The Governor of the province
of Riau on the island
of Sumatra in Indonesia has pledged
to halt deforestation, which could help protect Riau's vast peatlands and
forests that store 14.6 billion tonnes of carbon. Just to give you an estimate
of what that figure means, it's the equivalent of an entire year's greenhouse gas
emissions for the entire planet. Moreover, aside from being an important carbon store,
this area is also important for biodiversity and critical for the people that
depend upon these forests for their survival.
There are many causes of
forest destruction here - from palm oil and timber to pulp and paper. We are
urging that Riau's moratorium will stay in place until a permanent law can be passed.
Meanwhile, we are currently focusing our
efforts on a halt on any further expansion of the palm oil industry in Indonesia and the
wider region. We are lobbying for a proposal to halt such destruction to be
accepted at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which meets in
November.
If Riau's stance is an indication of things to
come, then we'll definitely have more good news to write about.
So at last the sheer waste involved in modern trawling has been captured on camera. Last week a Norwegian coastguard cutter filmed the crew of a Shetland trawler, the Prolific, openly dumping over 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish in UK waters. Now this footage is rightly causing a wave of revulsion in the media at the scale of unnecessary waste at a time of rapidly rising food prices and, ironically, when our own Prime Minister is telling us not to waste food.
Such discards are not isolated incidents. They happen routinely all around our coasts, but are almost never documented. They represent a scandalous waste of perfectly marketable fish. The reasons given are many and varied; the fish either are too small, the wrong species, exceed the fishermen's allotted quota, or will fetch too low a price at market. In the case of the Prolific it seems they were discarding tonnes of low-value small (but legally caught) fish in order to fill their quota with higher-value big fish. This time, though, the fact that fish caught in Norwegian sector of the North Sea were dumped in UK waters has outraged the Norwegian government, who released the footage in support of their demand that all fish killed must be landed.
So who's to blame? Current EU policy only sets quotas for fish landed at ports, so fishermen are free to keep trawling until they're happy with the value of their catch, discarding the contents of previous, less valuable trawls. Basically it's a license to 'maximise profit' The EU has been quick to try and characterise this as an isolated event, but ICES, the scientific body which advises the EU on fisheries quotas, suggests that as many as half of all cod and haddock caught in the North Sea are thrown back dead as discards. And the problem is made worse because EU quotas are set for single species, but trawling is an indiscriminate way to fish, so there will inevitably be a large percentage of wasted species caught up in the nets.
Basically the current system is crazy. The only real beneficiaries are the gulls that follow the fishing boats. We urgently need a radical overhaul of the way we manage fisheries, that includes making it a requirement to land all the fish that have been killed, and setting aside large areas as no-take marine reserves where all marine life, including commercially important species, can get some respite from relentless overfishing. The evidence suggests that where marine reserves have been established then, over time, fish stocks begin to recover and end eventually start to thrive again.
The award-winning environmental journalist Charles Clover, in his powerful attack on industrial fishing 'The End of The Line', made the point that if trawling were to take place not at sea, but on land in plain sight of everyone, then it would be quickly banned because the levels of indiscriminate destruction involved are so high that we would all be sickened by the sight. This Norwegian coastguard video has given us just a small taste of what that might feel like and, it seems, we can't stomach it.
Complaint upheld over Shell advert
The ASA will announce today that it has upheld a complaint against Shell by WWF, the environmental charity, about the oil company's claims that oil sands in Canada were a "sustainable" energy source.
Charles warns GM farming will end in ecological disaster
In an outspoken assault on GM crops, Prince Charles accused unnamed "gigantic corporations" of "conducting a gigantic experiment with nature, and the whole of humanity, which has gone seriously wrong".
IPCC 'wrong' on logging threat to climate
The new work suggests that the role of untouched temperate forest as either a carbon sink – or a carbon emitter, if the forest is logged – should be upgraded, and carbon accounting models should be altered.
More breaking news on nuclear safety from Nuclear Reaction this morning; we found the Olkiluoto 3 construction site in Finland,
where they are building the so-called state of the art European Pressurised nuclear Reactor (EPR), to be unsafe
after examining leaked documents from Areva, the French company building it.
Olkiluoto 3 is a white elephant whose construction has been mired with 1,500
flaws, is £1.5 billion over budget and is already running 2-3 years late.
Add to this the
revelation that welders haven't got a clue how to construct the nuclear
reactor and are receiving only two weeks’ training on the job - instead of the
proper degree that’s required on this specialised project.
(Areva by the way is the same company that's been given the contract to manage Sellafield in Cumbria, home to vast quantities of radioactive
waste stockpiles, and the reactor design is the same one that Gordon Brown would like to see
built here in the UK.)
This news follows a
recent accident in France,where there was a nuclear leak in Tricastin
that shocked the world. As France
advertises itself as a nuclear energy pioneer with 80 per cent of its energy
coming from nuclear, this couldn't have come at a worse time.
It's become clear that
the problems associated with Olkiluoto 3 are a result of shoddy construction
work by the sub-contractors that Areva employs to carry out the job.
Compromising on the quality of construction material to cut spiralling costs
should be a strict no-no when you're building a nuclear reactor. But all that
goes out of the window when all Areva is interested in is getting Olkiluoto 3
up and running as it desperately tries to sellits dodgy reactor around the world.
But, as
things go from bad to worse for Areva, the safety concerns we've exposed
not only make it a risky project that could have catastrophic consequences in
case of a leak, but reinforces the argument that the only way forward is to
halt the project and put environment and public safety first.
Tinned tuna is big business - there's a can in almost everyone's cupboard. Here in the UK we can't get enough of it - we're the second biggest consumer in the world after the USA. Globally tuna exports are worth more than any other fish species, at around 2.7 billion dollars per year.
But there are big problems with the way tuna is caught. Our new briefing paper, Tinned Tuna's Hidden Catch, explains how large numbers of sea turtles, sharks and other fish are all being wiped out by the global tuna industry. And tuna is in trouble itself, with some species critically endangered by overfishing.
Here in the UK some of our top selling brands, like John West and Princes, are among the worst at ensuring the fish they sell are caught using sustainable methods. We've produced a league table ranking the large tuna retailers according to various sustainablility criteria, and John West, the nation's biggest tuna brand, is languishing right at the bottom. Until things change, John West are officially John Worst.
The animation below shows how destructive fishing methods using Fish Aggregating Devices and purse seine nets affect both the tuna
and the species that live around them.
In a story not as weird as the environmentally-friendly bullets one but still somewhat unnerving, it appears the US military is gunning for an increase in the amount of energy it derives from renewable sources. Military chiefs want to see 25 per cent come from the likes of wind, wave and solar by 2025 and while it accounts for 1.5 per cent of US energy consumption, the biggest impact could be the civil application for military developments in technology and efficiency so the rest of the country could be following in its khaki-coloured wake.
My feelings about this are understandably mixed. On the one hand, any shift away from fossil fuels towards greener alternatives is a good thing; on the other... well, it's the military.
There's no point ranting about the development of new technologies to support an institution who's ultimate aim is (let's not beat about the bush here) killing people because there are countless everyday items with their origins in military development, from the internet to Superglue. But when the military PR machine is proud to claim that human rights vortex Guantanamo Bay has it's own wind turbines, you have to admire the stomach-churning irony.
It was a beautiful morning, if a little muggy, as
I passed through the Kent
countryside to Strood yesterday on my way to Climate Camp. I had to find out
for myself what it was really like at the farm opposite Kingsnorth
coal fired power station, where E.On wants to build the first new coal plant in the UK for over 30 years.
Joined by fellow climate campaigners, we
received friendly smiles from local people who pointed us in the direction of
Kingsnorth, egging us on our journey. (After all, not everyone wants to live next to a
coal fired power station.)
Approaching the climate camp, we were greeted
by a police garrison complete with horses, dogs and vans. Herded like cattle,
we were stopped and searched extensively - after which
we cheerfully resumed our journey to join the hundreds of climate campaigners peacefully
enjoying the bright sunshine in a picturesque rural meadow. Or
dangerous criminals plotting to cause grievous bodily harm, depending on who you listen to.
I haven't been out of London in ages, and I virtually
skipped among the hundreds of colourful tents as I was given a tour of the camp
and its various workshops, kitchens and eco-washing facilities. I was
literally tripping over solar panels; the entire power supply to the camp comes from small windmills and solar cells. Even the cinema was bicycle powered and
ground water purified for use with ingenious eco-filtration techniques.
I attended a few workshops that were running in
a couple of the tents, like the Plane Stupid discussion on next steps to oppose
building of the third
runway and sixth terminal at Heathrow. What I found was that although there
were speakers for these workshops, there wasn't any official leader. The
philosophy behind the workshops is to open them up for discussion without
having a chain of command dominating them, which I found liberating.
By mid-afternoon
I found myself playing Frisbee with some of the campers and singing along to songs
someone was playing on her guitar. Children played freely and were blissfully
unaware of the police helicopter that landed nearby. I also visited the stand-off point on
the farm where police raided the camp at dawn on Monday.
It was
evening, and time for me to go (after being frisked again) as I had to be in to write this blog today. On my way back to London, I pondered on what's made the government go backwards on energy technology, when the
future so clearly lies in renewables. I guess when E.On says jump, the government jumps.
We urgently need you to be a part of a growing movement across the UK urging Gordon Brown to give coal the boot. Get involved!
Burning coal is the single greatest threat to our climate - and it's totally unnecessary in the UK. Yet the government is about to give the green light to a new generation of dirty coal-fired power stations. We need to make sure this doesn't happen.
We urgently need you to be a part of a growing movement across the UK urging Gordon Brown to GIVE COAL THE BOOT. Please sign up today to become a part of the campaign, and we'll be in touch soon with ways you can help.
The UK is flooded with illegal and
unsustainable plywood made from tropical hardwood from the world's last
remaining ancient forests, commonly used on construction sites. With this in
mind, we have released a new report Setting A New Standard, which provides
practical advice to companies on how to get it right on timber, by specifying
wood that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
The construction industry is by far the largest
consumer of timber products in the UK, so they have a vitally
important role to play in ensuring that their timber use does not contribute to the devastation of rainforests around the world.
The report shows that there is no technical
reason why unsustainable plywood cannot be replaced by FSC-certified Oriented
Strand Board (OSB) which is competitively priced, locally sourced and already
available on the UK market. We have compiled a checklist to help construction projects use as much environmentally and socially responsible timber as possible.
While this report focuses on the timber used by
the UK
construction it is vital that politicians also act, to stop the import of
timber that comes from illegal logging. Currently the EU has no laws to stop
illegal timber and we are campaigning
for EU wide legislation to address this as a matter of urgency.
See the plywood checklist for a summary of the recommendations and an explanation of the terminology used. Getting it right on timber is becoming much
easier, but the impacts of getting it wrong are devastating for the world's
forests.
Not one, not two but at least three climate change-related happenings popped up around the country yesterday, many of them carried out by Climate Camp attendees. Although the camp is primarily focused on coal and the proposed new power station at Kingsnorth, today's activities also highlighted other climate threats such as aviation and biofuels. Here is just a taste of what's been happening:
Campers made their way this morning to a biofuel depot in Essex to take part in a blockade. According to news reports, people created a barrier in the road to prevent lorries gaining access to the depot, while others were chained to a fuel storage tanker. And this on the day that a government report finds that supposedly sustainable biofuels might not be so sustainable after all.
Meanwhile campers of the Plane Stupid variety headed to Gatwick Airport, where they occupied the roof above the train station and the arrivals lounge with banners unfurled with aplomb. Others provided leaflets about the climate impacts of aviation to passengers and staff.
Elsewhere, with an example of what is perhaps the smallest banner ever seen, Legoland in Windsor experienced its own visitation. The miniature replica of Kingsnorth power station (who'd have thought there'd be one in the first place?) was decorated with a teeny tiny banner reading 'Stop Climate Change'.
Follow events at Climate Camp via Twitter here and here.
A new report by the Institute of Marine Sciences at the National Research Council in Barcelona links the rapid growth of jellyfish populations throughout the world's oceans to overfishing of their natural predators such as tuna and as a result of global warming.
So it seems that Raymond Blanc may have not been too far from the mark when he set out a stark choice for chefs: "Sustainable bouillabaisse
today or jellyfish burgers tomorrow." Listen to Raymond's comments:
Let's hope that we manage to persuade enough of them to sign up to our new Seafood See Life campaign to keep jellyfish off the menu.
Jellyfish are mostly harmless, though some deadly varieties exist, and have been described by marine experts as the cockroaches of the sea: tough, durable and able to survive in damaged environments. Not something that you would really want to take home to eat in a newspaper!
