Crimes of the Powerful: Shell.

Brazilian Indians demand Shell leave their land.

Niger Delta villagers go to the Hague to fight against oil giant Shell.

WikiLeaks cables: Shell's grip on Nigerian state revealed.

Shell, Slammed Over Human Rights and Environmental Abuses, Faces Hearing Over Nigeria.

Shell Accepts Liability for Two Oil Spills in Nigeria.

Documentary: The Corporation.

Oceans on the brink of catastrophe.

The Independent today:

"The world's oceans are faced with an unprecedented loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory, a major report suggests today. The seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted, the report says, because of the cumulative impact of a number of severe individual stresses, ranging from climate warming and sea-water acidification, to widespread chemical pollution and gross overfishing.

The coming together of these factors is now threatening the marine environment with a catastrophe "unprecedented in human history", according to the report, from a panel of leading marine scientists brought together in Oxford earlier this year by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The stark suggestion made by the panel is that the potential extinction of species, from large fish at one end of the scale to tiny corals at the other, is directly comparable to the five great mass extinctions in the geological record, during each of which much of the world's life died out. They range from the Ordovician-Silurian "event" of 450 million years ago, to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction of 65 million years ago, which is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The worst of them, the event at the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago, is thought to have eliminated 70 per cent of species on land and 96 per cent of all species in the sea."

GMO Trilogy - Unnatural Selection.

Monsanto pesticide found to infect plants with AIDS-like disease.

Research conducted by a team of senior plant and animal scientists found that Monsanto's glyphosate chemical, which is the primary ingredient in its popular RoundUp herbicide formula, appears responsible for infecting plants with an AIDS-like syndrome that destroys their immunity, blocks their absorption of certain vitamins and minerals, and eventually kills them.

Dokumentar: Fuel.

Dokumentar: END:CIV - Resist or Die.

Going Beyond Climate Change

While the financial mayhem continues to draw the headlines, the cost of persistent biodiversity loss has yet to be established. But it is believed to be bigger than that of the meltdown, and in many cases also irreparable.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) now plans to gather incontrovertible evidence on the value of preserving biodiversity and the cost of losing it. The world's oldest and largest global environmental network will task its scientific commissions for this.

This is one eminent pillar of the immediate and strategic priorities of the IUCN as spelt out by the organisation's new president Ashok Khosla.

The idea, backed by IUCN's ten-day world conservation congress that concluded Tuesday (Oct 14) in Barcelona, is to protect the biosphere, with particular focus on the conservation of biodiversity in all its manifestations.

"This means that we must do what is necessary to bring the issue of biodiversity right into the centre stage of public awareness, media concern and decision-making at the local, national and global levels," Khosla told delegates at the closing session.

Discussions at the congress revealed that there are indeed definite lessons to learn from the debate about climate change. While many doubted the scientific basis of the connection between climate change and human activity, it was the authoritative and unambiguous view of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reflecting the combined scientific work of over 3,000 scientists that more or less put an end to the debate. Clearly, IUCN is the body that can and must do what IPCC is doing with climate change.

"The clear message coming out of this (Barcelona) meeting is that biodiversity underpins the well-being of human societies and their economies," said IUCN director-general Julia Marton-Lefèvre. "But conservation can only succeed if we attack the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, and action is taken at the same time to reduce the impacts of that loss."

The IUCN programme for 2009-2012 on 'Shaping a Sustainable Future' says the IUCN will contribute directly to targets agreed internationally by governments to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity.

It will also add an environmental perspective to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (agreed in 2000 by 189 countries), the plan for implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (agreed in September 2002 in Johannesburg) and other relevant international commitments.

Established in 1948 in Fontainebleau (Switzerland), three years after the United Nations was founded, the IUCN with about 1,000 members from across the world, including governments and international NGOs, is indeed poised to adjust itself to the changed and fast-changing realities of the globalised world.

Not only does it face the most challenging environmental issues ever in history -- climate change and diminishing biodiversity -- but IUCN members are also asking for fundamental changes in its working.

It is against this backdrop that the election of Khosla is of vital significance. He chairs the India-based Development Alternatives Group, a non-profit organisation established in 1983 "for creating large-scale sustainable livelihoods." He is also president of the Club of Rome, a global think-tank and centre of innovation and initiative.

One of his top priorities is to set up a world commission in collaboration with WWF and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to investigate the deeper implications of 'green carbon' such as sequestration, REED (a mechanism for compensating countries for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) and biofuels.

The proposed commission would, like the World Commission on Dams, bring together people from different walks of life and of different viewpoints who are in a position to look at where the action on climate change and on biodiversity can take place in the most meaningful way.

Another important point on IUCN's agenda in the coming years is to "form new partnerships among the best institutions to bring together their different insights and to generate meaningful solutions that deal effectively with the inter-related issues of population, natural resources, environment and development."

The IUCN will also bring clarity into the basis for establishing appropriate relationships with business. Judging from the debates on several motions on this subject at the Barcelona congress, there would appear to be a considerable consensus that the IUCN must engage with corporations, large, medium and small.

However, the terms of such engagement must be such as to lead to positive conservation outcomes, and ensure that at no time is IUCN's integrity or capacity to fulfil its mission compromised in any way.

Marton-Lefèvre confirmed that perception. "My view has always been that IUCN was set up to influence, encourage and assist society in dealing with nature and natural resources in a most sustainable and socially equitable manner -- and business is a part of society, whether some of our members like it or not. So my feeling is strongly that we must engage, but we don't lose our voice in this engagement," she told IPS.

But Khosla went a step ahead, when he said in his closing remarks: "The national and regional committees will have to be mandated to perform both expert and watchdog roles at the grassroot levels."

A task force to define the terms of such engagement and the changes in function required is expected to be set up by the 32-member council that serves as the board of directors of the organisation.

The congress did some important work to promote improvements in governance on the high seas. As an area outside of national jurisdiction, these are often exploited by all and managed by none.

The rights of vulnerable and indigenous communities received high priority at the Barcelona congress as IUCN members called on governments to take into account human rights implications in all conservation-related activities.

The congress saw the beginning of an ethical framework to guide conservation activities where poverty reduction, rights-based approaches and 'do no harm' principles can be applied to help redefine relating with nature.

With an eye on the UN climate change conference in Poland in December, the IUCN called for more specific goals in line with the Bali Plan of Action -- calling for a 50 to 85 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 and keeping a rise in temperature below 2 degrees Centigrade.

Several high profile commitments were made during the congress to support the IUCN mission: the MacArthur Foundation will invest 50 million dollars in climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the Mohammed Bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund will invest 25 million euros for worldwide biodiversity.


© 2008 Inter Press Service

This Stock Collapse Is Petty When Compared to the Nature Crunch

Published on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 by The Guardian/UK


This Stock Collapse Is Petty When Compared to the Nature Crunch
The financial crisis at least affords us an opportunity to now rethink our catastrophic ecological trajectory

by George Monbiot

This is nothing. Well, nothing by comparison to what's coming. The financial crisis for which we must now pay so heavily prefigures the real collapse, when humanity bumps against its ecological limits.

As we goggle at the fluttering financial figures, a different set of numbers passes us by. On Friday, Pavan Sukhdev, the Deutsche Bank economist leading a European study on ecosystems, reported that we are losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year as a result of deforestation alone. The losses incurred so far by the financial sector amount to between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion. Sukhdev arrived at his figure by estimating the value of the services - such as locking up carbon and providing fresh water - that forests perform, and calculating the cost of either replacing them or living without them. The credit crunch is petty when compared to the nature crunch.

The two crises have the same cause. In both cases, those who exploit the resource have demanded impossible rates of return and invoked debts that can never be repaid. In both cases we denied the likely consequences. I used to believe that collective denial was peculiar to climate change. Now I know that it's the first response to every impending dislocation.

Gordon Brown, for instance, was as much in denial about financial realities as any toxic debt trader. In June last year, during his Mansion House speech, he boasted that 40% of the world's foreign equities are now traded here. The financial sector's success had come about, he said, partly because the government had taken "a risk-based regulatory approach". In the same hall three years before, he pledged that "in budget after budget I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers". Can anyone, surveying this mess, now doubt the value of the precautionary principle?

Ecology and economy are both derived from the Greek word oikos - a house or dwelling. Our survival depends on the rational management of this home: the space in which life can be sustained. The rules are the same in both cases. If you extract resources at a rate beyond the level of replenishment, your stock will collapse. That's another noun which reminds us of the connection. The Oxford English Dictionary gives 69 definitions of "stock". When it means a fund or store, the word evokes the trunk - or stock - of a tree, "from which the gains are an outgrowth". Collapse occurs when you prune the tree so heavily that it dies. Ecology is the stock from which all wealth grows.

The two crises feed each other. As a result of Iceland's financial collapse, it is now contemplating joining the European Union, which means surrendering its fishing grounds to the common fisheries policy. Already the prime minister, Geir Haarde, has suggested that his countrymen concentrate on exploiting the ocean. The economic disaster will cause an ecological disaster.

Normally it's the other way around. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond shows how ecological crisis is often the prelude to social catatrosphe. The obvious example is Easter Island, where society disintegrated soon after the population reached its highest historical numbers, the last trees were cut down and the construction of stone monuments peaked. The island chiefs had competed to erect ever bigger statues. These required wood and rope (made from bark) for transport, and extra food for the labourers. As the trees and soils on which the islanders depended disappeared, the population crashed and the survivors turned to cannibalism. Diamond wonders what the Easter islander who cut down the last palm tree might have thought. "Like modern loggers, did he shout 'Jobs, not trees!'? Or: 'Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood.'? Or: 'We don't have proof that there aren't palms somewhere else on Easter ... your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering'?".

Ecological collapse, Diamond shows, is as likely to be the result of economic success as of economic failure. The Maya of Central America, for instance, were among the most advanced and successful people of their time. But a combination of population growth, extravagant construction projects and poor land management wiped out between 90% and 99% of the population. The Mayan collapse was accelerated by "the competition among kings and nobles that led to a chronic emphasis on war and erecting monuments rather than on solving underlying problems". (Does any of this sound familiar?) Again, the largest monuments were erected just before the ecosystem crashed. Again, this extravagance was partly responsible for the collapse: trees were used for making plaster with which to decorate their temples. The plaster became thicker and thicker as the kings sought to outdo each other's conspicuous consumption.

Here are some of the reasons why people fail to prevent ecological collapse. Their resources appear at first to be inexhaustible; a long-term trend of depletion is concealed by short-term fluctuations; small numbers of powerful people advance their interests by damaging those of everyone else; short-term profits trump long-term survival. The same, in all cases, can be said of the collapse of financial systems. Is this how human beings are destined to behave? If we cannot act until stocks - of either kind - start sliding towards oblivion, we're knackered.

But one of the benefits of modernity is our ability to spot trends and predict results. If fish in a depleted ecosystem grow by 5% a year and the catch expands by 10% a year, the fishery will collapse. If the global economy keeps growing at 3% a year (or 1,700% a century), it too will hit the wall.

Iam not going to suggest, as some scoundrel who shares a name with me did on these pages last year, that we should welcome a recession. But the financial crisis provides us with an opportunity to rethink this trajectory; an opportunity that is not available during periods of economic success. Governments restructuring their economies should read Herman Daly's book Steady-State Economics.

As usual I haven't left enough space to discuss this, so the details will have to wait for another column. Or you can read the summary published by the Sustainable Development Commission (all references are on my website). But what Daly suggests is that nations which are already rich should replace growth - "more of the same stuff" - with development - "the same amount of better stuff". A steady-state economy has a constant stock of capital that is maintained by a rate of throughput no higher than the ecosystem can absorb. The use of resources is capped and the right to exploit them is auctioned. Poverty is addressed through the redistribution of wealth. The banks can lend only as much money as they possess.

Alternatively, we can persist in the magical thinking whose results have just come crashing home. The financial crisis shows what happens when we try to make the facts fit our desires. Now we must learn to live in the real world.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008