World-News

Save Oaks!
From UC Berkeley
12.6.06

Wavy Gravy Speaks for the Trees!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpzPKChWh9Y

Will you speak for the trees?
https://www.saveoaks.com


Informant: Scott Munson

https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061204/ap_on_sc/brazil_amazon_1


Informant: NHNE

One of Europe's last areas of unspoiled forest is facing an unprecedented threat from the construction of a road through some of Romania's most precious and diverse countryside. Environmentalists have warned the route could prove catastrophic for endangered species of animals and plants living in the southern Carpathians. "This road will be the beginning of the end," said Gabriel Paun, program campaigner for Greenpeace. "It is a disaster."

https://www.truthout.org/issues_06/112706EC.shtml

Deforestation remains the greatest current threat to the world's forests, claiming 10 to 15 million hectares of tree-covered areas every year, but climate change may represent a bigger challenge in the long term, scientists say. "We're like a two-year-old playing with fire ... We're messing around with something dangerous and don't really understand what will happen," says William Laurance, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama, in reference to climate change and the Amazon rainforest.

https://www.truthout.org/issues_06/112206EA.shtml

For thousands of years, the Poplar River First Nation has relied on the trees, plants and wildlife of its traditional lands in the Canadian boreal forest for food, medicine and the survival of its cultural beliefs and traditions. Today, though, proposals for industrial development loom over this stretch of rugged granite cliffs, dense evergreen woods and tranquil marshlands on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba.

The Poplar River First Nation completed a land use plan in 2005 and formally asked for permanent protection of its territory last March. Yet despite repeated promises to protect Poplar River's lands -- an area nominated as a U.N. World Heritage site -- Manitoba officials have failed to act.

Demand that Manitoba's premier act immediately to protect this irreplaceable old-growth forest.
https://www.savebiogems.org/boreal/takeaction

Who says hip-hop isn't political any more? Check out Dr. Octagon's latest hot track, "Trees," an environmental PSA made for MTV.

Pass It On
https://ga3.org/ct/2p20pgF1uzU3/

I'm writing you from Everett, Washington, where just moments ago, Greenpeace activists drove a Kleenex shaped bus across the entrance of Kimberly Clark's paper mill, one of the largest mills in the country. This busy mill receives thousands of tons of ancient trees throughout the year, so our action is sure to get the company's immediate attention. We're demanding that Kimberly Clark's representatives meet with us, and we've even provided a meeting room and coffee onboard the bus to facilitate the discussion.

But you can help encourage Kimberly Clark to meet with us right now.

TAKE ACTION

Write directly to the CEO of Kimberly Clark and demand a meeting with Greenpeace.
https://usactions.greenpeace.org/action/start.php?action_id=125

We're not the only ones demanding that Kimberly Clark stop wiping out ancient forests for disposable tissue products. Just over a month ago, Fortune magazine reported that the CEO of Walmart has also asked Kimberly Clark to clean up its forest practices. Walmart happens to be the largest retail outlet for products such as Kleenex tissues and Scott toilet paper. If companies like Walmart, and consumers like you apply enough pressure, we can bring Kimberly Clark to the table.

It's time for Kimberly Clark to stop blowing the world's last remaining ancient forests and start using recycled content and FSC-certified wood in its products.

Your friend,
Pam Ginger
Cassady Forest Campaigner

https://www.care2.com/news/member/870323169/220673



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Kimberly+Clark

ACTION ALERT
PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!

By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet, Inc.

https://www.RainforestPortal.org/
November 8, 2006

TAKE ACTION

After an earlier successful campaign to halt oil road construction, the message must still be sent that oil extraction and protected areas do not mix https://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=ecuador .

Caption: Oil Production and Protected Areas Do Not Mix (link)

In two separate letters delivered to the Ecuadorian government, a group of over 40 Yasuni scientists (known as the Scientists Concerned for Yasuni) and 6 international NGOs have criticized Petrobras’ new Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of their new “roadless” plan to build oil production facilities in Ecuador’s world class Yasuní National Park. Although both letters praise Ecuador for stopping Petrobras from building an access road into Yasuni National Park, they emphasize that the new project design (construction and operation of 2 drilling platforms, flow lines, a processing facility and pipeline) will cause major impacts to the region’s biodiversity and indigenous peoples.

A massive new processing facility would be constructed on the alluvial plain of the world renowned Tiputini River. Sixteen hectares of mature, inundated forests along the Tiputini would have to be cleared and drained, completely destroying the habitat. And the rainforest surrounding the proposed sites for the two drilling platforms is home to large mammal species considered indicators of high quality rainforest, such as tapir, giant armadillo, giant anteater, and large monkey species.

Moreover, the processing facility would be built on an important hunting area for the Kichwa community of Chiru Isla, and the drilling platforms would be located within the prime hunting grounds of the Waorani community of Kawimeno. The Waorani representative organizations were never consulted about the project, nor did they grant consent for activities on their ancestral territory.

The Ecuadorian government must be urged to NOT approve the study and to cancel the project, as oil exploration and protected area status are simply incompatible.

Tell them by taking action now: https://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=ecuador

Notes: After sending this alert please choose to send a follow- up email regarding rainforest fires in Indonesia. When you do, it is likely you will receive many out of office messages which you can disregard. The emails targeted are the main contact points for the Kyoto meeting's representatives and they ARE being monitored while their government's focal points meet in Nairobi.

CLIMATE CHANGE/RAINFOREST NEWS TODAY

Climate Ark and Rainforest Portal projects of Ecological Internet, Inc.

https://www.climateark.org/ -- Climate Ark Climate Change Portal https://www.rainforestportal.org/ -- Rainforest Portal

November 11, 2006

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet

The World and Brazil in particular have come a long way in recent years regarding acknowledging the need to protect the world's rainforests and climate, and developing policy sufficient for doing so. Not so long ago Brazil's government railed against any suggestion by the international community that the Amazon should be protected. Now at the international climate talks in Kenya the Brazilian government has asked "rich nations to back a plan to help it slow deforestation". Along with other tropical rainforest rich countries like Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, it has proposed that a fund be established "that developing countries can tap after they prove they have slowed initial deforestation rates".

This proposal definitely represents progress towards solving two of the world's most dire ecological crises - terrestrial habitat loss and global warming/heating. But as always with such proposals, the devil is in the details. Forest diminishment such as what is caused by "selective" logging and other industrial developments permanently lowers the ability of ancient forests to hold carbon. To be truly effective, such climate funding for forest conservation must protect against deforestation as well as all other ecological diminishment of large, contiguous and relatively intact forest expanses. Ancient forests can simply not be acceptably industrially managed while still holding all their carbon.

g.b.


RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Brazil Proposes Fund to Protect Amazon
Source: Copyright 2006, Reuters
Date: November 7, 2006
Byline: Andrea Welsh

Brazil, home to the world's largest rainforest, will ask rich nations to back a plan to help it slow deforestation at global climate talks this week, a senior environmental official said.

The plan marks a first step toward including deforestation in global climate agreements to cut emissions of carbon, a heat- trapping gas released by burning fossil fuels and trees that is partly to blame for rising world temperatures.

Officials from dozens of nations were to meet in Kenya starting Monday for the 12th round of UN global climate talks since 1992. The goal is to start crafting an extension to the Kyoto Protocol, a 1999 treaty that set mandatory targets for most rich nations to reduce carbon emissions.

The Brazilian secretary of forests and biodiversity, Joao Paulo Capobianco, said Brazil will present a plan for rich nations to put money into a fund that developing countries can tap after they prove they have slowed initial deforestation rates.

"A country will only have the right to claim resources after the environmental benefit is delivered," he said in an interview.

Critics have said Brazil just wants to get paid for protecting the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest and home to maybe a quarter of all species on earth.

Slowing deforestation was a cheap and fast way to lower global carbon emissions, nearly a fifth of which come from clearing land and burning trees, Capobianco said.

"When deforestation comes up, people in America, England, France, Italy, they take to the streets and protest because Brazil is cutting down the rainforest," Capobianco said. "The question isn't why would they invest money in this. The question is why wouldn't they?"

Under the Kyoto Protocol, Brazil cannot get credit for slowing deforestation although it burns relatively little oil and gas. A third of its carbon emissions come from felling trees in the Amazon.

In 2005, enough trees were cut down to cover all of Israel or Wales. To date, about a fifth of Brazil's Amazon has been cleared -- an area twice the size of Germany -- mostly to produce lumber, graze cattle or plant crops like rice and soy.

Capobianco said Brazil reduced land-clearing by a third last year and could do better if given credit for the carbon emissions avoided. More money would go to invest in new economic models for the rainforest, which makes poor farm land because of its sandy soil and frequent floods, he said.

"People don't cut down the Amazon because they're angry at trees," he said. "It's actually expensive and quite difficult. People do it because it's how they guarantee their economic survival."

Capobianco also said poor nations would gain by lowering carbon emissions more cheaply than they otherwise could.

Brazil's plan will need support from other developing nations, which were excused from Kyoto's mandatory carbon cuts so they could focus on economic growth and urgent problems like poverty and disease.

The United States, which is responsible for more than a third of the world's carbon emissions, backed out of the treaty saying it unfairly exempted countries like China and India from mandatory cuts.