In a huge victory for the rainforest movement, plans to violate Ecuador's Yasuni National Park with an oil access road have been cancelled. The road would have lead to widespread destruction of one of the most important rainforest reserves in the world. Instead, oil drilling and production will continue without roads and the deleterious impact of follow-on colonization upon biodiversity and indigenous populations may be limited. More work remains to be done to fully protect Yasuni, Ecuador's rainforests, and the Amazon; and the local Hauorani peoples, but this is a massive improvement upon previous plans which would have certainly devastated the entire area. Now there is hope.

This is a major triumph for Ecological Internet which was the first to bring the threat to a wide international audience through three different massive email protests, most recently in September of 2005. Other groups we worked with that also provided critical leadership included Save America's Forests, Rainforest Rescue of Germany, the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, and many other organizations which rallied and provided crucial leadership in country.

If I sound excited it is because I am. Unlike recent Brazilian victories where Ecological Internet played a supportive role, and the perhaps fleeting recent positive news for Indonesia's rainforests and orangutans, this victory is substantially a result of our sustained international campaign and our network participants having sent hundreds of thousands of protest emails. On a shoestring budget our loose network of Earth protectors is regularly achieving conservation victories!

Today we set a precedent that oil access roads through primary rainforests are unacceptable. Again, take a moment and reflect upon having done good work for rainforests and the planet. Then get back to work saving the Earth - starting with these current alerts!

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

TAKE ACTION: Protest China's Plundering of Indonesian Rainforests to Build 2008 Olympic Facilities

With two-and-a-half years to go until the start of the 2008 Olympics to be held in Beijing China, the Chinese government has recently placed a $1 billion rush order for endangered rainforest timbers from Indonesia's Papua province to be used in construction for the games. A proposed timber processing factory would industrially harvest 800,000 cubic meters of the famous and threatened merbau (intsia spp) rainforest timbers, to be exported to China for the construction of sports facilities.

Indonesia's Papua province on the island of New Guinea has some of the world's last remaining large intact rainforests. These rainforests are millions of years old, contain untold biodiversity and evolutionary history, and provide critical regional and global ecosystem processes. An investment of this size will only serve to legitimize and further fuel illegal, highly unsustainable, and ecologically devastating logging, ensuring the destruction of this critically threatened ancient rainforest.

It is against the Olympic ideals of bringing "people together in peace to respect universal moral principles" when the events are housed in ancient rainforest timbers of questionable legality and morality. Please insist the Chinese government commit to hosting an "old-growth and ancient rainforest free" Olympics. Please take action now.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry at 3:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

A month ago I made the audacious statement that the rainforest movement had achieved a victory in protecting Indonesia's rainforests and orangutans from a huge oil palm plantation. I made this statement fully aware that Indonesia's rainforests were in frenzied crisis and hoping that supporting those in government working to conserve rainforests from such atrocities could make a positive difference. This hope has proven fleeting. I now realize I was wrong, am retracting the victory claim, and have realized there is little or no hope for Indonesia's large and intact ancient rainforests. I apologize for my error.

The latest news is that a Chinese company intends to set-up a massive timber plant in Indonesian Papua to process rare rainforest timbers for Olympic construction. This will set the stage for the final destruction of these relatively intact rainforests. The second story details the ongoing power struggle between various Indonesian factions for and against the massive oil palm project. These actions - which are so grossly unjust and unsustainable, and our inability to stop them - show just how impotent the rainforest movement has become.

Together with the nearly four million hectares of deforestation already occurring annually in Indonesia's rainforests, the new forces of rainforest destruction arrayed against Indonesia's rainforest ecosystems are simply too great. Nothing can stand against a billion Chinese consumers all aspiring to the wasteful and deadly living standards of Americans and Europeans.

Ecological Internet will continue our campaign to support those in the Indonesian government that oppose these projects. But frankly, there is little hope that anything but the smallest little fragmented bits of Indonesia's rainforests will ever be protected, and perhaps I was crazy for saying there was. Let's keep on trying nonetheless.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

China has joined Europe and the United States as a global drain upon the world's ancient forests. China's appetite for foreign wood arises from its spectacular economic growth and from the decision in 1999 to protect its own environment at the expense of regional forests. China's unsustainable demand for timber is causing widespread deforestation and environmental destruction beyond their own borders - particularly in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Myanmar and increasingly Russia.

Over the past five years, the Asian region has lost more than 14.8 million acres [6 million hectares] of natural forests, while adding a paltry half a million hectares in plantations (which are crops, with all their attendant agricultural impacts, not forests). To their credit, even the FAO understands that limited plantation development is not a replacement for lost natural forest ecosystems.

China's rush to develop and resultant destruction of ancient forests differs from historical deforestation in the immense magnitude and scope of destruction. As China's massive population adopts the deadly Western lifestyle and ecocidal relationship to natural ecosystems, it is highly unlikely any large, intact forest ecosystems will persist anywhere. The global economic growth machine is eating the Earth's life support systems.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry at 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Below is an important update on the global campaign to protect Indonesia's ancient rainforests from unfettered oil palm plantation development. It comes from WALHI (Friends of the Earth Indonesia), an important Indonesian NGO. Their new report importantly links the rapidly expanding European market for oil palm for biofuels (which Ecological Internet was amongst the first to publicize) and other products with wholesale Indonesian rainforest destruction from oil palm plantations.

They are demanding that the Indonesian government officially cancel the proposed mega oil palm plantation along the Malaysian border that threatens the orangutan and other species with extinction. Earlier loose assurances that the project will not proceed must be followed by formal government statements, and the area given permanent protected status that is enforced. Please continue to take action on this important issue.

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Title: European hunger for palm oil triggers expansion of plantations
Source: Copyright 2006, Friends of the Earth Indonesia (WALHI)
Date: April 12, 2006

MEDIA ADVISORY

Friends of the Earth Netherlands * Sawit Watch * Friends of the Earth Indonesia (WALHI) * Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland *

INDONESIA: EUROPEAN HUNGER FOR PALM OIL AND TIMBER TRIGGERS EXPANSION OF DESTRUCTIVE PALM OIL PLANTATIONS

JAKARTA (INDONESIA), LONDON (UK), AMSTERDAM (THE NETHERLANDS), 12 April 2006 -- A new report released today shows how the Indonesian government might develop up to 3 million hectares of oil palm plantations on the island of Borneo, threatening wildlife and local livelihoods to cater for international demand for cheap palm oil. [1]

One of the justifications given for this huge plantation project is the increasing international demand for palm oil to be used in food, feed and biofuels.

The report reveals how earlier plans to develop a 2 million hectare plantation on the Indonesian side of the border with Malaysia, are not yet off the table. Indonesia's initial proposals to develop the border area had met with international protest.

The Indonesian president Yudhoyono acknowledged there were conservation concerns to be taken into account. But the Indonesian Ministry of Public Works appears to have responded to this in January 2006 by simply enlarging the area defined as the "border zone". In this broader area, up to 3 million hectares of oil palm could be planted, according to the Ministry.

The project still threatens mayhem, damaging wildlife and the livelihoods of local people in the Kalimantan region. Friends of the Earth Indonesia (WALHI) and local palm oil organisation Sawit Watch ('Oilpalm Watch') are calling on the Indonesian government to officially cancel the border mega-plantation plan.

The new report reveals that the area deemed suitable for oil palm includes forests used by thousands of people who depend on them for their livelihoods. In new larger border zone, a special regulation (Presidential Decree No. 36/2005) would allow the government to take land away from communities that do not want oil palm plantations in the name of 'public interest'.

The report shows that those communities who are aware of the new proposals are strongly opposed to the plans.

Evidence shows that in the last decade, many areas have been deforested supposedly to make way for oil palm plantations but have then been abandoned after the timber has been sold. In East Kalimantan alone, 3 million hectares of forest disappeared for oil palm concessions. Of those, only 300.000 hectares have actually been planted with oil palm.

Sixty per cent of the forests converted into oil palm plantations in 2004-2005 were still good forests, despite the commitment made by the Indonesian government in 2000 that no more forests would be converted to palm and pulp plantations.

"Communities should not be forced to change their livelihoods simply for the benefit of oil palm companies and consumers overseas. They have not been consulted on these proposals and certainly have not agreed to abandon their land," said Rudy Lumuru of Sawit Watch, in the Netherlands to present the report.

'European importing countries should not increase their imports of palm oil until environmental and social issues are solved,' added Anne Van Schaik of Friends of the Earth Netherlands. 'This also means we should be very hesitant to embrace palm oil as a biomass-solution to the current energy crisis. To start with, companies and governments should ensure that palm oil used in food and feedstock is in line with the criteria laid out by the so-called Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil as soon as possible," said Van Schaik.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

IN INDONESIA:
Sawit Watch: Rudy Lumuru + 62 812 110 1016 Friends of the Earth Indonesia (WALHI) Rully Syumanda + 62 813 199 66998

IN EUROPE:
Friends of the Earth Netherlands (Milieudefensie) + 31 20 5507333 Friends of the Earth in London: Alison Dilworth + 44 20 7566 4084 or + 44 7952 993283

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1] The report "The Kalimantan Border Oil Palm Mega Project" can be downloaded as pdf from www.milieudefensie.nl/globalisering and from www.foenl.org

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

A new report (pdf) accuses McDonald's of destroying rainforests. Greenpeace traced soya grown on land that once was rainforest to an animal feed producer whose chickens are processed into Chicken McNuggets and other McDonald's products. "Fast food giants like McDonald's are trashing the Amazon for cheap meat. Every time you buy a Chicken McNugget you could be taking a bite out of the Amazon." The production of soya is having severe environmental impacts in the Amazon; indeed, much is illegal due to failure to protect rainforests when developing the land. Given Greenpeace's dramatic flash campaign materials, I predict an interesting, educational and effective campaign ahead - start by taking action now!

Here are additional facts from the report regarding the threat to the Amazon posed by soya and other agricultural production:

"Soybean production in the Brazilian Amazon states grew approximately 60 percent between 1998 and 2002, and the cattle herd nearly doubled from 26.2 million in 1991 to 51.6 million in 2001, making Brazil the second largest soybean exporter and the world’s major beef exporter... This increase in production has transformed the agricultural sector into a serious threat to the Amazon environment... By 2050, current trends in agricultural expansion will eliminate a total of 40 percent of Amazon forests, including at least two-thirds of the forest cover of six major watersheds and 12 eco-regions."

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Indonesian government recently announced it was abandoning plans to destroy 1.8 million hectares of rainforest by establishing oil palm plantations in prime orangutan habitat. While political maneuvering continues by those supporting the project (as no rainforest is protected, particularly in Indonesia, for long), this strategic victory is encouraging and important.

We believe the Indonesian government should be taken at its word, even as we work to consolidate this initial victory and to otherwise protest the state of Indonesia's rainforests which are in dire crisis. Ecological Internet asks that you send the Indonesian President a congratulatory email making further policy requests. It is important the project cancellation is formalized and permanently laid to rest, and the ancient rainforests that were threatened are given permanent protected status that is effectively implemented.

Please also express support for the Indonesian government's recent preliminary announcement of its participation in the "Heart of Borneo" tri-country conservation initiative which aims to preserve one of the most important centers of biological diversity in the world, covering approximately 220,000 km2 of rainforests and numerous wildlife species including the critically endangered orangutan. To be maximally effective the rainforest movement must acknowledge progress, however tentative and inadequate, even as we intensify our efforts.

Posted by Dr. Glen Barry at 4:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)