EcoRadio

Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

The Generator is founded on the simple premise that we should leave the world in better condition than we found it. The news items in this category outline the attempts people have made to do this. They are mainly concerned with our food supply and settlement patterns. The impact that the human race has on the planet.

  • COPENHAGEN DEBACLE

    Hi all,

    there’s been a dribble of press in Australia over the last couple of days
    that I and others have been trying to foster over the Rudd Government’s
    actions over at the Barcelona prep com for Copenhagen, culminating in the
    walkout of developing nations led by Africa.

    NOW is the time to get writing letters to eds of all the papers and get
    short pithy statements published about how Rudd’s woeful targets are
    holding back global efforts to protect the climate!

    Below is the latest media release I put out for Christine Milne on this.
    Feel free to lift bits from it or use it as a jumping board.

    Please consider writing to the papers today! The shorter the better – try
    to keep them under 150 words.

    letters@smh.com.au
    letters@theaustralian.con.au
    edletters@afr.com.au
    letters@theage.com.au
    letters@dailytelegraph.com.au
    hsletters@heraldsun.com.au
    cmletters@qnp.newsltd.com.au
    advedit@adv.newsltd.com.au
    letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au
    mercuryedletter@dbl.newsltd.com.au
    letters@wanews.com.au

    Write away right away! And please ask your cohorts to do so, too!
    Tim

    Rudd must share blame if Copenhagen fails, but lifting his targets could
    help broker agreement

    Friday 6 November 2009

    With growing resignation among global leaders that the Copenhagen
    Conference will deliver no more than another non-binding ‘political
    agreement’, Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong and those who gave them cover for their
    weak targets must share some of the responsibility.

    Developing countries, led by Africa, have lost patience with the refusal
    of the highly polluting developed world to commit to the kind of targets
    the science demands. A move by Australia to lift our goal to that level –
    40% cuts below 1990 levels by 2020 – could provide the kind of circuit
    breaker needed to rescue the talks and lead the way to a meaningful
    agreement.

    “The clear fact that Kevin Rudd’s woeful targets are holding back global
    progress now means that lifting them to the 40% level required by the
    science and the developing world could help deliver the kind of agreement
    the world needs,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne
    said.

    “Africa’s walkout and pointing the finger at Kevin Rudd gives the lie to
    the Government’s claim that it is vital to lock in their 5-25% targets to
    secure an agreement at Copenhagen.

    “As the Greens have said all along, Kevin Rudd’s woeful 5% target and the
    unreasonable conditions on his still too weak 25% maximum offer are part
    of the problem. Locking them in can only undermine the chances of global
    agreement.

    “Imagine the global impact it would have if Kevin Rudd decided now to
    listen to the scientists, listen to the developing world, listen to the
    Greens and listen to his own moral rhetoric and embrace the ambitious 40%
    emissions cuts they all point to!

    “That is the only thing Kevin Rudd can now do to help deliver a truly
    meaningful agreement at Copenhagen.”

    Senator Milne said a ‘political agreement’ at Copenhagen would be no more
    useful than the repeated and meaningless statements from meetings of the
    G8 and G20, and would barely progress talks from the Bali negotiations two
    years ago.

    “Neville Chamberlain reached a political agreement three quarters of a
    century ago, and it did neither him nor the world any favours,” Senator
    Milne said.

    “The only value of a political agreement is to help political leaders
    cover their failure to actually do something.

    “But a worse outcome would be an agreement that locks in targets that are
    too weak to prevent climate catastrophe, such as those in the CPRS.

    “A failure to agree this year is far better than an agreement to fail.”

    ———-
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  • UK bans Malaysian palm oil advert

    UK bans Malaysian palm oil advert

    Ecologist

    3rd November, 2009

    Second advert from palm oil industry lobby group is banned for its sustainability claims

    A magazine advert that endorsed the sustainability of palm oil has been banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) for making unsubstantiated and untruthful claims.

    The advert, produced by the Malaysia Palm Oil Council (MPOC) and entitled ‘Palm Oil: The Green Answer’ addresses the criticisms levelled at the palm oil industry, including deforestation and unfair treatment of farmers and indigenous peoples.

    It states: ‘These allegations – protectionist agendas hidden under a thin veneer of environmental concern – are based neither on scientific evidence, nor, for that matter, on fact.’

    In banning the ad, the ASA said: ‘We considered that, in conjunction with claims such as “puts minimal strain on the environment”, readers would infer from the claim that palm oil was sustainable and would not have an adverse effect on the environment.’

    This is the second MPOC advertisement that has been banned by the ASA. The first was a television advert banned in its current form for similar reasons. 

    According to the Adjudication record of the advert on the ASA website, it ‘misleadingly [implied] that palm oil plantations were as biodiverse and [sustainable] as the native rainforests they replaced.’

    Useful links
    ASA ruling

  • Why growing virgin vegetable oil to burn is crazy

     

    But Andrew Mercer, chief executive of Blue-NG, the company which owns the UK’s first power station running on vegetable oil, appears to believe that he is doing the world a favour.

    In arguing the case for his grotesque trade, Mercer begins by maligning the Green party. He contends that “The Green party toured the country this summer during the European elections campaign in a bus fuelled by UK-sourced rapeseed biodiesel”. Because this is a less efficient use of virgin rapeseed oil than burning it in power stations, he is greener than the Greens (or so he says). That someone else has allegedly done something even more damaging is hardly a persuasive justification. But is it true?

    I spoke to the Green party this morning, and discovered that Mercer had left out a crucial piece of information. The biodiesel used in its bus was made from waste cooking oil, not virgin oil. As I’ve been arguing since I first started attacking the practice of feeding cars rather than people, used cooking oil is currently the only sustainable feedstock for biofuel: once it is unfit for human consumption it can only be dumped or burned. It makes sense to burn it in place of fossil fuels. The Green party has now published a response in the comment thread and is requesting a correction.

    Burning virgin vegetable oil is an entirely different matter. In doing so, you are directly commissioning farmers to do one of two things: divert cropland which would otherwise have been used to grow food, or break land which would otherwise have been left fallow. In either case you are harming people or the environment.

    Mercer says: “There are millions of hectares of land lying idle across the EU”. Another way of putting it is that there are millions of hectares currently supporting wildlife and storing carbon. If farmers bring them back into production to fuel power stations like his, there would be dire consequences for wildflowers, butterflies, songbirds and other wildlife. Were it a choice between preserving this wildlife and feeding the hungry, I could understand the need for a pay-off. But the only reason that it’s commercially viable to burn virgin vegetable oil in power stations in this country is that the government is perversely offering a massive subsidy. It gives generators two renewable obligation certificates for every megawatt hour of electricity they produce, which is twice as much as you get for onshore wind. I refuse to accept that the EU’s wildlife must be sacrificed for what looks like a grant-harvesting operation.

    As two papers published last year in Science show (here and here), the carbon released by ploughing idle farmland to grow biofuels takes many years to repay. If we’re to have a high chance of preventing climate breakdown, the major cuts must be made today, so this policy makes no sense at all.

    When you consider the other greenhouse gases produced by growing crops it looks even dafter. The Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen has estimated that emissions of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas arising from the use of nitrogen fertilisers – wipe out all the carbon savings biofuels produce (pdf), even before you take the changes in land use into account. It’s significant that Andrew Mercer talks only about CO2. Even then he doesn’t say how he has produced his figures – I strongly suspect that he doesn’t take land use change into account. Were he obliged to consider all greenhouse gases from all sources, I suspect he would discover that burning virgin vegetable oil is far more polluting than burning fossil fuel.

    Mercer then contends that oilseed rape is roughly the same price as it was 10 years ago. This isn’t true either, as you can see from the IMF figures reproduced here. In October 1999, oilseed rape cost $398/tonne. Last month the average price was $857. Prices this year have consistently been about twice those of prices ten years ago. The idea that oilseed rape is just a “break crop” is risible. It is a major international commodity, grown because it makes money.

    The notion that you can draw any conclusions about commodity trends from a single year’s production in one small country is equally daft. It’s as stupid as saying, for example, that a cold snap in the United Kingdom shows that global warming isn’t happening. And no one would be dumb enough to do that, would they?

    The reality is that whenever there’s a global shortfall in rape production, as there was last year, palm oil helps to fill the gap. Compare this graph of palm oil prices to this one of rape oil prices and you’ll see that the price trends are almost identical.

    So while Mercer boasts that he is not burning palm oil in his power station, whenever his trade helps to cause a shortfall in rapeseed stocks, the result is likely to be an increase in the sales of palm oil. Growing rapeseed to burn is crazy, growing oil palm to fill the gaps is madness on a different scale altogether, in view of the massive impacts on climate, indigenous people and wildlife when the forests of Indonesia and Malaysia are cleared to plant it.

    Like Biofuelwatch and other green groups, I will keep putting pressure on the government to drop its perverse subsidies. I’m offering Andrew Mercer a £10 bet that if we succeed, Blue-NG will stop burning virgin vegetable oils. This is what happened in the Netherlands: as soon as the Dutch government stopped paying companies to make electricity from food, the business ground to a halt. Let’s bring this obscene, subsidised trade to an end here too.

    Monbiot.com

  • Green Loans Scheme headed for collapse

    Green loans scheme headed for collapse

    Canberra, Wednesday 21 October 2009

    The Rudd Government’s Green Loans Scheme cannot handle the community
    demand and is headed for collapse, according to figures obtained in
    Senate Estimates hearings late last night.

    “Tens of thousands of Australian families and households have registered
    their interest in greening up their homes, but a pitiful 58 loans have
    been processed to date,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator
    Christine Milne said.

    “Demand for green loans outstrips the scheme’s capabilities by so much
    that it is headed for the same fate as the rooftop solar rebate, solar
    schools program and other green initiatives that have been
    unceremoniously dumped when they became too successful.”

    The Greens Loans Scheme was an election promise to provide zero interest
    loans to householders who want to green up their homes. It was
    originally intended to start in January 2009, but finally started in
    July, with technical hitches in the scheme’s web portal slowing it down
    even further.

    Under the scheme, accredited assessors conduct household energy audits.
    The audits are provided to the government which in turn provides the
    householder with an assessment report which they can then use to obtain
    a low interest loan from a financial institution.

    According to figures obtained in Senate Estimates hearings late last
    night:
    * the scheme is aimed at providing 75,000 loans over four years;
    * the scheme budgets for 20,000 loans in the current financial
    year;
    * to date, 44,000 households have registered for the home energy
    audits;
    * 27,044 assessments have been completed;
    * some 12,000 reports have been sent out in recent weeks;
    * 58 loans have been approved as at the end of September, with
    none at all before the beginning of that month;
    * as few as 317 reports are currently under consideration by
    financial institutions.

    “The mismatch between the demand for the loans, the number of loans
    budgeted for, and the number of loans actually processed shows just how
    much the Rudd Government has again underestimated the community feeling
    about dealing with the climate crisis.

    “I’m deeply concerned that, if the Green Loans Scheme can get over its
    serious teething troubles, it will end up collapsing under its own
    weight.

    “With 44,000 registrations and only 317 reports under consideration, you
    can guarantee that there will be a nasty crunch in the next few months.

    “Mr Rudd has followed closely in Mr Howard’s footsteps, closing down
    green schemes when demand outstrips budgeting, as the rooftop solar and
    solar schools programs show.

    “That approach has a major human cost, as well as environmental and
    economic, with thousands of people who had secured jobs thanks to the
    schemes tossed on the scrap heap.

    “The Green Loans Scheme must be urgently fixed before it meets the same
    fate.”

    Tim Hollo
    Media Adviser
    Senator Christine Milne | Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate
    Change Spokesperson
    Suite SG-112 Parliament House, Canberra ACT | P: 02 6277 3588 | M: 0437
    587 562
    http://www.christinemilne.org.au/| www.GreensMPs.org.au
    <http://www.greensmps.org.au/>

  • Power line to cut green corridor’s misiing link

     

    ”Cutting a 60 metre swathe, which is permanently kept clear of native vegetation, is like building a wall across the Serengeti plains,” the Greens MP John Kaye said.

    ”As long as this power line exists, it is cutting genetic groups off from each other, and also reducing the chances of species migrating to avoid the effects of climate change.”

    A consultancy, URS Australia, was hired by the electricity agency Transgrid to talk to people living near the power line route. It found ”most were generally opposed to the project”.

    Many residents also say new electricity infrastructure is not needed. Transgrid justified construction of the $227 million line on the basis that the population of the Far North Coast would grow significantly in the next two decades, and that each person would need significantly more energy.

    ”A lot of people are really mystified about why we need to spend so much money on this when there are other cleaner sources of energy that we could be using in the area,” Julia Harpham, a resident whose property lies in the path of the new line, said.

    Ms Harpham’s property harbours vulnerable Ovenden’s ironbark trees, which the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change recommends should not be disturbed.

    Transgrid said an environmental assessment was being done and would take into account all vulnerable species.

    ”The environmental assessment will describe the possible impacts of the transmission line, and any mitigation measures required to reduce those impacts,” a Transgrid spokeswoman said in a statement. The line would mainly follow the route of an existing, smaller power line and the amount of extra clearing would be small, the spokeswoman said.

    The Great Eastern Ranges Initiative encourages rural landholders to grow trees on areas of their properties so that a string of national parks and state forests along the Great Diving Range will be linked together. But the plan has no power to stop developments that interrupt the corridor.

  • Deforestation and the true cost of Europe’s cheap meat

     

    Much of the cheap meat and dairy produce sold in supermarkets across Europe is arriving as a result of serious human rights abuses and environmental damage in one of Latin America’s most impoverished countries, according to a new film launched in conjunction with the Ecologist Film Unit.

    An investigation in Paraguay has discovered that vast plantations of soy, principally grown for use in intensively-farmed animal feed, are responsible for a catalogue of social and ecological problems, including the forced eviction of rural communities, landlessness, poverty, excessive use of pesticides, deforestation and rising food insecurity.

    The film, Killing Fields: the battle to feed factory farms – produced by a coalition of pressure groups including Friends of the Earth, Food and Water Watch and with European coordination by Via Campesina, – documents the experiences of some of those caught up in Paraguay’s growing conflict over soy farming and reveals, for the first time, how intensive animal farming across the EU, including the UK, is fuelling the problem.

    Campaigners plan to use the film to highlight the ‘unsustainable’ nature of modern food production, and to spearhead efforts to raise awareness of the largely hidden cost of the factory farming systems supplying much of Europe’s cheap meat and dairy produce.

    The moves come as international concern over global food insecurity grows, and amid fresh warnings that millions of the world’s poorest people face acute hunger in the coming months and years because of the twin threats of climate change – impacting farming in large parts of the developing world – and the ongoing credit crunch which has seen global food aid budgets slashed.

    Protein king
    Soy is prized for use in animal feed as it provides a cheap source of protein for poultry, pigs and other intensively reared animals that require fast growth in order to produce large meat, egg and milk yealds. The EU ban on the use of bonemeal and other animal by-products in agricultural feed following the BSE crisis has further driven demand for soy as a principal feedstuff.

    Globally it has been estimated that as much as 97 per cent of soymeal produced is now used for animal feed.

    Attracted by cheap land prices, poor environmental regulations and monitoring, widespread corruption and low taxation on agricultural export commodities, agribusinesses have long viewed Paraguay as an ideal country in which to do business. In recent decades increasing chunks of rural land have been bought up and turned over to export-orientated soy cultivation.

    Paraguay is now the world’s sixth largest producer of soy, with over 2.6 million hectares of land given over to cultivating the crop, and the fourth largest exporter. Vast quantities are exported to neighbouring Argentina, from where much of the crop is shipped to China to supply the country’s growing demand for animal feed.

    The EU is the second largest importer of Paraguayan soy, with Germany, Italy and the Netherlands among the biggest customers.

    Food supplies shrink
    The arrival of export-orientated soy production in Paraguay has led to significant swathes of forest being destroyed to make way for crops, according to critics, threatening biodiversity and depleting resources vital for many rural communities.

    In testimonies collected by investigators from villages adjacent to soy plantations – and featured in the film – local people complain that there is no longer an abundance of food and other produce:

    ‘We indigenous people used to live from the forests, [from] animals, fruits… now we cannot do that any more because we are surrounded by ranches,’ Jose Dolores Berraro, from the Yrbucua community, says. ‘It’s an invasion because instead of reforesting they come to deplete natural resources and these forests.’

    Although new laws have been introduced to protect forested areas following the decimation of the world renowned and ecologically important ‘Atlantic Forest’ region, campaigners say the rate at which forests elsewhere in Paraguay are being devastated to make way for soy plantations is increasing, with some 500 hectares per day still being lost, according to some estimates.

    Chemical fix
    Industrial scale soy production, particularly for genetically modified (GM) crops – some 90 per cent of Paraguay’s soy is now thought to be GM – is dependent on the frequent application of powerful pesticides and other agri-chemicals which have been linked to environmental degradation and a host of negative health impacts on people living near to soy farms.

    Crop spraying has polluted important water sources in many rural regions, say campaigners, poisoning both domestic and wild animals, threatening plant life, and resulting in a number of health problems in people, including diarrhoea, vomiting, genetic malformations, headaches, loss of sight and even death.

    The film contains harrowing testimony from Petrona Villaboa, who lives in Pirapey, whose son Silvano died after being sprayed with toxic chemicals on a soy plantation.

    Statistics compiled by pressure groups suggest that as much as 23 million litres of pesticides and herbicides are sprayed in Paraguay each year, including several that have been classified by the World Health Organisation as being ‘extremely hazardous’.

    Armed response
    Paraguay has a long history of land conflict, and the arrival of large scale soy farming has been met with significant resistance from many rural communities. Peasant and indigenous organisations have repeatedly protested against the encroachment of their land – organising protests, blockades, land occupations and actions to prevent pesticide spraying.

    But the response from soy farmers, often backed up by police and paramilitary units acting on the orders of the authorities, has been brutal, according to peasant leaders, with violent evictions, frequent shootings and beatings – resulting in numerous injuries and several deaths – as well as arbitrary detentions and frequent disappearances.

    In one of the worst incidents to date, during the forced eviction of the peasant community at Tekojaja, in Caaguaza, soy farmers – reportedly under the protection of police and soldiers – forcibly removed some 270 people from the village, including children, arrested 130, set fire to crops and bulldozed houses, before shooting dead two inhabitants, Angel Cristaldo and Leopoldo Torres.

    In another incident reported by the peasant’s movement MCP, in Canindeyu, activist Esteban Hermosilla disappeared from his house and was discovered dead and half buried, on a nearby agricultural estate. His assassins reportedly cut off Hermosillas’ ear as proof he had been killed, before sending it to the man who it was later claimed had ordered the murder.

    Such cases are far from unique – peasant organisations have compiled a detailed dossier of violent repression linked to the soy industry in Paraguay – and pressure groups are keen to highlight this seldom-reported human cost of intensive farming.

    Since the beginning of the soy boom in Paraguay in 1990, it has been estimated that as many as 100,000 small-scale farmers have been forced to migrate to cities – with about 9000 rural families evicted because of soy production annually.

    Upon arrival in urban areas, many familes are forced into slums and struggle to adapt. With few employment opportunities and little state assistance, many face a life of poverty.

    • Andrew Wasley is a journalist with the investigative agency, Eco-Storm

    • This article was shared by the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network