2016 - Conservation news

Here’s how much forest we’ll have to destroy to feed our growing junk food addiction
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/heres-how-much-forest-well-have-to-destroy-to-feed-our-growing-junk-f

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A key ingredient in junk food is vegetable oil, and 60 percent of edible vegetable oil is produced from oil palm and soybeans — crops that are currently associated with massive deforestation in Southeast Asia and South America, respectively.
A team of researchers from Princeton University, Adelaide University in Australia, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore estimated the amount of land — and the potential amount of forests — required to produce the palm and soybean oil used in junk foods.
We will need an estimated 17.1 million metric tons of vegetable oil for junk food production by 2050, which would require something like an additional 5 million to 9.3 million hectares (12.3 million to 23 million acres) of soybean land and about 0.5 to 1.3 million hectares (1.2 million to 3.2 million acres) of additional oil palm land, the team determined.

#forêt #déforestation #malbouffe #agroindustrie

China to ban its elephant ivory trade within a year
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/12/china-to-ban-domestic-ivory-trade-within-a-year

Reste un an aux éléphants pour se faire massacrer

The Chinese government today announced it will close its domestic commercial ivory market by the end of 2017, a move conservation groups are calling a “game-changer” for elephants, which are being rapidly driven toward extinction due to ivory poaching.

#Chine #ivoire #braconnage

China seizes over 3,000 kg of pangolin scales in biggest-ever smuggling case
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/12/china-seizes-over-3000-kg-of-pangolin-scales-in-biggest-ever-smugglin

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Pangolins use their scaly armor to protect themselves. Unfortunately, these protective scales have become the very reason for their population collapse.

Today, eight species of pangolins survive, four each in Asia and Africa. All four Asian species are on the verge of extinction, while the African species are moving towards a similar fate, thanks to rising demand for pangolin meat and scales in China.

Although #pangolin scales are made of keratin, just like human fingernails and rhino horns, people (incorrectly) believe that they contain medicinal properties. Traders claim that pangolin scales can promote menstruation and lactation, and treat rheumatism and arthritis. But these claims remain unproven. Consumption of pangolins has also become a status symbol as supply becomes scarce and demand increases.

The three tonne seizure is just the tip of an iceberg, officials say.

#extinction #braconnage #trafic #perlimpinpin #croyances

Interpol says corruption in global forestry sector worth $29 billion every year
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/12/interpol-says-corruption-in-global-forestry-sector-worth-29-billion-e

According to the report, the cost of corruption in the global forestry sector is some $29 billion annually. Bribery is the most common form of forestry corruption, followed by fraud, abuse of office, extortion, cronyism, and nepotism.

[...] The report explains that the forestry sector is particularly vulnerable to #corruption — defined as “the misuse of entrusted power for private gain” or “any course of action or failure to act by individuals or organizations, public or private, in violation of a duty or obligation under law or trust for profit or gain” — due to the fact that many forests, especially in the tropics, are located in jurisdictions with weak governance and poor regulatory regimes.

#forêts

’We need more knowledge and more control’: Palm oil expands in Ecuador
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/we-need-more-knowledge-and-more-control-palm-oil-expands-in-ecuador

Over the past five years, the landscape of Maximiliano Moreno’s property in northern Ecuador and the air he breathes has changed. He went from being surrounded by vast forest to overlooking endless plains of oil palm. The situation prompted an agreement between Moreno and the owner of the neighboring land to reduce discharge from the plantation to his plots where he harvests cacao and breeds tilapias.

“Pollution [from oil palm cultivation] is something difficult, heavy insecticides are used, kilos of fertilizer per plant and everything is drained to the streams that cross the farm,” Moreno told Mongabay-Latam.

Moreno is a farmer and president of the Riveras del Punino community — located in the parish of Nuevo Paraíso, Francisco de Orellana (also known as Coca). Tempted by rising palm oil prices, he confessed that there was a time when he considered the possibility of working in the oil palm industry and cutting down all his fruit trees, cacao and timber inside his 30-hectare property. However, he was more interested in the conservation of his land’s vegetation and water sources. This was not the case for his neighbors, who Moreno said bought their respective 60-hectare properties to grow oil palm.

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#Équateur #industrie_palmiste #terres #déforestation

Vietnam faces dilemma on forests as climate change threatens coffee crops
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/12/vietnam-faces-dilemma-on-forests-as-climate-change-threatens-coffee-c

Vietnam is the world’s largest producer of Coffea canephora, or Robusta coffee, which is mainly used to make instant coffee and other lower-quality products. According to Conservation International, the Southeast Asian nation accounts for more than 17 percent of global coffee production, up from just 3 percent in 1990.

This has been an economic boon for a huge number of people: 550,000 smallholder farmers supply over 95 percent of Vietnam’s coffee, and another 500,000 people are engaged in seasonal work in the industry, according to the Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) office in Hanoi.

However, Robusta coffee production in Vietnam is at a turning point, according to Peter Laderach, Senior Climate Change Specialist at CIAT. A devastating drought in the Central Highlands – the country’s primary coffee growing area – earlier this year will likely hurt annual harvest figures. Laderach asserts that such severe weather events, known as climate variability, will become more common in the future.

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#café #climat #cartographie #Fairtrade

Restoring degraded land could mean big financial gains for Latin America
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/restoring-degraded-land-could-mean-big-financial-gains-for-latin-amer

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The report finds that the restoration of even 20 million hectares of this degraded land could bring in $23 billion. WRI chose to focus on that number in pursuit of Initiative 20×20, a multinational effort to restore 20 million hectares in Latin America by 2020.

“Degraded, unproductive land is a drag on local farmers and national economies alike,” Walter Vergara, Senior Fellow at WRI and lead author of the report, said in a statement. “But it also represents a tremendous opportunity. WRI’s economic analysis of restoration shows for the first time that if we can bring productivity back to underperforming land, restoration not only pays for itself, but it creates billions of dollars of additional value, brings in environmental co-benefits and represents a major opportunity for carbon storage and therefore to efforts in climate change mitigation.”

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#dégradations_des_sols #sols #restauration_des_sols #climat #cartogragraphie

The people of Ethiopia’s forests
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/the-people-of-ethiopias-forests

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Like many countries, there is money in Ethiopia’s forestry sector – both regulated and unregulated. The most recent official figures from Global Forest Watch show that the country’s forestry sector contributed $893.7 million to the economy in 2011, or about 3.2 percent of the GDP. But beyond the numbers are stories of people whose lives are connected to, supported and touched by, and dependent upon the forests of Ethiopia. They include men and women, young and old, skilled and unskilled, rich and poor.

Here are a just few of these stories, as reported by Maheder Haileselassie Tadese for Mongabay in Ethiopia.

#bois #Éthiopie #exploitation_forestière #forêt

World’s tallest tropical tree discovered, along with nearly 50 other record-breakers
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/worlds-tallest-tropical-tree-discovered-along-with-nearly-50-other-re

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A few months ago, it was announced that there was a new record for the world’s tallest tropical tree: a Yellow Meranti (Shorea faguetiana) found in Sabah, one of the two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, that stands some 89.5 metres (about 294 feet) tall.

But that record was not destined to last long. Gregory Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University announced at the Heart of Borneo conference today that he had not only found a taller tropical tree, but 50 taller trees.

The tallest is a towering 94.1-meter (nearly 309-foot) tree with a canopy that measures 40.3 meters (132 feet) in diameter, discovered in Sabah’s relatively undisturbed Danum Valley. Asner was able to observe the tree first-hand during a helicopter ride on Monday to the remote region. “I’ve been doing this for a solid 20 years now, and I have to say, this was one of the most moving experiences in my career,” Asner told Mongabay.

The tree is in the genus Shorea, though the exact species has yet to be determined. Asner and his colleagues also found 49 other trees taller than 90 meters spread all over Sabah, and plan to visit each of them in the coming weeks.

#grand_arbre

Controversial Jakarta land reclamation project gets legal go-ahead
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/controversial-jakarta-land-reclamation-project-gets-legal-go-ahead

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The developers behind Islet G, a small artificial island off the coast of Jakarta, may have finally been given the legal green light to continue the project, which has been stalled since April of this year.

On Oct. 20, an Indonesian court overturned a lower court’s earlier ruling that Islet G developer PT Muara Wisesa Samudra (MWS) must halt land reclamation activities in the Jakarta Bay. The lower court’s decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Coalition for Saving the Jakarta Bay, an alliance of fishing communities and environmental activists.

The group claims the development of Islet G, which is part of a broader plan to construct 17 artificial islands in Jakarta Bay, is causing environmental damage to the bay and destroying the livelihoods of local fishermen.

#indonésie #îles_artificielles #ressources_naturelles #pêche

Higher incomes driving Indonesian smallholders to oil palm and rubber
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/higher-incomes-driving-indonesian-smallholders-to-oil-palm-and-rubber

New research confirms that, as is often the case for large-scale oil palm, the move toward small-scale oil palm-focused farming in Indonesia is coming at the expense of rainforest, and the soil and water quality, carbon storage and wildlife habitat that it provides. For the 464 households in Jambi province on the island of Sumatra interviewed in the study, scientists found that the higher incomes associated with cultivating a single profitable crop were luring many farmers away from more traditional practices.

#industrie_palmiste #agro-industrie #caoutchouc #Indonésie

Complaint against a palm oil company in Papua held in limbo by RSPO
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/complaint-against-a-palm-oil-company-in-papua-held-in-limbo-by-rspo

A complaint lodged earlier this year about alleged abuses by a palm oil company in Indonesian Papua has raised questions over the credibility of the industry’s largest certification scheme in investigating member violations.

In April, indigenous rights NGO Pusaka wrote to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (#RSPO) with detailed allegations that PT Nabire Baru — a subsidiary of Goodhope Asia, which is owned by Sri Lankan palm oil giant Carson Cumberbatch — had violated “both legal regulations and the customary law” of the Yerisiam Gua people, as well as the RSPO’s own principles and criteria, which ban unsustainable practices like the conversion of virgin rainforests and land grabbing that aren’t necessarily illegal in countries where palm oil is produced.

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#industrie_palmiste #terres #peuples_autochtones #indonésie
Central to the complaint were claims that Nabire Baru took communal land belonging to the indigenous group in Papua’s Nabire district without a collective decisionmaking process.

Study finds Brazil isn’t counting all deforestation in official estimates
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/study-finds-brazil-isnt-counting-all-deforestation-in-official-estima

A new study published in the journal Conservation Letters finds that, between 2008 and 2012, close to 9,000 square kilometers (about 3,475 square miles) of the Brazilian Amazon were cleared without being detected by the government’s official monitoring system.
Brazil’s Monitoring Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by Satellite Project (known as PRODES) has played a key role in Brazil’s recent efforts to rein in deforestation.
But when researchers with Brown University compared data from PRODES with two independent satellite measures of forest loss — from the Global Forest Change project and the Fire Information for Resource Management Systems — they found an area of deforestation roughly the size of Puerto Rico was not included in the PRODES monitoring.

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#amazonie #déforestation #images_satellites

World Bank money is helping to finance Asia’s coal boom: report
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/world-bank-money-is-helping-to-finance-asias-coal-boom-report

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A coal boom in Asia could destroy any chances of meeting global climate goals, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim pronounced earlier this month at the Group’s annual meeting. “If all the new coal plants on the books earlier this year were constructed – especially in Asia – it would be impossible to stay below two degrees,” he said, referring to the temperature change target set in the Paris Agreement.

#climat #énergies_fossiles #BM

Rainforest rapidly cleared for sugarcane in Bolivia
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/exclusive-rainforest-rapidly-cleared-for-sugarcane-in-bolivia

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Satellite data indicate deforestation for sugarcane in the northern portion of the country near Madidi National Park is ramping up as the San Buenaventura sugar mill expands production in the area.
Nearly 2,000 hectares have been cleared for sugarcane so far, with a total of 11,700 hectares planned for cultivation by 2023.
The Tacana Indigenous community alleges it was forced to concede 4,000 hectares of its ancestral territory for the construction of the mill.
Deforestation already affects 20 percent of the Pan Amazon, and scientists warn that if it continues at this pace, it could produce an ecological collapse in less than 40 years.

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Gold mining deforestation in Peruvian reserve surpasses 450 hectares
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/gold-mining-deforestation-in-peruvian-reserve-surpasses-450-hectares

n the past two months, another 100 hectares of tropical rainforest have been demolished in Tambopata National Reserve, where deforestation from illegal gold mining in the reserve now exceeds 450 hectares – 4.5 square kilometers. This could mean trouble for the region’s wildlife – some 600 species of birds, 1,200 species of butterflies, and 200 species of mammals inhabit Tambopata.

Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) has been monitoring Tambopata since November 2015, when deforestation was first detected within its borders. According to MAAP’s recent analysis, mining continues in four regions along the Malinowski River, which forms the northern border of the reserve. MAAP researchers quantified the recent uptick in mining-driven deforestation by analyzing high-resolution satellite imagery from July and September within the reserve.

According to Matt Finer, who heads up the MAPP project, illegal mining has a clear signature recognizable through satellite imagery.

#extraction_minière #déforestation #cartographie #Amazonie

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Romania announces ban on trophy hunting of bears, wolves and wildcats
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/10/romania-announces-ban-on-trophy-hunting-of-bears-wolves-and-wildcats

Following protests by environmental groups, the Ministry of Environment announced that it had cancelled an order that would have allowed trophy hunting of about 1,700 wild animals this year. This decision could give populations of large carnivores a chance to recover, the Guardian reported.

All large carnivores are strictly protected in the European Union. But a loophole in the European law allows thousands of Romania’s wild animals — which are often blamed for damaging crops, property or human life — to be hunted for sport every year. Consequently, hunting in Romania has grown into a multimillion-euro industry that has “harvested” about 2,374 bears, 1,586 wolves and 898 wild cats between 2007 and 2015. Hunters pay up to 10,000 euro (~$11,000) to claim their prize.

#chasse #tuerie #trophée #virilisme

Land grabbing and environmental destruction could now be prosecuted under international law
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/land-grabbing-and-environmental-destruction-could-now-be-prosecuted-u

The International Criminal Court (ICC), housed at The Hague in the Netherlands, has mostly focused on human rights abuses and war crimes committed during armed conflicts throughout its 14-year history. But the court has now signaled that it will begin investigating crimes such as land grabbing, environmental destruction, and forced evictions that are often committed during peacetime in the pursuit of profit.

In a detailed policy paper on case selection and prioritization released last week, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda wrote that “crimes that are committed by means of, or that result in, inter alia, the destruction of the environment, the illegal exploitation of natural resources or the illegal dispossession of land” will be given “particular consideration” for prosecution.

#terres #environnement #droits_fondamentaux

Youth, women, indigenous group pay the price of logging in Kenya
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/youth-women-indigenous-group-pay-the-price-of-logging-in-kenya

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Members of the Ogiek indigenous group have been subject to evictions from their forest homeland as part of a government effort to restore the Mau forest, a critically important watershed where deforestation and illegal logging are persistent problems.
Many Ogiek are impoverished, living in camps for displaced persons. Children with poor access to schooling are turning to work in the region’s thriving timber industry.
A new law giving local communities more control over their forests may improve the situation, but advocates say it needs to go further in specifically addressing the needs of marginalized women and children.

#forêt #Kenya #femmes #enfants #peuples_autochtones

Poaching in Africa becomes increasingly militarized
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/09/poaching-in-africa-becomes-increasingly-militarized

Dozens of African rangers are killed each year by increasingly well-armed and -organized poachers in a bloody conflict over the continent’s wildlife. The escalation includes the expanding use of military-grade equipment like helicopters, machine guns, infrared scopes, and heavy armored vehicles by poachers who are wiping out Africa’s remaining megafauna for the Asian black market.

The Thin Green Line Foundation, an Australia-based NGO that provides support for the families of rangers killed on the job, reports that worldwide, “it’s estimated that over 1,000 park rangers have been killed in the line of duty over the past 10 years, 75% by commercial poachers and armed militia groups. Park rangers are generally under-equipped, underpaid, and often under-appreciated.”

#braconnage