In December, over 10,000 delegates from governments, media,
NGOs and business met in Bali to agree on the framework for
negotiating the second phase of the Kyoto protocol.
What followed were two extraordinary weeks; from the US
insistence on taking a wrecking ball to the talks, to the lead UN
negotiator breaking down in tears, to the necessary extension of
the negotiating deadline; there was no doubting how critical an
agreement was.
At the last moment, and under intense international scrutiny,
the US caved in, allowing a framework to be agreed. There's now
aprocess and a timeline with which to move forward and shape the
protocol post-2012. The outcome wasn't as strong or clear as it
could have been, but a huge amount was achieved and importantly the
Kyoto show is still on the road.
Save the forests, save the climate
Greenpeace's Forests Defenders Camp was set up in the Sumatran
rainforests in Indonesia, ahead of the December climate
negotiations in Bali, to highlight the role deforestation plays in
climate change, and challenge the destruction at its source. (20
per cent of global emissions come from deforestation, more
emissions than the world's entire transport sector).
Indonesian forests are being destroyed faster than in any other
part of the world, for logging and oil palm plantations. This is
pushing unique animals like the orangutan and Sumatran tiger, to
the brink of extinction. While the loss of forests is bad enough,
the carbon released is contributing to climate change and
increasing the urgency of acting to protect the world's remaining
forests.
The Forest Defenders Camp helped put forest destruction on the
international agenda, and at the end of the Bali climate
talkscountries agreed to bring deforestation into the global
climate treaty. They will embark on a process over the next two
years to do this.
Mr Splashy Pants
Over 150,000 people voted in our competition to name the
humpback whales we were tracking on their migration to the Southern
Ocean. The winner? Mr Splashy Pants, by a nautical mile! It seems
like the world couldn't get enough of Mr Splashy Pants with many
websites encouraging their readers to vote for 'Splashy'.
Mr Splashy Pants got a huge 119,367 votes (over 78 percent of
the vote) with his nearest rival being Humphrey at 4,329 (lessthan
3 percent). The rest of the top ten were Aiko, Libertad, Mira,
Kaimana, Aurora, Shanti, Amal and Manami.For the people who voted
for a name other than Mr Splashy Pants, take heart. The scientists
involved in the Great Whale Trail tagged 20 humpback whales in the
South Pacific. The top seven names will be used to name whales.
Traffic soars on Greenpeace Japan website
Greenpeace's Japanese office has been working hard to tell the
Japanese public the truth about whaling, and it is work that
isbeginning to pay off. After decades of media blackout of the
antiwhaling perspective, a serious debate is beginning to emerge
within Japan itself.
In mid-January, traffic on the Greenpeace Japan website soared
from10,000 hits a day to over 10,000 hits in just one hour.
Visitors to the website signed up to an online petition asking
Japanese government ministers to stop squandering taxpayers' money
on whaling.
Comments have been flooding in from all over Japan, with the
following from a Tokyo resident typical of the sentiment
expressed:"What is the purpose of whaling? We do not want to eat
whale. If 'research' is the real purpose, we can do it without
killing them, can't we? Do not waste our taxes catching whales but
instead protect them".