350 EU-Africa

Summaries:

—-In Germany the Convention on BioDiversity is scuttled by gov-industry oriented manipulations. No ban on GE trees, no adoption of a real definition of what a forests is, no implementation measures for the defense of indigenous rights, just more wantings that devour our rapidly vanishing cake (1). FSC gave a presentation that was protested because FSC “certifies” plantation forests, which often extirpate indigenous people, as well as destroys ecosystems / biodiversity (2). A report titled “Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” was introduced. The report focuses on the $3 Trillion value that ecosystem services provide us. (3)

—-On the Ivory coast it’s been announced Unilever is leveling primary rainforest for more Palm Oil plantations. A month ago Unilever was exposed to be a significant investor in the same kind of forest clearings in SE Asia(4). In Tanzania a new paper attributes the loss of glaciers on Kilimanjaro to deforestation (5).

Articles:

Germany:

1) Global Forest Coalition is appalled at the lack of political will displayed at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Ninth Conference of the Parties (COP-9) and the direction the CBD is headed. Although countries in the Africa Group were unified in protecting biodiversity, other countries such as Brazil, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Japan blocked most progressive attempts to contain the alarming influence of industry now found in the CBD. Very disappointedly the CBD now makes it easier for genetically engineered trees to be commercialized, which sets back the gains achieved at the last CBD (COP-8) in Curitiba, Brazil in 2006. Nor did the CBD adopt a correct definition of forests, which should exclude monoculture timber plantations from that definition. Dr Miguel Lovera, chairperson of GFC said, “This is not a step ahead but a huge step backwards at a time when forests and biological diversity are being lost at alarming rates.” Lovera continued, “The CBD did not do much to stop deforestation or protect biodiversity as proven by the GFC report released in Bonn, ‘Forests and the Biodiversity Convention’, in which 22 countries were independently monitored to evaluate countries’ implementation of CBD decisions.” Lovera added, “In addition, although there is good language for Indigenous Peoples’ participation in the preamble, there are hardly any measures to ensure this in the implementation process. One bright note, the CBD finally acknowledges that climate mitigation projects can be detrimental to forests and at least requests more research on these issues.” The CBD unfortunately failed to prevent agrofuel expansion. “They apparently are unaware of the litany of documented adverse impacts of agrofuels (biofuels) on biodiversity, food and climate,” said Dr. Rachel Smolker, lead researcher and campaigner with GFC and Global Justice Ecology Project. She summarized, “Their decision is littered with references to ‘promoting the benefits of sustainable biofuel production’ and ‘taking account of their full life cycle’. GFC’s Sandy Gauntlett, Chairman of the Pacific Indigenous Peoples Coalition (PIPEC) said, “The parties to the CBD are fast becoming the world’s largest organization dedicated to opposing equitable social change, with industry laying an increasingly larger role in commodifying the planet’s environmental resources.” He concluded, “Many of the parties are lining up for their slice of the cake.” http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/19161

2) After listening to 45 minutes of polite chat from the panel about how lovely FSC is, activists held up a banner reading “FSC: Stop Certifying Monoculture Tree Plantations”. They also read out parts of the statement below. After a couple of questions and a short discussion, Stefan Salvador from FSC closed the meeting, although several more people wanted to ask questions and some pointed out that this should be a democratic space for discussing the problems with FSC. Forest certification according to the principles of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) balances social, environmental and economic interests. FSC requirements address all core elements of the UN Convention on Biodiversity. In fact, through FSC certification these have been successfully implemented in over 100 million ha of forests around the globe.” The above statement is posted in FSC”s special section on its web site titled “FSC at the UN Conference of Biodiversity.? What the statement does not say is that the 100 million hectare figure hides millions of hectares of monoculture tree plantations that have been falsely certified as “forests? At the same time, it hides the fact that social and environmental movements from around the world have been for years denouncing tree plantations and demanding FSC to stop certifying them, because among many reasons they destroy biodiversity. This demonstrates that FSC is misleading the CBD with its statement. Be they plantations of eucalyptus, pine, acacia or oil palm, these large scale monocultures are mostly aimed at feeding northern consumers with growing volumes of raw materials extracted in southern countries at a huge social and environmental cost. http://www.geasphere.co.za/indexns.htm

3) The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity review was commissioned in 2007 by German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel of Germany and European Environment commissioner Stavros Dimas and aims to assess the economic value society receives from nature through benefits such as food, water, soil, flood protection, medicines and carbon sinks. Undertaken by Deutsche Bank economist Pavan Sukhdev, the interim report warns that without the adoption of new policy measures, biodiversity will continue to decline at unprecedented rates, predicting that of over a tenth of the natural areas remaining in 2000 could be lost by 2050, “chiefly as a result of conversion for agriculture, the expansion of infrastructure, and climate change “. The interim report primarily focuses on the economic cost of deforestation and warns that the global economy is currently losing forest ecosystem services with a value of around €28bn a year. It added that these losses are felt in future years as well as in the year of deforestation, and therefore the net present value of services from forests ecosystems that we lose each year is estimated at between $1.35 trillion and $3.1 trillion, for discount rates of four per cent and one per cent respectively. The interim report does not detail the full economic cost of biodiversity loss, but speaking at the opening of the summit CBD executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf said that Sukhdev had put the cost at $3.1 trillion a year or six per cent of global GDP. Sukhdev called for the adoption of a new economic measure that is more sophisticated than GDP, and includes the benefits that ecosystems and biodiversity provide. By no longer ignoring these benefits, such systems would help policymakers adopt the right measures and to design appropriate financing mechanisms for conservation,” the report argued. http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2217979/shrinking-forests-cost-global

Ivory Coast:

4) One of Côte d’Ivoire most important primary rainforests is to be cleared by global consumer product company Unilever and others, despite Unilever’s recent promises to buy only “sustainable” palm oil from lands not cleared of rainforests for their production. Tanoé Swamps Forest in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) is one of the last remaining old growth forests in the country and the last refuge for three highly endangered primates — the Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus, the Geoffroy’s colobus and the Diana roloway — as well as home to many endangered plant species. Tanoé Forest is thought to contain the last remaining population of Piliocolobus waldronae (known as Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus). This is a species formerly widespread in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, but hunted to extinction over most of its range and declared extinct in 1998; yet a freshly shot specimen was found, in the early 2000s, having been hunted in the Tanoé Forest. If Unilever goes ahead with this project, it may be the first time in history that any company has deliberately profited from the extinction of a species. Despite international protests, the palm oil company PALM-CI has just begun destroying this 6,000 hectare forest to convert it to oil palm plantations. They are currently building drainage systems at the periphery and, once the rainy season is over, they intend to clearcut all of the forest. If the forest is destroyed, the three primate species as well as many plant species will almost certainly become globally extinct. Large amounts of carbon dioxide will be released from the carbon-rich swamp forests. http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=ivory_coast_oil_palm

Tanzania:

5) There is supposedly a paper that explains Kilimanjaro’s loss of glaciers as a result of deforestation. The loss of humid air rising up from the wooded slopes causes less condensation and deposition of ice on the cap of the mountain. A paper in Nature is often (from what I’ve seen in my searches today) cited as the one that explains all this, but the Nature paper is actually a news summary of the work of Bill Ruddiman. I can’t pull up the references right now because UND doesn’t electronically subscribe to the journals in question. I think this is probably a good answer to the question of Kilimanjaro, not because I’m skeptical of climate change but because the deforestation theory describes a discrete mechanism by which the ice cap would get smaller. It’s a lot easier to figure out whether a specific theory is correct or incorrect than to argue for or against such ill-defined terms as “climate change” that do not in themselves describe a mechanism. http://www.google.com/search?q=kilimanjaro&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:officia
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