Greenpeace bids to turn Japan against whaling

Isabel Reynolds, Reuters 9 Dec 08;

TOKYO (Reuters) - Greenpeace launched a campaign to turn Japan against whaling on Tuesday, with directors of the group from around the world delivering a letter to Prime Minister Taro Aso, urging him to halt the hunts.

The letter handover came weeks after Japan's whaling fleet set off for the Antarctic for an annual hunt aimed at catching about 900 whales, which Tokyo says is carried out for scientific research purposes.

In a break with past practice, Greenpeace is focusing on a campaign to try to change Japanese domestic opinion this year, rather than send a ship to chase the fleet in the Southern Ocean, which caused diplomatic ruffles last year.

That decision has drawn criticism from hardline anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, whose members skirmished with whaling vessels at sea last season.

"Each year we put more and more emphasis on the campaign in Japan," Steve Shallhorn of Greenpeace Australia told reporters. "We are asking the people of Japan to ask their politicians to end the subsidy to this outdated industry," he added.

He and Greenpeace directors from the United States, Brazil, the Netherlands, Germany and other countries, were joined by Paddy Hart, an Australian former whaler, for the letter delivery.

Activists were also set to protest outside Japanese embassies abroad, Greenpeace said.

Japan officially stopped whaling under a 1986 global moratorium, but continues to take hundreds of whales in what it calls a research program. Much of the meat ends up on dinner tables.

Though most Japanese do not eat whale meat on a regular basis, many are indifferent to accusations that hunting the creatures is cruel, while others resent being told what they should eat.

But Greenpeace Japan Director Jun Hoshikawa said there were signs that interest in the issue was rising in Japan, with a handful of lawmakers calling for an investigation of the hunt.

Among them is Ryuhei Kawada, known for battling the government after he and others became infected with HIV through tainted blood products.

"When the government is wrong, it is important to raise your voice," he told reporters. "The United States and Australia have a history of whaling, but Japan continues even now. We should think about this from the point of view of the environment," he said.

An official at the whaling section of Japan's Fisheries Ministry said he could not comment because he had not seen the letter from Greenpeace.

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

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Aussie scientists use toxic mash to turn predators off toads

Yahoo News 8 Dec 08;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian scientists are serving up mashed cane toad with a dash of poison to put predators off eating the toxic aliens.

The cane toads, which carry poisonous sacs on their heads that can kill animals as big as crocodiles within minutes, are spreading rapidly westwards across the country despite efforts to eradicate them.

"Native predators are actually pretty capable of learning to avoid cane toads if given the chance," University of Sydney professor Rick Shine told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation this week.

"We're learning about ways to educate the predators in advance of the toad front in ways that will help them survive" once the toad arrives in their territory.

A marauding amphibian, Bufo marinus was introduced to Australia in 1935 from Central and South America in an attempt to control beetles ravaging sugar cane fields in the tropical northeast.

But, like many animals imported into Australia, the cane toad has turned into a pest, with recent research showing they have more than halved the number of crocodiles in some Northern Territory rivers.

Attempts to minimise the damage focused on trying to kill the toads, but "it's hard to do and it's clear that the toad is by and large winning the battle," Shine said.

"The invasion-front toads are all very big guys, so they've got a lot of poison, so the first toad you meet if you're a goanna (lizard) is almost bound to a big one and it's almost bound to be your last meal."

However, if predators ate a small toad that made them sick but was not big enough to kill them, they rapidly learned to avoid the warty hoppers, he said.

So scientists are working on a programme of feeding animals such as crocodiles and goannas a mixture of toad bits and a poison to make them "desperately nauseous."

"(This will) convince predators that anything that looks and smells and tastes at all like a toad is a good thing to avoid," Shine said.

Initial results showed that predators, including quolls -- carnivorous marsupials -- quickly learned that the aliens were not a good addition to their diet.

"(It) suggests there is at least some hope that we can reduce the carnage that toads cause to these big predators," Shine said.

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Eat camels to protect environment, Aussies told

Yahoo News 9 Dec 08;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australians were urged Tuesday to eat camels to stop them wreaking environmental havoc, just months after being told to save the world from climate change by consuming kangaroos.

A three-year study has found that Australia's population of more than a million feral camels -- the largest wild herd on earth -- is out of control and damaging fragile desert ecosystems and water sources.

The Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, which produced the report, plans to serve camel meat at a barbecue for senior public servants in Canberra on Wednesday to press its point.

Report co-author Professor Murray McGregor said a good way to bring down the number of camels was to eat them.

"Eat a camel today, I've done it," he told the national AAP news agency.

"It's beautiful meat. It's a bit like beef. It's as lean as lean, it's an excellent health food."

Similar claims are made for kangaroo meat, but the rationale for farming and eating the national emblem -- as outlined by the government's chief climate change adviser in October -- is different.

Millions of farm animals such as cows and sheep produce massive amounts of harmful greenhouse gases, said Professor Ross Garnaut, but kangaroos emit negligible amounts of methane.

Unlike the native kangaroo, camels were introduced into Australia as pack animals for the vast outback in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, but were released into the wild as rail and road travel became more widespread.

The country has wrestled for years with imported animals brought in as beasts of burden, food sources, for recreational hunting or, ironically, to control agricultural pests.

The Department of the Environment lists animals of "significant concern" as including feral camels, horses, donkeys, pigs, European wild rabbits, European red foxes, cats, goats and cane toads.

With few natural predators and vast sparsely populated areas in which to roam, the populations have soared, putting pressure on native species by preying on them, competing for food, destroying habitats and spreading disease.

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Science paves way for climate lawsuits against oil companies

David Adam and Afua Hirsch, The Guardian 9 Dec 08;

People affected by worsening storms, heatwaves and floods could soon be able to sue the oil and power companies they blame for global warming, a leading climate expert has said.

Myles Allen, a physicist at Oxford University, said a breakthrough that allows scientists to judge the role man-made climate change played in extreme weather events could see a rush to the courts over the next decade.

He said: "We are starting to get to the point that when an adverse weather event occurs we can quantify how much more likely it was made by human activity. And people adversely affected by climate change today are in a position to document and quantify their losses. This is going to be hugely important."

Allen's team has used the new technique to work out whether global warming worsened the UK floods in autumn 2000, which inundated 10,000 properties, disrupted power supplies and led to train services being cancelled, motorways closed and 11,000 people evacuated from their homes - at a total cost of £1bn.

He would not comment on the results before publication, but said people affected by floods could "potentially" use a positive finding to begin legal action.

The technique involves running two computer models to simulate the conditions that led to extreme weather events. One model includes human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases, the second assumes the industrial revolution never happened and that carbon levels in the atmosphere have not increased over the last century. Comparing the results pins down the impact of man-made global warming. "As the science has evolved this is now possible, it's just a question of computing power," he said.

Allen and his colleagues previously demonstrated that man-made warming at least doubled the risk of heatwaves such as the 2003 event that killed 27,000 people across Europe. No legal action resulted, but Allen said that was partly because most of the deaths were in France, where the legal system makes such cases difficult.

"We can work out whether climate change has loaded the dice and made extreme weather more likely. And once the risk is doubled, then lawyers get interested," he said.

Peter Roderick, director of the Climate Justice programme, said the most likely route for seeking damages would be tort cases, which deal with civil wrongs. Several have been attempted by US states against power and car companies only to be rejected by the courts.

Roderick said developing countries such as Nepal could also sue for compensation over damage caused by global warming. "As the issue of damages gets worse and worse, the chances of this happening will get greater and greater," he said. "I hope it happens."

Lawyers say it is only a matter of time before class actions are brought. However, Stephen Tromans, an environmental law barrister, said establishing causation would be one of the main difficulties. "It is one thing to be able to link levels of greenhouse gases with a specific event causing damage but, even assuming you can do that, quite another to establish causation against a particular company or industrial sector."

There are legal precedents for making exceptions to normal rules of causation. One example is the decision of the House of Lords on mesothelioma, where past employers can be liable for having contributed to the overall exposure, though the harm cannot be scientifically attributed to any specific period of employment.

"In that case an exception was made to the normal rules on causation in order to prevent an injustice that would otherwise have occurred," Tromans said.

There may also be grounds for a case on the basis that firms have tried to misinform the public - as in US cases against tobacco firms - about the effects of their business.

Owen Lomas, head of environmental law at City firm Allen & Overy, said: "If you look at the extent to which certain major companies in the US are accused of having funded disinformation to cast doubt on the link between man-made emissions and global warming, that could open the way to litigation."

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We need to turn carbon into gold

Oliver Tickell, BBC Green Room 8 Dec 08;

Little meaningful progress seems to have been made at the UN climate summit in Poznan, Poland, says Oliver Tickell, author of Kyoto2. In this week's Green Room, he calls on world leaders to back a deal that will raise the serious funds needed to deliver a low carbon future.

Progress at the UN climate summit in Poznan, Poland, appears to have ground to a halt.

As the global gathering enters it second and final week, there has been a dismal lack of progress to date.

One of the key stumbling blocks is how all the things that we need to tackle the climate change problem will be financed.

Here are some of the key topics being debated:

Forests and soils

Forest destruction and degradation contributes up to 20% of human greenhouse gas emissions.

To have a hope of bringing climate change under control we need to bring these emissions to a halt, and make forests (as well as soils, peatlands and other terrestrial sinks) into major carbon sinks.

But how can we bring about the change we need?

The answer has to be to make forests worth more alive than dead to governments and forest owners.

As things stand we are happy to pay for palm oil, beef, soya beans, rubber and timber from deforested land.

To persuade countries like Brazil and Indonesia to change their ways, we need to pay them more keep their forest than we are already paying them to destroy it.

Currently the main idea, which goes under the acronym of REDD, is to create carbon credits by reducing deforestation in poor countries, and selling the credits to rich countries so that they can let their industrial emissions rip.

But this suffers from the grave defect that we need to reduce emissions from both forests and industry at the same time, not trade one off against the other.

Adaptation to climate change

The cost to poor countries of the climate change that is already taking place, no matter what action we take to reduce emissions, is up to $100 billion per year.

This cost is incurred in the effort to cope with the consequences of drought, flood risk, rising sea levels, increasing insect-borne disease, and other hazards.

So far, a paltry few percent of this funding has been lined up. Since the damages are a direct result of the historic emissions of rich countries, and the world's poorest people are the principal victims, this is nothing short of iniquitous.

Meanwhile, more than $60bn-a-year is sloshing around the world's carbon markets, such as the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme and the "flexibility mechanisms" of the Kyoto Protocol.

It sometimes seems that everyone is making fortunes out of the carbon market, except those who really need it to adapt to the far harsher conditions that climate change is creating.

Renewable energy

Renewable energy is a key part of any sustainable future. But developing and rapidly industrialising countries are generally choosing coal-fired power generation, because it is relatively cheap, it works, and it's available now.

This development path will lock these nations into burning coal for up to 75 years, undermining any effort made elsewhere to reduce emissions.

This makes it essential to divert the hundreds of billions of dollars each year that are being invested in fossil fuels in developing countries and put them into renewables.

But in order to make this happen, extra funds need to be found to bridge the gap between the cost of coal fired power stations and renewables.

In the long run, renewables make good economic sense because once they are built there is no need to buy the fuel to keep them running.

But in the short term there is an extra cost to be paid and at the moment, there's no one to pick up the bill.

Energy efficiency

Vastly improved energy efficiency is absolutely necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to satisfy rising demand for energy around the world.

Even though energy savings can be made for next to nothing, they tend not to take place. This is usually because the costs are picked up by one person, while another enjoys the benefits.

So how are we to stimulate the revolution we need?

One answer is to regulate. EU citizens are already aware of the "energy rating" system that applies to many household appliances, and this approach has been highly effective. It should now be extended globally to all energy consuming goods, homes, buildings, factories and offices.

Poor countries will of course need extra funding to have their short-term costs covered. But in the long term, they will also benefit from reduced energy costs.

Powerful industrial greenhouse gases

The hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are gases used as refrigerants and foam blowing agents.

They were introduced by the chemical industry to replace ozone destroying CFCs, which have (almost) been phased out by the Montreal Protocol.

However, HFCs are powerful greenhouse gases, and their production is rising by 15% per year.

The Environmental Investigation Agency estimates that without controls, they could be responsible for the equivalent of about 10 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions per year by 2040, or about one-third of the world's current burn of fossil fuels.

The obvious way to control them is in the same way that the Montreal Protocol phased out the CFCs.

This would involve a direct regulatory approach, guided by an expert panel, with funding made available to help developing nations meet the cost of adapting affected industries.

Where is the money going to come from?

Currently there is no mechanism capable of taking on the problems of climate change.

My own calculations indicate that it will cost the world about one trillion dollars each year.

That is certainly a lot of money, but it is an amount that looks affordable when it is compared to what the world is spending to deal with the global financial crisis.

One obvious way to raise the funds is to sell greenhouse gas emissions permits on a global basis, rather than giving them away as under the current Kyoto Protocol.

With industrial global emissions accounting for about 33 gigatonnes, a $30-per-tonne carbon price would pay the whole bill.

The EU is already going this way. More and more allowances under the ETS are being auctioned, and the European Parliament is calling for the proceeds to finance climate solutions.

President-elect Barack Obama has a similar national policy for the US, and a new report by humanitarian charity Oxfam calls for this model to be applied to rich country emissions allocations, with auctioning taking over from free allocations.

This general approach has to be the way forward, for the simple reason that there's nowhere else for the money to come from.

Governmental aid flows remain pathetically insufficient even to deal with all the "old" problems of poverty, never mind the new problems of climate change.

Charities are nowhere near rich enough, and the private sector will only invest where there is profit to be made.

So here is one principle for delegates in Poznan to agree on - the carbon market must be turned into gold, not for carbon traders and financiers, but to finance the world's transition to a low carbon, equitable future.

Oliver Tickell is author of Kyoto2 - how to manage the global greenhouse, published by Zed Books

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

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Industry, Investors Urge Strong U.N. Climate Deal

Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn, PlanetArk 9 Dec 08;

POZNAN - Major companies, investors and insurers appealed on Monday for decisive action to fight climate change at a meeting in Poland working on a new U.N. pact to fight global warming.

Climate negotiators in the western city of Poznan are meeting on a new climate treaty meant to be agreed by next December in Copenhagen to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

"At a time when the global economic downturn may cause some to question whether now is the time to act, we believe that decisive action will stimulate global economic activity," leaders of more than 140 companies said.

The statement, drafted by the UK-based Corporate Leaders' Group on Climate Change (CLG), represented companies including Ebay, Sun Microsystems Inc, BP, and Unilever.

Climate policies such as carbon trading or carbon taxes add to fuel bills and impact the profitability of investment choices for example between fossil fuels and low-carbon alternatives, and business lobbies say they want more clarity.

"If business people cannot see what is the next 10, 15, 20 years they cannot assess the profitability of their investments," said Guy Sebban, secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce, a global federation of employers and businessmen.

Some delegates, negotiators and analysts at the U.N. talks have suggested that the financial crisis coupled with the short time available for U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will scale back ambitions for Copenhagen.

That could water it down to an agreement on a set of principles rather than a full treaty to confront warming. That could make it harder to agree goals for emissions cuts in time before current goals under the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.

An investor delegation for the first time presented on Monday a call for action to the annual U.N. climate talks.

Their statement, signed by 152 global investors worth over $9 trillion, called on world leaders to negotiate a strong and binding successor to the Kyoto Protocol, to ensure investors receive market signals to fund a transition to a low-carbon economy.

Like the CLG statement, the banks and pension funds called for a continued commitment to carbon markets -- favored by the business community as a flexible, low-cost regulatory approach to curbing carbon emissions.

Insurers also said they had a role to play in a future deal, especially to help offset the costs of adapting to the impacts of climate change such as rising seas, droughts and floods.

"The insurance sector is one that most directly experiences the impacts of climate change," said Andrew Torrance, head of ClimateWise which groups 42 insurers. "We are looking forward to insurance being a central component of a Copenhagen deal."

He said insurers paid a record $83 billion in disaster-related payments in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska)

(Editing by Keith Weir)

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Combating climate change and boosting growth are natural allies

IUCN website 9 Dec 08;

Accelerated action on energy savings and the scrapping of fossil fuel subsidies are the two top actions needed to combat climate change and spur economic recovery, according to a survey released today.

The findings of this survey of climate decision makers in the private, public and civil society sectors underline their overwhelming view that combating climate change is a pro-growth, pro-economic recovery policy.

Three-quarters (73 percent) of the 1,000 experts surveyed agree that “equitable economic growth and development and significant progress in combating climate change can be achieved at the same time”. Only 11 percent disagree.

The overall findings from professionals across 115 countries who make or influence climate decisions will be presented today in Poznan, Poland, at the UN Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The survey found that decision makers believe that the price of carbon must nearly triple to over $50 per tonne on average before their organizations will consistently implement climate-friendly decisions over more cost effective, but carbon-intensive options.

A key finding of last year’s Climate Decision Makers Survey revealed just how important decision makers view the protection of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. This year’s updated poll reaffirms it. The majority (64 percent) of decision makers say that investing in biodiversity protection and creating new financial mechanisms (59 percent) as an incentive should be short-term climate priorities.

“This survey echoes the message we heard at IUCN’s World Conservation Congress in Barcelona,” says Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN Director General. “We had 8,000 participants from 180 countries and the message they brought was clear; biodiversity underpins the well-being of human societies and their economies. We now have an understanding of the clear link between conservation and climate and that healthy ecosystems are the best defense against climate change.”

The survey was conducted during the past four weeks by researchers at GlobeScan with the support of the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), along with other contributing organizations.

“The fact that these decision makers across the world don’t see any inherent conflict between the economy and climate action certainly challenges the governments meeting in Poznan to move forward in spite of the current economic crisis,” says GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller. “And they’re saying the price of carbon needs to be increased in order to stimulate action on the ground.”

“Combating climate change is the stimulus package needed to power the planet out of its current malaise and set the stage for a 21st century Green Economy – one that prizes resource efficiency, innovation and decent employment in developed and developing societies alike,” says Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director.

The survey additionally asked hands-on decisions makers to rate 17 specific approaches to addressing climate change. Increasing energy conservation and efficiency (77 percent) rates as having the greatest potential impact on GHG emissions in the short term (rated “major” by 77 percent). Ranked second is the removal of subsidies for carbon-intensive activities (76 percent) – a clear signal to policy makers needing to free up budgets to fund fiscal stimulus measures.

When asked to evaluate the potential of different technologies to lower atmospheric carbon concentrations in the longer term (25 years), efficiency and conservation (88 percent) remain the most attractive among decision makers, well above nuclear energy (only 29 percent rate current nuclear technology highly), carbon capture and storage (29 percent on retrofits) and biofuels from food crops (only 12 percent). Clearly, these decision makers see energy efficiency as the “low-hanging fruit”.

“The development challenge is to accelerate or maintain robust economic growth in poorer countries while also dealing with the impacts of climate change,” says Katherine Sierra, World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development. “The new global survey supports the view that developing countries will need support in terms of finance, as well as technology in the fight against climate change. The financial situation is no justification for postponing action on climate change. Climate change is not waiting, so we cannot wait either.”

In spite of their strong opinion that economic development and climate action are synergistic, a plurality (44 percent) expect that the current economic crisis will nonetheless hinder progress toward an effective international climate agreement.

The survey results provide guidance for negotiators in Poznan. A solid majority (66 percent) of those surveyed endorse the G8+5 GLOBE legislator’s 2008 Tokyo Framework for International Cooperation beyond 2012 as a model for negotiators at Poznan and Copenhagen. Support is strong for an inclusive, multifaceted, long-term yet flexible global agreement that acknowledges the value of ecosystem services.

Unlike public opinion polls, this survey focuses on the views of professionals in position to make or influence large decisions in government, the private sector and civil society. This focus, together with the survey’s large global sample and good balance of respondents across geographies and sectors, makes this survey unique.

For these and other survey results presented in Powerpoint, with methodological details, please visit: http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/cdms08/cdms_release_slides.ppt

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Number of hungry people rises to 963 million

FAO website 9 Dec 08;

High food prices to blame – economic crisis could compound woes

9 December 2008, Rome - Another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger this year primarily due to higher food prices, according to preliminary estimates published by FAO today. This brings the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, compared to 923 million in 2007 and the ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty, FAO warned.

"World food prices have dropped since early 2008, but lower prices have not ended the food crisis in many poor countries," said FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem, presenting the new edition of FAO's hunger report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008.

"For millions of people in developing countries, eating the minimum amount of food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream. The structural problems of hunger, like the lack of access to land, credit and employment, combined with high food prices remain a dire reality," he stressed.

Prices of major cereals have fallen by over 50 percent from their peaks earlier in 2008 but they remain high compared to previous years. Despite its sharp decline in recent months, the FAO Food Price Index was still 28 percent higher in October 2008 compared to October 2006. With prices for seeds and fertilizers (and other inputs) more than doubling since 2006, poor farmers could not increase production. But richer farmers, particularly those in developed countries, could afford the higher input costs and expand plantings. As a result, cereal production in developed countries is likely to rise by at least 10 percent in 2008. The increase in developing countries may not exceed even one percent.

"If lower prices and the credit crunch associated with the economic crisis force farmers to plant less food, another round of dramatic food prices could be unleashed next year," Ghanem added. "The 1996 World Food Summit target, to reduce the number of hungry by half by 2015, requires a strong political commitment and investment in poor countries of at least $30 billion per year for agriculture and social protection of the poor," Ghanem said.

Where the hungry live

The vast majority of the world's undernourished people - 907 million - live in developing countries, according to the 2007 data reported by the State of Food Insecurity in the World. Of these, 65 percent live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia. Progress in these countries with large populations would have an important impact on global hunger reduction.

With a very large population and relatively slow progress in hunger reduction, nearly two-thirds of the world's hungry live in Asia (583 million in 2007). On the positive side, some countries in Southeast Asia like Thailand and Viet Nam have made good progress towards achieving the WFS target, while South Asia and Central Asia have suffered setbacks in hunger reduction.

In sub-Saharan Africa, one in three people - or 236 million (2007) - are chronically hungry, the highest proportion of undernourished people in the total population, according to the report. Most of the increase in the number of hungry occurred in a single country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, as a result of widespread and persistent conflict, from 11 million to 43 million (in 2003-05) and the proportion of undernourished rose from 29 to 76 percent.

Overall, sub-Saharan Africa has made some progress in reducing the proportion of people suffering from chronic hunger, down from 34 (1995-97) to 30 percent (2003-2005). Ghana, Congo, Nigeria, Mozambique and Malawi have achieved the steepest reductions in the proportion of undernourished. Ghana is the only country that has reached both the hunger reduction target of the World Food Summit and the Millennium Development Goals. Growth in agricultural production was key in this success.

Latin America and the Caribbean were most successful in reducing hunger before the surge in food prices. High food prices have increased the number of hungry people in the sub-region to 51 million in 2007.

Countries in the Near East and North Africa generally experience the lowest levels of undernourishment in the world. But conflicts (in Afghanistan and Iraq) and high food prices have pushed the numbers up from 15 million in 1990-92 to 37 million in 2007.

Almost out of reach

Some countries were well on track towards reaching the summit's target, before food prices skyrocketed but "Even these countries may have suffered setbacks - some of the progress has been cancelled due to high food prices. The crisis has mainly affected the poorest, landless and households run by women," Ghanem said. "It will require an enormous and resolute global effort and concrete actions to reduce the number of hungry by 500 million by 2015."

Exporters under threat

The world hunger situation may further deteriorate as the financial crisis hits the real economies of more and more countries. Reduced demand in developed countries threatens incomes in developing countries via exports. Remittances, investments and other capital flows including development aid are also at risk. Emerging economies in particular are subject to lasting impacts from the credit crunch even if the crisis itself is short-lived.

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Best of our wild blogs: 9 Dec 08

Narcondam Hornbill: Addendum
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Nesting saga of Peaceful Doves: Part 5 of 6
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

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Seven Solomon Islands dolphins to end up in Singapore?

Makili claims dolphins to Singapore
Solomon Star 9 Dec 08;

A LOCAL environmentalist Lawrence Makili claims the seven dolphins that left the country yesterday were heading to Singapore, not the Philippines.

Local exporter Chris Porter said the consignment, which met all legal requirements, was heading to an oceanarium in the Philippines where they’ll be trained for public programmes.

But Mr Makili claimed his sources informed him the dolphins’ final destination will be in Singapore.

“The exporter needs to be honest about this,” Mr Makili, who’s currently in Fiji attending a meeting, said.

He condemned this latest export, saying it’s a sad day for the Pacific, particularly Solomon Islands.

“I am surprise the Government sees it fit to allow this export while a study to determine the wild dolphin numbers in our waters is still continuing.

“This shows the government does not care four our resources,” Mr Makili said.

Gov’t accused over live dolphin export
Solomon Star 9 Dec 08;

LOCAL environmental campaigner Lawrence Makili accused the Government of allowing the export of live dolphins, as seven bottle-nose species left the country yesterday to the Philippines.

Mr Makili, who is the Pacific’s rep of US-based Earth Island Institue, said the Government acted like a robber by keeping information of the export under wraps.

He said the Ministry of Environment Conservation and the Ministry of Fisheries & Marine Resources should be ashamed of their action.

“It’s a shameful thing for this Government to continue to show the world and the Pacific its arrogance and stubbornness on this issue,” Mr Makili, who is currently in Fiji, said.

But a spokesman from the Ministry of Fisheries rejected Mr Makili’s assertion the export was kept secret.

“The deal was legal because the Government allowed 100 dolphins to be exported out of the country each year and that was only the first seven this year,” the spokesman said.

Solomon Islands Mammal Education Centre and Exporters Ltd sent the seven dolphins to the Philippines.

The company said the dolphins are being sent to a oceanarium in the Philippines where they’ll be trained for public shows.

But Mr Makili claimed the dolphins will eventually end up in Singapore.

Director of the Earth Islands Institute in the United States Mark Berman said this latest dolphin export will further damage the reputation of the Solomons as a tourist destination.

Meanwhile, Mr Berman claimed a proposed deal by Thailand to buy dolphins from the Solomon Islands had been ceased.

“There was information that a wildlife park in Thailand was going to buy dolphins but due to our strong alliance with the tuna industry of Thailand and the Thailand government, there will be no dolphin exports from Solomons or anywhere else for that matter to Thailand.”

He said Thailand is the world’s largest supplier of tuna to the US and European Union dolphin safe tuna markets therefore their government has stated no live dolphins will be brought into Thailand for any reason.

“Our goal as a NGOs is to continue to halt this disgusting trade in wildlife which only harms dolphins and the Solomon Islands people,” he said.

By EDNAL PALMER

Our 7 dolphins are now in Philippines
Solomon Star 9 Dec 08;

SEVEN Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins left our shores yesterday onboard a 767 freight carrier for the Philippines.

Marine Exports Limited director Canadian Chris Porter said the consignment met all legal requirements both locally and international.

“The transport was legal and approved by CITES, the international body for the protection of endangered species,” Mr Porter said.

UPS, the company that sent its cargo plane to carry the dolphins is one of the world’s largest cargo service providers in the world.

"UPS operated the best well executed dolphin transport that I have ever worked with,” Mr Porter said.

“From fueling the planes to safety and care meetings about the animals, they made me feel confident and secure the seven animals are in good hands.

"As one dolphin is named after my son Noah, this is very important to me," he added.

The seven animals are bottlenose dolphins, one of the many species of marine animals here.

Mr Port said the dolphins were flown to a world class oceanarium in the Philippines where they will be trained further for public display programmes.

Mr Porter and his local business partner Robert Satu said lack of protest during yesterday’s shipment was because of their well executed and open dialogue about their operation.

"The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently released a television documentary on the aspects and issues relating to Marine Exports Limited.

"And today’s transport is very symbolic for the company as it has been seven years that the company has been operational.

"No international proclamations occurred leading to today’s transport of seven animals moved to a Philippines world class oceanarium.

"Our persistence and dedication to our company’s mandate to increase both the financial and conservation value of the dolphins as a natural resource belonging to the Solomon Islands continues to be fulfilled," Mr Porter said.

Last year Marine Exports sent 28 dolphins for the Atlantis Palm in Dubai.

Ocean Embassy, a Company of ex-Sea World personnel, transported the animals 30 hours to Dubai.

The transport was fraught with numerous complaints and protest by Environmental groups around the world.

Government sources said that a levy of over $800,000 was collected from Marine Exports for the export of the seven live dolphins.

Mr Porter stated proudly: “When I first entered Solomon Islands a dead dolphin was worth $150. Next year a live dolphin will be worth over $1,000,000."

Mr Satu added: "This resource is of Solomon Islands and I have proven that the Grass Roots People can accomplish big things with our natural resources.

“I encourage fellow Solomon Islanders to challenge themselves to attain our country’s development dreams."

Meanwhile, the Government is continuing its development of one of the world’s most comprehensive animal management plan for dolphins.

Projects underway include ongoing animal census surveys, traditional hunting database and public education programmes.

Mr Satu said Solomon Islands is the world’s largest natural aquarium.

"I feel privileged that we can share some of its beauty with other countries around the world. Solomons is a very rich country and the dolphins are great ambassadors of that," he said.

More live dolphins exported
Solomon Star 7 Dec 08;

SEVEN live dolphins are due to leave the country today.

Dolphin dealer and one of the Directors of Solomon Islands Mammal Education Centre and Exporters Ltd Robert Satu is again, exporting the dolphins.

Information on whereabouts the dolphins will be exported to, remains sketchy as reports of the export arrangement leaked few minutes before the private jet landed.

However, speaking on anonymity, a reliable airport source revealed that the Boeing 763 jet took a 6 hours flight to Honiara from Pampanga , Philippines and could return the same route.

The source said the jet’s arrival also surprised some of them.

“Usually, aviation and airport officials are informed properly on an arrival of international jets, but the flight just caught some of us by surprise,” he said.

“We’re aware of a private jet coming but the arrival time was not revealed and the next thing customs and other officials did was scrambled as we were warned that the jet was ascending,” he said.

Loading of the seven dolphins was expected to have taken place last night at the domestic terminal, as the flight will leave the country at 9am this morning.

Attempts to talk to Robert Satu last night were unsuccessful.

Solomon Islands banned the live dolphin export trade in 2003 following an outcry over a consignment of 28 bottlenose dolphins to an aquatic park in Mexico .

Activists claim at least nine of the dolphins died in Mexico.

Satu, who was involved in the exports to Mexico, claimed the ban was illegal and won a landmark court ruling last December that paved the way for dolphin exports to resume.

After the court ruling, the government was swift to change its position on the trade.

Fisheries Minister Nollen Leni has said the government would now encourage the capture and sale of up to 100 bottlenose dolphins a year for export, noting that water parks would pay tens of thousands of dollars for a trained dolphin.

The Solomon Islands Mammal and Education Centre Exporters Ltd Company was paid about $769,000 the Mexico export.

In October last year, another 28 Dolphins were exported to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, sparking criticisms from Australia, New Zealand and the world.

By EDNAL PALMER

Related articles
Dolphin exporter signs deal with Western Province
Joy A. Rikimae, Solomon Star 19 Feb 08

Solomon Islands to export 30 dolphins to Dubai
Yahoo News 12 Oct 07

3 dolphins found dead in Solomon Islands
Yahoo News 17 Oct 07

Report of a Fact-finding Visit to the Solomon Islands, 9-12 September 2003 (PDF file) by Graham Ross1, Frances Gulland1, Nick Gales, Robert Brownell and Randall Reeves

Environmental Concerns Action Network Of Solomon Islands response to the IUCN REPORT "ECANSI (Environmental Concerns Action Network of Solomon Islands) wishes to place on record the deep concern of this organization over the Report of a Fact-finding visit to the Solomon Islands, 9-12 September, 2003 by Drs Graham Ross and Frances Gulland on behalf of the IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group and the IUCN/SSC Veterinary Specialist Group."

See also
SUFFERING, NOT SMILING: The Truth About Captive Dolphins
A campaign by Acres to raise awareness on the plight of captive dolphins and to urge Singaporeans not to support marine parks and dolphinariums that keep dolphins in captivity.

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The prowl for offenders bears up well

Most TCM halls stick to ban on sales of illegal animal products
Grace Chua, Straits Times 8 Dec 08;

'NO, WE do not import illegal bear products,' says the elderly woman proprietor of the Chinese medical hall in Ang Mo Kio.

But when asked if she had bear gall bladder, she readily says: 'We may have some left over.'

She then shaved slices off a lump of waxy, blackish substance and pressed them into four capsules. The asking price: $20.

It was the only shop out of 10 Chinese medicine halls that agreed to sell The Straits Times the banned product. The other nine said selling such products was illegal and that their shops had stopped carrying them five to 10 years ago.

The sale of bear products, along with those of tiger and rhinoceros, is prohibited under Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites). Singapore is a signatory to the convention.

Under the Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act 2006, selling or advertising products containing parts of endangered animals carries a maximum penalty of $50,000 and two years in prison.

Madam Kong Yown Foong, the proprietor of Eng Peng Trading Chinese Medical Hall, says it is not worth the risk. 'We would lose a lot of money in order to make a small sum.'

She receives requests for bear bile and bear gall about once a year but suggests her customers try herbal alternatives instead.

It appears that most Chinese medicine halls are complying with the ban, though there are a few black sheep.

An undercover probe by the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) in 2006 found 23 out of 115 traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) shops, or about 20 per cent, selling bear products, down from more than 70 per cent in 2001.

It is not at all clear that these products are even genuine.

The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) investigated 14 shops last year offering illegal bear products for sale and found that products in 12 of the shops were fake.

But this is just as damaging as selling the real thing, said Acres.

'By making a claim that the product is from bears, the dealer is potentially driving up the demand for bear products, which directly contravenes the spirit of Cites and the local legislation meant to enforce Cites,' says Acres' executive director Louis Ng.

In March last year, Acres and the Singapore TCM Organisations Committee introduced a voluntary labelling scheme for TCM outlets, to verify that they do not sell tiger, bear or rhino products. So far, 274 of the 800 TCM retail outlets in Singapore have signed on. At least three of the 10 outlets The Straits Times visited had the red accreditation sticker pasted on their premises.

Those who suspect a shop is selling illegal animal products should not buy from it, says AVA spokesman Goh Shih Yong. They should instead contact the AVA, which will investigate the matter immediately. The AVA hotline is 1800-226-2250.

Links

More about Acres and their bear bile campaign.

Read more!

Glimmer of hope for rare monkey

BBC News 8 Dec 08;

A new sub-population of a Critically Endangered species of monkey has been recorded in north-western Vietnam.

Biologists from Fauna and Flora International said they had found up to 20 Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys in a remote forest.

The team said the new group offered a ray of hope because it included three infants, suggesting that the monkeys were breeding and increasing in number.

Until now, fewer than 250 of the primates were thought to exist.

"When I saw the Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys, I was overjoyed," said biologist Le Khac Quyet.

"This new discovery further underlines the importance of learning more about the monkeys' range and distribution.

"There is still time to save this unique species, but with 200 or so left and the threat still strong, we need to act now," he added.

Under pressure

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists the monkeys as Critically Endangered because their numbers have continued to decline as a result of intensive hunting and deforestation.

Until now, the monkeys had only been recorded in a few north-eastern areas within Vietnam, with no group exceeding 50 mature adults.

The loss of habitat and human encroachment had "dramatically restricted" the animals' distribution, the Red List warned.

It also said that the creatures' inquisitive nature also meant that they did not flee when approached by humans, increasing the risk of being shot by hunters.

However, Fauna and Flora International (FFI) hopes the discovery of the new sub-population will lead to increased efforts to protect the primates' remaining habitat.

"All recent indications suggest that we have a fantastic opportunity to secure this population and significantly increase the chances of survival of this species," explained Paul Insua-Cao, FFI's Vietnam primate programme manager.

Biologists observing the monkeys also found that they were more wary of people, issuing warning signs to each other.

The FFI team suggested that this group had associated humans with danger, perhaps as a result of ongoing threats from hunters.

A global assessment of the world's primates published in August warned that 48% of the order faced extinction.

The outlook, described as depressing by conservationists, warned that the main threat was habitat loss, primarily deforestation.

Other threats include hunting of primates for food and the illegal wildlife trade.

The FFI team hopes its work, co-funded by the UK government, with local people will ease the pressures on the Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys' habitat.

Measures including curbing the growing of crops in the area's tropical forests and confiscating hunters' guns have already been introduced since the new sub-population was first recorded in April 2008.

Read more!