Strangely like war: Dayak people in Malaysia fighting palm oil companies for survival

by | Feb 22, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy

By Environmental Investigation Agency

MUARE TAE, Indonesia — The fate of a Dayak community deep in the interior of East Kalimantan demonstrates how Indonesia must safeguard the rights of indigenous people who practise a sustainable lifestyle if it is to meet ambitious targets to reduce emissions from deforestation, alleges an organisation that specialises in investigating environmental crimes.

The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) claim Dayak Benuaq of Muara Tae, in West Kutai Kabupaten, today face a two-pronged assault from palm oil companies aggressively expanding into their ancestral forests. Together with Indonesian NGO Telapak, the community is manning a forest outpost around the clock in a last ditch attempt to save it from destruction.

The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has witnessed at first-hand the Dayak Benuaq’s struggle, and how their sustainable use of forests could help Indonesia deliver on its ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

EIA Forests Team Leader Faith Doherty said: “There are more than 800 families in Muara Tae relying on the forests for their food, water, medicine, culture and identity. Put simply, they have to keep this forest in order to survive.

“The rhetoric from the President of Indonesia on curbing emissions by reducing deforestation is strong but on the front line, where indigenous communities are putting their lives at risk to protect forests, action is sorely missing.”

President Yudhoyono has pledged to reduce carbon emissions across the archipelago by 26 per cent by 2020 against a business-as-usual baseline, alongside delivering substantial economic growth.

Plantation expansion will inevitably be a significant element of growth, but it has historically been a major driver of emissions and it is widely acknowledged that in order avoid them, expansion must now be directed to ‘degraded’ lands.

The EIA believe that as a result of weak spatial planning, however, the forests of Muara Tae are identified as ‘APL’, a designation meaning they are not part of the national forest area and are open to exploitation. The EIA claim the theft of indigenous forests also raises serious questions as to what form of ‘development’ these plantations offer.

In indigenous communities such as the Dayak Benuaq of Muara Tae, Indonesia has perhaps its most valuable forest resource. It is due to their sustainable methods, honed over generations, that the forest even remains.

The remaining forest is home to a large number of bird species including hornbills, the emblem of Borneo. There are about 20 species of reptiles and it is also a habitat for both proboscis monkeys and honey bears.

From Gáldu

New map depicts human costs of mountaintop removal mining

by | Feb 21, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling, Toxification

By Jeremy Hance, Mongabay

Environmental degradation can have major impacts on a community’s quality of life and a new interactive map of mountaintop mining for coal in the U.S. makes this abundantly clear: based on 21 scientific studies, the map highlights how communities near mountaintop mining have lower life expectancy, higher birth defects, worsening poverty, and are more likely to suffer from cancer, as well as heart and respiratory disease. Created by the non-profit Appalachian Voices and posted on ilovemountains.org, the map show that most communities near mountaintop removal sites are in the bottom 1 percent for overall well-being in the U.S.

Mountain top mining begins by clear-cutting forests then employing explosives to destroy mountaintops to access the coal beneath. The resulting waste is buried in nearby valleys. Hundreds of mountains in Appalachia have been destroyed by this type of industrial mining, and thousands of miles of streams impacted. Selenium, a toxic substance, has been discovered in streams fed by filled-in valleys. Once mining is done, companies “reclaim” the site by re-plating vegetation. However it is an open question whether forests, and biodiversity, will return.

A recent study found that the overall hidden environmental and health costs of coal on U.S. society reached $523 billion annually—that’s $1,698 per person in the U.S. every year.

“This is not borne by the coal industry, this is borne by us, in our taxes,” Paul Epstein the study’s lead author, told Reuters at the time. “The public cost is far greater than the cost of the coal itself. The impacts of this industry go way beyond just lighting our lights.”

In addition to impacts on local communities, coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel in the world and thus a major driver of climate change.

Interactive map available at: http://ilovemountains.org/the-human-cost

Marine mammals sickening from land-based animal diseases

by | Feb 20, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change, Toxification

By AFP

When dead sea mammals started washing ashore on Canada’s west coast in greater numbers, marine biologist Andrew Trites was distressed to find that domestic animal diseases were killing them.

Around the world, seals, otters and other species are increasingly infected by parasites and other diseases long common in goats, cows, cats and dogs, marine mammal experts told a major science conference.

The diseases also increasingly threaten people who use the oceans for recreation, work or a source of seafood, scientists told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held this year in this western Canadian city.

The symposium “Swimming in Sick Seas” was one of many sessions at the meeting that drew a bleak picture of the state of the world’s oceans, which are increasingly acidic, warming in some areas and being inundated with melting ice or other climate change effects.

“There are dramatic shifts in the ocean ecosystem,” said Jason Hall-Spencer of Britain’s University of Plymouth, citing his research in Italy, Baha California and Papua New Guinea that is “all showing the same thing” — with an increase in carbon dioxide, “you get a 30 percent drop in microbes, plants and animals” in the oceans.

Gretchen Hofmann of the University of California at Santa Barbara said increasing ocean acidity, caused by CO2 from fossil-fuel burning, is killing shellfish young — called spat — worldwide.

In the Pacific Northwest of Canada and the United States, the failure of spat hatcheries threaten a commercial industry worth more than $200 million, said Hofmann.

Lisa Levin of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, said warming of the water reduces how much oxygen it can hold, newly threatening deep-sea creatures that have survived for millennium under stable conditions.

“We’ve seen less than five percent of (animals) on the deep sea floor, and if we’re wiping them out we’ll never see them,” Levin told the conference.

“There are undoubtedly organisms down there that can be very beneficial to us, that we have yet to find.”

According to Trite, director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the Fisheries Centre at University of British Columbia, the bodies washing ashore are a grim signal.

“I see the dead mammals coming ashore as canaries in a coal mine,” said Trite.”

Parasites, funguses, viruses and bacteria are increasingly passed from land to sea animals because human settlements on coastlines changes water patterns through paving, filling of wetlands that are natural filters, and intensive agriculture run-off, said scientists.

Toxoplasma gondii (sometimes called kitty litter disease), round-worm, single-celled parasites that cause brain swelling and disease that cause cows to abort their fetuses add to the challenges marine animals face from human pollution, Trite said.

Diseases from large agriculture operations “can cause abortion storms” in sea animals, said Michael Grigg, a US expert in parasites with the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Grigg said a virulent new Type X strain in California “is now spreading across the US” and samples have found it in South America and Asia. Grigg noted common strains of Toxoplasma gondii are already common in people, infecting as many as 25 per cent of North Americans and 50 to 70 per cent of adult Europeans.

Changes in disease and frequency in sea animals “could have unrecognized impacts on humans as well,” said Melissa Miller, a veterinarian in California. “We live in the same areas, and harvest and eat many of the same foods.”

The panel said increased surveillance was required to monitor the health implications for humans of parasites and pathogens spreading from land to the marine mammals.

From Yahoo! News:

U.S. House Votes to Open ANWR and Coasts to Oil Drilling

U.S. House Votes to Open ANWR and Coasts to Oil Drilling

by | Feb 19, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Women & Radical Feminism, Worker Solidarity

By Defenders of Wildlife

The House of Representatives voted on Feb. 16 to open the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and along almost every acre of our coastline including off the East Coast, West Coast, the protected eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Bristol Bay to oil drilling all under the guise of funding this year’s transportation bill.

The funding issue is a scam. Even the most generous revenue estimates from this reckless expansion of drilling will not be enough to fund proposed transportation projects in the bill. In addition, what small amounts of revenue might be generated from oil and gas leasing in the Arctic refuge would not be seen for ten years as oil companies will still need to explore, apply for drilling permits and start development. In short, H.R. 3408 is a fiscal gimmick that relies on unknown future revenues that are speculative at best to pay for transportation projects today.

Upon passage of the bill, Defenders’ president and CEO Jamie Rappaport Clark, said, “Today, the House approved the most radical drilling-bill we have seen in recent memory. This fiscal boondoggle would industrialize the pristine coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to iconic wildlife like polar bears and the Porcupine Caribou herd, exposing thousands of miles of coastline to chronic pollution from offshore drilling and potential oil disasters like the Deepwater Horizon.

The Arctic refuge is the largest onshore denning area for America’s polar bears.

The vote comes only one day after an exploratory well exploded on Alaska’s North Slope, spewing drilling mud, leaking natural gas and requiring the intervention of a company specializing in blowout control.

“Yesterday’s exploratory well explosion on Alaska’s North Slope demonstrates once again that drilling is a dangerous business. We can’t afford to take those risks with some of our most pristine and fragile places, some of which may never recover should a drilling accident occur. The Senate should reject this funding scam and look for realistic ways to meet our transportation needs without sacrificing the health of our environment.”

From Ecowatch

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Climate change killing ancient cedars in Alaska

by | Feb 19, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change

By Bob Berwyn, Summit Voice

Forest Service scientists say huge Alaska tracts of yellow-cedar trees have been dying because their roots are freezing during cold weather in late winter and early spring, when there’s no snow to protect the roots.

Most climate models suggest that coastal Alaska will less snow but a persistence of periodic cold weather events in the future.

Yellow-cedar is a culturally and economically valuable tree in southeastern Alaska and adjacent parts of British Columbia. The slow-growing trees can reach 700 to 1,200 years in age. The tree has long been culturally significant to Native Alaskans who use it to make paddles, masks, dishes, and woven items. The wood is also very valuable commercially (for home and boat building) because of its straight grain, durability, and resistance to insects.

Yellow-cedar decline affects about 60 to 70 percent of trees in forests covering 600,000 acres in Alaska and British Columbia.

When snow covers the ground, it  protects the shallow roots from extreme soil temperatures. The shallow rooting of yellow-cedar, early spring growth, and its unique vulnerability to freezing injury are all factors in the regional die-off.

A new paper from the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, “Shifting Climate, Altered Niche, and a Dynamic Conservation Strategy for Yellow-Cedar in the North Pacific Coastal Rainforest,” summarizes 30 years of research and offers a framework for a conservation strategy for yellow-cedar in Alaska.

  • The complex cause of yellow-cedar decline is related to reduced snow, site and stand characteristics, shallow rooting, and the unique vulnerability of the roots to freezing in low temperatures.
  • Low snow levels and poor soil drainage lead to impact root injury and the eventual death of yellow-cedar trees. The tree thrives in wet soils, but its tendency to produce shallow roots to access nitrogen on these sites made it more vulnerable when spring snow levels were reduced by climate warming.
  • Yellow-cedar health depends on changing snow patterns, thus locations for appropriate conservation and management activities need to follow the shifting snow patterns on the landscape.
  • Some responses to shifting climate are expected to be complex and difficult to anticipate. Long-term multidisciplinary research was needed to determine the true role of climate in the health of yellow-cedar and untangle it from other processes and natural cycles in forests.

Scientists are working with partners in the Alaska Region of the Forest Service to use this new information as the framework for a comprehensive conservation strategy for yellow-cedar in Alaska in the context of a changing climate.

From Summit County Citizens Voice: http://summitcountyvoice.com/2012/02/07/forests-tracing-the-cause-of-yellow-cedar-mortality/