Amazon ranchers 'pushed into rainforest' by farming

29th April 2010
Source: Cool Earth

Soy farming levels in Brazil is forcing ranchers to move into the Amazon rainforest, it has been claimed.

According to an article on Monga Bay, the expansion of the industrial soy farming industry is adding to deforestation by pushing cattle ranchers further into the rainforest. The site reported that this is the finding of a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

For the research, scientists looked at census figures taken between 2000 and 2006 on deforestation, livestock populations levels and pasture area sizes to work out which parts of the rainforest are being hit the most by forest clearing.

"Their analysis found that deforestation shifted 39 kilometres to the north-east during the period," the site noted.

Cattle ranches are one of the biggest causes of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, as is illegal logging and other activity.

Monga Bay pointed out that in the 1990s, soy production in the rainforest went through a boom period.

Super Vegetable Gardens Provides Sustainable Farming In Senegal

April 29, 2010
Source: PSFK

Underneath the blistering African sun and seventy kilometers northeast of Senegal’s capital, Dakar, ten vegetable gardens with green leafy vegetables line a highway to the nearby Keur Madaro village. Super Vegetable Gardens aims to help small-scale farmers throughout Senegal and in tropical areas around the world by tackling food security, poverty and climate change. A collaborative agriculture project launched last June by international aid organization Pro-Natura and JTS Seeds has seen 150 gardens sprout throughout the country a year later. Each farmer is given a starter kit, containing soil conditioners, fertilizers, and an array of organic, non-genetically-modified seeds for fruits and vegetables including cabbage, tomatoes, carrots and melons.

Guy Reinaud, president of Pro-Natura sheds some light on caring for the garden:

“It is very, very new. The only obstacle is linked to the type of person taking care of the garden. It works exceedingly well technically, but you have to spend two hours per day to feed a family of ten people.”

Biochar a charcoal powder originating in the Amazon rainforest is another innovation of the super vegetable garden project, as the powerful soil conditioner has the capacity to increase crop productivity, reduce water consumption and even act as carbon sinks to absorb and store CO2 from the atmosphere.

Chevron oil demands Crude filmmaker hand over unseen footage

Thursday 29 April 2010
Source: guardian.co.uk

A scene from the film Crude, which focused on a legal battle by Ecuadoreans who claim oil contamination in the Amazon caused illneses such as leukaemia

The oil giant Chevron is trying to force a filmmaker to hand over hundreds of hours of documentary footage about pollution in the Amazon in the latest twist in a multibillion dollar lawsuit.

The company wants to view unused material from the award-winning documentary Crude, about an environmental catastrophe in Ecuador's oil-producing Amazon region, to bolster its defence in one of the biggest lawsuits in history.

The 105-minute film sympathises with alleged victims of oil contamination but lawyers for Chevron hope 600 hours of raw footage shot over three years will include segments that could help them fend off potential damages of $27.3bn (£17.9bn).

The case has alarmed both environmentalists, who fear Chevron will get ammunition, and investigative filmmakers, who fear their integrity and ability to protect sources will be compromised.

Joe Berlinger, who directed Crude, said he would fight the request to hand over his tapes and digital archives. A district court in Manhattan is due to hear the case tomorrow.

"This is a violation of the first amendment and journalistic privilege," Berlinger said in a telephone interview. "Just because they want to look at my footage doesn't mean they have the right to look at my footage."

Crude, which premiered last year, focuses on the 17-year legal battle between Chevron and 30,000 Ecuadoreans who say their land, rivers, wells, livestock and own bodies were poisoned by decades of reckless oil drilling in the rainforest.

The plaintiffs say Texaco – which was taken over by Chevron in 2001 – dumped 68bn litres of waste water between 1972 and 1990, causing an epidemic of diseases such as leukaemia. Some have called it "the Amazon's Chernobyl".

Chevron says scientific tests show the water is safe, that the diseases have other causes, that Texaco cleaned up the site and that pollution since then is the fault of the state company Petroecuador.

An Ecuadorean judge based in Lago Agrio – a jungle town named after Texaco's headquarters – is expected to rule on the lawsuit within two months. Chevron, braced for defeat in what it says is a biased tribunal, has vowed to fight on.

Kent Robertson, a company spokesman, said one version of Crude showed the plaintiffs' legal team participating in a focus group with a supposedly neutral court expert – a scene edited out of the DVD version.

"We believe that Mr Berlinger may have also unwittingly captured on film other instances of improper collaboration between court experts and the plaintiffs' representatives that would further demonstrate the illegitimate nature of the entire Lago Agrio trial," said Robertson. "Through our discovery request we are simply asking to review Mr Berlinger's film archive to establish if there are other documented instances of misconduct."

The director said there was no smoking gun and that the controversial scene was not of a focus group but a routine meeting that indicated no wrongdoing. It was edited out on the basis of audience reaction at the Sundance film festival, a standard industry practice, he said.

Crude was a balanced film that gave Chevron's side of the story, Berlinger said. Had the Ecuadorean plaintiffs demanded the footage he would have rebuffed them too.

The filmmaker found himself in a similar legal battle when prosecutors and defence lawyers demanded raw footage from another documentary, Paradise Lost, about the murder of young boys.

He won that case but is unsure about beating a corporate behemoth. "I am hopeful but not confident. Chevron have the most expensive law firm in New York and very deep pockets. I have very thin pockets."

Berlinger said he had received support from hundreds of other filmmakers who feared a "chilling" impact on documentaries if sources' protection could not be guaranteed.

Both sides said they would appeal against an unfavourable ruling. Berlinger said he would comply if he was ultimately ordered to hand over footage. "I won't destroy it. I believe very strongly in the principles at stake here but I'm also the father of two children. I'm not willing to go to jail over this."

Peru: Expo Amazonica 2010 opens today in Lima

29 April, 2010
Source: Living in Peru

The best products and cultural expression from the Peruvian rainforest communities will be exhibited in Lima, at the "Expo Amazonica 2010", starting today.

Public and private institutions, associations and native communities from the rainforest will share some of its innovative experiences in a large fair to be held between April 29 and May 2 at the Parque de la Exposicion.

The fair will showcase some of the best agrarian, handicrafts, and cattle products; there will also be a gastronomic festival and a show with dances and cultural expressions from the Amazonian communities.

In addition, the program includes events like the "Sixth Annual Municipal Conference" to discuss about environment issues, and another conference called "Let's talk about the rainforest."

Large-scale soy farming in Brazil pushes ranchers into the Amazon rainforest

April 28, 2010
Source: mongabay.com

Industrial soy expansion in the Brazilian Amazon has contributed to deforestation by pushing cattle ranchers further north into rainforest zones, reports a new study published the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The research, which looked at soy and cattle dynamics in the southern Amazon stats of Mato Grosso and Pará, supports the claim that soy is an important indirect driver of deforestation in the world's largest rainforest.

The authors — including Elizabeth Barona, Navin Ramankutty, Glenn Hyman and Oliver Coomes — analyzed annual census data on deforestation, crop harvest area, livestock population, and pasture area between 2000 and 2006 from municipalities in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. Their analysis found that deforestation shifted 39 km to the northeast during the period, while pasture shifted 87 km to the northwest, from northeastern Mato Grosso to southwestern Para, and soybeans moved 82 km to the northeast, from southern to northeastern Mato Grosso. The researchers also noted that soybean expansion was accompanied by a decline in pasture area in many municipalities in Mato Grosso, lending support to the argument that "decreases in pasture in Mato Grosso owing to soybean expansion may have been compensated by increases in pasture elsewhere in northern Mato Grosso, Para and Rondônia causing some deforestation indirectly, i.e., 'displacement deforestation.'"

Movement of the centroid of land-use types from 2000 to 2006. For each land use the centroid of all municipalities in the Legal Amazon, weighted by the land-use area in that particular year, was calculated.

Land-use transitions between 2000 and 2006 in the Legal Amazon. In the municipalities where deforestation occurred over this period (green and orange), we separated those in which pasture increased from those where soy increased. (In municipalities where both soy and pasture increased, we labeled it using the dominant change.) Similarly, we identified municipalities where soy expanded while pasture decreased (and the decrease in pasture exceeds deforestation). Captions and images copyright Barona et. al. (2010)

The authors say future research should "examine more closely how interlinkages between land area, prices, and policies influence the relationship between soy and deforestation, in order to make a conclusive case for 'displacement deforestation.'"

Soy in the Amazon

Soy production in the Amazon exploded in the early 1990s following the development of a new variety of soybean suitable to the soils and climate of the region. Most expansion occurred in the cerrado, a wooded grassland ecosystem, and the transition forests in the southern fringes in the Amazon basin, especially in states of Mato Grosso and Pará — direct conversion of rainforests for soy has been relatively limited. Instead, the impact of soy on rainforests — as suggested by the Environmental Research Letters study — is generally seen to be indirect. Soy expansion has driven up land prices, created impetus for infrastructure improvements that promote forest clearing, and displaced cattle ranchers to frontier areas, spurring deforestation.

The Brazilian soy industry argues that it receives an unfair share of the blame for Amazon forest loss. It notes that producers in the legal Amazon face some of the most stringent environmental laws in the world, with landowners required to maintain 80 percent forest cover on their holdings. By comparison there are no legal forest reserve requirements for U.S. farmers.

Nevertheless soy growers, crushers, and traders have taken steps to reduce the environmental impact of their crop in the Amazon biome. After a damaging Greenpeace campaign in 2006, leading players in the industry agreed to a moratorium on soy grown on newly deforested lands. Analysis last year showed that growers are mostly abiding by the ban: only 12 of 630 sample areas (1,389 of 157,896 hectares) deforested since July 2006 — the date the moratorium took effect — were planted with soy.

BBC on the impact of biofuels on Paraguay’s ecology and farmers

28 Apr 2010
Source: Grist Magazine

Everyone should listen to this BBC report (unfortunately not embedabble) on the "price of biofuels." It digs into a key question: what does Europe's appetite for biodiesel mean for people and ecosystems in the countries that produce the feedstocks?

Focusing on Paraguay, the BBC comes up with answers that aren't pretty. The economic benefits of the biofuel craze accrue to large plantation owners and the global agribusiness firms that buy their soy and provide the inputs. Tracts of of the Amazon get leveled for soy production. Small-scale tenant farmers get forced off their land and into penury. Inevitably, agrichemicals rain down and seep into streams, wreaking havoc on communities.

In short, we see not the production of a "green" fuel but rather an ecological calamity in service of the idea of green fuel: a highly profitable travesty masquerading as a "solution."

The focus is the Europe-South America consumption-production chain, but our own corn-ethanol program is implicated. Like crude oil, agricultural commodities like corn and soy are fungible. Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill don't distinguish between soy grown on Iowa prairie lands and, say, the the Brazilian savanna. In industrial production, soy is soy; and corn is corn. As biofuel production expands, it demands more cropland--affecting farmers' planting decisions and make therm scramble to increase yields.

Ponder the fact that the U.S. government uses mandates and tax breaks to divert more than a third of the U.S. corn crop into ethanol--and that proportion will rise to more than 50 percent by 2015, if mandates in the Renewable Fuel Standard hold true. As recently as 2004, ethanol burned through just 13 percent of the crop.

All of that corn being diverted into our gas tanks means that somewhere, some industrial agriculturalist sees an opportunity to plow up new land for more corn production. Or switch from soy to corn, putting upward pressure on the price of soy and encouraging more soy in places like the Amazon rain forest or Brazil's savanna.

Let's put this into perspective. The U.S. grows 40 percent of the globe's corn. If one third of it gets transformed into ethanol, that means that more than one out of every eight corn kernels grown in the world now goes into U.S. drivers' gas tanks. When one half of our corn goes to ethanol, one kernel in five will help power our car fleet.

Let's think about it another way. The mighty U.S. corn crop sucks up more than 40 percent of the synthetic nitrogen and mined potassium fertilizer used in U.S. agriculture. (Figures extrapolated from this USDA document--and a pox on that agency for presenting this key information in a rather raw Excel document, and not a thought-through HTML.) So again, given that a third of corn goes to ethanol. that means nearly 15 percent of our consumption of this those ecologically devastating, geopolitically troubling resources can be explained by ethanol.

And for what? All to reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by about 6 percent. Reaching that stunningly modest level required decades of steady government support in the form of multi-billion-dollar annual tax breaks, plus research grants and mandates. And to be clear, our ethanol habit barely----if at all--reduces the total amount of fossil fuel consumed. Production of corn-based ethanol offers a razor-thin net energy gain--and that, only if you grant a generous credit to distillers grains, an ethanol byproduct, as a livestock feed. As I've shown before, the mush left over from industrial ethanol production is riddled with antibiotic residues and heart-ruining mycotoxins--not the kind of stuff you'd want to feed to animals you plan to eat (even though the meat indsustry welcomes distillers grains as an "economical" alternative to whole corn).

In short, government-mandated biofuel programs, both in Europe and here, are distractions from the necessary task of reducing fossil energy consumption. They will inevitably cause the destruction of climate-stabilizing ecosystems like rain forests and seperate small-scale farmers from their land. Indeed, both are lready happening.

I can see one hopeful sign from the U.S. biofuel experience, though. It has proved that the U.S. government, even under such alleged free-market zealots as Reagan and Bush II, actually is capable of making sustained public commitments to alternative energy. (Leave aside their loyal and expensive support of the crude-oil industry).

The trick for progressives is to not just attack public support for ethanol, but also to try to shift that spirit of public investment to technologies and projects that actually conserve fossil fuel, like mass transit, dense cities, and efficiency. Meanwhile, Friends of the Earth is circulating an online petition demanding an end to "dirty corn ethanol subsidies."

Last chance for cattle companies to prove they're serious about saving the Amazon

28 April 2010
Source: Greenpeace UK

Back at the end of last year, while politicians were talking about the importance of forests in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference, we were busy taking on the single biggest cause of rainforest destruction worldwide – the expansion of the Brazilian cattle industry.

It seemed like it was going to be a pretty tough nut to crack, so we dug in our heels and prepared for a long fight to get lasting change at the heart of the Amazon rainforest.

But sometimes events surprise you. Completely unexpectedly, within months of the campaign starting, and following thousands of Greenpeace supporters taking action, the issue was making serious progress.

Our supporters and campaigners put shoe brands including Nike, Timberland, Adidas and Clarks, and UK food giant Princes, under serious pressure to take responsibility for making sure that leather and beef in their products was not bought from farmers actively destroying the forest. And it worked.

The big brands threatening to move their business elsewhere led to an extraordinary agreement from the biggest cattle companies in the world, to not buy from farms that destroyed the rainforest. It was a really swift result, although it's worth remembering that what seemed like rapid change was based on 10 years of Greenpeace work in the Amazon, and a 3 year long investigation into the cattle industry.

But getting companies to agree to change the way their do business is only half of the story. To make sure that they backed up their words with action, we set some deadlines for the cattle companies to meet, with the first test of their commitment being set for April. Disappointingly, all of the companies came back with excuses. None of them had met the deadline.

And so, as campaigners, we were faced with a difficult dilemma. Should we keep expecting change from the cattle companies, or should we assume that they just weren’t taking the issue seriously? It took a lot of careful thinking and negotiating, but we eventually decided to give them a little more time.

We think that with enough pressure from their customers we can give them the push they need to get them back on track. But it might not work. And if it doesn’t we'll need your help again. We’ve seen from the recent Nestle campaign that our supporters can bring serious pressure to bear on big corporations. Our message to the cattle companies is clear - this is the last chance to prove they are serious about saving the Amazon.

Rainforest Foundation US Announces Partnership with J. Sabatelli Brazil Cosmetics

Apr 28, 2010
Source: PR Log (Press Release)

he Rainforest Foundation has its roots in Brazil, where it has worked with local partners to protect indigenous lands and forest resources for the past 21 years.

Founded by Sting and Trudie Styler after a trip to the Amazon in 1989, the Rainforest Foundation has a celebrated history as one of the first international organizations to support indigenous and traditional peoples of the world's rainforests in their efforts to protect their environment and fulfill their rights to land, life and livelihood.

Sharing the Rainforest Foundation’s passion for protecting rainforests is their new partner J. Sabatelli. Over the next year, J. Sabatelli will support the Rainforest Foundation’s work by donating $5 for each of their skin care products sold.

Juliana Sabatelli, founder of J. Sabatelli Brazil Cosmetics, grew up in Brazil and has personally seen the impact of deforestation. As a result, she feels a strong obligation towards the land and people of the Amazonian rainforests.

As an aesthetician and make-up artist who has worked in Beverly Hills, Sabatelli wanted to combine her vision for a greener, more sustainable world with her dedication to creating products for healthy, younger-looking skin. J. Sabatelli Brazil anti-aging skin care products contain USDA-certified organic ingredients and seven signature Brazilian oils and extracts. The product line has earned the Ecocert certificate and the Forest Stewardship Council's “Green Seal”
certification for sustainable harvesting, the highest social and environmental standards on the market.

“The indigenous people of the Brazilian Amazon have been using these oils and butters for centuries to treat their skin problems naturally. We are the first to combine the best of the old world and new world,” says Sabatelli.

The J. Sabatelli Brazil Cosmetics line is the first anti-aging skin care line infused with seven oils and extracts found in the Brazilian rainforest: Brazil nut, Açaí, Cupuaçu, Maracujá, Buriti, Andiroba and Pracaxi. All the oils and extracts are sustainably wild-crafted; thereby reducing the impact on the rainforests, generating additional sources of income and protecting the land of indigenous Amazonian people.

"We are excited to partner with J. Sabatelli Brazil Cosmetics and we hope that their commitment to the sustainable use of rainforest natural resources will be an inspiration within the cosmetics industry and an example of how businesses can be done differently," said Suzanne Pelletier, Rainforest Foundation US Executive Director.

Rainforest Pyramid reopens today at Moody Gardens

April 27, 2010
Source: Houston Chronicle

GALVESTON — Moody Gardens reopens its Rainforest Pyramid today for the first time since October with a new insect exhibit featuring a bird-eating Goliath tarantula and a 4,000-square-foot butterfly tent. The pyramid will close again Sept. 6 and reopen the summer of next year with catwalks taking visitors through the top of the rainforest and a 6,500-square-foot Amazon otter exhibit.

The opening today follows the completion of the first phase of a $25 million expansion of the Rainforest Pyramid, including the addition of the insect exhibit — Jitterbug! Spineless Wonders of the World — and a tent with 15 varieties of Texas butterfly, said Greg Whittaker, Moody Gardens animal husbandry manager.

Hurricane Ike severely damaged the Rainforest Pyramid when it struck Sept. 13, 2008. Salt water killed thousands of freshwater fish and 5 percent of the rainforest creatures, including several bats and snakes. Moody Gardens reopened three weeks after the storm, but the Rainforest Pyramid remained closed until April 2009.

The hurricane also delayed plans to build a $150 million glacier pyramid that would have re-created arctic climates, from snowy ice packs to frozen tundra.
Rain is optional

The Rainforest Pyramid closed again in October for construction of new features that will be on display today, including simulated rainforest showers with thunder sound effects. Guests will be warned through the loudspeaker system of impending rain in the Mayan ruins section of the pyramid. Those who wish to brave the downpour can bring raincoats or buy them at Moody Gardens.

Horticulture Exhibits Manager Donita Brannon said four tractor-trailer loads of new plants were delivered and planted over the last six weeks. New signs will point out rainforest plants with medicinal uses, such as the endangered Rosy Periwinkle from which is derived vinblastine, a drug used to fight leukemia and Hodgkin's disease.

Brannon said 25 percent of pharmaceutical drugs are derived from plants in the fast disappearing rainforest, but only 1 percent of rainforest plants have been tested for medical uses.

The new insect exhibit will feature between 32 and 40 types at any one time, but the types will change as the insects live out life spans ranging from one month to one year and new specimens arrive. Many of the insects have vicious names, like the toe biting water beetle and the white-spotted assassin beetle.

When the pyramid reopens next year with skywalks through the rainforest canopy, visitors will see creatures otherwise not visible from the ground, such as iridescent blue roller birds and the 8-foot nests built by the oropendola bird, along with tamarins, marmosets and tree sloths.

Amazon Expedition Aims to Collect 100,000 Bugs

04.27.10
Source: Treehugger

To date, around 1 million insect species have been identified throughout the world. But, while that may be a mind-boggling number, biologists estimate that there remains at least 4 million more left undiscovered--many of which may lie deep in the heart of the world's largest rainforest. With that in mind, soon a team of researchers will travel 20 days, by boat, into remote regions of the Amazon in hopes of collecting around 100 thousand insect specimens.

According to a report from Globo Amazonia, this isn't the first time a team from Brazil's National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) has set out in search of new species. The project to collect new species has been ongoing for the last several years and will continue through to 2011. Last year's expedition was cut short, however, when the team's boat sank early on in the voyage, leaving crewmembers stranded.

From June 1 to June 21, the team made up of 20 researchers, will travel hundreds of miles into parts of the Amazon rainforest that have been largely unexplored, setting up more than 60 insect traps along the way. The forest's size and inaccessibility has made it difficult for biologists to do research in the past--but makes the Amazon a virtual treasure-trove of undiscovered species.

Team coordinator José Albertino Rafael :

The Amazon, especially (in the state of) Amazonia, still has a little-known insect fauna. We regularly find new species in any region of the state and much more when we cover the remote areas, still unexplored. So experts from different taxonomic groups will participate in the project, so that much of what we find can be identified and described.

This year, Rafael has no doubt their mission will be successful in adding more insect species to the list of around 1 million that have previously been classified. "A reasonable estimate says there may be more than 5 million species and the Amazon is very rich in biodiversity," he said.

With insects accounting to about two-thirds of total species on the planet, discovering even a fraction of the estimated 5 million that remain unclassified holds the potential to advance scientific understanding of life on earth--not to mention the Amazon rainforest, which is the cradle to so much of it.

Green Light for Amazon Rainforest Dam

Tue, 04/27/2010
Source: TopNews United States

The Amazon and Xingu rivers are dangerous to the comfort of the Amazon rainforest, since it has been noted, with the planned Belo Monte dam, to be a threat to the area and its populace.

An editorial on Peace, Earth and Justice News, greatly criticized the construction of the new hydroelectric dam, which is set to cross the Xingu River, by stating, that it will destroy a widespread area of the woodland plus intimidate the continued existence of many of the native people, who dwell in the tropical area.

The article's author, Joan Russow is demanding from people, to make a stand, regarding the construction of the new dam, which will be one of the biggest in the world.

She said that Brazil has better means of providing its future energy needs, than devastating the grand Xingu River, its rainforests and its inhabitants.

Commenting on the dam, the Brazilian Government has formerly stated that the region, which will be flooded, has been vigilantly considered and the size has already been reduced.

Joan Russow is expecting that the local inhabitants will come up and speak, so that, this can be stopped.

Amazon Defense Coalition: Chevron Lawyer Faces Sanctions for Misleading Court Over “Dirty Tricks” Operation in Ecuador

April 27, 2010
Source: Business Wire

QUITO, Ecuador--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chevron’s lead lawyer in Ecuador faces sanctions for misleading the court about a “dirty tricks” operation that the oil giant used to try to delay an environmental trial where it faces a multi-billion dollar liability, representatives of the plaintiffs announced today.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs filed a motion with the Ecuador court asserting that Chevron lawyer Adolfo Callejas misled the judge when he failed to disclose that secretly taped videos of the trial judge were made by a longtime Chevron contractor, Diego Borja, who worked for the company’s legal team in the trial. Callejas has worked as a lawyer with Chevron and its predecessor company in Ecuador, Texaco, for more than three decades.

The plaintiffs have called the creation of the videos – released on YouTube in August of last year -- a “dirty tricks” operation by Chevron intended to derail the trial, where the scientific evidence points to the oil giant’s culpability for causing a wide-ranging environmental catastrophe in Ecuador’s rainforest.

Chevron lawyer Callejas had told the Ecuador court that Borja was an independent third party who made the tapes and then turned them over to Chevron because of a sense of civic duty. Borja later admitted he and his wife were paid substantial sums of money by Chevron for years to work on the environmental trial, and later were moved by Chevron to the U.S. where Borja continues to receive a salary from the oil giant.

“We now know that Borja was paid by Chevron and that he was a Chevron employee, contrary to what Callejas said at the time to the court,” said Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorian lawyer for 30,000 rainforest dwellers suing the company.

It was later discovered that Borja signed numerous documents relating to soil sampling under the direction of the Chevron legal team, which Callejas led. Callejas therefore knew of Borja’s longtime ties to Chevron but hid that information from the court, said Fajardo.

“Borja executed a dirty tricks operation to help Chevron derail the lawsuit and it appears Callejas helped him,” said Fajardo.

After Chevron made the videos public, Chevron relocated Borja to a luxury house near its headquarters in California and paid for him to retain a prominent criminal defense lawyer, apparently so he could not be questioned by authorities, said Fajardo.

Misleading the court for the purpose of delaying a litigation is a sanctionable offense under Ecuador’s civil code, said Fajardo.

Rainforest rivers 'critical to the Amazon

26th April 2010
Source: Cool Earth

The Amazon and Xingu rivers are critical to the wellbeing of the Amazon rainforest, it has been noted, with the planned Belo Monte dam a threat to the region and its people.

An article on Peace, Earth and Justice News heavily criticised the building of the new hydroelectric dam, which is set to cross the Xingu River, saying it will "devastate an extensive area" of the forest as well as "threaten the survival" of many of the indigenous people who reside in the tropical region.

The article's author Joan Russow urged people to make a stand about the building of the new dam, which is set to be one of the biggest in the world.

She said people need to tell Brazilian decision makers that "Brazil has better ways of providing its future energy needs than destroying the mighty Xingu River, its rainforests and its peoples".

Commenting on the dam, the Brazilian government has previously said that the area to be flooded has been carefully considered and already reduced in size.

Ecuadoran President Confirms Deal to Leave Oil Under Yasuni Park

April 26, 2010
Source: Environment News Service

QUITO, Ecuador, April 26, 2010 (ENS) - President Raphael Correa now has approved an agreement to leave Ecuador's largest oil reserves, amounting to some 900 million barrels, underground in Yasuni National Park in exchange for more than $3 billion.

Under the unprecedented agreement, known as the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, the government of Ecuador will refrain from exploiting the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini oil field within the Amazon rainforest park, which scientists have determined to be the most biodiverse area in all of South America.

The agreement between Ecuador and the United Nations Development Programme creating a trust fund to receive donations to the Yasuni-ITT Initiative was nearly signed in December at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, but at the last minute, President Correa instructed his negotiators to hold back until several sticking points were resolved.

Now, those issues are settled and the agreement will be signed within the next week to 10 days, according to Ivonne Baki, who now heads the president's negotiations committee for the Yasuni-ITT Initiative.

"It has been reviewed by the president and was approved by the president," she said of the detailed Terms of Reference for the UN Development Programme trust fund.

Baki, a former Ecuadoran ambassador to the United States, told ENS in an interview that the trust fund agreement presented in Copenhagen needed changes to gain presidential approval. "In order for us to get the money from countries, we needed to have an international fund. But that fund was set up not as the president was told it would be, not according to discussions before," she said. "He had to change some of those things."

The agreement now refers not to "donors," a term President Correa found unsatisfactory, but to "contributors."

"Ecuador is a contributor, other countries are also contributors," Baki said.

In addition, President Correa insisted that Ecuador have a majority on the trust fund board of directors. Under the revised agreement, there will be three board members from Ecuador, two board members from contributing countries, and one position representing civil society that was not there in the previous version.

Finally, under the previous version, all decisions of the board had to be by unanimous consensus, which allowed any one person to veto a measure, bringing the whole process to a halt.

Under the revised agreement, decisions will be reached by consensus if possible, but if that is not possible, by majority, Baki said.

Getting the agreement right is very important, said Baki, because it could be an example to be followed by other countries in the same position as Ecuador.

"A biodiverse developing country that has oil underneath that we don't want to touch," she said, "Imagine, we could contribute this to the world. This is a different kind of sustainable development."

"Really we need Yasuni to be known all over the world," said Baki, and she has assurances from some of the biggest names in the entertainment world that they will support and help to publicize the Yasuni-ITT Initiative.

Actors Leonardo Dicaprio, Edward Norton, Glenn Close, Daryl Hannah and Chevy Chase told Baki and Ecuadoran Vice President Lenin Moreno during a four-day conservation conference at sea that they would back the Yasuni-ITT Initiative.

Baki said, "They are lending their names and the moral support that we need to make Yasuni known in the world."

Former U.S. Vice President and Nobel Peace Laureate Al Gore will come to Ecuador in November to give a conservation conference, she said.

All of this attention is focused on an area of the Amazon rainforest that Baki calls "amazing."

"Once you have been there, you feel you have seen God," she said.

"We were flying by helicopter over the greatest variety of trees unimaginable," Baki told ENS, "when all of a sudden there was a red tree, all of a sudden a yellow tree, and all different kinds of birds."

"We went down a river by canoe to find most amazing variety of plants, trees, animals, monkeys, small monkeys, nature living together in harmony. And on top of that the communities - there are two groups of indigenous people who voluntarily are uncontacted, but there are other communities that have done an amazing job, incredible things with the trees, with artisanal products,

Baki stayed at the Napo Wildlife Lodge by Anangu Lake in Yasuni National Park, within the ancestral territory of the Anangu Quichua Community.

The community manages the lodge, which Baki described as having "the most beautiful food, hotel, nature. They only ask 'please keep this place.' You feel you are in another world," she said.

Near the lodge are two parrot and macaw clay licks, 565 bird species, 11 species of monkeys, giant otters and other large mammals such as Brazilian tapirs, white-lipped peccaries, and all species of cayman.

For years, conservationists around the world and indigenous communities who live in the park have been urging protection of Yasuni. "What will happen when our children grow up? Where will they live when they are older? Our rivers are tranquil and in the forests we find the food, medicines and other necessities that we need. What will happen when the oil companies finish destroying what we have?" Waorani community members wrote to the President of Ecuador in July 2005.

To "keep this place" free of oil development, Ecuador will issue Yasuni Guarantee Certificates to contributors to the Initiative, as a guarantee that an estimated 900 million barrels of oil, worth US$6 billion will remain in the ground for an indefinite time period.

The value of the certificates will be a multiple of the metric tons of avoided carbon dioxide emissions.

"This is a negotiable instrument that does not earn interest and does not have an expiration or maturity date, since the guarantee is in perpetuity and will be redeemed only in the event that the Ecuadorian government decides to start the oil exploration and production within the ITT fields," the government of Ecuador says on its website.

The donations to the Yasuni-ITT Trust Fund will come from two main sources - voluntary contributions and transactions in the carbon market.

The voluntary contributions can come from governments of countries, international or multilateral organizations, civil society organizations, private sector companies, and citizens worldwide.

Global deforestation slows

March 25, 2010
Source: mongabay.com

Global forest loss has diminished since the 1990s but still remains "alarmingly high", according to a preliminary version of a new assessment from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The report, Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010 (FRA 2010), shows that global forest loss slowed to around 13 million hectares per year during the 2000s, down from about 16 million hectares per year in the 1990s [NOTE]. It finds that net deforestation declined from about 8.3 million hectares per year in the 1990s to about 5.2 million hectares per year in the 2000s, a result of large-scale reforestation and afforestation projects, as well as natural forest recovery in some countries and slowing deforestation in the Amazon.

Nevertheless, loss of primary forests remained high at around 4 million hectares per year during the 2000s. Primary, or old-growth, forests today account for only 36 percent of global forest cover (1.35 billion hectares), while secondary and naturally regenerating forests make up 57 percent (2.15 billion hectares). The balance — 9 percent or 264 million hectares — consists of planted forests, including industrial plantations.

Net change in forest areas by country, 2005-2010 (hectares per year). Image courtesy of FAO.

The ongoing loss of primary forests is significant because they store more carbon and house more biodiversity than planted and regenerating forests.

FRA 2010 says that forest loss was highest in Brazil, Indonesia, and Australia, each of which lost more than 2.5 million hectares between 2005 and 2010. Myanmar (Burma), Bolivia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Congo, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe lost more than 1.2 million hectares during the period.

China saw the biggest gains in forest cover, a product of an ambitious reforestation and afforestation initiative. Primary forests in the country however continue to be diminished for plantation development, particularly in the southern China. The United States also gained net forest cover, while experiencing primary forest loss.

FRA 2010 estimates that global forest cover change between 2005 and 2010 resulted in annual loss of roughly 500 million tons in carbon stock. Overall the world's forests store 289 gigatons (billion metric tons) of carbon, or about 37 years of annual CO2 emissions at 2006 levels.

The assessment finds that 12 percent (460 million hectares) of the world's forests are designated for biodiversity conservation, an increase of 95 million hectares since 1990. Legally established protected areas — national parks, game reserves, wilderness areas and other protected areas — cover 13 percent of the world's forests. 30 percent of the world's forests are used primarily for production and about 10 million people are employed in forest management (including logging) and conservation, although a much larger number depend on forests for their livelihoods. Globally, governments spend more on forestry than they collect in revenue, indicating that the sector is heavily subsidized, according to the report.

Forest ownership patterns, 2005

Management rights in public forests, 2005. Images courtesy of FAO.

FRA 2010 estimates that 80 percent of forests are publicly owned, but ownership and management by communities, individuals, and corporations is increasing. Community-managed forests are most widespread in South America, while corporate management dominates in Oceania, Europe, and Asia.

The assessment reports that some 35 million hectares of forest are damaged by pests annually, primarily in the temperate and boreal zone. Roughly 1 percent or 38 million hectares was reported as being affected by fire each year, although FAO warns that forest fires are "severely underreported."

The final version of FRA 2010 with country-by-country figures will be published in October and a new global forest map is expected by the end of the year.

FAO says that a collaborative global remote sensing survey will greatly improve its assessments by late 2011. The current assessment is based mostly on self-reporting by countries.

Brazil President: Not building Amazon dam would be 'insane,' nation needs clean energy

Apr 27, 2010
Source: Today Online

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - Brazil's president says scrapping an enormous Amazon hydroelectric dam would be "insane" as otherwise the country would generate energy in a more polluting way.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also says the Belo Monte dam project - and subsequent flooding of a large area in the jungle - will displace 16,000 people.

Activists say 40,000 will be displaced.

Last week, a consortium of nine companies won rights to build the dam.

It is opposed by activists and movie director James Cameron. They say energy produced will go mostly to mining companies.

Brazil's government insists the dam - to be the world's third largest - will produce clean energy.

Silva says Monday using fuel-fired plants would be an "insane move" in the fight against global warming.

Climate scientist sues newspaper for 'poisoning' global warming debate

Thursday 22 April 2010
Source: guardian.co.uk

One of the world's leading climate scientists has launched a libel lawsuit against a Canadian newspaper for publishing articles that he says "poison" the debate on global warming.

In a case with potentially huge consequences for online publishers, lawyers acting for Andrew Weaver, a climate modeller at the University of Victoria, Canada, have demanded the National Post removes the articles not only from its own websites, but also from the numerous blogs and sites where they were reposted.

Weaver says the articles, published at the height of several recent controversies over the reliability of climate science in recent months, contain "grossly irresponsible falsehoods". He said he filed the suit after the newspaper refused to retract the articles.

Weaver said: "If I sit back and do nothing to clear my name, these libels will stay on the internet forever. They'll poison the factual record, misleading people who are looking for reliable scientific information about global warming."

The four articles, published from December to February, claimed that Weaver cherrypicked data to support his climate research, and that he tried to blame the "evil fossil fuel" industry for break-ins at his office in 2008 to divert attention from reported mistakes in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on which he was lead author.

The lawsuit also highlights several claims in the articles that attempt to question or undermine the scientific consensus on climate change, including that annual global mean temperatures have stopped increasing in the last decade and that climate models are "falling apart".

Such statements, the lawsuit says, would lead readers to conclude that Weaver "is so strongly motivated by a corrupt interest in receiving government funding that he willfully conceals scientific climate data which refutes global warming in order to keep alarming the public so that it welcomes... funding for climate scientists such as himself."

Weaver said: "I asked the National Post to do the right thing, to retract a number of recent articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held. To my absolute astonishment, the newspaper refused."

A spokesman for the National Post said: "Beyond saying that we intend to defend the article, we do not comment on such suits."

Weaver is suing for libel three writers at the newspaper, as well as the newspaper as a whole and several, as-yet unknown, posters on the paper's online comment section. Such comments, typical on articles about global warming, included claims that Weaver was "as big a hypocrite as he is a fraudster" and a rat leaving a sinking "ship of lies, red-herrings and hysteria". One poster suggested he should be thrown under a bus.

McConchie Law Corporation, acting for Weaver, said that the National Post articles had "gone viral on the internet" and were reproduced on dozens of other websites, including prominent climate-sceptic sites Climate Audit and Watts Up With That.

The lawsuit says the newspaper "expressly authorised republication" of the articles by including online links that invited readers to email the story to others, and share it through tools such as Facebook.

McConchie Law said it was seeking an "unprecedented" court order that would require the newspaper to help Weaver remove the articles from across the internet. Media law experts said that such demands were becoming increasingly common in complaints to publishers, but this could be the first time they were tested in court.

Weaver's libel action follows an official complaint made last month by a leading UK scientist to the Press Complaints Commission over a story published in the Sunday Times. Simon Lewis, an expert on tropical forests at the University of Leeds, claimed the story published in January was misleading because it gave the impression that the IPCC made a false claim in its 2007 report that reduced rainfall could wipe out up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest. He said he told the newspaper that the IPCC's statement was "poorly written and bizarrely referenced, but basically correct".

New England tour guides take visitors to AMAZON RAINFOREST

April 25 2010
Source: Dickinson Press


NEW ENGLAND — “I’m your tour guide and I’m going to tell you a little about the Amazon rainforest,” said New England third-grader Jayla Nelson.

Nelson, along with her classmates and the second-graders, have been working for weeks to create rainforests in their classrooms — complete with trees, vines, insects, flowers, birds and animals. The project was highlighted with an open house on Thursday when the students took visitors through the rainforests they had created.

The rainforest project has become a tradition in New England, dating back 16 years ago when it was started by Nancy Gussey, second-grade teacher, and Judy Johnson, third-grade teacher.

“We do it every other year,” said Johnson. “They love it. From the first day they come to school, one of their first questions is, ‘Is this the year we do the rainforest?’”

Walking through the rainforest, Nelson pointed out an umbrella bird and macaw.

“Notice the army ants. There are thousands of them and they go in packs. When they walk over something, they devour it,” she said.

She pointed out the trees, vines and flowers growing high above to catch the sunlight.

“Some of the vines are called monkey ladders because monkeys climb on them,” she said.

She pointed out a taco toucan, flowers, butterflies and caterpillars. She stopped beside the bird-eating tarantulas — big enough to devour a bird.

“Then there’s the sausage tree — they look like sausages, but they’re not really sausages,” she said.

She stopped beside a Yanomami village hut and spoke about the rainsticks the people use for ceremonies.

Continuing on, she pointed out a tasier having large eyes to see in the dark, gecko, a jaguar and a uakari money.

“He got embarrassed in front of his friends — that’s why he has a red face,” she joked.

She warned that an electric eel was nearby, as was an emerald tree boa.

She pointed to a kinkajou, capybara, ring-tailed lemur and Basilisk lizard.

“They are really cool — they can stand on their back legs and run,” she said.

Concluding the tour, she said, “Thank you for coming to our rainforest. I hope you had a great time.”

Johnson said the Amazon rainforest unit takes up the social studies and science study hours.

“They learn so much about saving the earth, about the rain forest itself, all the different animals,” she said.

They also learn to work together in groups to plan how their part of the rain forest is going to look. They have compiled booklets of their writing — research on the animals and poems about the rainforest.

“They have become almost obsessed with saving the rain forest,” she said.

Third-grader Takoda Westling said the classes have assisted the Rainforest Alliance in saving the rainforest. The students raised more than $100 to purchase one acre of rainforest land.

“It’s a lot of land that’s safe now,” added Johnson.

The rainforest tour guide in second grade was Lucas Jarrell who pointed to a map of the Amazon rainforest located in South America.

He pointed to a Hercules beetle and a howler monkey that can be heard up to 3 miles away.

“Here we have a boa constructor — it squeezes its prey until it suffocates and eats it head first,” he said.

He pointed out a masked tityra, leaf-cutter ants, a red-eyed tree frog and a poison-dart frog.

“It’s the most poisonous frog in the world. The natives use its poison to put on their darts and arrows to kill their animals, he said.

He pointed to a Tucuxi dolphin, an Anaconda and a jaguar — the biggest cat in Amazon rainforest.

He showed a Yanomami hut, more flowers and butterflies, a coral snake and a tarantula with a baby.

He ended the tour by showing a living exhibit of butterflies and an experiment with growing grass in the rainforest.

“We have spent the last several weeks studying the rainforest and animals,” said Gussey.

The students have been researching the plants and animals and write reports about what they’ve learned. They have made papier-mâché animals — including a life-sized Anaconda.

“This is the second graders’ first experience with researching and finding information,” she said. “The parents are very involved.”

“We have trees made out of carpet rolls that are up to the ceiling,” Gussey said. “We figured out to save the carpet rolls from year to year.”

The children learned to be tour guides for the open house.

“We’re practicing,” she said. “They have little visors to keep the sun out of their eyes.”

This is the last rainforest unit for Gussey, who is retiring in May. She has taught in New England for 25 years and in Dickinson for four years. Living on a farm, she is looking forward to quilting, reading, traveling and spending time with her grandchildren.

“It’s going to be a very big change because my life has been centered around the school and activities,” she said. “I graduated from New England High School. This is my +.”

She can’t say if the rainforest tradition will continue, but if the students have a vote, it should.

Work on Brazil dam to start 'in months'

Sat Apr 24 2010
Source: Ninemsn

Work on a huge, controversial dam in Brazil's Amazon is to begin by September at the latest, despite furious opposition from indigenous and environmental groups, Energy Minister Marcio Zimmerman says.

"This is the most-planned plant in the world. We have done five years of environmental studies and we can't wait any longer," Zimmerman said on Friday, according to the Agencia Estado news agency.

Construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam was awarded on Tuesday to a consortium led by a state electricity agency over protests from indigenous communities that are to be displaced and environmental activists.

"Avatar" director James Cameron has also lent his weight to the opposition, saying the row over the dam paralleled the natives-versus-exploiters storyline of his blockbuster movie.

But Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said the dam was essential to meeting Brazil's growing energy needs in the 21st century.

He also said $US1.9 billion ($A2.05 billion) of the $US11.2 billion ($A12.08 billion) cost of the dam was going to allay the environmental impact and to help indigenous communities and other locals who will be moved from the area to be flooded.

Action Alert: Brazil's Proposed Belo Monte Dam Damns Amazonian Rainforests and Peoples

April 25, 2010
Source: PEJ News

Action Alert: Brazil's Proposed Belo Monte Dam Damns Amazonian Rainforests and Peoples

By Rainforest Portal, a project of Ecological Internet - April 25, 2010
In partnership with International Rivers

The wild and free Xingu River is critical to maintaining intact the Amazon, its peoples, Brazil's national advancement, and the Earth we share

NOTE: This is a protest, not a petition, sending emails to many real decision makers on matters vital to the Earth.
The Amazon and Xingu rivers are wild and free
Caption: The campaign draws parallels to James Cameron's Avatar (pictured right) as indigenous peoples resist rapacious ecological destruction (link)

The Brazilian government continues with plans to build the massive Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River in the Amazon rainforest, despite massive domestic and international opposition. The 11.2 billion dollar dam will devastate an extensive area of the Amazon rainforest and threaten the survival of tens of thousands of indigenous and traditional peoples who depend on the Xingu River for their livelihoods. It is estimated 500 square kilometers of intact Amazon rainforest land would be flooded by the dam. Last week Brazil awarded the construction contract to Norte Energia, a domestic consortium of companies; and construction of the dam, which would be the world’s third largest, could begin this year.

The Xingu River in northeast Brazil is a tributary of the Amazon River. The Belo Monte Dam, meant principally to fuel the expansion of aluminum foundries and other industrial plants in the Amazon, would require diverting nearly the entire flow of the Xingu, drying up the “Big Bend” of the Xingu and its tributary, the Bacajá, home to thousands of indigenous people. Native people upstream would also be affected by the dam´s impacts on fish stocks, their principal food source.

In recent weeks the areas indigenous people, in addition to social movement and environmentalists including Avatar movie director James Cameron, gathered to protest the plans for the Belo Monte dam. Cameron called the dam an ecological disaster and said there were alternatives. Indigenous people have not been adequately consulted about the project and are concerned that their rights will be violated if the project goes forward as planned. The project will directly affect two indigenous reserves along the Big Bend of the Xingu, and will indirectly affect indigenous reserves throughout the Xingu Basin.

The Kayapó leader Raoni Metuktire, who gained international exposure touring the world with Sting, said indigenous men from the Xingu were preparing their bows and arrows in order to fight off the dam. "I think that today the war is about to start once more and the Indians will be forced to kill the white men again so they leave our lands alone," he said. "I think the white man wants too much, our water, our land. There will be a war so the white man cannot interfere in our lands again."

The Amazon basin with its intact rainforests and rivers is a critical ecosystem that must remain intact for Brazil’s sustainable advancement and for the Planet to remain inhabitable. Please tell Brazil´s President Lula and other decision makers in the Brazilian government that you support the position of indigenous peoples of the rainforest - that Brazil has better ways of providing its future energy needs than destroying the mighty Xingu River, its rainforests and its peoples.

An Amazon jungle jaunt

Apr 22, 2010
Source: Colombia Report

For anyone looking to experience the Amazon rainforest without waking up in the middle of the night covered in leeches, southern Colombia's Amacayacu National Park offers the perfect mix of adventure and comfort.

Any jaunt to this southern Colombian jungle park will start in Leticia, the lazily paced capital of the Amazonas department. The streets are lined with palm trees, shops and cafes, where you can shop for pure cocoa chocolates and handicrafts, or while a way an afternoon sipping caipirinhas.

The park is 65 kms to the south of the city, and can be reached by a manic one-and-a-half hour speed-boat ride down the Amacayacu River. Situated in a large chunk of virgin rainforest, Amacayacu is brimming with wildlife and features plants that could kill you and others to bring you back.

A boardwalk makes strolling through the ancient forest easy, allowing you to concentrate on the squirrel monkeys and macaws above, while avoiding the more sinister creatures that crawl and slither.

Comfortable rooms with balconies overlooking the jungle can be booked through Aviatur. Houseboats complete with crew, accommodating up to eight people, can also be organized.

Twenty minutes up the river from Amacayacu sits the pristine community of Puerto Narino. In this tiny jungle settlement the Nututama Foundation works with local indigenous people to protect endangered species including turtles and the pink river dolphin. Clean but modest accommodation is available for those seeking a truly unique experience.

Avianca runs daily flights between Bogota and Leticia, and at under two hours, the jungle is closer than you think.

AMAZON WATCH SILENCE ON PETROECUADOR OIL SPILLS IS REMARKABLE

23 April 2010
Source: SanFranciscoSentinel.com

In the space of a week, a Chevron technical team has discovered two fresh oil spills in Ecuador’s oil-producing Amazon region. One covers three hectares (7.4 acres) near state-owned oil company Petroecuador’s Guanta production station in the heart of Cofan indigenous country. The other impacts half a hectare (1.2 acres) in the Sacha field, an area operated by the Rio Napo joint venture. The spill is near the village of San Carlos where plaintiffs’ lawyers and activists claim oil has caused an outbreak of health problems.

Yet the Amazon Defense Front, Amazon Watch and the Rainforest Action Network – groups backing a the meritless lawsuit against Chevron – have said nothing. Despite claiming to advocate on behalf of the environment and the people of Ecuador’s Oriente, there have been no expressions of outrage. No denouncements of the companies operating in these areas. No indignant press releases. No press conferences. And, of course, no lawsuits.

April 17 2010: Photo facing northwest.
General view of Petroecuador’s spill.

April 17 2010: Photo facing southeast showing a berm
built to dam fluids as part of the remediation activities
by Petroecuador in the spill area located approximately
1 km North of Guanta Production Satation.

April 10 2010: Remediation activities of recent Petroecuador
oil spill from production line near San Carlos.

April 10 2010: Remediation activities of recent Petroecuador
oil spill from production line near San Carlos.

Yet this behavior is consistent with an ongoing pattern of ignoring the conduct of Petroecuador and opposing Petroecuador’s clean-up efforts. Given their track record, one has to ask if these lawyers and activists are really advocates of the environment or the indigenous people they claim to represent?

It very well may be that the Amazon Defense Front, Amazon Watch, and the Rainforest Action Network are more interested in taking Chevron to the cleaners than actually cleaning up the Amazon.

Awarding of Brazilian dam contract prompts warning of bloodshed

Wednesday 21 April 2010
Source: guardian.co.uk

Indigenous leaders in Brazil are warning of imminent violence after a successful tender for the rights to construct a giant hydro-electric plant in the Brazilian Amazon which opponents claim will wreak havoc on the rainforest and its inhabitants.

The tender for the Belo Monte dam, on the Xingu river in the state of Pará, was won by a consortium of Brazilian companies on Tuesday, taking the government one step closer towards the construction of the £7bn dam, which would reputedly be the third biggest of its kind, with the capacity to produce some 11,000MW of power.

One Brazilian minister told reporters that the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was pleased with the result. But environmentalists, indigenous leaders and their supporters, including Avatar's director, James Cameron, who has made two recent visits to the region, have vowed to fight to prevent construction.

The Kayapó leader Raoni Metuktire, who gained international exposure in the 1980s and 1990s touring the world with Sting, said indigenous men from the Xingu were preparing their bows and arrows in order to fight off the dam.

"I think that today the war is about to start once more and the Indians will be forced to kill the white men again so they leave our lands alone," he said. "I think the white man wants too much, our water, our land. There will be a war so the white man cannot interfere in our lands again."

Luis Xipaya, another of the region's indigenous leaders, told Reuters: "There will be bloodshed and the government will be responsible for that."

Plans to build a towering hydro-electric dam on the Xingu were conceived in the 1970s but have repeatedly stalled, partly as a result of international pressure. However, renewed attempts to push ahead with the dam, part of a massive government drive to boost economic growth, have revived fears for thousands of indigenous people who live in the region.

"I do not accept the Belo Monte dam," said the indigenous leader Mokuka Kayapó, who claimed the indigenous way of life would be destroyed. "The forest is our butcher. The river, with its fish, is our market. This is how we survive."

Many residents of Altamira, a sleepy Amazonian city on the banks of the Xingu near the site of the planned dam, also fear social chaos with the influx of thousands of impoverished workers.

Antonia Melo, a local human rights activist from the Xingu Para Sempre movement, described the dam as a human rights violation. "We will all be affected by over 100,000 people who will arrive in the region as a result of Belo Monte. There will be violence, a lack of food, of sewage, of health services," she warned.

Local newspapers report that immigrants have already started arriving in the region from as far away as Rio de Janeiro and Brazil's deep south in search of business opportunities and work.

Not all Brazilians oppose the dam. Many argue that Belo Monte will create jobs as well as electricity, while one major newspaper suggested that the plant would help attract foreign tourists to the region.

"I'm in favour of it and if the government does what it promises, giving us new homes, people will have more opportunities. It will be good for us because the city will develop more," Claudionor Alves de Oliveira, an Altamira carpenter, told the G1 news site.

On Tuesday activists from Greenpeace dumped several tonnes of manure outside the National Electric Energy Agency in Brasilia, where the bidding took place.

Sheila Juruna, an indigenous activist leading the anti-Belo Monte campaign, contrasted Brazil's attempts to restore order in Haiti, through its UN stabilisation force, with its treatment of the country's indigenous peoples. "Our government is helping other countries where disasters are happening. But here in Brazil they are destroying us," she said.

Speaking in Brazil last week, James Cameron called the dam an ecological disaster and said there were alternatives.

Peru criticized over Repsol working in tribal area

Thu Apr 22, 2010
Source: Reuters

LIMA, April 22 (Reuters) - A human rights group has criticized Peru's government for granting Spanish oil giant Repsol (REP.MC) initial approval to build 279 miles (450 km) of seismic lines and 152 heliports in a portion of the Amazon basin believed to be inhabited by tribes that shun contact with outsiders.

Peru has the third highest concentration of tribes living in voluntary isolation after Brazil and New Guinea, and human rights groups say big oil and gas projects on lands they use would threaten their survival.

"The presence of this company puts these groups at an enormous risk," said David Hill, of the London-based Survival International.

Rain forest trees would be removed and dynamite would be blasted to build the seismic lines, which are used to explore for petroleum by taking readings of underground deposits after blasts.

The project, located in an area known as Lot 39, was granted initial approval by the environment ministry and the government's indigenous affairs department, INDEPA.

It is now being reviewed by the mining ministry for final approval.

Repsol officials did not return several calls seeking comment.

Peru's government has angered critics by denying the existence of untouched tribes in the past, and has been slower than countries such as Brazil in recognizing protected areas for them.

Iris Cardenas, the Mining Ministry's director of environmental affairs, told Reuters the area had been thoroughly explored by INDEPA, but the state agency has yet to prove that any unknown tribes live there.

She added that the project was only an extension of an existing one, and that only small trees would be axed.

"This is not labeled as an Indian reservation but we're going out of our way to make sure that everyone follows procedure," Cardenas said. "We have no reason not to approve it," she said, adding that ministry would finish reviewing it by the end of the month.

Last year, growing pressure by Amazon tribes -- who protested plans for energy exploration in deadly clashes -- forced the government to throw out a series of laws that would have lured more foreign investment to broad swaths of the Amazon basin. (Reporting by Luis Andres Henao, Editing by Terry Wade and Lisa Shumaker)

Copenhagen emissions targets so weak that the world is ‘in peril’

April 21, 2010
Source: Times Online

The national pledges on cutting emissions made under the Copenhagen Accord are so weak that they have left the world “in dire peril” from rising temperatures, according to a leading scientific research institute.

Political leaders, including Gordon Brown, exaggerated the significance of the accord by claiming that it would limit the increase in temperature to 2C, the study found.

The “unambitious” emissions cuts by 2020 agreed under the accord meant that the actual increase would exceed 3C, which would trigger regular heatwaves across Europe similar to the one in 2003 that killed 30,000 people.

In an analysis published by the journal Nature, researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said that the 76 countries that had made pledges under the accord had put off making difficult decisions and were “betting on extreme reduction rates” in emissions after 2020.

They said this was “equivalent to racing towards a cliff and hoping to stop just before it”.

The institute accused Lord Stern of Brentford and other government advisers of misleading world leaders by suggesting that emission reductions of 4-5 per cent a year were possible after 2020.

“Such pathways lull decision-makers into a false sense of security that emissions trends can continue upwards for the next decade without any ramifications.”

The institute concluded: “The prospects for limiting global warming to 2C — or even to 1.5C as more than 100 nations demand — are in dire peril.” Most climate scientists believe that warming of 3C would lead to more frequent droughts, floods, storms and rising sea levels.

The Amazon rainforest could reach a tipping point where extreme heat and lower rainfall resulted in much of the canopy being replaced by desert and savannah.

The oceans would become increasingly acidic from absorbed CO2, bleaching coral reefs and destroying many species of plankton and shellfish.

The Met Office said that a global average increase of 3C would conceal more extreme temperatures in some regions, with the hottest days of the year in Europe being 7C warmer and the temperature in the Arctic rising by 8C.

The vaguely worded Copenhagen accord, hastily agreed in the final hours of last December’s summit, sets a goal of limiting warming to 2C but does not set out how this will be achieved nor provide any overall emissions targets. The national pledges on cutting emissions made under the accord are only voluntary.

The institute found that if these promises were carried out, global yearly emissions of greenhouse gases would increase by 10 to 20 per cent above current levels, reaching the equivalent of 47.9-53.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020.

“This would result in a greater than 50 per cent chance that warming will exceed 3C (5.4F) by 2100,” the institute said.

“To be on track for meeting the ‘below 2C’ climate target, global emissions of no more than 40 to 44 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) of CO2 equivalent have to be achieved by 2020.”

The researchers said that the accord failed to address the problem of countries carrying forward 12 billion tonnes of surplus emissions allowances for use after 2012. The weak targets set by the Kyoto Protocol meant that several countries have not used up all the allowances they had been allocated for the 2008-12 period.

“The Copenhagen Accord does not mention whether banked surpluses can be used. Because anything profitable is likely to be pursued, we assume that nations will [use[ these.”

A spokesman for Lord Stern denied that he had misled politicians by making unrealistic assumptions about rapid emissions cuts after 2020.

He said: “We said it was difficult to achieve an average reduction of 4 per cent a year after 2020, but it is not impossible.”

From the depths of the Amazon river... amazing images of giant, bubblegum pink dolphins

22nd April 2010
Source: Daily Mail

These never-before-seen pictures of bubblegum pink Amazon river dolphins are a fascinating glimpse into the behaviour of these elusive creatures.

Unlike their playful cousin, 'Flipper', these dolphins live in the murky, sediment covered depths of the giant Amazon river 50 miles south of the city of Manaus and are in fact freshwater creatures.

Captured on film over a total of three weeks by Seattle based photographer Kevin Shafer, the dolphins distinctive pink colouring develops with age and is exaggerated by the red silty Amazonian water.

Swimming with up to six of the nearly blind, seven foot long pink dolphins, Kevin braved the parasitic, piranha-infested waters of the world's largest river in search of that perfect shot.

The Amazon river dolphin is a freshwater river dolphin endemic to the Orinoco, Amazon and Araguaia/Tocantins river systems. It has been listed as endangered due to pollution, over fishing, excessive boat trafficking and habitat loss. The brain of the river dolphin is 40 per cent larger than a human brain

Captured on film over a total of three weeks by Seattle based photographer Kevin Shafer, the dolphins distinctive pink colouring develops with age and is exaggerated by the red silty Amazonian water

'I photographed the dolphins in the Rio Negro tributary of the Amazon river, which is around 1000 miles inland upstream in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest,' said renowned photographer Kevin, 55.

'This part of the river system is known as the 'Wedding of the Waters' and is where the Rio Negro joins with the Rio Solimues and carries on as the Amazon.

'This huge river system is up to one mile wide at certain points and up to 100 feet deep.

'This enormous body of water is the perfect home for the river dolphins and I was lucky to find a community of them along the banks.'

Deciding to travel himself to photograph the dolphins, Kevin found a fishing village where the dolphins congregate because they feed off fishing scraps of the villagers.

'The visibility of the water is up to five feet away and that is considered a good day,' said Kevin.

'Other days I would be lucky to even see my hand in front if me, let alone take pictures of these great animals.'

Advised to wear a full body wet suit to prevent infection by the rivers parasites or even attack by the notorious piranha, Kevin decided to ignore the advice after a day or two.

Mystery: In a traditional Amazon River folklore, at night an Amazon river dolphin becomes a handsome young man who seduces girls, impregnates them, then returns to the river in the morning to become an Amazon river dolphin again

'I wanted freedom of movement within the water to take my pictures and the suit was quite restrictive,' said Kevin.

'I was able to enjoy the experience more without the suit.

'That involved appreciating that the river dolphins were in fact almost blind and navigate almost entirely by sonar.

'That is why they bob and weave their heads so much, sending out signals to direct their movements.'

Believed to have lived in the Amazon for tens of thousands of years, the river dolphins have followed a different evolutionary path.

'The water is so dense with silt that has flowed down from the Andes that they evolved to not use their eyes.

'This also cause them to develop their distinctive pink skin, which begins as quite greyish when they are young, but develops over the years to the stark bubblegum pink colour that you can see.'

The Amazon river dolphin has about 100 peg-like front teeth for catching prey and it mainly eats crustaceans, crabs, small turtles, catfish, piranhas, and other fish

Less friendly than their famous bottlenose cousins, the river dolphins were considered gods in the rain forest because of their elusive nature.

'The Chinese River Dolphin was declared extinct two years ago and it is safe to say that ecologist designate the population numbers of the Amazon River Dolphin as "unknown".

'They are unique creatures who actually count piranhas as part of their diet.

'Although I have seen a few with little nibs taken out of their flippers and fins, which the locals assure me are the work of piranhas getting their own back.'

Scientists do not exactly know why these dolphins are pink. However, they believe that the pink coloration could be credited in part to the dolphin's diet of crabs and shell fish, which have a red pigment in their muscle tissues, and to the silt-filled river water which is virtually impenetrable to sunlight.

As time progresses, the pigment gets built in the skin of the dolphin and imparts pink coloration to the skin.

The presence of a large number of blood capillaries near the surface of the dolphin's skin can also be another reason. This is why when dolphins get excited they become all pink, just as if they were blushing.

Energy in Brazil Power and the Xingu

Apr 22nd 2010
Source: Economist

PROTESTERS in paint and headdresses in Brasília, warring tribes of lawyers and a mountain of pig dung: yet another giant Brazilian public-works contract was up for grabs, and the lobbies were restless. After the courts struck down an avalanche of eleventh-hour injunctions, late on April 20th a consortium of contractors won the right to build Belo Monte, a huge hydroelectric power station to be raised on the Xingu river in the eastern Amazon basin.

The victors—led by Chesf, a state-owned hydropower generator, and several construction firms—celebrated quietly and quickly. Their discretion was understandable. Waiting outside the auction room at Brazil’s power regulator was an angry mob, kitted out in overalls and warpaint, and three tonnes of fresh manure, courtesy of a local pig farm. “Belo Monte de Merda” read the banner in the ripening heap.

But Brazil’s rapidly growing economy needs more energy, preferably renewable. The scale of the dam—it will be the world’s third-largest hydroelectric station after China’s Three Gorges and Brazil’s own Itaipu—is epic. So is the investment, of at least 19 billion reais (nearly $11 billion). But ever since the engineers in Brasília rolled out the blueprints for damming the Xingu two decades ago, the project has attracted powerful opposition.

Environmental groups and river dwellers say Belo Monte will flood vast patches of rainforest while desiccating others. “The forest is our butcher shop, the river is our market,” Indian leaders wrote in a newspaper. They were aided by greens from Europe and the United States, including the tribes of Hollywood. James Cameron, a film director, flew in to daub his face in red paint, hug an Indian and join the protest.

In his past as a labour leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president since 2003, might have joined them. Now he has a legacy to mind. Belo Monte is the centrepiece of the government’s ambitious public-investment programme—the flagship initiative of Dilma Rousseff, his former chief of staff and would-be successor, who faces a tough fight in October’s presidential election against José Serra, the main opposition candidate. As president, Lula has shown little patience for tree-huggers (see article), never mind grandstanding gringos. “They don’t need to come here and give us advice,” he snapped.

Yet greens were not alone in their lack of enthusiasm for the project. Some of the country’s leading builders, such as Odebrecht and Camargo Corrêa, pulled out of the auction, convinced that the government-dictated power rates, capped at 83 reais ($47) per megawatt-hour, were too low to assure a fair return on their investment. (The winning consortium offered a slightly lower rate.) The government had to pledge billions of dollars in soft loans and tax breaks to lure bidders. Even so, two firms in the winning consortium immediately dropped out, apparently because they thought the tariff too low.

Not since a military government quartered the Amazon basin with roads, dams and settlements in the 1970s has Brazil seen such a row over the rainforest. Ironically, Belo Monte is a project shaped by the lessons of the past, drawn and redrawn to cull the power of the forests without razing them. That challenge—developing the wilds and having them too—is in many ways the riddle of modern Brazil. The rest of the developing world is watching closely to see whether it can be solved.

A generation ago similar protests over an earlier version of the same dam—known then as Kararao—forced officials to rethink their strategy. They came up with Belo Monte. It was not just a marketing ploy. Instead of building a great wall across the Xingu to create a massive reservoir, Belo Monte is designed as a run-of-river dam, a technique that harnesses the natural flow of the river to drive the turbines.

The new version will still flood a lot of forest: a reservoir of 516 square kilometres (200 square miles) will leave scores of villages awash and force thousands from their homes. But that is a third of the area that the original dam would have inundated. The consortium has committed to help relocate the displaced and patch up any damage to the environment.

But these environmental safeguards will also curb Belo Monte’s capacity to generate power, which will vary with the flow of the Xingu. When swollen by the rainy season, the river will cascade through the turbines, turning out up to 11,200 megawatts—adding 10% to Brazil’s existing generating capacity. But during the dry Amazon summer, when the Xingu shrinks, Belo Monte’s assured output will plunge to an average of 3,500-4,500 megawatts. Add in the likelihood that the rate cap leads to escalating subsidies, and no wonder that some Brazilians wonder whether an all-too familiar species has re-emerged in the Amazon: a white elephant.

But with the economy set to grow by up to 7% this year, and tens of millions of Brazilians consuming more after leaving poverty, investing in more power generation is essential. The protesters want smaller wind or solar plants. But without Belo Monte, Brazil would probably have to build nuclear power plants or invest in coal-fired thermal energy. And then the protests would no doubt be even bigger.