Making Waves Blog

Turtle Recall (World Turtle Day)

Willie Mackenzie — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:27:00 +0200

Every day is Turtle Day when you're an ocean campaigner…

When I heard it was World Turtle Day, I hatched a plan. I know that to an international audience 'turtle' covers a multitude of reptile species, but rather than getting all Queens' English-y over what is a tortoise, a terrapin or a turtle, I thought this was a good opportunity to focus in on the seven amazing species that roam our oceans – the sea turtles.

And there are three good reasons: they are awesome; no one will dispute calling them 'turtles'; and six out of seven species are endangered, thanks to us – so they need some love.

So here is everything you needed to know about sea turtles, in a handy, shareable blog.

Sea turtles are ocean wanderers. Females return to the beach they were born on to lay their eggs, but males have no need to ever return to land.

Some turtles are not fussy with their food, but some species really are. Leatherback turtles love jellyfish and hawksbill turtles prefer to eat sponges. Both have adapted to be able to resist stings, spikes, and toxins to let them munch down on their preferred lunch.

Loggerhead turtles have big, strong heads. They need them for crushing and crunching shellfish. Back in Shakespeare's time the word 'loggerhead' was a derogatory word meaning 'blockhead'. Which isn't very nice.

Green turtles are the only vegetarians in the sea turtle world. But when they are young they are less bothered and will eat anything. It's only when they become fussy right-on teenagers that they decide meat is murder.

'Turning turtle' means to be upside down, or belly up. For a turtle on land this is a real problem. For a sea turtle it is merely the backstroke.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were probably terrapins. Yeah - Teenage Mutant Ninja Terrapins. Hmm.

Leatherback turtles are the undoubted record breakers. They can travel 10,000 miles each year foraging for food, dive more than 1200 metres deep into the ocean, and range all the way from Chile to Alaska. They are adapted for cold water, warm-blooded, with an insulating layer of fat.

And leatherbacks are HUUUUGE. The biggest one ever recorded washed up on a beach in Wales, was 2.2metres long – that's roughly the size of a double bed. The smallest sea turtles are about 60cm long when adult.

Even the biggest leatherback starts life as a tiny ping-pong ball sized egg laid in a nest on a beach. Baby turtles must make the perilous journey to the sea, without being picked off by predators, which is pretty tough going for something so ridiculously adorable.

When coming onto land to lay eggs, female turtles can be vulnerable to unusual predators. In South America, jaguars are known to prowl beaches looking for a slow-moving meal.

Each interlocking segment on a turtle's shell is known as a 'scute'. Oddly, ''s cute!” is what people tend to say when they see a baby turtle too.

In the film One Million Years BC a giant prehistoric turtle terrorised Raquel Welch in a bikini. This awesome Ray Harryhausen monster was based on a real prehistoric turtle, Archelon, which wasn't quite as big in real life. They do say the camera adds ten pounds though…

Sea turtles that graze algae keep coral reefs healthy (which is good news because coral reefs need all the help they can get), and turtles that eat jellyfish help make the beaches safer for humans who don't want to get stung.

In the water, a plastic bag looks like a jellyfish. That's bad news for turtles.

It's not rocket science knowing how best to start protecting turtles - you would protect their nesting beaches and the seas around them – yet growing pressure from human development means turtles are losing out across the world.

Some places where turtles were traditionally hunted for meat and their shells are switching to ecotourism instead. Turtles, like whales, must be worth more alive than dead, right?

Turtles are fantastic ocean ambassadors, but also indicators of the many ways we humans are screwing those same oceans up. Protecting turtles means changing fishing methods, protecting areas are needed for feeding and breeding, and for us to stop treating the ocean as a rubbish tip.

Add your voice to the call for marine reserves

Greenpeace is working on all of those, and actively campaigning for a global network of large-scale marine reserves – areas that are closed to all extractive uses, such as fishing and mining – covering 40% of the world's oceans, which are urgently needed to protect marine species and their habitats and that could be key to reversing global fisheries decline. Such a network would include smaller coastal reserves that could protect turtle rookeries and larger reserves offshore in ocean areas where marine turtles are at greatest risk.

Join us now and share this with your friends to help spread the word.

Herakles' Cameroon palm oil project halted

Laila Williams — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:04:00 +0200

Bruce Wrobel, the chief executive of Herakles Farms, claims his company’s efforts to flatten a chunk of Cameroon’s dense rainforest to develop a palm oil plantation are borne of a desire to address a "dire humanitarian need".

Yet this week Herakles has had to suspend its activities in Cameroon following a forestry ministry order for the company to halt clearing work at their Talangaye nursery in the southwest region of the country.

Greenpeace has long been among those calling out Wrobel and his company over their failure to tell the real truth over their project. The suspension of work is merely the latest evidence that the proposed plantation is a mess, despite the company’s ever-present PR machine.

In contravention of national law, in the face of local opposition and a huge threat to the local environment, the development is simply the wrong project in the wrong place and it needs to be stopped.

Today, together with the Oakland Institute we have released a new report revealing just how big the discrepancy is between what Wrobel and his friends say publicly and what they are saying to potential investors.

Compiled through confidential internal Herakles documents, here are some of the biggest fibs exposed in Herakles Exposed:

The reality: Herakles has yet to receive a land lease from the Cameroonian government and thus possesses no right to develop its concession area. It has been in violation of national law since 2010. The new order from the forestry ministry again proves Herakles has far from all the permissions required.

The claim: Herakles does not tolerate corruption.

The reality: Evidence strongly suggests Herakles has resorted to bribery, the offer of cash gifts and promises of employment to obtain the consent of some local communities and the government to facilitate the project.

The claim: In a widely circulated open letter of 2012 by Herakles CEO Bruce Wrobel, the company claimed that all timber generated by the project’s massive deforestation would benefit the Cameroonian government.

The reality: In direct contradiction to Wrobel’s public claim, however, Herakles’ presentations intended to attract investors has estimated the company may bank US$60 - US$90 million on the sale of timber and brags about the "profit uplift". We feel sorry for financiers that have been tempted by Herakles profit projections because Cameroonian law states that only accredited logging companies can commercialise timber. And as Wrobel himself wrote, Herakles "are not commercial loggers".

The claim: Herakles will produce 34 tonnes of palm bunches (FFB) per hectare at peak production.

The reality: The most experienced palm producers in Africa yield 26 tonnes FFB per hectare and most plantations yield less than 20 tonnes FFB at peak production.

The reality: The company promises in an investment advisory it would clear more than 10,000 hectares of land in order to plant 1.5 million oil palm seedlings. However, internal communications from employees reveal Herakles is in no position to clear that much land and that the seedlings and nursery are already overgrown by nine months, meaning work is unable to proceed at the advertised speed.

Okay, so Herakles is not the first American or international company to employ questionable business practices abroad … so why does it matter so much?

Since 2008 there has been a massive land rush on the African continent as foreign companies and governments look to produce commodities, biofuels, and food staples in addition to asserting foreign control over natural resources such as timber, minerals and water. The heavily forested areas of the Congo Basin are prime targets as companies search for rich soil in areas with a low population density.

If Herakles’ project succeeds – despite the illegalities, the massive deforestation, destruction of local livelihoods and false claims to investors – many other investors may attempt to do the same.

That is why the project must be stopped – permanently.

Creating a debate on sustainable tuna fishing is the first step towards change

Oliver Knowles — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:50:00 +0200

Our second ship tour of the Indian Ocean as part of the campaign for sustainable tuna fisheries ended last week. Combined with last year's tour, Greenpeace has been patrolling the region for illegal and unsustainable fishing practices for five out of the last 10 months.

During the last two months we have documented illegal and destructive fishing and have used our port stops to meet with key stakeholders and staged a direct action on a South Korean vessel found to have been fishing illegally. All of this has helped spark discussion about the future of tuna fishing in the Indian Ocean.

This is a long way from where we started last September when we arrived in the region for the first time with our ship the Rainbow Warrior. Our work this year has taken forward many of the conversations started last year and allowed us to start talking with many more people from different coastal states.

On the Esperanza we documented some of the illegal and unsustainable fishing that is happening away from government and public scrutiny. We exposed for a second year in a row evidence of illegal fishing by Sri Lankan boats inside the protected Chagossian waters and have submitted the evidence to the relevant authorities, including the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC).

We found evidence of tuna transshipments at sea where caught tuna is moved from fishing vessels into larger container ships, a practice notorious for allowing illegally caught fish into the supply chain. Back on land, we met with the Mauritian Fisheries Minister, Nicolas Von Mally, who agreed in writing to put forward a motion to ban transshipments of tuna at sea at next year’s IOTC meeting. This is real progress.

While in Mauritius, the Esperanza was joined by a flotilla of local fishing boats as we sailed up the coast to the annual IOTC meeting, urging delegates to count the number of Indian Ocean tuna fishing boats and to ban the use of destructive Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) with purse seine nets.

Inside the meeting, our first ever formal delegation to the IOTC worked tirelessly to highlight the need for urgent reform.

Earlier, we had tracked down a vessel owned by South Korean fishing giant Dongwon found to have been fishing illegally in waters off the African coast. While the vessel was in Port Louis, Mauritius, we painted the word 'illegal' in English and Korean on the ship's hull. We also called on the Mauritian authorities to refuse permission for the vessel to unload. All of this culminated in the Mauritians refusing to let the vessel unload its untraceable and suspect catch.

In Reunion, more than 1,400 people toured the Esperanza over two days of open boats. Combined with meetings with key companies, fishermen and their unions, local NGOs and many media interviews we took our message about the urgent need for reform of tuna fishing to a big audience on the island.

Similarly in Madagascar we met with local fishermen to hear how the big tuna fishing boats are impacting their fishing and livelihoods. This was the first time that Greenpeace has worked on sustainable fishing issues in Madagascar and we made many useful contacts.

In total, we were at sea for two months documenting fishing at sea, while we talked with politicians, businesses, scientists, NGOs and fishermen on land.

In their different ways, it is clear that many of these very different groups recognise the need to change and improve the way tuna fishing is run and operated in the region. While we may not yet have agreement on what that change should be, our work over the past 10 months has ensured that a dynamic and far-reaching debate has properly begun. This is the first step towards change.

Now the hard work of securing that strong and lasting change to protect tuna stocks and the wider Indian Ocean marine environment begins.

Oliver Knowles, Greenpeace International senior oceans campaigner

International Biodiversity Day in photos

Bustar Maitar — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:41:00 +0200

On this International Day for Biological Diversity, we want to show you stunning images from one of the world’s richest places in biodiversity: Indonesia. From whale sharks, to abundant coral reefs and forests teeming with life, the Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior is currently documenting the beauty and fragility of Indonesia’s natural environment.

The message in these images is simple: this is what we stand to lose if we don’t act now.

If our planet is to sustain life on earth in the future and be protected from environmental destruction, we need action by governments to protect our living, breathing oceans and forests and to halt biodiversity loss.

The fragile state of Indonesia's oceans and forests are a clear reminder of how marine and forest life is at risk from industrial overfishing and relentless deforestation.

Indonesia has at least 20% of the world’s total biodiversity and is home to more than 30,000 recorded species of plants and more than 3,000 mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians

Approximately 10% of the world’s rainforests are located in Indonesia. Fifty years ago, 82% of the country was covered with forests but in the last decade this has dropped to 48% due to relentless deforestation for paper and palm oil plantations and mining.

Indonesia’s seas are also among the most diverse coastal and marine habitats. Areas like Raja Ampat, in West Papua, are claimed to be among the richest spots in biodiversity on Earth. But the country’s coral reefs are considered to be among the world’s most threatened biodiversity hotspots, at risk from overfishing, pollution and climate change.

Continued inaction is not an option.

We must move now to stop destructive industrial overfishing in order to restore our oceans to health and take steps to achieve zero deforestation.

Check out how you can support or join us.

Bustar Maitar is the head of the Greenpeace International Forests Campaign in Indonesia

Danzer feels the bite as the FSC show its teeth

Danielle van Oijen — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:00:00 +0200

To the layperson the world of forest certification is often a technical one that does not seem to operate at what could be called a breakneck pace. However, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has this week reached a landmark decision that fits the old adage that ‘good things come to those who wait’.

The Swiss-German timber group Danzer will be 'disassociated' from the FSC, the global certification system for responsible for forest management. This means the company loses all its FSC certificates worldwide.

The decision is the culmination of an 18-month effort by Greenpeace following a complaint made in 2011. That complaint stated that while Danzer bore the FSC stamp and projected a ‘green’ image to the world, its own operations were involved in human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to the independent forest monitor in DRC, the company was logging illegally on a systematic scale in 2011 when it received an FSC certificate for controlled wood.

The FSC has a set of minimum criteria for companies it will associate with - the Policy for Association. This is done to prevent the bad and the ugly from joining the scheme and helping to maintain FSC credibility in the marketplace.

The Policy for Association should exclude companies from the FSC that are active in deforestation, illegal logging, human rights abuses, destroying high conservation value forests and using GMOs. The FSC has now done the right thing to protect its reputation and brand by breaking ties with the Danzer group.

To exemplify why all of this is so crucial it is worth travelling back and looking at why Greenpeace International filed the complaint against Danzer.

In May 2011 the police and military were called by Siforco - at that time a subsidiary of Danzer - to quell protests by local communities in Yasilika against the company’s operations and their failure to fulfil social obligations.

Many of the local community were subsequently injured and had the their properties destroyed. There were also allegations of rape. One person later reportedly died of their injuries.

For Greenpeace, the case was clear-cut: Danzer needed to bear some responsibility for the company's involvement in these violations. We had been documenting conflicts in the company’s logging areas in the DRC since 2005 and this was not an isolated incident.

We welcome FSC’s show of teeth, although it is still unclear if this will help the people of the DRC and other countries or if it will rectify past transgressions by Danzer. But, it does send the right message. It is an important signal for forest managers that these practices are totally unacceptable and that they can be held responsible for their actions.

Greenpeace does not expect any FSC certificates to be handed out in the DRC in the near future as companies are not ready for them and neither is the FSC. This decision underlines that.

Unfortunately, the Yalisika case is not an isolated event. Violent conflicts occur frequently in the DRC where the logging sector is in a state of organised chaos.

The FSC's decision will hopefully spark a long awaited process to strengthen its system and make it credible in high risk areas where good governance, the rule of law, civil society are lacking and corruption is common practice.

Since the complaint was made Danzer has divested Siforco and sold its concession to Groupe Blattner Elwyn.

But what became clear today is that it cannot just sell up and walk away from the problems it has caused in the past. It will now have to pay for it by losing its certificates and do what it should have done years ago - respect the rights of local people and provide them with benefits.

Time for civil disobedience

Kumi Naidoo — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:21:00 +0200

The tradition of civil disobedience is being reignited. The need is growing and the call to action is becoming impossible to ignore! Non-violent direct action can help re-establish a balance where our rights have been overtaken by the self interest of powerful economic elites, willing to sacrifice our children’s future for their short term gain and profit.

Peaceful acts of civil disobedience have been at the heart of many major struggles humanity has fought over the past several decades: the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, the Civil Rights movement in the US and Gandhi’s fight against British colonial rule in India, to mention just a few examples.

Imagine a world without civil disobedience and non-violent direct action. If that’s too abstract and difficult to imagine, try this: imagine a world where women still can’t vote, where racial segregation and institutionalised discrimination still rule, imagine brutal colonial dominance and extreme inequity and social injustice across the globe. And while in some places we have to look to the past to find such outrageous examples of injustice and inequality, let's not forget that there are still many places where such disturbing realities remain the norm to this day.

Actions do speak louder than words and actions are needed now more than ever given the threat that our planet is facing as a result of rampant environmental and social exploitation.

Civil disobedience and direct action are at the heart of what we do here at Greenpeace, part of our heritage and history, our destiny and mission. Civil disobedience does not require heroes – it only takes decent men and women to say ‘enough is enough’. While with Greenpeace, I have taken direct action in the freezing waters of the Arctic Ocean twice. I have climbed oilrigs to represent the voice and concerns of millions of people saying that Arctic drilling is madness and must be stopped. I have even spent time in jail for this – but the fight is not over, and I will continue to support the Save the Arctic movement to stop Big Oil’s irresponsible ambitions. But this is about more than just stopping Big Oil; it’s about creating a world in which future generations can thrive, a world that is peaceful, just and equitable.

Civil disobedience seems to penetrate the consciousness of our political leaders much more than other methods. The public pressure that comes from civil disobedience can tilt public opinion and re-establish the balance between people power and the deep wallets of private companies sacrificing long-term environmental considerations for short-term profits. Political leaders can realise that they need to listen – if not because it’s the right thing to do, at least for fear of losing their mandates and positions.

A big thank you to all activists out there advancing the environmental cause, whether it’s fighting to bring justice to local communities in Nigeria suffering from Shell oil spills or stopping the Keystone XL pipeline in the US! Civil disobedience momentum is building – but much more is needed to avert catastrophic climate change and environmental destruction and degradation. Please join me and take action too!

Why we are happy, but not celebrating the Indonesian forest moratorium

Yuyun Indradi — Fri, 17 May 2013 06:00:00 +0200

I have been fielding calls non-stop over the last couple of days, because as you may have noticed, there has been widespread coverage lately (see here, here and here) on the Indonesian government’s extension of its forest moratorium.

It’s good news.

And it’s encouraging that the President of Indonesia, known as SBY, is renewing his commitment to protect forests – and cut my country’s massive carbon emissions. If the powerful palm oil lobby here in Indonesia had got their way for instance, the forest moratorium would have been scrapped and there would be a free for all to clear land for pulp and paper, palm oil and mining concessions.

Thankfully that did not happen.

But sadly, the moratorium still doesn’t go far enough. As I’ve been telling journalists who have asked for our view on the moratorium extension, the President did not go far enough – he did not strengthen the moratorium to cover all forests and peatland. Like the previous moratorium, the extension only covers primary forests, and rather than ALL natural forest and peatland. This is what’s really needed if we want to save Indonesia’s remaining tigers and orangutans, which are under threat from relentless palm oil, and pulp and paper expansion.

Why is there a moratorium anyway?

A shocking 85% of Indonesia’s emissions are from deforestation and peatland clearance, making Indonesia one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet, behind countries such as China and the United States. Norway is funding Indonesia’s forests and climate initiative to the tune of US$1 billion, with the aim to incentivise forest protection in Indonesia and cut greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a noble aim, and one we have been lobbying (both quietly and loudly) for years now.

So in May 2011, Indonesia introduced a two-year moratorium on permits for new concessions in primary forests and peatlands. While this moratorium was a welcome step in terms of the signals it sent, in practice most of the primary forests that it covers are already legally protected; the remainder are largely inaccessible and not under immediate threat of development. However, it leaves almost 50% of Indonesia’s primary forests and peatlands without any protection as they lie within already designated concessions and other significant areas of high carbon forest are not covered by the moratorium, as they are considered to be secondary forests.

The new two-year moratorium does nothing to fix that.

And furthermore, it does nothing about crucial issues of governance, which we feel goes to the heart of the matter. Without proper oversight and enforcement, the moratorium is a weak decree.

We have closely monitored the moratorium's implementation, and for the two years during the last moratorium we still found cases of overlap with concessions and some deforestation (encroachment) in protected areas.

That’s not to mention that the Ministry of Foresty has changed forest functions (from protected forest to production forest) and forest status from forest area to non-forest area.

So what are we going to do?

A lot.

More work needs to be done to harmonise spatial planning, developing sectorial policies and maps, stronger law enforcement measures (including addressing corruption and money laundering in the forest sector) and mechanisms for social conflict resolution. We will be pushing (quietly and loudly) to get this done.

And we’ll continue investigating and publicising cases of deforestation, the companies responsible and the laws that need strengthening.

We’ll remind the President that the path to zero deforestation means more than signing a decree.

Watch this space.

Yuyun Indradi is a Forests Campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia

I Love Arctic meets Arctic Council

Markus Power — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:00:00 +0200

The air was abuzz this morning in Kiruna. As delegates and press were mingling in the breakfast hall, Foreign Ministers were entering their policed motorcades and a group of Greenpeace volunteers was making final preparations to greet the decision makers with banners and signs along the road. But in the midst of all this, we were honoured with a quiet yet very special moment.

In a branch of the hotel lobby we gathered with four representatives of Arctic Indigenous Peoples; amongst them were Chief Michael Stickman, International Chair of the Arctic Athabaskan Council, and James Gamble, Interim Executive Director of the Aleut International Association, both Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council, who received two of the I Love Arctic photo books that we brought to Kiruna.

Hand over of 'I Love Arctic' photo-books to two Permanent Participants of Arctic Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic Council. From the left to the right: Ethan Gilbert (Greenpeace), Chief Michael Stickman (International Chair, Arctic Athabaskan Council), Chief Gary Harrison (Alaska Chair, Arctic Athabaskan Council), Chief Bill Erasmus (International Vice-Chair, Arctic Athabaskan Council), James Gamble (Interim Executive Director, Aleut International Association), Kiera-Dawn Kolson (Greenpeace).

In support of the I Love Arctic project, Chief Bill Erasmus of the Arctic Athabaskan Council carried four books with him into the Arctic Council Ministerial meeting to distribute them on our behalf to the four remaining Permanent Participants. We waved him goodbye in the cold air, warmed by the sight of over 17,000 people’s hopes and dreams for the Arctic making their way into the exclusive meeting.

Already yesterday, as delegates and Ministers were shuttled from the airport to Kiruna's city centre, they were greeted by activists presenting I Love Arctic photos on huge banners along the road.

US Secretary of State John Kerry's motorcade passes I Love Arctic photo banners on the way to Kiruna.

Inspired by the events so far, we still had one goal to fulfill: the handover of the books to the Arctic Council member states. Today's final appointment was with the outgoing Chair of the Arctic Council Gustaf Lind and the Danish Arctic Ambassador Klavs Holm, who received the last eight of the I Love Arctic photo books.

Swedish Arctic campaigner Therese Jacobson hands over 'I Love Arctic' books to the outgoing Chair of the Arctic Council Gustaf Lind and the Danish Arctic Ambassador Klavs Holm.

Despite the weak outcome of the Arctic Council Ministerial meeting, which was full of nice words, yet failed to sufficiently address pressing issues like greenhouse gas emissions of the Arctic States, Black Carbon or the real risks of Arctic oil drilling with concrete plans of action, we leave tomorrow knowing that the call of our ever-growing global movement for the Arctic was heard loud and clear in Kiruna.

Bringing the voices of people across the globe to the Arctic Council meeting was an important milestone. The struggle to save the Arctic and the future of our planet is a marathon, not a sprint. Together we celebrate the culmination of our achievements - tomorrow it's back to work.

Untangling the Gordian knot between the oil industry and the Arctic Council

Ruth Davis — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:52:00 +0200

The Arctic Council — the body concerned with the future management of the region — met today in Kiruna, Sweden’s most northern city, built around the world’s largest underground iron mine. As is perhaps inevitable when digging an enormous hole in the ground, the iron mine is now found to be pulling the town down into it; Kiruna is either going to fall in, or its going to be moved, brick by brick, 4km away. The sense of a community on the edge permeates this tough Northern outpost.

Kiruna will survive, because its people are resilient and resourceful. But whether the culture, wildlife, economy and infrastructure of the region can survive the twin crises of climate change and rapid and poorly regulated industrialisation is a more open question. Not least because the Arctic Council, originally established to protect the Arctic and its Peoples, too often proves better at defending the interests of extractive industries and big business.

The governments of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Russia, the US and Canada all know that two-thirds of the world’s remaining fossil fuel resources must stay in the ground if we are to stand a chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. In one report after another, Arctic Council scientists present irrefutable scientific evidence about impacts of fossil fuel extraction on the region; the loss of sea ice, the acidification of the oceans; and more locally, the huge risks of oil drilling in one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems, where it would be almost impossible to clean up a spill.

Yet the Council remains apparently paralysed and unable to take any concrete steps to stop the oil rush that is threatening to engulf this region in a cascade of changes from which it might never recover. The reason for this gulf between this understanding of risk — and the ability to act — is simple. In Canada, the US, Russia and Norway, the Arctic Council also encompasses some of the largest fossil fuel producing nations in the world — nations whose political systems, finances, wider economy and even cultures are profoundly entangled with the interests of the fossil fuel industry.

The situation is painful, absurd, tragic and deeply, deeply frustrating. Earlier today, US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of the necessity of curbing climate change to protect future generations. He called it a life or death situation. Yet the influence of oil money on US politics remains a roadblock to all of the steps that the country could take to tackle the crisis. Canada talks of reducing black carbon emissions, whilst continuing to pour money and unprecedented backroom effort into securing global markets for tar sands — the dirtiest fossil fuel of all.

Yet grotesque as this position is, it is neither stable nor inevitable. The evidence that bold action is essential for our collective survival is overpowering. The voices of those suffering the consequences of rapid change in the Arctic — particularly the voices of Indigenous Peoples who for too long have not had control over their own futures — cannot and will not be ignored forever. Beyond the Arctic, more and more people are realising that their lives, livelihoods and cultures can only be protected if we decide to untangle the Gordian knot of our relationship with the fossil fuel industry. From changes to the monsoon systems of Asia to the rising sea levels and devastating storms affecting people from the Seychelles to Manhattan, the consequences are clear and the choices, unavoidable.

The result is that the Arctic Council is now at a political tipping point: if they do nothing but research and chat — they will have failed the people of the Arctic and the wider global community.

And so too is the environment is at a tipping point. The contradictions between politics and reality might make us angry, but shouldn’t allow us despair. Together we can shift the balance.

A beacon of hope in the Arctic Council's shadow

Jon Burgwald — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:05:00 +0200

I’m here in a city called Kiruna in the northern part of Sweden, just inside the Arctic Circle. It is a small city with less than 20,000 inhabitants and in the foggy scenery, one thing stands out: The worlds’ largest underground iron mine, which can be seen from anywhere in the city.

From where I sit, I can see the iron mine to the left, and wind turbines a few kilometres to its right. It’s a strange dichotomy, and yet so appropriate — a fitting reminder that the Arctic is at a crossroads.

Today, Kiruna is playing host to the Arctic Council, where foreign ministers from the eight Arctic states and the six permanent participants — representing the Arctic Indigenous Peoples — are about to meet to discuss the future of the Arctic. The foreign ministers are largely bound by their pro-development agenda. But not everyone in the room shares their vision.

In fact just yesterday, we wrapped up a conference here, in the very same building where the foreign ministers are now gathering, a pan-Arctic Indigenous Peoples conference called “The Peoples’ Arctic: Unified for a Better Tomorrow.” And in that meeting it became very clear that there is growing Indigenous opposition to oil drilling in the Arctic.

More than 70 people attended the conference, most of them Arctic Indigenous and Inuit, from every Arctic state. Two of the attendees represent organisations that are permanent participants in the Arctic Council. Both of them oppose Arctic drilling.

At the end of the conference, a range of the participants signed onto a declaration, which was drafted by a group of Russian Indigenous Peoples at the first conference of its kind last August. The declaration now has more than 40 signatories — including two of the six permanent participants at the Arctic Council — calling for a ban on offshore oil drilling and for the Arctic states to respect the rights of the Indigenous Peoples.

Their reasons for signing the declaration are many and varied; rather than try to speak for them, you can find their own words inscribed on portraits here.

Many of these people, who have an inherent right to the lands of the Arctic, are experiencing the difficulties caused by a changing Arctic. The event was historical, as the relationship between Greenpeace and the Peoples of the North hasn’t been the best since our mistakes in the sealing campaign back in the eighties. There were lively discussions about the threats that both Indigenous Peoples and the Arctic face, and it is clear that there is a sense of urgency — a need to act.

And all of this happened on the eve of the Arctic Council meeting.

When these eight foreign ministers gather this morning to meet and greet and sign a greenwashed agreement on oil spill response and claim that they have done all they could — they will do it in the shadow of this conference and these statements. Then they will go back home and continue to allow oil companies to continue their destructive rampage in the fragile Arctic.

But the beacon of hope shines through the voices of those Indigenous Peoples who over the weekend, took a step toward rejecting Arctic oil. Greenpeace is not speaking on behalf of these Peoples, but we are standing shoulder to shoulder with them on this issue to protect the Arctic from destructive oil exploration. The movement is growing, and it is getting more and more difficult for the toothless governments in the Arctic Council to ignore.

Bringing the voice of 17,000 people to Kiruna

Markus Power — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:23:00 +0200

Almost there! My train is slowly approaching Kiruna, a city in the very North of Sweden, right above the Arctic Circle. Looking outside the window, I see the beautiful, snow covered landscape of Lapland, home to the Sami, the Indigenous Peoples who inhabit this land. It's the furthest north I've ever been.

I'm travelling to Kiruna on behalf of more than 17,000 people who came together on the “I love Arctic” Global Day of Action in 38 countries across the globe to call on our political leaders to protect the Arctic from dangerous offshore oil drilling and destructive industrial scale fishing.

Tomorrow, on May 15, 2013, the Arctic Council will gather in Kiruna, for their bi-annual Foreign Ministers meeting. The Arctic Council is the political regional body of Arctic states, observers and permanent participants — Arctic Indigenous Peoples — who are shaping the future governance and management of the Arctic.

According to its own founding principles and achievements, the Arctic Council should put the protection of the people and environment of the Arctic first, but instead it seems as if national and corporate interests begin to replace these founding principles. I’m on my way to remind them of their original mandate as they sit down to discuss the future of the Arctic.

One major item on the agenda of tomorrow's meeting is the agreement on a document titled "Cooperation on Marine Oil Pollution Preparedness and Response in the Arctic." As Greenpeace noted when we leaked this document in February, this is a disappointingly weak plan. It fails to set any practical minimum standards for preparedness and it doesn't even touch on the issue of company liability for the consequences of an oil spill. No oil company has ever proven it can clean up an oil spill in ice, and serious questions remain about the role oil companies played in drafting the document the Arctic Council is about to agree on tomorrow.

In the face of all this, I’m happy to be here to remind the Arctic Council of what’s at stake, and that they have a mandate beyond politicking and drafting useless document — a mandate to protect the Arctic not just for the Arctic states, but for people all around the world. Because we know that what happens in the Arctic effects everyone, everywhere.

As a documentation of the “I Love Arctic” Global Day of Action, I brought 14 picture books with me to Kiruna. Each of these books contains photos of all the 280 human banners, people formed on April 20 from Buenos Aires to Bangkok and from Oslo to Cape Town. The books also contain a photo-mosaic of more than 2,000 people holding up a speech bubble saying "I Love Arctic."

Very soon, on behalf of an ever growing Arctic movement, I'll have the honour of handing these beautiful books over to the foreign ministers as well as to the Arctic Council's permanent participants, the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic — the true stewards of the Arctic. Once this is done, I'll share the story of how it went with you all.

My train is rolling into Kiruna's central station now. Arctic Council, here we come!

Knowledge is key to biodiversity, not technology

Iza Kruszewska — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:53:00 +0200

Agribusiness and commodity traders are thin on the ground at this week’s FAO conference in Rome on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition. Despite its title, this event is of little interest to Big Food. After all, this conference is about feeding people – especially poor people in rural communities – not about feeding global commodity markets.

Sponsored by agriculture and development agencies, this conference – if it was "selling" anything at all - was "selling" biodiversity by sharing knowledge.

Agricultural biodiversity entails growing a variety of plants on a smallholding or farm instead of a large expanse of a single plant in monocultures of maize or soybean or plantations of oil palms. Biodiversity can not only provide food and a nutritious varied diet, but also fodder and ecosystem services like pest control by encouraging beneficial predators and fertilization by planting legumes and fertilizer trees.

Biodiversity is also the basis and the result, of a good forest conservation policy. A common misconception is that sound agricultural policies cannot go hand in hand with the protection of forested areas.

A smallholder rotating cereals and vegetables, growing coffee under a canopy of fruit or cocoa trees or oil palms will contribute to their household’s food security and nutrition by hedging their bets – if one crop fails, others can fill the gap and provide the family with a varied diet. Furthermore forest canopies continue to be protected and important corridors maintained for wildlife.

Any surplus fruit or cash crops of coffee and cocoa can supplement the family income. By relying on biodiversity to deter pest infestations and provide fertilisation, the smallholder reduces reliance on external inputs, like expensive chemical fertilisers and pesticides, which in turn prevents the pollution of soil and water and even improves the household balance sheet.

Ecological farming relies on agro-biodiversity by working with nature. In contrast, uncontrolled industrial agriculture threatens to suppress biodiversity by promoting an agricultural model that relies on monocultures of plants like GE cereals or plantations of oil palm or cocoa, to the exclusion of any other plant.

The lack of biodiversity increases the vulnerability of the monoculture to pest infestations, that industrial agriculture usually "solves" by selling toxic chemical pesticides, which often kill organisms indiscriminately, including beneficial insects like pest predators and pollinators such as bees.

This is why you will not find many corporate interests represented at this FAO conference. There’s no money to be made selling knowledge about agro-biodiversity to poor smallholder farmers. Indeed, there would be money lost for agribusiness with the wide-scale adoption of ecological farming.

By following a strategy of "Zero deforestation" countries that are home to large forested areas can ensure food sovereignty for their people by making the most of their natural resources without putting them at risk.

If smallholders are growing a variety of plants that provide a varied diet, they won’t be suffering from nutrient deficiency. This will sap demand for one of the latest technology fixes being developed by Big Food to make more money from our broken food system - biofortification. Whether it is Golden Rice to "solve" the vitamin A deficiency in Asia or Golden Sorghum to "solve" the vitamin A, zinc and iron deficiencies in Africa.

It would also provide a raison d’etre for releasing GMOs into the environment. There will be no market for these false solutions if smallholders embrace agro-biodiversity. As one Asian blogger put it: "the best solution to tackle Vitamin A Deficiency already exists and it’s called vegetables."

Forest destroyer kicked out of club

Suzanne Kroger — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:53:00 +0200

It was one of those days when we felt like change was in the air – even if it was a small victory it was an important one.

Yesterday, we confirmed that notorious palm oil producer and forest destroyer, Duta Palma, has (finally) been ejected from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil – an organisation with the declared aim of ensuring environmentally responsible palm oil production.

You might remember Duta Palma: we’ve been investigating and uncovering their practices for the last few years, revealing as recently as three weeks ago the company’s rogue activities in Indonesia.

This company has a long history of deforestation, community conflict, illegality, and non-compliance with RSPO regulations. But finally – and for what it’s worth – Duta Palma no longer has a stamp of approval from the RSPO.

This is good news, even if it means the RSPO dithered over this decision for far too long.

Our forest supporters around the world can claim this as good news for the people who depend on Indonesia’s rich forests, and the many animals that are threatened by the relentless expansion of destructive companies like Duta Palma.

But sadly, the case of Duta Palma is not over. Its operations continue and its legacy of environmental and social destruction will live on.

There is still a lot of work to be done, and this one action does not mean that being a member of the RSPO is a sign that the palm oil you buy is free from deforestation: see here for what we had to say about the RSPO’s latest raft of weak and ineffective rules.

At the end of the day, it’s up to the movers and shakers in the palm oil industry to take responsibility for their supply chains. The Duta Palma case reveals the risk faced by respected global brands that palm oil they purchase through international traders may come in part from illegal and destructive operations. Cargill, the world’s largest privately owned company, clearly stated it no longer trades with Duta Palma. But traders such as Wilmar International and Sime Darby that have been known to supply Duta Palma's dirty palm oil to the international market need to come clean about their supply chains. They need to commit to zero deforestation practices.

And we also need political solutions.

We are urging the government to use the expected moratorium extension to review all existing concessions areas so that rogue operators don’t get away with environmental crimes again.

So the work continues. We will continue to investigate, document and expose deforestation and the devastation it causes to forest dependent communities, Indonesia’s precious population of tigers and the climate. We look forward to reporting more good news soon.

Watch this space.

Suzanne Kroger is the coordinator of Greenpeace International's Palm Oil Campaign

Not only is another world possible, she’s on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Kumi Naidoo — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:38:00 +0200

Opening remarks at the Peoples' Arctic Conference in Kiruna, Sweden:

Greetings my friends, and welcome to the conference, the Peoples’ Arctic: Unified for a Better Tomorrow. My name is Kumi Naidoo and I have the pleasure and honour of welcoming you here today.

First I would like to thank the Sami Peoples of Sweden for welcoming us all here and allowing us to host this meeting on their traditional territory. Ohlo-Keeto!

I would also like to thank the people of the Nordic region, who, through their support of the Swedish Postcode Lottery, have been funding this important conference for the second year in a row. And to the Swedish Postcode Lottery directly, thank you for making this all possible.

Thank you all so much for coming all this way to be here with us for this historic occasion, where Indigenous Peoples from every Arctic state have come together to share experiences, exchange stories, bond over our likenesses and learn from our differences. We at Greenpeace and the Save the Pechora Committee are honoured to be with you all here in Kiruna.

It’s not often that we are able to gather together in this way. We live far apart from each other, in diverse lands, living unique lives — but we come together today bound by a common thread: the story of the changing Arctic — the changing landscape of your homes.

During the next two days you will hear stories from many important voices in this struggle — people like my friend Alice Ukoku, who has been fighting valiantly against the impacts of oil drilling in her native Niger Delta. Aleksei Limanzo from RAIPON will speak to you about the changing situation in Russia and Dene National and Northwest Territories Grand Chief Bill Arasmus will discuss Indigenous rights in a changing Arctic with Laila Susanne Vars, vice-president of the Sami Parliament in Norway, and Pat Pletnikoff, an Alaskan mayor. We’ll hear stories of the pitfalls and potentials of resource extraction from Mikkel Myrup, the Chair of Avataq in Greenland, as well as Francois Paulette, a Dene human rights activist from northern Canada.

I will not try to tell their stories for them. But I do want to talk to you now about other stories: the stories we tell ourselves every day; the stories we pass on to our children; the stories that some try to tell for us; and the stories that we’re changing just by being here today.

Over the last few years, in my position as the executive director of Greenpeace International, I have had the honour and the opportunity to hear stories from many of you directly about the changes you’re experiencing in your daily lives. Your homes, your ancestral lands, are changing rapidly. Everywhere on this planet, from my home in Africa to the north of Alaska, we are all experiencing the impacts of a changing climate firsthand.

And in fact, just two days ago, we hit a terrifying landmark when the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million. Let me repeat this, for this is a tipping point for all of us: For the first time in human history, the concentration of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million. The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea levels were up to 40 metres higher than today.

This is no longer just a theory or something we worry our children will face. We are already seeing climate change in action, all over the world. I’ve seen it where I come from, I’ve seen it in Fort Chipewyan in the Alberta Tar Sands, I’ve seen it in the Amazon where Indigenous Peoples have paid a huge price as well, and I’ve seen it in Greenland (where I had the privilege of spending almost a week’s holiday in prison in Nuuk!).

I’ve also heard from many of you that you see it every day where you live. The weather is changing. We can no longer deny this. In some places, the rains come less frequently; in others, the snowfall lasts well into spring. Deep trenches of water are appearing where before there was only ice. Reindeer and caribou, deer and moose, fox and polar bears and countless species of birds are migrating away from traditional hunting grounds, changing their patterns, beginning to adapt to a changing climate.

Across the Arctic, amid all this change, we are hearing stories of struggle and seeing signs of trouble — but also signs of emerging crusades for justice and resilience against the corporate powers that for too long have dictated our story.

Shell was forced to cancel its 2013 Arctic drilling plans after a series of failures and accidents plagued its 2012 drilling programme. Similarly, both Statoil and ConocoPhillips have both shelved plans to drill in the Arctic this year.

But beyond the oil companies, this has been a year of heroic stories for the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic. A battle has been brewing with our allies in Russia, where RAIPON, the largest Indigenous organisation representing more than 40 Indigenous groups in Russia and the East, was ordered in November by the Russian Ministry of Justice to close its doors following what they deemed, “irregularities in its organisational statuses.” This stirred exactly the sort of international outrage that it warranted.

As expressed by Aili Kesketalo, the leading Sami politician from Norway, this challenged “the very foundation for international cooperation between Indigenous Peoples.”

In the end, after much outrage and complex politicking, this unjust decision was overturned. This marked a change in the story the Russian government was trying to tell, affirming an important lesson: that the Indigenous Peoples of the Arctic are powerful, and when united, represent an unparalleled threat to the current “business as usual” approach to Arctic management. In the words of RAIPON’s former First Vice President:

“There is an extensive hike in the level of industrialization in the north, and the Indigenous Peoples are among the last barriers against the companies’ and state’s development of the resources.”

Reading this, I was reminded of one of my favourite quotes by Ghandi,: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

This is also exactly what is happening in Canada where we saw other evidence of this kind of oppression in late 2012, when Indigenous Peoples were similarly vilified by the Harper government.

After being labeled by the Minister of Natural Resources as “radicals” funded by shadowy government conspirators, Harper went further, introducing bills containing huge, draconian amendments to environmental assessment and protection — and buried in there were changes to many laws that removed tens of thousands of rivers and lakes from federal protection, including bodies of water to which aboriginal groups have registered legitimate claims and declarations of interest.

This spurred an unparalleled uprising, a massive movement called Idle No More, which brought together tens of thousands of people from across Canada, from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, standing together in opposition to this clear undermining of human rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and in clear contrast to their treaty rights.

The story of the Idle No More movement is hugely inspirational but also extremely nuanced — but over the course of the next two days, I encourage you to seek out your Canadian Indigenous allies and ask them about this uprising, about what it means for them, and what it says about the Canadian government that is just this week assuming chairmanship of the Arctic Council.

Amid all of this oppression shines an underlying story: a light of resistance, power, and hope. Indigenous Peoples everywhere are fighting back. You are being recognised as the stewards of the land and the powerful force that you are; you are demanding that your treaty rights be honoured, and finally I hope that you are being heard by the governments that first ignored you, then laughed at you, then fought you, and then conceded.

You’re not alone. All over the world, people are joining forces, moved by the stories of what’s happening in the Arctic, and inspired to act to change the power structure, take it away from the big corporations and put it back in the hands of the people.

I see this week as an opportunity for Arctic Indigenous Peoples to have your voices heard. In these big political games, where the story has long been about whoever has the most money and power gets to call the shots, where the people with money get to carve up your land and divide the resources, it is imperative that your story be told, and that the right people be made to listen.

While you lose your right to sustain yourself in a traditional way off the land, they make money. While you are getting hungrier for untainted food and water, they get hungrier for more power and control. This is not a just story. It is not one I want anything to do with. It is not right, it is not equitable, and it is certainly not sustainable. And so we must change it.

We must change the questions that are being asked and the answers that are being given in false justification. These corporations are asking themselves, how much can we consume? How quickly can we extract all this oil? When really the questions they should be asking are, to whom does this land belong? And who should have the right to decide how it’s managed? Who will suffer tomorrow’s consequences of our decisions today?

The authorities will often frame the story as this: oil equals sustainable development and a better quality of life for Indigenous Peoples living here, versus no oil equals no prospects for local communities in the North. This is a false dilemma and tantamount to blackmail. We have learned time and again that access to oil does not mean positive growth for Indigenous and local communities. In fact, coming from Africa, I know that being rich below the ground almost always equals poverty above ground. But your stories do not have to end this way.

In a few decades, oil will be gone. Experts say that we passed peak oil production in 2010. So why should we risk the last pristine ecosystems on the planet in the race for the last drops of oil? And who will take the responsibility for cleaning up the mess these companies will leave behind when they are done sucking everything out of the Arctic? Not the companies, no, we have learned this. And not the Arctic Council either — their new toothless oil spill response plan has proven this. Time and again, we have learned the sad truth that neither governments nor industry can be trusted to do this.

This week Greenpeace and the Save the Pechora Committee are here to learn from your experiences, to listen to what you want, and to help amplify your voice in this struggle. To help tell the stories you want to tell.

It is no secret that historically, Greenpeace hasn’t always done right by Indigenous communities. We made some errors many years ago, but we are learning from past mistakes. So let me be clear on this point — Greenpeace unequivocally supports subsistence whaling and hunting.

However at this critical point in history, it’s important to recognise that there is far more that unites us than divides us, and it’s that unity of purpose that we want to explore.

Last year when I addressed a similar conference we held in Russia, I told some of you that we would not solve all the problems we face with one conference, nor will we solve them with two. But together we made great strides. The attendees of the conference sat together crafting a joint statement of opposition to Arctic drilling. For hours they talked around the table, exchanging ideas, honing the language, fine-tuning the set of demands until there was unanimous agreement. The result of that meeting was a strong statement that other Arctic Indigenous Peoples have continued to sign on to since then. The statement is here, and you’ll be given the opportunity to read through it and sign if you so choose.

These meetings and these collectively crafted agreements are critical steps in forging new and lifelong relationships that I believe will be pivotal in forming our collective future. Together we are consciously creating the sort of stories and the kind of world that we will all live in together, and that we will leave behind for future generations to inherit.

This is no small task. In fact, it is a huge responsibility, and one that I do not take lightly. Just by being here and demonstrating your commitment and willingness to work with your contemporaries around the world, shows me that you all share this burden.

There is an old Cree Proverb that I’m sure many of you know, that says, “Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught — Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”

And you know, this is happening. I truly believe that there is a shift in consciousness happening right now. We stand here today on the precipice of a new world.

It is daunting, and sometimes scary — but it is also a unique and inspiring opportunity. All across this planet I am humbled by what I am witnessing firsthand — a deep commitment, passion and vision of people who see another way forward. Who envision another kind of world for their children — one that respects the earth and honours her fragility; Peoples from north to south, east to west, who have grown tired of an economic paradigm that values profit over people, and greed over green. People who are standing up and standing together, claiming their rights as human beings, and demanding they be heard.

Every day I draw my inspiration and my strength from these people — from people like each of you who stand in this room. I am humbled by your individual vulnerability and your collective strength.

And you are not alone.

Last month, a group of young ambassadors — including Kiera Dawn-Kolson and Josefina Skerk, two Arctic Indigenous representatives and both of whom are here today — embarked on a quest with Greenpeace to the North Pole, to plant the names of three million people on the seabed below the North Pole — three million people from nearly 60 countries on earth, all united in their determination to secure Arctic protection. They all know what we do: that our fates are intertwined with the fate of the Arctic. They left their homes in the Seychelles, in the Northwest Territories of Canada, in the north of Sweden and in New York, to create a new conversation about the future of the Arctic. To tell different stories and to change the narrative from the current paradigm to the new reality we all envision.

On the seabed at the North Pole they planted an indestructible glass time capsule. There it sits now holding the names of 2.7 million people, including some of yours, a testament to our joint commitment. Inscribed around the capsule on a titanium ring is a quote from one of one of the most powerful storytellers from India. Her name is Arundhati Roy. The quote is from one of her novels, The God of Small Things, and it says: “Not only is another world possible, she’s on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

My friends, I believe that right now we are bearing witness to this. I believe the new world we seek is on its way.

Together with you all, we stand here today to affirm our commitment to creating this new world together, to asserting our right to ensure our future, to ensure our very lives, which may sometimes seem far apart, but are in reality wholly connected. With your blessing, I promise we will work to make the governments of the Arctic realise that your voices cannot and will not be ignored. Together we will continue in our battle to protect the Arctic and your rights as the true inhabitants of this unique place.

Over the next two days, I hope we will forge new relationships and strengthen old ones. I encourage you to use the breaks to make friends and speak to each other. I encourage you to ask Kiera and Josefina about the mission they have just returned from, and to share stories with them in return. More than anything at this conference, I look forward to hearing — and learning from — your stories.

These stories we tell each other will form the narrative that we create, block by block, and character by character; do not underestimate their power. These stories will shape our futures, and the future of this planet that we call home.

And history is also our teacher here in terms of our ambitions to address the destruction that is happening in the Arctic. Twenty years ago when Greenpeace and other groups pushed for the Antarctic to be declared a global commons protected from industrial exploitation, everyone said, you’re crazy, you don’t stand a chance, you’ll never win.

But they were wrong. And now more than two decades later, Antarctica is still protected, and this achievement has helped in some way to mitigate runaway climate change.

The irony is that Antarctica, which isn’t even home to human beings, is now protected. So how is it that the Arctic, home to millions of people, including some of the most precious and unique communities in the world, cannot secure the same protection where people need it most?

The answer is that we can, and we must. This reminds me of a quote from the Maori, the Indigenous Peoples of New Zealand/Aotearoa — about exactly this point, which I’d like to end on, because I think it perfectly encapsulates why we are all here:

He aha te mea nui o te ao?
He tangata! He tangata! He tangata!

What is the most important thing in the world?
It is people! It is people! It is people!

Listen to Kumi Naidoo's speech here.

Carbon dioxide reaches levels never seen by humans

Stephanie Tunmore — Sat, 11 May 2013 11:18:00 +0200

The levels of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. The last time levels were this high global average temperatures eventually reached 3 or 4C° higher than now, the polar regions were up to 10C° warmer than today the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were smaller and Sea level ranged between five and 40 meters (16 to 131 feet) higher than today.

There are two reasons to be seriously worried by this year's CO₂ measurements from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. We are hitting the symbolic limit of 400 parts per million, showing how far we have come from the pre-industrial levels of 280 and the relative safety of 350. Even more alarming, though, is the fact that this year the levels have risen faster year-on-year than ever before during the time that measurements have been made, breaking the previous record from more than a decade ago. In other words, not only are we speeding into climatic territory that humankind has never experienced before, we are still speeding up.

The planet is poised to reach the 1,000 ppm level in only 100 years if emissions continue to rise at their present level whereas an increase of just 10 parts per million might have taken 1,000 years or more during ancient climate change events. We are altering the conditions within which civilisation developed, at a rate that will seriously challenge our capacity to adapt and change.

The people with their foot on the gas pedal are the dirty fuel and logging industries, with the coal industry alone responsible for two thirds of recent frantic emission growth. And they have no intention of slowing down. Massive coal expansions are planned in Australia, China and the U.S., that would lock in increasing emissions for decades. Stopping or scaling back these projects is absolutely necessary to keep global warming from accelerating further out of control.

The Greenpeace Energy [R]evolution 2012 provides a consistent fundamental pathway for how to protect our climate: getting the world from where we are now to where we need to be by phasing out fossil fuels and cutting CO₂ emissions while ensuring energy security. Implementing a revolution in the way energy is produced and used would add six million jobs in the heating and power sectors alone.

The multitude of destructive global and local impacts of the fossil fuel industry is becoming all the more apparent and uniting local groups and international networks in resistance. The hope for the planet is that the climate movement and the clean energy solutions can grow even faster than the CO₂ emissions have. We have already seen examples of the movement taking on some of the biggest and most powerful vested interests in the world, delaying or stopping coal terminals, oil sands pipelines and coal power plants; and putting in place successful clean energy policies. What the data from Mauna Loa shows is that spaceship earth needs more hands - your hands - on deck to bring in more of these victories.

Sailing through the world’s richest waters – Rainbow Warrior arrives in Indonesia

Bustar Maitar — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:50:00 +0200

I grew up in West Papua, which sits in the far west of the world’s biggest archipelago. I studied forestry in the province’s capital, but grew up in another city called Jayapura. If West Papua is considered frontier land, then Jayapura is certainly the wild west.

It’s an obscure and isolated part of the world. Wild, green and untamed, this part of the world is home to one of the earth’s last glaciers in the tropics and some of the richest biodiversity on this planet.

I’ve returned to my old stomping grounds for an important reason. Today, our ship, the Rainbow Warrior III, arrived in Jayapura, Indonesia to begin an ambitious and historic visit. Just three years ago in 2010, the Rainbow Warrior II was unceremoniously escorted back to international waters by the navy. But thankfully no such misunderstanding took place this time. We are here to celebrate my country’s stunning, yet fragile environment.

For too long our forests and oceans have been under siege. Fifty years ago, 82% of Indonesia was covered with forests but in the last decade, this has dropped to 48% due to rampant deforestation for paper and oil palm plantations and mining.

Indonesia’s seas are also among the most diverse coastal and marine habitats, but experts identify the country’s coral reefs as among the world’s most threatened biodiversity hotspots, at risk from overfishing, pollution and climate change.

But let me tell you why this is important to you, no matter if you’re sitting in Jakarta, London or Berlin.

The destruction of the world’s forests is one of the main causes of climate change, second only to the energy sector. Indonesia loses approximately 1.1 million ha, or 1.2% of its forest area per year.

And believe it or not, according to some estimates, Indonesia ranks as one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, behind countries like the United States and China.

But the world stands to lose a lot more. Only around 400 Sumatran tigers are still left because its habitat is disappearing. And in West Papua the bird of paradise is iconic to the region but now they are threatened as industrial plantations and logging imperil their homes.

My island nation, scattered between the Pacific and Indian oceans is teeming with life and unparalleled beauty, but so much is at threat. I hope our journey aboard the Rainbow Warrior will help support the political will needed so that initiatives like the government’s forest moratorium is strengthened and so industrial fishing doesn't kill our oceans. I hope this journey also will bring hope to other indigenous people on this island, to show that together we can protect the future.

When I come back in ten years time, West Papua probably won’t be the frontier land it is now. But I sure hope development doesn’t mean losing everything that makes this country so beaituful.

I hope we will at least have learnt how to live in harmony with our environment.

Bustar Maitar is head of the Indonesia Forest Campaign

Why California should not be allowed to outsource Hot Air

Daniel Brindis, Greenpeace Forests Campaigner — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:43:00 +0200

This week Greenpeace and other leading environmental groups including Sierra Club California, California Environmental Justice Alliance, Asia Pacific Environmental Network, and Friends of the Earth sent a letter to California Governor Jerry Brown in which we urge him to stop a proposal that would allow companies to keep polluting in California in exchange for some highly controversial forest projects abroad. Not only could this have devastating social and environmental consequences in developing countries but it would also allow for higher emissions in California.

In January California created the world’s second largest carbon market, aiming to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. In designing the market, California claims to have learned from mistakes others have made elsewhere. By enacting a carbon price floor, for example, the government has tried to ensure the market will not face the same problem as its European equivalent did when its carbon prices collapsed in April. Now, however, California is considering to open a Pandora’s Box: The state is thinking about allowing companies that otherwise would have to cut their emissions at home to forgo those requirements by using forests in Mexico or Brazil to offset their pollution. The use of those so-called REDD-credits (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) would set an international precedent. So far all major cap-and-trade schemes have explicitly ruled out the use of tropical forests as an offset option because of environmental and social concerns.

While trading subnational REDD-offsets would be a dream come true for bankers and project developers (who are already lining up to make a killing on such projects), allowing this to happen would wreak havoc on the environment. Science tells us that if we want to get serious about stopping catastrophic climate change, we need to curb emissions and bring down deforestation rates around the world. We do not have the luxury to choose between the two. We cannot simply replace one with the other. The numbers just don’t add up. They don’t add up in California and they don’t add up elsewhere. Which is why experts like Natalie Unterstell, Brazil’s chief negotiator on forests at the international United Nations climate talks said last year: “We do not want REDD to generate more emissions. We are not going to sell emissions reductions titles to someone who will increase emissions on the other side.” It might be good for California to keep this in mind as Brazil is one of the countries the state wants to source their offsets from.

Last year, Greenpeace released the report Outsourcing Hot Air explaining why using forests to offset industrial emissions will not save the climate and why California should steer clear of including this option in their carbon market.

We showed that while many problems exist with offsets in general, there are significant problems unique to tropical forests which make them broadly unfit to offset industrial emissions. There is, for example, the issue of permanence: a substantial part of end-of-pipe emissions from factories stays in the atmosphere for centuries where they contribute to climate change. Reductions in forests emissions on the other hand cannot be easily guaranteed for such a period of time given how quickly forests can be degraded by companies, pests, and even the impacts of climate change. Then there is the question of real additionality. Every offset project ultimately hinges on the assumption that without the project there would have been more emissions or in the case of forests, more deforestation. In other words: It has to be proven that the trees used to offset the emissions from Californian companies would not have remained standing if it wasn’t for the offset project. This, of course, is something we can never know for sure but independent investigations have found project after project where this was demonstrably not true. Finally there is the substantial risk of leakage. Leakage occurs when due to the protection of one area, deforestation just shifts to another area. This can largely be prevented by implementing anti-deforestation schemes such as REDD on a national level because if deforestation is tackled nationwide, timber companies or others who are cutting down trees cannot simply move their destructive operations to another part of the country. California, however, is considering a sub-national approach to REDD which would dramatically increase this risk because it wouldn’t put entire forest landscapes under protection but create a fragmented patchwork where the drivers of deforestation could just move from one place to another. For the climate it makes no difference where a tree is being cut down so California’s proposal, if implemented, would likely not curb emissions from deforestation.

Our report did not only show how forest offsets risk to make the climate crisis worse but also highlighted how they could lead to dramatic social problems and human rights violations in developing countries. Tropical forests have unique social, economic and cultural significance to those who live in and depend on them for their livelihoods. Independent investigations into the promotion of international forest offsets have raised serious concerns related to human rights violations and there is major opposition to California’s plans from indigenous peoples and local communities around the world.

Since we released Outsourcing Hot Air academics and scientists from around the United States have weighed in to share their concerns with California’s proposal. They all point to substantial problems with international forest carbon offsets. Tracey Osborne from the University of Arizona who has been working on the issue for more than a decade points out that “[f]rom Indonesia to Mexico, members of indigenous and forest communities have marched in protest against market-based strategies for climate change mitigation in forests. In particular, they have expressed concern about how forest-based carbon offsets associated with REDD+ may affect their land rights and access to resources.” Kathleen McAfee, Associate Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University, adds that “landed elites and well-connected investors with influence in the courts, police, military, and other federal agencies, commonly defy or bypass environmental restrictions in their pursuit of profitable but environmentally destructive logging, ranching, and expanded cultivation of export crops”.

It is time for California to become a real leader on climate and public health issues rather than one seeking to provide its most polluting industries with yet another loophole that will allow them to avoid reducing their emissions at home. California has a long track record at pioneering innovative solutions to tackle environmental challenges. To keep that legacy California needs to ban subnational offsets from tropical forests and demand real emission cuts at home that will benefit both people and the climate.

United we sail – Mauritian fishermen, Greenpeace protest against overfishing

Oliver Knowles — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:12:00 +0200

This week, politicians, scientists and fisheries managers from around the world are coming to Mauritius to attend the annual Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) meeting. This organisation is charged by governments to protect tuna stocks across the Indian Ocean, but right now it is abjectly failing in this task.

Tuna fishing across the region is poorly controlled – too many boats are taking too many fish, and often these boats come from wealthier, distant nations that use wasteful and destructive fishing techniques.

On Sunday morning, I sailed on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza from the Mauritian capital, Port Louis, along the coast towards Grand Bay where the IOTC meeting is being held, to deliver an important message. But the Esperanza did not sail alone. We were joined by a flotilla of artisanal Mauritian fishermen in their tiny boats who wanted to deliver the same message to the IOTC – act now to improve your management of Indian Ocean tuna fisheries.

Battling strong winds and an increasing ocean swell, the local fishermen did a magnificent job in keeping close to the Esperanza with their banners flying as we crept up the coast towards the IOTC conference centre to deliver our message.

The day before our flotilla sailed up the coast I had met many of the fishermen on the beach where they tie up their boats. In the sand, using a stick, they drew out a map of the coastline and we agreed a place where the Esperanza would meet them so that we could sail up the coast together to deliver a message to the IOTC.

These local fishermen, whose boats are only a few metres long and open to the weather, struggle to make a living because their catches have been declining dramatically over recent years. As the number of large, foreign tuna fishing vessels have increased, the local fishermen have seen their catches fall in size. They tie up their vessels on a crumbling concrete jetty that is barely usable or on a nearby beach covered in rubbish that has washed up in recent tides.

Just along the coast, visible from the fishermen’s beach, much larger long-line vessels from places such as Japan, Taiwan and Korea and huge state-of-the-art French, Spanish and Korean purse seiners berth alongside well-maintained concrete docks and use modern port and processing facilities.

This contrast, between the operations of the local fishermen and the foreign fishing fleets using the modern port underscores the Mauritian fishermen’s grievances and offers some explanation as to why they joined us to call on the IOTC to improve its management of the region's tuna fisheries.

IOTC management is currently so poor that there is no clear idea how many boats are actually fishing in the Indian Ocean. Wasteful and destructive tuna fishing techniques, such as purse seining with Fish Aggregating Devices continues to expand unchecked.

Wealthier, distant-water fishing nations such as France, Spain, Taiwan, Japan, China and Korea are supported more by current management than many local fishermen, who very often struggle to make a living. Waters are poorly controlled and policed meaning there is a significant amount of illegal fishing taking place across the Indian Ocean.

Transhipments of fish between vessels at sea are allowed – an operation that if poorly monitored (and this is usually the case), allows for loads of illegal fish to be landed ashore. In its recent voyage across the Indian Ocean, the Esperanza and her team have found evidence of this illegal fishing. We have now presented this information to the IOTC.

As we approached Grand Bay, the wind and swell picked up yet again and the fishermen decided it was time to return home. We waved them goodbye from the Esperanza as they turned for the coast. But they had made their point and their message will be heard at the IOTC next week.

The local fishermen who we sailed with today are already feeling the impacts of poor fisheries management by the IOTC. For them, declining tuna and other fish stocks are an issue that they and their families confront every day. They will remain in the front line of a poorly protected Indian Ocean, but unless the IOTC acts now to change the fishing here, we will soon all be the poorer for it.

Oliver Knowles, Oceans Campaigner, is currently on the Esperanza.

Click here to download the Greenpeace report looking at Indian Ocean fishing capacity

Population and Ecology

Rex Weyler — Mon, 06 May 2013 00:33:00 +0200

World governments, the public, and the UN now recognize that the human population number matters in achieving ecological sustainability for human communities.

For forty years, since the first United Nations environment meeting in Stockholm in 1972, environmentalists have debated whether we should include human population growth among the urgent challenges of human consumption, industrial toxins, species loss, global warming, and so forth.

This debate appears to be resolved. Clearly, human population figures have an impact on the health of natural ecosystems. Virtually every nation in the world seeks more commodities for its citizens, and a growing population multiplies the effect of this growing per-capita resource consumption. We could make all the right moves regarding energy systems, transportation, and recycling, and still overshoot Earth’s capacity with unsustainable numbers of humans. It is a good sign that the United Nations now recognizes this.

UN special session on population

Next year, in September 2014, the United Nations will convene a special session on human population. The U.N. General Assembly finally intends to implement a population stabilization plan devised twenty years ago at the U.N. population conference in Cairo. The original strategy, adopted by 180 nations, cited women’s rights, birth control, and economic development as keys to stabilizing population growth. This strategy remains valid, but is useless if not implemented with meaningful targets and actions. It may also prove useless if we do not re-define “economic development” to focus on better lives for the world’s poor, less wasteful consumption among the rich, and less concentration of wealth among the super-rich.

Since the Cairo conference, the world's population has grown from 5.7 billion to 7 billion people. We add about 75 million people each year – the equivalent of five cities the size of Beijing each year – but we fail to match this growth with new infrastructure, shelter, food, water, or health care. Adding more people simply puts more strain on Earth’s limited and dwindling resources. As we add more people, we lose some 16 million hectares of forest each year, gain 6 million hectares of desert, lose 26-billion tons of topsoil, deplete aquifers, and drain rivers. These trends are not sustainable.

The additional humans are crowded into existing cities and depleted countryside. About ten million people starve to death each year, over a billion people go hungry, and some 2 billion have no access to clean fresh water.

Lip service or real action?

The danger with UN meetings – as we witnessed with climate conferences – is that no substantive action will follow. Kenya lead the movement for a UN population meeting, but Kenya's deputy U.N. ambassador Koki Muli warned that there will be no final document from the 2014 population session. The assembly may dodge the real changes that need to occur, choosing to avoid controversial issues such as universal women’s rights, girl’s education, abortion rights, and access to contraception.

Historical evidence shows that wherever women have rights over their own reproduction and where families have access to birth control, the fertility rate declines. Growth advocates claim that industrial development leads to lower population growth, but that is not always the case. Prior to 1964, population and GDP grow together. Since then, in Europe, fertility rates have dropped, but not in the US or Saudi Arabia where cultural resistance undermines family planning. However, in the 1970s, fertility rates fell in Spain and Italy, not because of increased wealth, but rather following the advent of women’s rights and available contraception. In Columbia, fertility rates dropped from 6 to 3.5 children per family in 15 years after contraception was made widely available.

The U.N. is correct to focus on these measures, but to be successful, the U.N. must be willing to confront cultural resistance with education. The Cairo conference recognized the need for comprehensive population policies that include family planning, gender equality, and sex education for both young women and men. However, they also noted that such policies will conflict with cultural habits. The Cairo conference recognized that practices such as abortion should be treated as a public health issue to ensure safe motherhood.

The U.N. Population Fund's executive director, Babatunde Osotimehin, believes the UN has to work with individual communities to reverse out-dated cultural practices such as contraception bans and female genital mutilation. That organization has been working with UNICEF, the UN’s children fund, to encourage communities to stop the practice. In 2012 they met directly with 1,800 communities to overcome “major obstacles related to culture,” according to Osotimehin. They have worked to educate communities in family planning and contraception, which Osotimehin calls “the most important intervention you can give to liberate a women’s energy and life.” Finally, according to Osotimehin, “the world is listening.”

Change in attitudes

With present practices, the UN estimates we are on pace for 10 billion people by 2050, and possibly 12 to 14 billion by 2100. That would mean twice as many humans in a world even more depleted of resources. Since we have not been able to feed or supply basic living standards for 7 billion, these figures appear frightening. However, attitudes are beginning to change.

In the US, the Center for Biological Diversity conducted a Public Poll a found that 60 percent of Americans now equate human population growth to wildlife extinctions; 57 percent understand the link to climate change. These represent marked changes from even a decade ago.

Real world environmental crises are driving these changes in attitude. In the US, for example, the nation is on track to lose 15 million hectares (36 million acres) of forest to urban sprawl by 2050. In Florida, due to over-pumping of water, salt water is now intruding into the primary aquifer, which supplies water for 19 million people.

Water shortages now appear in most parts of the world, rich and poor – US plains, Beijing, Madras, Mexico – simply because of over-consumption, too many people demanding too much of a limited resources. Since 1960, for example, the Aral Sea has shrunk to about 10 percent of its original area.

Population, consumption & technology

During the 1970s, American ecologists Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren published a now-famous formula to account for human ecological impact on the Earth’s systems: I = PAT, indicating that ecological Impact (I) is equal to Population (P) times Affluence (A), or average consumption, times a factor for Technology (T).

Stated simply, the human impact on the planet is proportional to a certain population consuming a certain amount of resources per person, using particular technologies, such as coal, hydrocarbons, automobiles, nuclear power, and so forth. The point is: population is a factor, not to be ignored.

This formula has been useful, but one obvious flaw in this formula, we now know, is that the “Technology” factor is non-linear, meaning that a simple change in technology can create a large, exponential leap in ecological impact. Consider for example the exponential impact of deep sea drilling after the British Petroleum oil-well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, or the exponential impact of a disaster such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. A nuclear war would be the ultimate exponential impact.

Another reason we must consider the exponential impact of technology is that the living ecological system may also respond with its own multiplying effects. Every time we disturb nature, we set in motion a sequence of system responses, which then have their own impact, usually beyond our control or influence. We witness this with global heating. Carbon in the atmosphere heats Earth’s air, land, and water, but the heating itself creates feedbacks that include: Melting permafrost that releases methane, which increases heating; melting ice that reduces Earth’s reflective qualities (albedo), retaining more heat; dying forests that absorb less carbon; increased wildfires; and so forth.

The formula should more accurately be I = PATS; the ecological impact of humanity is related to population and per-capita consumption, as well as to technology and systems feedbacks, which can be non-linear, or exponential, factors.

The wealthy nations and wealthy consumers have, of course, the greatest impact, but sheer numbers do count. There are ways that we can stabilize human population without unpleasantly imposed restrictions, namely with universal women’s rights, education, and available contraception. We can hope that in 2014, the United Nations adopts these policies and takes serious action.

Rex Weyler

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EU bans three bee-killer pesticides: a light of hope for bees and agriculture

Matthias Wüthrich — Fri, 03 May 2013 11:18:00 +0200

The next time you see a bee buzzing around, it’s worthwhile remembering that much of the food we eat depends significantly on pollination these insects provide. But bees and other pollinators are declining globally, particularly in North America and Europe, putting this essential role in doubt.

In the US, the loss of 30-40% of commercial honeybee colonies since 2006 has been linked to “colony collapse disorder”, a syndrome characterised by disappearing worker bees. Since 2004, losses of honeybee colonies have left North America with fewer managed pollinators than at any time in the last 50 years. In recent winters, bees colony mortality in Europe has averaged about 20% (but up to 53% for some countries).

Without insect pollination, about one third of the crops we eat would either have to be pollinated by other means, or face considerably lower yields. In all, up to 75% of our crops would suffer some decrease in productivity. Undoubtedly, the most nutritious and interesting crops in our diet (including many key fruits and vegetables), together with some crops used as fodder in meat and dairy production, would be badly affected by a decline in insect pollinators. The most recent estimates value pollination services at €265bn.

And the problem could become even bigger as the world moves progressively towards growing more crops that are dependent on bee (and other insect) pollinators. So why are some policy-makers still trying to delay actions designed to save the farmer’s smartest natural allies?

A significant first step

Europe took a significant step in the right direction this Monday as a majority of EU member states voted for a partial ban of three bee-killer pesticides. After the fierce lobbying by the powerful pesticide industry, the vote was a vindication. The bee-killer companies have lost this battle; and the bees have won – for now! This is a success that environmentalists, beekeepers and the considerable amount of European citizens that got involved in the related campaigns can be proud of.

The decision still has to be formally confirmed by the European Commission. But it cannot ignore that there is overwhelming scientific, political and public support for a ban. Tonio Borg, EU Health and Consumer Commissioner already made clear that ‘the Commission will go ahead with its text in the coming weeks’, in light of the majority support from the member states in Monday’s vote. Since member states failed to reach a qualified majority to either endorse or oppose a ban in two consecutive votes, the Commission now has the right move ahead on its own proposal.

This is good news for the bees and for the farmers of Europe. This EU-wide decision is the world’s first region wide ban on bee-killer pesticides. It will restrict the use of three neonicotinoids (clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam) for seed treatment, soil application (granules) and spray treatment on plants and cereals attractive to bees.

Exposing the culprits: Bayer and Syngenta

Remarkably enough, the three neonicotinoids are best-selling blockbuster products manufactured by the agri-giants Syngenta and Bayer. Both these companies conducted an imposing PR campaign furiously trying to protect their profits with no regard to the high environmental costs. They ignored scientific evidence on the toxicity of the pesticides in question and tried hard to delay the ban.

Greenpeace recently exposed their lies on several occasions: the organisation hung a giant banner on Syngenta’s headquarters in Switzerland, attended Bayer and Syngenta Annual General Assemblies in Germany and Switzerland; and organized a symbolic funeral ceremony for a queen bee in front of Bayer’s headquarters in the Netherlands.

An incomplete ban

However, this is truly only a first step, as this ban is incomplete and full of potential flaws.

Firstly, it is only a temporary ban, and two years may not be enough to guarantee that the health of bees and other pollinators will improve. Secondly, the restrictions only apply to certain uses on crops: the ban is far from comprehensive. Thirdly, the neonicotinoids are very persistent and may have built up over the years in soils and be present in other plants visited by bees. Even uses of neonicotinoids in closed greenhouses have been associated with heavy concentrations in aquatic systems causing losses of aquatic insect biodiversity as evidenced by a recent Dutch study. So it is far from clear that even with the ban in place nectar and pollen will safe for bees and other insects.

In addition, more bee-harming pesticides need to be removed from the market. Greenpeace believes that the EU must go further and implement a wider ban covering all uses of neonicotinoids and all agricultural sectors rather than the limited action the EC has proposed. This should also include all of seven-priority bee-killer pesticides identified by Greenpeace in its 'Bees in decline' report.

Four of the seven are not neonicotinoids and we will keep strongly campaigning to remove these pesticides from the market.

This would be a crucial first step to start a move away from the current chemically intensive agricultural system. Even then, only a shift to modern ecological farming practices can be the long-term solution to save the bees, and preserve European agriculture. Our work has only begun.

Matthias Wüthrich is an ecological Farming campaigner at Greenpeace Switzerland and European bees project leader.

Floating freezers full of tuna, but where did it come from?

Francois Chartier — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:06:00 +0200

On the shimmering blue high seas, there is a grey area. Known as transshipping, this common practise of transferring fish catches from one vessel to another is also a loophole, as it can lead to fish from illegal sources getting into the chain of custody without detection. It also means that otherwise legally caught fish might not be adequately reported, leading to fishery management problems.

Many tuna fishing vessels, mainly longliners, stay at sea for long periods and transfer their catch to bigger boats, known as reefers. These cargo vessels are like floating freezers. They collect the tuna caught by fishing vessels, which are then put in freezers and brought to tuna processing facilities, like canneries in Mauritius, Seychelles or Madagascar. Sometimes they also supply markets in Asia, so these reefers are key players in the tuna industry.

Often more than 100 metres long, they not only receive tuna from longliners, but also supply boats with food, bait, water and sometimes fuel. This means longliners can stay at sea for many months, even years. The crew on one vessel we witnessed transshipping last week told us they had been at sea since December 2012 and will probably stay on the waves until the end of this year.

Transshipments at sea are not authorised in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of several coastal states, including Mauritius, but are permitted to happen on the high seas. This means there are many opportunities for those wishing to cheat to do so. Vessels can, for example, transfer catches from boat to boat so only one vessel ends up meeting the reefer.

Without any independent observers on board the fishing boats it becomes very complicated to keep track of which vessel caught the fish and where – and if the coastal state was adequately compensated for the fish caught. .

In an area north-east of Mauritius’ EEZ, the team aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, saw just how common transshipping is. A reefer was constantly seen waiting to pick up tuna from longliners and over the course of three days we saw three transshipments from longliners to a large Panama-flagged reefer, the Tuna Queen.

According to some of the crew we spoke to, there is usually one transshipment everyday, sometimes more. We also saw longliners with no obvious fishing gear on board, indicating they may act as a small reefer between the longliners, further complicating the process.

So it’s impossible to properly manage fisheries with so many transshipments in the middle of the ocean. This creates gaps in data needed by the region's fisheries managers. That’s why Greenpeace, at the upcoming Indian Ocean Tuna Commission meeting in Mauritius, is calling for all transshipments at sea to be banned as an essential pillar of sustainable fishing in the Indian Ocean.

Each of the transshipments observed by Greenpeace International took several hours. Just after sunrise, the longliner and the reefer would come along side each other. For the next five to eight hours, tonne after tonne of frozen tuna was transferred from the longliner to the reefer.

A crewmember on one of the vessels we spoke to said around 100 tonnes of tuna were transferred each day. Due to the lack of regulation, however, this number could be much higher.

These catches, from different fishing vessels, are all stored together in the reefer. As there are no observers on board these smaller vessels nobody can know for sure where the fish came from and if it was legally caught, rendering the whole load possibly stolen.

François Chartier, Greenpeace France Oceans Campaigner

Greenpeace China becomes the biggest solar power producer in Beijing

Iris Cheng — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:42:00 +0200

At 10:48 am on 17 April in Beijing, Greenpeace made a bit of history: we joined the first batch of around 50 rooftop solar PV projects that connected to the grid in China.

And to our surprise, we learned that our modest five-kilowatt solar system is actually the biggest rooftop solar power project currently in Beijing.

Our “system” is 65 square meters of solar panels at the new GP China warehouse in Shunyi, on the outskirts of Beijing. At full capacity on a day with clear weather, these panels will generate around 25 kWh of electricity. To give you a sense of scale, an average urban Chinese family consumes less than 10 kWh per day.

Geeky screenshot of the production monitoring system – the panels produced 61KWh in a little over two days, “it’s a powerhouse!”

After the hurrahs, and true to Confucius teaching, we reflected on the lessons we have learned so far, and what it will take to unlock the future in China of rooftop solar – also called distributed solar.

The good news

We installed our solar system just six months after a decision by the central last October that allowed distributed solar installations to connect to the grid for free. We wanted to test out the opportunity and see how long it would take a small producer to do that. We’ve now demonstrated that it’s doable within a reasonable time. For us, the approval process took only a month and a half, and installation, when we did it, only a few days. Our small solar success highlights a much more significant milestone in solar sector development in China – the enabling of on-grid distributed, or rooftop, solar generation.

Greenpeace is a front-runner in the renewable way outside China also. Recently, Greenpeace offices have installed solar in Senegal and India. Rooftop solar offers households, small organisations and businesses the choice to be powered by renewable, especially when getting clean energy from electricity utilities is a problem, as it is in China and many other developing countries in Africa and Asia.

Greenpeace Germany is at the other end of the spectrum. There, renewable campaigners actually set up an independent company, Greenpeace Energy, an established renewable utility, and a recognized innovator in the German renewable industry.

Unleashing solar

2013 is a turning point for solar energy in China. The current crisis of overcapacity in solar PV production is actually speeding up China’s transition in domestic energy to renewables. To preserve jobs and ease the restructuring of the solar industry, the government has set ambitious renewable targets for its domestic market. The solar target for 2015, revised four times in two years, has soared from five GW to 35 GW, including a target of 10 GW for rooftop solar.

Making it possible to connect to the grid is a crucial first step – but a few key ingredients are still missing to really unlock the future of rooftop solar in China:

Feed-in tariff stability

Small producers are still at a significant disadvantage, only able to sell their surplus electricity at 0.35 yuan / kWh (5.65 US cent/kWh), well below the feed-in tariff (FiT) of 1 yuan/kWh for large concentrated-solar farms.

This means small producers need three times as long to recover their initial investment. The current FiT for small producers is interim. The government is expected to unveil a new solar feed-in tariff soon, and the level and stability will be crucial to determine the uptake.

Innovation in solar financing

We paid 50,000 yuan ($8,072 US) for our solar installation upfront, as an investment to be covered by cuts in our energy costs in the coming years and by selling our surplus electricity to the grid. But for many, the upfront cost is a barrier. But this can be fixed with innovative financing. In the US, the solar industry and governments are experimenting with various schemes and financing models to get around high upfront costs, for example, with state incentives and rebates, solar power purchase agreement (PPA), even crowdfunding.

Get citizens involved in energy decisions

To meet its 10GW target, China needs two million more solar systems like ours. Chinese citizens can play a big role not only as consumers demanding more solar energy, but also by demanding more solar and other renewables as a meaningful action to help tackle the frightening air pollution caused by coal burning, and to reduce China’s carbon emissions.

China needs to find answers to all of the above to create an attractive price and market for solar power. These same ingredients enabled Germany to connect its one-millionth solar PV installation to the grid in 2011, with solar producing 10 percent of Germany’s total electricity in 2012.

And given this is China, let’s see how quickly we could reach this.

Iris Cheng is an energy campaigner with Greenpeace International

Where a coal addiction has put South Africa - the dirtiest air in the world

Melita Steele — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:51:00 +0200

Witbank, a town just outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, has some of the world’s most polluted air – that’s according to new research reported yesterday.

The massively high levels of pollution can be directly linked to the national utility company Eskom and its string of coal-fired power stations that run through the South African province Mpumalanga.

In fact, the Witbank area is home to the country’s largest coalfields, and no fewer than 11 coal-fired power stations, with a new mega coal-fired power station (Kusile) under construction in the area. (Kusile will be one of the biggest coal-fired power stations in the world.) If our air is the ‘worst in the world’ now, I can only imagine what it will be like when this new coal-fired power station begins to burn 17 million tons of coal per year.

This horrifying air pollution data makes the entire Witbank area nothing less than an environmental crime scene. Such high levels of air pollution create particularly high risks for health impacts like respiratory problems (including asthma), cancer, heart disease, strokes and even death. The threats posed by coal are real, and we are living with them right now.

Coal expansion puts our water under threat (Eskom uses 10 000 litres of water per second because almost all of the electricity that the utility produces comes from coal), and clearly puts people’s health at risk. Corporations continue to profit from coal, while the people of this country pay the price. The government’s position that we should continue to mine our coal reserves for the foreseeable future, and Eskom’s position that coal is the only electricity choice they are prepared to invest in is short-sighted and puts all South Africans at risk.

Having the ‘world’s dirtiest air’ should be the line that makes us turn back from more investments in coal. There really is no future in coal. Instead South Africa must urgently shift away from coal, towards a clean energy future, based on renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Melita Steele has an MSc in Environmental Science and is passionate about working to change the world one small piece at a time. She works for Greenpeace Africa as a climate and energy campaigner, focusing on issues related to coal.

Coal ship activists return to shore determined to #EndCoal

Jamie Ling — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:12:00 +0200

This week six Greenpeace activists did something incredibly brave for the future of our planet.

In an act of civil disobedience they boarded a fully-loaded coal ship as it left the Great Barrier Reef – a daring but necessary act to help stop Australia’s coal exports driving catastrophic global warming.The activists boarded the South Korea-bound MV Meister on ladders as it ploughed through the open ocean. Once on board, they handed a letter to the captain about their peaceful protest and hung a banner off the front of the ship carrying the words “End the age of coal”.

Within hours of boarding the MV Meister, journalists from around the world were covering the story taking our message to the coal industry and world leaders with an international audience. Check out these great stories in The Guardian Herald Sun ABC News Mackay Daily Mercury Xinhua Net (China) The Indian Express New Zealand Week Jakarta Globe andDow Jones Newswires.

Meet the activists

The six activists came from Australia, New Zealand, USA, China and India – countries where the actions of coal companies are having a drastic effect on our lives. Watch the video and read their quotes below about why they chose to take this stand.

Yang, China

“In China people are getting very worried about the health impacts of air pollution. There is so much discussion on social media about the use of coal, some of which comes from Australia. It is our obligation to do something to change this.”

James, New Zealand

“We need to consider the threat of climate change with the same urgency we gave to atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific. Every day people are affected by climate change, but our leaders are turning a blind eye and supporting the industry which drives the reckless growth of fossil fuel industries. Together we can end the age of coal.

Freya, Australia

“I am deeply concerned about the effects it will have on the Great Barrier Reef, both from the effects of increased shipping through the Reef and rising sea temperatures. I feel this has reached a point where we must do everything in our power to stop it.”

Harmony, USA

“I took action because people deserve a better future than that’s being offered by the coal industry. We cannot allow coal companies to expand unchecked, to continue to sicken communities across the world, and now export their direct energy to other countries. By boarding this ship, I’m working to take the step away from coal toward a clean and renewable energy future.”

Emma, Australia

“Climate change is the biggest threat humanity faces today. Millions are already suffering; we are seeing the effects more and more every day. Our leaders are failing us on this issue, please stand with us and take action in any way you can. Together we can put an end to the reckless expansion of this industry.”

Guarav, India

"I have come all the way from India to take part in this action and spread the message that the world and India needs to look beyond coal. We need energy which is abundant, safe for environment and humans, and we need to act on climate change now!"

Click here to stand in solidarity with these activists and sign on to our statement of support we’re publishing in an Australian newspapers next week.

50 shades of Arctic oil thanks to green and progressive Norway?

Cristiana De Lia, Arctic Campaigner — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:44:00 +0200

This morning three Greenpeace polar bears chained themselves to oil barrels in front of Norwegian energy firm Statoil’s office in central Moscow. Holding banners reading “Arctic worth more than oil” and “Arctic not for sale,” our brave polar bears declared they are being held hostage by oil companies rushing to drill in the Arctic.

But why would these polar bears do something like this against a company from an enlightened and progressive place like Norway?

After all, Norway conjures up images of towering mountain ranges, clean, fresh air, stunning fjords, glaciers, waterfalls and abundant wildlife. That same, liberal Norway whose prodigious environmental virtues and policies sets the benchmark for sustainability.

But a dark shadow lies just behind this green and pleasant visage: an oil company whose plans could tarnish Norway’s green reputation forever and put the Arctic in serious trouble.

This oil company is Statoil, the Norwegian state-owned energy provider, and it has huge plans to explore for oil in almost every corner of the Arctic.

Though Statoil recently announced it was cancelling plans plans to drill in the chilly Arctic waters of the Norwegian Barents Sea this summer, it still wants to look for oil away from prying eyes in the remote Russian Arctic, where drilling regulations are far less strict. What’s worse, to make its Arctic dream a reality, Statoil has teamed up with a company responsible for more spills than any other on the planet: Russian oil behemoth Rosneft.

The Arctic is already an endangered and fragile environment. Its ice is melting fast, the vanishing white blanket at the top of the world warning us that if we don’t stop exploiting this pristine environment, the impact on everyone could be devastating. There is no technology to deal with an oil spill under ice and, considering the catastrophes already caused by Rosneft, there is a big chance that the same will happen with in the fragile Arctic Ocean.

Statoil’s plan is perfectly clear: it wants to make a fat profit at the expense of the Arctic, risking spills in icy waters a long way from Norway, whilst keeping up its veneer of social responsibility at the same time.

We can’t allow this to happen. This is why our polar bears took action in Moscow and we have a way to stop Statoil!

Russian police have just taken our polar bears into custody, but not before they managed to hand over a letter to Statoil’s head of Public Affairs demanding the company scrap its plans to operate in the far north and you can help too!

At the next Statoil AGM on the 14th of May, the Norwegian government can vote to stop the company drilling in the ice. We need your help to put pressure on the government to make the right decision for the future of the Arctic!

Take action and send a letter directly to Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to tell him to make sure that Statoil keeps its paws off the Arctic!