Category: Archive

The big palm-oil trading companies like Unilever and Cargill have formed a Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil. But an official report from their last meeting said talk of sustainability in the industry was currently "a pipe dream".

No wonder that green-minded retailers like Wal-Mart and Tesco don’t have much to say about where the palm oil in their products originates (though Tesco has joined the Round Table above).

Can I suggest a place to start? McDonald’s says it will no longer serve meat made from animals fed with soya beans from recently deforested land. So how about a similar rule for palm oil in our biscuits? The industry could begin by announcing a ban on palm oil from Indonesia’s new super-plantation.

Otherwise we will have saved the whales, only to finish off the jungles.

Fred Pearce, senior environment reporter, New Scientist International

Fred’s previous footprints: Furniture stolen from the rainforest, An ethical paper mill isn’t pulp fiction, Cans lost in the landfill, A can-load of energy, Where prawns meet the mafia, How fair is fair-trade coffee?, The cost of gold, Old phones offer new hope in Africa, A dollar a day for wrecked lungs, Green beans and old computers, Cottoning on to FairTrade.

WSPA’s history-making Animals Matter campaign for a Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare by the United Nations is progressing faster than organisers anticipated.

In the 4/7/07 newsletter to WSPA subscribers: `In a major milestone for the Declaration, the WSPA last month secured the support of Chief Veterinary Officers from 169 countries. Showing amazing unity and commitment, they passed a resolution officially recognising that the time has come to protect billions of animals from cruelty, exploitation and neglect.’

The Declaration will achieve global recognition that animals matter. That they can feel pain and can suffer and that all of us – from individuals to governments – have a responsibility to put an end to cruelty around the world.

The support of the Chief Veterinary Officers brings the Declaration closer to a resolution by the UN that it will help protect all animals, everywhere.

In more good news, the Animals Matter petition in support of the Declaration has just passed the 500,000 signature mark. To add your signature to the petition and be part of animal welfare history. click here.

On June 13, 2007, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced it was planning to issue an Exempted Fishing Permit to allow pelagic longline fishing in the waters off California and Oregon. Longline fishing is currently prohibited in the 200-mile "Exclusive Economic Zone" (EEZ) off the West Coast. Such fishing has been banned within the EEZ off California for more than 30 years. However, until 2004, a fleet of longline vessels operating out of California ports fished for swordfish in the high seas just outside of the US EEZ. Following a successful lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, that fishery was closed down to protect endangered sea turtles.

Globally, longline fishing has been a disaster for marine wildlife, with more than a billion hooks set each year and more than 200,000 sea turtles, 100,000 seabirds, thousands of marine mammals, and millions of sharks caught or killed annually. Over 1,000 scientists from more than 100 countries and over 300 organizations from 60 countries have called upon the United Nations for a moratorium on pelagic longline fishing in the Pacific.

In the past 25 years Pacific leatherback sea turtles have declined by over 95 percent. Drowning in longline and gillnet fishing gear is the primary cause of the species’ decline. If this level of mortality continues, the species may disappear from the Pacific in as little as a decade. Pacific leatherbacks nest in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, yet return regularly to the waters off the central California and southern Oregon coasts to feed on jellyfish.

In 2001, following another lawsuit by the Center, the Fisheries Service designated an area off the California and Oregon coasts as the Pacific Leatherback Conservation Area and banned gillnets from the area when leatherbacks are present. This month, under pressure from the Center, scientists and the public, the Fisheries Service canceled a plan to allow gillnets back in the Pacific Leatherback Conservation Area. However, the next week the agency proposed to allow longline fishing in the very same Conservation Area on an experimental basis.

The current proposal is the first step toward allowing the introduction of full-scale longline fishing on the West Coast. Please write today and urge the Fisheries Service to protect endangered sea turtles, seabirds and marine mammals and reject longline fishing in our coastal waters.

Reference: “Zero Emissions UK Homes by 2016 – How long for Australia?”, 17 May 2007.
Other articles of interest: “The latest eco-houses – and why they’ll need no heating at all”. Website: http://money.independent.co.uk/property/homes/article2500115.ece “Government code for sustainable homes”. Website: http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/england/professionals/en/1115314116927.html “Kingspan – zero carbon house”. Website: http://www.offsite2007.com/page.jsp?id=15 “Government move gets off to better start than it might have hoped.” Website: http://www.residentiallandiord.co.uk/news995.htm” Contact: media@beyondzeroemissions.org

Erisk Net, 17/5/2007

Reference: Sylvia Hale, Member of the Legislative Council, NSW 30 May 2007

Erisk Net, 30/5/2007