Associated Press
Speaking before Amazon summit, Lula calls on industrialised countries to provide financial help to halt deforestation.

Brazil’s president said today that “gringos” should pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation, insisting rich western countries had caused much more environmental destruction than the loggers and farmers who cut and burn trees in the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was speaking before an Amazon summit at which delegates signed a declaration calling for financial help from the industrialised world to halt deforestation, which contributes to global warming.

“I don’t want any gringo asking us to let an Amazon resident die of hunger under a tree,” Lula said. “We want to preserve, but they will have to pay the price for this preservation because we never destroyed our forest like they mowed theirs down a century ago.”

In Brazil, the word “gringo” generally refers to anyone from the northern hemisphere.

Lula convened the meeting to form a unified position on deforestation and climate change for seven Amazon countries before the Copenhagen climate summit. But the only leaders who attended were Guyana’s Bharrat Jagdeo and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, representing French Guiana, leaving top Lula aides and environmentalists to admit the gathering will have a muted impact.

Other countries sent vice-presidents or ministers, and the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela embarrassed Brazil by cancelling at the last minute.

Sarkozy supported a recent proposal by Lula to create a financial transaction tax that would be used to build a fund to help developing countries protect their forests. Details will be discussed in Copenhagen.

Despite the lacklustre summit showing, Lula aides said it was important to drive home a message that the Amazon is home to 30 million people, most of whom depend on the forest’s natural riches to eke out a living. About 25 million live in Brazil’s portion.

“In Europe everyone has opinions about the Amazon, and there are people who think the Amazon is a zoo where you have to pay to enter,” said Marco Aurelio Garcia, Lula’s top foreign policy adviser. “They don’t know there are 30 million who work there.”

Brazil has managed to reduce Amazon destruction to about 7,000 square kilometres a year, the lowest level in decades. But that is still larger than the US state of Delaware.

The Brazilian Amazon is arguably the world’s biggest natural defence against global warming, acting as an absorber of carbon dioxide. But it is also a big contributor to warming because about 75% of Brazil’s emissions come from rainforest clearing, as vegetation burns and felled trees rot.

Brazil has an incentive to protect the Amazon because the new global climate agreement is expected to reward countries for “avoided deforestation” with cash or credits that can be traded on the global carbon market.

Norway will give Brazil $1bn (£600m) by 2015 to preserve the Amazon rainforest, as long as Latin America’s largest country keeps trying to stop deforestation.

Norway was the first to supply cash to an Amazon preservation fund which Brazilian officials hope will raise $21bn to protect nature reserves, persuade loggers and farmers to stop destroying trees, and finance scientific and technological projects.

Brazilian environment minister Carlos Minc has said Japan, Sweden, Germany, South Korea and Switzerland are considering donating to the fund.

These giant tropical tree stumps, some complete with their buttress roots came from a regulated, commercially logged tropical primary forest in Ghana. They have been installed in the Trafalgar Square to inspire and provoke debate about the future of the world’s rainforests.

The “Ghost Forest” as it is called is the vision of the British artist Angela Palmer. The concept is to present a series of rainforest tree stumps as a ‘ghost forest’ – using the negative space created by the missing trunks as a metaphor for climate change, the absence representing the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation.

Palmer chose to source the tree stumps from Ghana, because over the last 50 years has lost 90 per cent of its primary rainforest, but it is now at the vanguard of responsible and sustainable forestry.

Image Credit: http://www.ghostforest.org

The artist says that instead of being “yet another message about climate change doom and gloom, the Ghost Forest carries a message of hope and optimism for the future.”

The tree stumps were presented as a “ghost forest” initially in Trafalgar Square in London from 16-22 November 2009, and are now moving to Copenhagen for 7-18 December 2009 to coincide with the UN’s COP15 Climate Change Conference.

More information and images http://www.ghostforest.org

The lemur is under threat from a “timber mafia” which is pillaging the island’s forests for profit, conservation groups have warned.

Madagascar, which has been isolated from landmasses for more than 160m years, is the world’s fourth largest island and a “conservation hotspot” with thousands of exotic species found only here. These include nearly 100 species of lemur, six of which are deemed critically endangered.

But decades of logging, mining and farming have destroyed 90 per cent of Madagascar’s forests, though the rate has slowed in the past two decades, the Guardian reports.

The former president, Marc Ravalomanana, was praised for putting 6m hectares under protection and backing eco-friendly community projects and sustainable farming. But Mr Ravalomanana was ousted in March in a violent coup that led to a “gold rush” of armed loggers and poachers.

Now lemurs’ natural habitat is again under threat from the accelerating deforestation.

In addition, the endangered animals are being hunted for bushmeat, either to be eaten by drought-afflicted local populations or sold as a roasted delicacy in city restaurants.

Dr Hantanirina Rasamimanana, a researcher and teacher at Antananarivo University, told the paper: “Deforestation is always a problem, but in these past five months bushmeat is also very dangerous. People are desperate because of the lack of rain.”

She added: “Here in Madagascar, when there is a political change, everything is burning. It’s always like that. They burn, they cut, they destroy, they steal. “If they don’t stop, I am afraid that some species will become extinct.” Conservationists say that armed gangs are exploiting the security vacuum to pillage rosewood and ebony from supposedly protected forests on behalf of a so-called “timber mafia”.

This year an estimated $100m worth of hardwood has been cut down and sold, mostly to China to be turned into furniture.

Source: Telegraph, 18 Nov 2009

There are many human activities that contribute to global warming. Among the biggest contributors are electrical generation, the use of passenger and other vehicles, over-consumption, international shipping, deforestation, smoking and militarism.

According to Inter-Governmental Committee on Climate Change eating meat is directly responsible for global warming.

There is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock. Changing one’s eating habits from the Standard American Diet to a vegetarian diet does more to fight global warming than switching from a gas guzzling SUV to a fuel-efficient hybrid car.

Cattle farming, also called animal agriculture, is primarily done to meet the demands of the meat-eating population. It not only leads to deforestation, these animals also liberate methane. The production of methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing global warming. One farm houses about 15,000 cattle. While a vegetarian uses one unit (requirement for livelihood like food and water) of earth, a non-vegetarian uses 1.4 units of the earth. Thus, a non vegetarian is exploiting the earth’s resources.

Dr Kalyan Gangwal, founder president of Sarva Jeeva Mangal Pratisthan Said “Diet has a direct relation with global warming. Shifting away from SUVs and SUV-style diets, to more energy-efficient alternatives is key to fighting the warming trend.” According to him, one cannot call themselves environmentalists who are non vegetarian.  He stressed that his propagating of vegetarianism is based on scientific facts. According to him, that observing for a day (World Meatless ad Animal Rights Day) on November 25 will not do, one should cut down the meat intake.

If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do.Global warming may be the most serious global social problem threatening life on Earth. We need to fight global warming on the governmental and corporate levels, and we also need to fight global warming on the everyday and personal levels.

According to an article in the Guardian, lemurs are threatened by a combination of political turmoil and reckless deforestation in Madagascar. The hard wood trees are cut down and sold mostly to China. As the government imposes a 40% tax on wood exports, it profits by more deforestation.

Lemurs’ natural habitat is under threat from the accelerating deforestation. In addition, the endangered animals are being hunted for bushmeat, either to be eaten by drought-afflicted local populations or sold as a roasted delicacy in city restaurants.

Deforestation critically impacts on climate change. According to Greenpeace deforestation accounts for about one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than that emitted from all the cars, planes, and trains in the world.
In short rainforests help keep the climate stable over time by storing carbon emissions. Cutting trees down and burning forests means that stored carbon is released into the atmosphere. Deforestation therefore is one of the causes of global warming and climate change.

If we want to keep global warming at the level recommended by the United Nations as safe, a global temperature rise of less than 2°C, we must act to ensure that a deal to stop climate change also provides for the protection of forests.

It is therefore important that we support the work of NGOs that are campaigning to ensure that the Copenhagen summit results in a legally binding treaty.

You can sign petitions with the following organisations:
Greenpeace
TckTckTck (see also sidebar banner)
WWF

As a matter of fact you could sign up with any of the over 100 organisations that form the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition.

Check out the Environment for the Americas to learn about plans for the 2010 International Migratory Bird Day celebration!

The Conservation Scholars series highlights leaders in conservation science and includes a small biography, a list of major scientific publications and a Q & A on each person’s particular area of expertise.

Our sixteenth Conservation Scholar needs little introduction because, well, he’s so famous (especially in Australia)! I cannot estimate how many times I’ve covered Professor Hugh Possingham’s and his colleagues’ research here on ConservationBytes, but suffice it to say it probably dominates the coverage (ok, I could have, but I couldn’t find the time). Affectionately known as the ‘Huge Possum’ for his brilliance, his effect on wide-reaching environmental policy and his no-bullshit approach to science, Hugh was awarded a coveted Federation Fellow by the Australian Research Council in 2007. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and one of the founding Editors-in-Chief of Conservation Letters (for which I have the honour of editing alongside him).

Biography

Born in 1962, Hugh accidentally completed Applied Mathematics at The University of Adelaide in 1984 (top of honours class of 20 students). After attaining a Rhodes Scholarship Hugh completed his DPhil at Oxford University in 1987. An ARC QEII Fellowship ANU in 1989 followed, then a postdoc with Jonathan Roughgarden at Stanford modeling barnacles. In 1990 he took a tenure-track position in Applied Mathematics. He became a Professor and Chair in 1995 and moves to become Head of the Ecology Centre at The University of Queensland in 2000. Hugh has been awarded: the POL Eureka Prize for Environmental Research, 1999, the inaugural Fenner medal for plant and animal biology from the Australian Academy of Sciences, 2000, the Australian Mathematical Society Medal, 2001, ARC Professorial Fellow, 2003, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, 2005, ARC Federation Fellow, 2006, Sherman Eureka Prize for Environmental Research, 2009. Hugh has over 290 publications, 4900 Web of Science citations and currently a lab of 32 students and staff. Work from his lab helped stop land clearing in Queensland and NSW securing at least 1 billion tonnes of CO2. Hugh has a variety of broader public roles advising policy makers and managers as he sits of 16 committees and boards including: The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists (founding member), Queensland Smart State Council, Chief Editor of Conservation letters, Council of the Australian Academy of Science, member of three NGO scientific advisory committees. The Possingham lab developed the most widely used conservation planning software in the world. Marxan was used to underpin the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef and is currently used in over 100 countries by over 2000 users – from the UK to Brazil. Australia is using Marxan to help it rezone its entire Exclusive Economic Zone (2% of planet). Hugh gave a plenary at the first Marxan conference in Vancouver in April 2007. A recent international plenary was at The Society for Conservation Biology meeting in Port Elizabeth, Sth Africa 2007 – decision theory to conservation scientists – and locally the Australian Society for Operations Research, 2009 – conservation theory to decision theorists. Recent media includes discussions of: triage, assisted colonization (Science policy forum), national biodiversity policy, declining woodland birds and the conservation of travelling stock routes in Australia. He suffers from obsessive bird watching.

Major Publications

1. Lindenmayer, DW, HP Possingham. 1996. Ranking conservation and timber management options for Leadbeater’s Possum in south eastern Australia using population viability analysis. Conservation Biology 10:235-251
2. Possingham, HP, SJ Andelman, MA Burgman, RA Medellin, LL Master, DA Keith. 2002. Limits to the use of threatened species lists. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 17:503-507
3. Meir, E, SJ Andelman, HP Possingham. 2004. Does conservation planning matter in a dynamic and uncertain world? Ecology Letters 7:615-622
4. Wilson, KA, M McBride, M Bode, HP Possingham. 2006. Prioritising global conservation efforts. Nature 440:337-340
5. Chades I, E McDonald-Madden, MA McCarthy, B Wintle, M Linkie, HP Possingham 2008. When to stop managing or surveying cryptic threatened species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 105:13936-13940

Questions & Answers

1. You were recently quoted saying “If you don’t know what a differential equation is, you are not a scientist”. Can you describe the importance of mathematics in conservation biology and recommend what subjects in mathematics young conservationists should pursue?

All disciplines of science eventually get consumed by mathematics. This is a natural progression as they strive for prediction and utility. In 1994 it dawned on me that conservation research would remain fairly useless in practice unless it was embedded in a decision science framework with objectives, constraints, things we control and predictive models affected by those things we control. I have not changed my view since then. After a knowledge of decision sciences (optimisation mathematics and economics) a credible conservation researcher needs some differential equations, algebra, statistics (preferably Bayesian) and maybe something flashy things like graph theory. Conservation research without decision theory is pure conservation research, which is an oxymoron.

2. You’ve certainly tackled a lot of issues in your illustrious career, but you are probably best known for your work on reserve design algorithms and the software Marxan. Can you explain what reserve design algorithms are, why they’re needed, and how Marxan works?

That may be the most useful area of the lab’s research, however intellectually it is very straightforward – what is interesting is not always useful and what is useful is not always interesting. Marxan can be summarised in one sentence – get me a set of reasonably clumped sites that reserves a reasonable amount of a whole heap of biodiversity features (or surrogates of features) that we have data on while annoying as few people as possible. That is it – and it may ultimately alter the face of ten percent of the world. As for illustrious career … there are a few intellectual giants that aren’t so big I can still clamber over them to steal some ephemeral glory.

3. While most Australians might say they value biodiversity, our poor conservation record invalidates this assertion. What do you think are some practical (and realistic) ways we can encourage Joe Bloggs to invest in and protect biodiversity?

There seem to be two sorts of people that care for nature for its own sake. First there are those that love wilderness and large natural spaces, even if they don’t go there. These are the people who believe the Amazon is worth preserving because it is so huge, wild and diverse and that is all we need to know. Then there are the people interested in natural history. I think this a less fickle constituency, however their numbers in Australia are remarkably small. I would like to build on the latter – the love of nature for its own sake. It doesn’t matter how many media interviews I do extolling my love of nature, that doesn’t work. This probably requires activities that give more people a “hand-on” experience with nature; we probably need to get more people doing things like feeding birds. I used to say that bird feeding in Australia was stupid – I think I was wrong.

4. Effective conservation requires a lot more than science because it needs to alter human behaviour. One aspect here you’ve championed is effective allocation of conservation funds. How does one do this?

If you can shop you can wisely allocate conservation funds. All you need to know is price (usually well known), benefit to you (only you can determine that), and product reliability (read a consumer magazine). Combine the three and you are 90% there. Of course we delight in making it a lot more complex, sometimes with justification, but it is just shopping.

5. You’re a member of the well-known Wentworth Group. What do you do as a group?

The Wentworth Group has successfully championed major environmental policy reforms in Australia over the past few years. Some work is highly visible (work on water reform and land clearing), but other stuff is behind the scenes. I think it is a remarkable revolution in the way science can influence policy at a huge scale, and I can claim no credit for any of it.

6. If conservation triage was a corporation, you’d probably be its CEO. What is conservation triage to you, and how should it be approached?

Conservation triage is the same as resource allocation. Haven’t you read Madeleine’s 2008 TREE paper, Corey? If conservation planning and triage is just resource allocation, which is just prudent shopping, then my entire career boils down to six words: “the smart guide to biodiversity shopping”. And 90% was done by my lab members – it is all fairly embarrassing really.

[CJAB - I did, Hugh, I promise! I'm trying to bring my readers up to speed though ]

7. Happiest greenie moments.

Playing a role in stopping broad-scale land clearing in Australia (= saving about 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere) and getting all of Australia’s waters rezoned (including the Great Barrier Reef).

8. Future aspirations.

End tropical deforestation. Stop over-grazing in much of Australia. Get the people of Australia to love biodiversity. See every family of bird.

Amen, brother.

CJA Bradshaw

1. La réduction des gaz à effet de serre (GES)

La solution la plus efficace pour protéger notre climat est de réduire fortement les émissions de GES dans tous les secteurs. Nous appelons donc les pays développés à prendre leurs responsabilités. Nous exigeons de  :

• Limiter la hausse de la température moyenne mondiale à 1,5°C par rapport à 1850 ;
• Stabiliser la concentration de CO2 dans l’atmosphère à 350 ppm ;
• Réduire les émissions de GES de 40% pour 2020 par rapport à 1990 ;
• Avoir pour objectif de diminuer les émissions de GES de 95% pour 2050 par rapport à 1990

2. Déforestation

Les forêts constituent d’importants réservoirs de carbone car les arbres captent et stockent du CO2. Des millions d’hectares de forêts disparaissent tous les ans à cause de l’expansion agricole, du développement d’infrastructures, etc. La déforestation représente environ 20% des émissions mondiales de CO2 et elle engendre de nombreuses conséquences désastreuses (perte de biodiversité, déplacement de populations, etc. ).

=>écolo j considère que l’accord de Copenhague doit inclure un mécanisme financier visant à mettre un terme à la déforestation et la dégradation des forêts d’ici 2020. Les réductions d’émissions ainsi obtenues doivent être additionnelles (et non soustraites) aux réductions d’émissions des pays industrialisés.

3. Financement

Les pays industrialisés sont responsables des émissions passées de GES et restent encore maintenant de grands émetteurs. Ils possèdent en outre des ressources financières et technologiques. Ils doivent par conséquent aider les pays en développement, plus vulnérables et premières victimes du changement climatique, à réduire leurs émissions et à s’adapter aux impacts à venir.

=>écolo j suit les différents experts et les ONG, et réclame qu’au moins 110 milliards d’euros par an de fonds publics doivent être mobilisés d’ici 2015 pour mettre en place des mesures de réduction des émissions et soutenir l’adaptation au changement climatique dans les pays en développement. L’Union Européenne devrait financer un tiers de cette somme (35 milliards d’euros par an). Cette somme doit être prévisible, durable, transparente et additionnelle aux autres transferts financiers, liés notamment à la coopération au développement.

4. Protocole de Kyoto

Le protocole de Kyoto a montré ses limites et nécessite d’être réformé. Le nouvel accord post-Kyoto doit inclure des mécanismes plus stricts et des objectifs plus ambitieux. Il nécessite aussi une participation par le plus grand nombre de pays possible.

=> écolo j considère que le nouvel accord doit respecter le principe de responsabilité différenciée. Les pays ne doivent pas participer à l’effort de la même manière. Par ailleurs écolo j estime que le nouvel accord doit aussi envisager des objectifs contraignants pour les pays émergents (Brésil, Chine,Inde). Les Etats-Unis doivent eux aussi participer pleinement à la lutte contre les changements climatiques en ratifiant le nouvel accord.

5. Mécanisme pour un développement propre (MDP)

Jusqu’à présent le mécanisme pour un développement propre  (un des trois mécanismes de flexibilité) a généré des projets dans un nombre restreint de pays (Chine, Brésil et Inde) et n’a pas réellement contribué au développement durable de ceux-ci.

=> écolo j considère qu’à partir de 2013, le MDP doit être limité aux pays en développement dits moins avancés disposant d’une capacité limitée à réduire leurs émissions de GES. Il doit de plus tenir compte du développement durable et le nucléaire, la capture et la séquestration du carbone ne peuvent être éligibles pour le MDP.

Pour ceux qui veulent en savoir un peu plus et bien comprendre la conférence de Copenhague, un mémorandum est disponible sur demande à Antoine (antoine.terwagne@ecoloj.be).

This article was originally published on ecopolitology.org– a website covering the politics of energy and the environment.

While it’s not news to most of us who work in or follow international conservation, Peru’s El Comercio newspaper ran a story today about how only 8 park rangers patrol Alto Purús National Park. Alto Purús is the largest national park in Peru and the third largest in all of South America.

Alto Purús “protects” 2,724,263 hectares of tropical rainforest (~ 6.7 million acres). The math’s not too challenging on this one. That’s almost a million acres for each of the 8 rangers to patrol.

Click here to continue reading on ecopolitology.org

From: Greenpeace

I’m sure you knew that deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest is a cause of global warming. But did you know that a large reason for deforestation is to create grazing pastures for cattle to meet the World’s beef demands? And did you know that McDonalds leads the way in fastfood chain purchases of beef from the rainforest? Essentially, one quarter pounder is equivalent to 25 square feet of the Amazon Rainforest. Check out the discussion at treehugger:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/from-the-forums-get-mcdonalds-out-of-the-rain-forest.php

Cool Earth works to protect forests at risk of depletion. You can now sponsor specific trees in the Ashaninka region of the Amazon (Peru). Sponsorships start at £1. The Ashaninka region of Peru is experiencing rapid deforestation as illegal loggers are cutting down trees to cherry pick the most valuable trees.
The website allows you to view information of the unique qualities of each tree and find out how it plays a vital role in the planet’s survival. When you sponsor a tree you’ll receive a certificate and can view its location in your Cool Earth account.

Cool Earth is a registered charity working with local communities to secure forests at risk of being destroyed within the next 18 months. Only 10% of donations are spent on admin and governance, making sure every penny possible goes on safeguarding our climate.

If you would like to learn more about the rainforests and their importance to our planet, have a look at this great interactive book entitled Rainforests- The burning issue. The book is an initiative of the Prince’s Rainforests Project and is available free of charge online.

It includes facts and figures, explanatory diagrams, videos as well as incredible pictures of the tropical rainforests.

An email tool alows you to send the book to friends who have an interest on the issue.

The Prince’s Rainforests Project calls for urgent action to fight climate change by addressing rainforest destruction. Through its website you can now add your voice to those who want to protect the rainforests. You can upload your picture or a video with your message to the Prince’s Rainforests Project.

You can also invite your friends to sign up to the Prince’s Rainforests Project and learn more about deforestation. Please advertise this campaign as widely as possible!

An international team of researchers reports in the journal Nature Geoscience that CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels increased by 2% from 2007 to 2008, by 29% between 2008 and 2000, and by 41% between 2008 and 1990 — the reference year of the Kyoto Protocol. The lead author, Prof Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the British Antarctic Survey, said “the only way to control climate change is through a drastic reduction in global CO2 emissions. The Earth’s carbon sinks are complex and there are some gaps in our understanding, particularly in our ability to link human-induced CO2 emissions to atmospheric CO2 concentrations on a year-to-year basis.” The report also notes that emissions from land use change have remained almost constant since 2000, but now account for a significantly smaller proportion of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions (20% in 2000 to 12% in 2008).

Here’s an interesting video with David Attenborough in which he speaks about what it means to lose so much of our rainforests. Enjoy

I wish I’d had a chance to see this myself.

The Ghost Forest is an art installation on the Trafalgar Square aimed to highlight deforestation and climate change.

Learn more about the artist Angela Palmer and why she had embarked on this project. In case you’re wondering, the tree stumps fell naturally from adverse weather from a reserve in Western Ghana. The stumps will travel, but the project is carbon neutral.

More beautiful pictures from Flickr from Where the Art Is’ photostream.

This clip explains what is happening to the planet as a result of rainforest deforestation. Using images and graphics, this film explains the importance of the forests and why we must stop destroying them before its too late.

Beware false prophets, and especially those masquerading as conservationists (or at least ‘green’) when they are not, in fact, doing anything for conservation at all. But this blog site isn’t about typical greenie evil-corporation-making-a-mess-of-the-Earth sermons (there are plenty of those); it’s instead about real conservation science that has/should/could have a real biodiversity benefits. This is why I highlight the bitey and the toothless together.

With the slow (painfully, inadequately, insufficiently slow) maturation of environmental awareness and the rising plight of biodiversity in general (including our own health and prosperity), it has become almost chic to embrace a so-called ‘green’ perspective. This approach has blown out into a full-scale business model where in many wealthier nations especially, it’s just plain good business to attract the green-conscious consumer to buy more ‘environmentally friendly’ products. Problem is, so many of these products are the farthest thing from green you can imagine (see examples here, here & here). This stimulated the environmentalist Jay Westerveld to coin the term greenwashing in 1986. Greenwashing is basically defined as activities that misleadingly give the impression of environmentally sound management that thereby deflect attention away from the continued pursuit of environmentally destructive activities.

Well, not that the problem has disappeared, or even dissipated (if anything, it’s growing), but I don’t want to focus on that here. Instead, I want to highlight a recent paper in which I was involved that outlines too how environmental groups can be guilty of almost the same sin – claiming businesses, practices, individuals, corporations, etc. are far more environmentally destructive than they really are. This, we termed blackwashing.

The paper by Koh and colleagues entitled Wash and spin cycle threats to tropical biodiversity just came out online in the journal Biotropica, and therein we describe the greenwashing-blackwashing twin conservation evils using the oil palm controversy as an excellent example case. Just in case you didn’t know, much of the tropical world (especially South East Asia) is undergoing massive conversion of native forests to oil palm plantations, to the overwhelming detriment of biodiversity. I’ve covered the issue in several posts on ConservationBytes.com before (see for example Tropical forests worth more standing, Indonesia’s precious peatlands under oil palm fire & More greenwashing from the Malaysian oil palm industry).

Briefly, we demonstrate how the palm oil industry is guilty of the following greenwashes:

• Palm oil plantations are safe for tropical biodiversity – They are most definitely not (see Fitzherbert et al. 2008, Koh & Wilcove 2008, Brüle & Eltz 2009, Danielson et al. 2009, Venter et al. 2009)
• Oil palm is planted forest – It is not, either in terms of the amount of carbon it sequesters or the biodiversity it supports (see above point).
• Native forest conversion no longer occurs – An outright lie (Chazdon 2008, Butler 2008).

On the either side, various environmental groups such as Greenpeace, have promoted the following blackwashes:

• Orang-utan will be extinct imminently – A gross exaggeration, although something we believe is eventually possible.
• Avoided deforestation schemes (e.g., REDD) will crash carbon-trading – Again, even economists don’t believe this.

For details, see the paper online.

Now, I’d probably tend to believe some of the less outrageous claims made by some environmental groups because if anything, the state of biodiversity is probably overall worse than what most people realise. However, when environmental groups are exposed for exaggerations, or worse, lies, then their credibility goes out the window and even those essentially promoting their cause (e.g., conservation biologists like myself) will have nothing to do with them. The quasi-religious zealotry of anti-whaling campaigns is an example of a terrible waste of funds, goodwill and conservation resources that could be otherwise spent on real conservation gains. Instead, political stunts simply alienate people who would otherwise reasonably contribute to improving the state of biodiversity. Incidentally, an environmental advocacy group in Australia emailed me to support their campaign to highlight the plight of sharks. I am a firm supporter of better conservation of sharks (see recent paper and post about this here). However, when I read their campaign propaganda, the first sentence read:

“Almost 90 % of sharks have been wiped out“

I immediately distanced myself from them. This is a blatant lie and terrible over-exaggeration. Ninety per cent of sharks HAVE NOT been wiped out. Some localised depletions have occurred, and not one single shark species has been recorded going extinct since records began. While I agree the world has a serious shark problem, saying outrageous things like this will only serve to weaken your cause. My advice to any green group is to get your facts straight and avoid the sensationlist game – you won’t win it, and you probably won’t be successful in doing anything beneficial for the species you purport to save.
CJA Bradshaw

Koh, L., Ghazoul, J., Butler, R., Laurance, W., Sodhi, N., Mateo-Vega, J., & Bradshaw, C. (2009). Wash and Spin Cycle Threats to Tropical Biodiversity Biotropica DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-7429.2009.00588.x

whitey is a fraud. we don’t need to tell you that…and we’re sure the wood harvested from this new zone will carry a premium on the market…just like the fraud going on at Iwokrama an d they call it sustainable forestry

Times Online: Guyana’s forests have been far less logged than in many tropical nations, and under the terms of the new deal with Norway, Guyana could actually be paid for increasing deforestation. The memorandum states that Norway will compensate Guyana if it does not cut down more than 0.45 per cent of its forests per year, but Guyana is currently felling trees at a far slower rate. The countries contributing to Redd are concerned that their money could disappear into the pockets of corrupt officials in poorly governed countries. There are also fears that payments will result in logging companies switching to unprotected areas, resulting in no net reduction in deforestation.