Ecuadorean tribe will 'die fighting' to defend rainforest

Jonathan Watts in the Guardian (UK): Ecuador's Yasuni national park – seen by many as the most biodiverse place on Earth – is at risk from rising extinction rates globally and local economic pressures to exploit the oil beneath the forest Link to this video In what looks set to be one of the most one-sided struggles in the history of Amazon forest conservation, an indigenous community of about 400 villagers is preparing to resist the Ecuadorean army and one of the biggest oil companies in South America.

The Kichwa tribe on Sani Isla, who were using blowpipes two generations ago, said they are ready to fight to the death to protect their territory, which covers 70,000 hectares of pristine rainforest. Petroamazonas – the state-backed oil company – have told them it will begin prospecting on 15 January, backed by public security forces.

Community members are launching a last-ditch legal battle to stop the state-run firm assisted by a British businesswoman, who is married to the village shaman, and who was recently appointed to run the local eco lodge.

Mari Muench, who is originally from London, said the community decided at two meetings late last year to reject a financial offer from the oil firm because they were concerned about the long-term environmental impact of mining. They recently learned, however, that the chief of the village has signed a contract giving the go-ahead for the oil exploration, even though they say he was not authorised to do so.

Earlier offers of a new school, university places for village children and better healthcare were dropped in the document, which provides compensation of only $40 (£24) per hectare, according to copies that the Guardian has seen. The community secretary, Klider Gualinga, said more than 80% of the village is opposed to the oil deal, but a minority are pushing it through against their wishes and local rules....

An image from Yasuni, shot by Geoff Gallice, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Mixed forests – a missed opportunity?

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences News: Modern forestry is largely based on monocultures—in Sweden usually pine or spruce—mainly because it is considered more rational. However a forest contributes more ecosystem services than timber production, such as biological diversity, carbon storage, and berries. A new study from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Future Forests shows that mixed forests, in comparison with monocultures, have positive effects on several different services, including production.

“Many people have suggested that high diversity of tree species has a favorable impact on processes in the ecosystem, but until now this connection has primarily been studied in terms of one process or ecosystem service at a time,” says Lars Gamfeldt from University of Gothenburg, who directed the new study.

The study, performed by an international research group, is based on material from the Swedish National Forest Inventory and the Swedish Forest Soil Inventory. By examining the role played by the occurrence of diverse tree species for six different ecosystem services (tree growth, carbon storage, berry production, food for wildlife, occurrence of dead wood, and biological diversity), the study demonstrates that all six services covary with the number of tree species.

Different trees contribute to different services. For example, the amount of spruce is related to high tree growth and the amount of pine to berry production, while carbon storage was found in plots with more birch. In order to attain more of all services, forestry may thus need to make use of different tree species. Other studies of forests in Central Europe, the Mediterranean region, and Canada support these findings.

The study also investigated the relationship between the various ecosystem services. For example, high tree growth appears to be negatively related to the production of both berries and food for wildlife and to the occurrence of dead wood. On the other hand, food for wildlife was positively associated with both berry production and biological diversity in ground vegetation....

A pine forest in Sweden, shot by r AB Tetra Pak, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Successful completion of climate change adaptation project in the Peruvian Andes

UNESCO: Negotiated with the support of the World Heritage Centre, this 3 year Swiss government financed project entitled "Local Capacities for climate change adaptation and risk management: Manu National Park in Peru - World Heritage Site" was brought to a successful close earlier this month.   Fully implemented by the UNESCO Lima office, the project was founded on a strategic alliance with Peru’s National Protected Areas Service. 

The project recognized the close link between the conservation of this vast natural World Heritage site, and the well-being of neighbouring communities.  It worked on two distinct fronts – the first on the development of a climate change adaptation plan for the Manu National Park (also a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve), and the second on helping neighbouring communities improve their understanding of climate change, its implications on their livelihoods, and on the possible measures they could take to be prepared for it.    Over 4,400 students received information on this issue, and 60 teachers were trained.   Municipalities considered vulnerable to climate change benefitted from the development of manuals on climate change risk management.

As climate change and its effects on World Heritage sites are increasingly understood, projects such as these help stakeholders from community to intergovernmental levels come to terms with the real implications in terms of livelihoods and biodiversity conservation.   The World Heritage Centre is currently developing a “Climate Change Adaptation Field Guide for Natural World Heritage Site Managers” in an effort to help prepare the world’s most outstanding natural areas deal with the effects of climate change....

A river bank in Manu National Park, shot by As578, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

National Geographic Post on Biocultural Diversity

Via nationalgeographic.com

Gleb Raygorodetsky of Natural Justice-partner the Sacred Sites Initiative has drafted a post at National Geographic on the intensifying erosion of the earth’s biodiversity entitled "Pulsating Heart of Nature: How to Ensure Our Collective Bioculturally Resilient Future." He notes the limits in the capacity of linear, reductionist thinking in seeking solutions to this degradation and encourages integrative fields of inquiry to develop new and more meaningful responses. 

He concludes by emphasising the need for a more holistic worldview based on valuing biocultural diversity, and lays out the following requirements for achieving this transformation: 

 “We must embrace change as an inalienable part of life, rather than trying to avert it at any cost. We must be realistic about the scope and scale of what should be done to correct the course, as well as what each of us is capable of doing him or herself. We must also expand our notion of community from a group of people united by their geographic or genetic proximity, to a broader global community inclusive of other like-minded individuals and groups united by their recognition of the value of biocultural diversity as the very ‘pulsating heart’ of Nature. We must work towards a biologically and culturally rich world not only through our work, but more importantly by changing our own thinking and actions.” 

 The post can be accessed here.

Project to leave oil in ground under Yasuní park reaches $300 million

John Vidal in the Guardian (UK): More than $300m (£188m) has been promised to stop the exploitation of 846m barrels of oil below the Yasuní national park in Ecuador, one of the world's most biologically rich areas of rainforest, new figures show. Ecuador's idea to leave the oil in the soil under the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) area of the park and ask the world to compensate it with half its monetary value was hailed as a revolutionary, if idealistic, new conservation idea when it was first proposed in 2007.

But critics doubted whether raising the $3.6bn needed in 13 years would be possible, and accused Ecuador of holding the world, literally, over a barrel.

However, figures released by the UN Development Programme-run Yasuní-ITT initiative shows that while most wealthy governments have declined to contribute, foundations, individuals and cash-strapped regional authorities in austerity-hit Europe have pledged or given over $300m since 2011, when the fundraising drive began in earnest.

Germany has offered $50m over three years, and Chile, Colombia, Georgia and Turkey have given token amounts. In addition, 10 regions of Europe have contributed $150-250,000 each, along with corporations including Coca Cola, airlines, banks and Brazilian, US and Russian foundations. A Puerto Rican musician gave $50,000.

But while only $64m has been formally deposited, the papers show $187m has been promised by countries including Belgium, Brazil, France, Lebanon, Indonesia, Turkey, Spain and Qatar. Some is likely to come via debt swaps and "technical agreements" as well as contracts and agreements with companies....

A view in the Yasuni natinonal park, shot by Geoff Gallice, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Australia approves plan to save vital river system

Space Daily via AFP: Australia approved an "historic" plan Thursday to save an ailing river system vital to the nation's food bowl by returning the equivalent of five Sydney Harbour's worth of water to the network each year.

Environment Minister Tony Burke said he signed into law the final draft of a water reform plan for the Murray-Darling Basin, a river network sprawling for one million square kilometres (400,000 square miles) across five Australian states.

The scheme will see 2,750 gigalitres of water, equivalent to five Sydney Harbours, returned annually as environmental flows to the system -- short of the 4,000 gigalitres sought by conservationists but more than wanted by farmers.

Burke said the figure could reach 3,200 gigalitres with infrastructure improvements to which the government had committed Aus$1.77 billion (US$1.83 billion). Two million tonnes of salt -- enough to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground -- would also be flushed out every year under the plan, which he described as "historic".

"The foundation and reason for the reform is unequivocally and unapologetically to restore the system to health," Burke told reporters "Consistent over-allocation and mismanagement (have) seriously degraded the health of the system."...

Menindee Lakes in NSW from 16,000 feet, part of the Murray-Darling system, shot by Tim Keegan, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Natural capital could create a market value for biodiversity

Andrew Mitchell in "Sustainable Business" blog the Guardian (UK): Last month, Indian environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan told 80 world ministers at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity that: "The mobilisation of resources is the most important unresolved question that we have inherited from Nagoya [conference, Japan 2010]."

Natarajan was speaking in the Conference of the Parties (COP 11) at the convention in Hyderabad, India, where financial discussions centred around the potential doubling of funding for developing countries to meet their commitments to protect biodiversity in the face of its rampant global decline.

Developing countries wanted this scaling up of funding to be enacted within two or three years, but debt-ridden European countries only wanted to commit to doing this by 2020. Other countries, such as Canada and Japan, were reticent about any financial commitments. With such divisions, what hope is there for the forests and wildlife upon which our future security depends?

A quarter of the world's mammals, 13% of birds, 41% of amphibians and 33% of reef-building corals are now at risk of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Over-exploitation of resources, deforestation, pollution and climate change mean that the rate of extinction of plant and animal species is now as much as 1,000 times higher than before humans. The very fabric of the natural capital that underpins our economic prosperity is being undermined. New thinking is needed, and fast.

The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, which includes the Aichi biodiversity targets, proposes, halving the rate of habitat loss, expanding water and land areas under conservation, preventing the extinction of known threatened species, and restoring at least 15% of degraded ecosystems, among other things and all by 2020. The High Level Panel, co-sponsored by the UK and Indian governments, submitted a report to COP 11 which preliminarily estimated that upfront funding of $81bn, followed by $30bn a year thereafter was needed to achieve the Aichi targets....

A sculpture of a dodo bird, long extinct, in a park in Poland, shot by Szalax, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Blog Post on Conservation and Human Rights

From its origins in seeking to protect disappearing wildlife at the behest of big-game hunters, conservation has evolved unpredictably and substantively over the past century. With a firm conviction that the practice of conservation, to paraphrase Dr Martin Luther King Jr, is long but ‘bending toward justice’, Dr Kent Redford recently traced the developments in conservation practices and the increasing emphasis on the need to incorporate human rights discourses and practices into conservation in a blog post for Just Conservation.

According to Dr Redford, “change also came about at the turn of the last century because of the issue of justice. The arc of conservation was bending with the realization that our moral argument for the value of conserving biodiversity was seriously flawed if we ourselves were acting immorally towards people. Seeking one justice did not justify abrogating another. So conservation entered the period of accommodation, of self-examination, and of change. It was clear that we needed to seriously consider how our actions, taken in pursuit of conservation goals, affected the rights of the people impacted by those actions.” 

Find the full blog post here.

Ignoring natural capital could see countries' credit ratings downgraded

Will Nichols in Business Green: Degradation of a country's so-called natural capital could exacerbate the sovereign debt crises that have helped trigger, and deepen, the global economic downturn, the UN warned yesterday. A report by the UN Environment Programme's Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) says loss of soils, forests, and fisheries, as well as rising resource costs, are likely to become increasingly important to a nation's economic health – and may therefore affect its ability to repay or refinance sovereign debt.

However, despite the US, Spain, Italy and Greece all seeing their sovereign debt downgraded since 2011, environmental factors are still being overlooked by the models used to determine sovereign credit ratings.

The UN's analysis of France, Japan, India, Turkey and Brazil found all five countries are pushing their ecological assets to the limit and lowering their resilience to natural resources risks, such as spikes in commodity prices.

India, for example, is currently demanding almost twice as much from its ecological assets than they can sustainably provide, and this gap is growing. The report argues that population growth means an increasing amount of the country's natural resource requirements will have to be met through imports. As such, the country's ability to cope with commodity price shocks will continue to diminish, potentially undermining its credit-rating.

Meanwhile, France is sweating its natural resources at a level 1.4 times that which can be sustainably provided and Japan could only meet 35 per cent of its natural resource needs domestically in 2008, down from 73 per cent in 1961....

Mount Fuji and cherry blossoms, shot by Midori, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Greenpeace says Philippine seas is facing an unprecedented crisis

Samar News (Philippines): Climate change, ocean pollution, and overfishing threaten the Philippines’ stature as the leader in global marine biodiversity, and are already affecting communities that rely on rich marine ecosystems for food.

At a community conference held at the Municipal Hall of Donsol, Sorsogon, Greenpeace today expressed alarm over the unprecedented destruction of the Philippine marine ecosystem that foreshadows serious health, social and economic impacts.

“We are an archipelagic nation. Soon, we will become the epicenter of global marine adversity if our government agencies refuse to acknowledge and address the crisis at sea,” said Vince Cinches, Oceans Campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

“Our seas are already under threat from massive overfishing and decades of unsustainable fishing practices that have resulted in today’s dwindling fish catch. With ocean acidification and rising sea temperatures, fish won’t be able to spawn and propagate. That now leaves 30 million Filipinos with even less fish to eat,” he added.

There is also the problem of illegal commercial fishing. Monsignor Angel Dy of the Sorsogon Social Action Foundation Inc. said that fisherfolk around Burias-Ticao Pass cannot compete with large commercial fishing vessels that encroach on municipal waters. “We know that illegal and unregulated fishing is rampant in our waters, and yet no one seems to be doing anything about it. This is the reason why last year some bishops went to President Aquino to request that his office ban commercial vessels from the waters around Burias, Ticao, and Ragay Gulf,” said the Monsignor....

Traditional boatbuilding in the Phlippines, shot by Paul Shaffner, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Natural Justice at 5th IUCN WCC

Harry Jonas and Holly Shrumm of Natural Justice are in Jeju, South Korea, to participate in the Fifth World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The Congress will take place from 6-15 September and will be preceded by meetings of the volunteer Commissions. Natural Justice will present at and participate in a range of events related to Indigenous peoples' and local communities' conserved territories and areas (ICCAs), sacred natural sites, biocultural diversity, rights-based approaches to conservation, governance and management of protected areas, the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and access and benefit sharing, among others. The official Congress programme is available here. Updates will be provided on this blog throughout the Congress. Find ways to engage with the Congress from anywhere here.