our climate but they are home to unique wildlife such as the worlds largest freshwater crustacean and the giant Wedge tail eagle. These wild forests are also water catchments for many communities and are of course an inspirational and spiritual place for people to visit and enjoy. The global community needs to support the urgent protection of not only Tasmania's irreplaceable native forests but forests everywhere - our future and our climate depend on it!"
Strie, who has been criticized by both the forestry industry and hardcore environmentalists on the island, has new ideas for how best to approach forestry in Tasmania.
"Now in mid 2009, we have wasted valuable years, one and a half decade in fact, we wasted irreplaceable forests and ecosystems since 1994, all this without having ever established the will, energy or process to have a real alternative to the present situation," he laments, but adds that there is hope for the future.
Smoke rises over the Tasmanian horizon at Chudleigh. Photo by Pete Godfrey.
"We need to build on the living examples around the globe, the positive examples of community based and often privately initiated close to nature management." He points to a non profit program in Ireland called Pro Silvia as well as current policies in Scandinavia and Central Europe.
But what does this look like?
"In short: working with nature! Keeping the chainsaws out of the virgin forests, (untouched by white man), and by identifying within the collaboration of community, industry, science and industry a plan of restoration action and industry that puts a holistic, total quality objective on things. A triple win process that has a seashore to mountain approach." Still he says "it will take more than one century to restore (if ever possible) the natural functions of healthy, rich and diverse forests."
To the frustration of those who would like to see change in Tasmania, the power remains largely in the hands of the forestry industry, led by Gunns, and the government. So far both the liberal establishment and the corporations have not relented in their philosophy of 'business as usual'.
Clearly, though, the critics are not going anywhere either, nor are they willing to be silent (as evidenced by the robust responses I received for this article). Although they have different visions for Tasmania's forests, critics are currently united in their opposition to current practices. For frustrated foresters like Strie, NGO managers like Oosting, and hardcore activists who spend their nights in trees and camps, the war rages on.
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