AFP: Brazil looks to develop Amazon as deforestation alarm rings

AFP: Brazil looks to develop Amazon as deforestation alarm rings

BRASILIA (AFP) — Brazil is preparing a controversial plan to develop parts of the Amazon and shed the idea of the area being a "sanctuary", even as warnings mount over the threat of deforestation to the vast and important zone.

Two ministers offered contrasting evaluations of the Amazon on Wednesday in declarations that underlined the struggle between competing interests inside President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government.

Strategic Affairs Minister Roberto Mangabeira Unger told congress that a development plan was being readied that would finish with the "wrong idea" that the Amazon "can be kept as a sanctuary for mankind's enjoyment without productive activity."

At the same time, Environment Minister Carlos Minc was issuing a warning to reporters that the destruction of the Amazon has picked up since the beginning of the year despite government efforts to curb it.

Figures to be released next Monday by the Brazilian Institute for Spatial Research "are going to show a rise," he said, adding that the central state of Mato Grosso accounted for more than 60 percent of the new deforestation.

The wrestling between those who want to see Brazil's economic development include the Amazon, and others that want to conserve the world's biggest forest has reached a new intensity.

Last week, Minc was named to take over the environment ministry after his greatly respected predecessor, Marina Silva, resigned unexpectedly after a long series of defeats against other ministries wanting to turn the Amazon into an economic, not ecological, prize.

Minc has signalled he intends to pursue Silva's policies, and has received backing from Lula for an idea to have the army patrol the Amazon and defend it against illegal loggers, soya farmers and cattle ranchers.

But Unger's detailing of a Sustainable Development Plan, floated by the government two weeks ago, suggested the new environment minister would also have an uphill battle.

The Amazon, Unger told lawmakers in Brasilia, is not only "the biggest collection of plants on the planet" but also "a group of people."

"If the 25 million people who live in the Amazon don't get economic opportunities, they will be pushed toward disorganized activity that will result in deforestation," he argued.

"An environmentalism lacking an economic plan would be counterproductive environmentalism," he said.

The minister stressed that the preservation of the Amazon remained a priority, but alongside development that would allow "modern" and "intensive" farming and cattle-raising in specified areas.

He also asserted that "defense" issues were involved in maintaining order in the Amazon, opening the door to the army's involvement.

The last official figures showed that deforestation of the Amazon picked up in the last half of 2007, reversing conservation progress made by the government since 2005.

A total of 7,000 square kilometers (2,700 square miles) of vegetation had been chopped or burned down between August and December 2007.

Minc, speaking at a Rio de Janeiro news conference, said he would try to find ways to negotiate with soya farmers in the region, who are blamed by ecologists as wreaking the most damage.

He singled out the governor of Mato Grosso, Blairo Maggi, who was seen as having a significant role in Silva's resignation.

"As of now, Blairo won't have me to fight with, but directly with President Lula, who has decided to create a National Forestry Force to watch over the Amazon," Minc said.

By MICHAEL ASTOR, Associated Press Writer Wed May 21, 7:05 PM ET

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Destruction of the Amazon is again on the upswing despite a recent crackdown on illegal logging, Brazil's new environment minister said Wednesday.

Carlos Minc said official calculations of how much rain forest has been cut down would be released Monday by the National Space Research Institute.

"It will be bad news. It will be data showing an increase in deforestation," Minc said in an interview on Globo TV.

Minc took his post last week after veteran rain forest defender Marina Silva surprised the nation by stepping down, citing "stagnation" in the fight to preserve the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness.

Deforestation in the Amazon had declined for three consecutive years until earlier this year when preliminary satellite data detected a spike.

In response to the increase, the government sent environmental agents and elite federal police units to crack down on illegal logging in the jungle region.

The crackdown was met with violent protests as it shut down dozens of illegal sawmills and led to seizure of 15,500 tons of illegally logged wood.

Earlier this month, the country's Justice Ministry said the operation had reduced deforestation by 80 percent between February and March.

But environmentalists said such month-to-month comparisons are unreliable.

Aides at Minc's office said he wasn't immediately available to comment on how his data differed with the Justice Ministry's.

The Brazilian Amazon, covers about 1.6 million square miles (4.1 million square kilometers) or nearly 60 percent of the country. About 20 percent of the forest has already been razed.

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Reuters: Alaska to sue to block polar bear listing

Wed May 21, 2008 9:29pm EDT

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The state of Alaska will sue the U.S. government to stop the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species, arguing the designation will slow development in the state, Gov. Sarah Palin said on Wednesday.

Palin said the state will file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington challenging U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's decision to grant Endangered Species Act protections to the polar bear.

The Republican governor has argued that the ice-dependent polar bear, the first mammal granted Endangered Species Act listing because of global warming, does not need additional protections.

"We believe that the listing was unwarranted and that it's unprecedented to list a currently healthy population based on uncertain climate models," said Alaska Assistant Attorney General Steven Daugherty.

Even though Kempthorne enacted a rule aimed at precluding any new restrictions on oil and gas operations as a result of the listing, the Palin administration believes a wide variety of other development activities in Alaska would be hampered if the listing goes through, Daugherty said.

Any development or activity requiring federal permits or using federal funds would have to engage in a "consultation" process to ensure that polar bears are not harmed, he said.

That consultation, mandated by the Endangered Species Act, "is a long and time-consuming process," he said. "It's just, basically, a big time-and-money-waster."

The date for filing the lawsuit is unknown, Daugherty said. The state Department of Law on Wednesday was drafting its 60-day notice of intent to sue, he said. (Editing by Vicki Allen)
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Reuters: Queen Goes Green With World's Largest Wind Turbine
ABERDEEN, Scotland - Britain's Queen Elizabeth is going green by investing in the largest wind turbine in the world, her property company the Crown Estate said on Wednesday.
The Estate, which owns most of the seabed off Britain's shores, regularly leases out its land to wind farm projects but has never invested in the turbines.
With a capacity of 7.5 megawatts, the Crown has gone for the biggest yet.
"This is not something we've ever done before and I think it will raise quite a few eyebrows," Ben Barton, the company's offshore manager for wind farms said.
Speaking at an energy conference in Aberdeen, Barton said the Crown Estate had decided to make the investment to help overcome turbine supply difficulties, which he said were a key constraint to the construction of off-shore wind farms.
The turbine will be built by the London-listed wind turbine maker Clipper Windpower and will be fully operational by 2010, Barton said, with all the power generated to be sold to the national grid.
The Crown Estate is looking at areas in north-east England as a possible site for the project, he said.
The company also said it was seeking initial expressions of interest from firms wishing to be considered for developing 100 MW or more capacity in Scottish waters.
Story Date: 22/5/2008

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Reuters: Senegalese Fisherman Save Dozens Of Stranded Whales
REPUBLIC OF SENEGAL: May 22, 2008


YOFF, Senegal - Senegalese fishermen dragged dozens of stranded pilot whales back out to sea on Wednesday but at least 20 more died on the beach after mysteriously coming ashore.

More than 100 pilot whales, which have bulbous foreheads and can grow to over 4 metres long, beached themselves overnight at Yoff, a traditional Lebou fishing community on the Cap Vert peninsula, mainland Africa's most westerly point.

Local fishermen struggled through the night to drag the animals back to sea from the sloping sandy beach, using their brightly coloured open wooden boats known as "pirogues" and attaching ropes around the animals' sleek, black bodies.

"No one slept last night because all the fishermen were called out to help save the whales," said Iba Dieye, a local fisherman from Yoff.

"About 100 of the big fish washed up on the beach last night at around 9 p.m.. We worked all night to try to drag them back into the ocean. We got about 80 back into the water with ropes, our pirogues and our hands. But the ones still here are dead now," said another fisherman, Elima Bah.

Nevertheless, hours after the mass stranding, local adults and children were still trying to haul some of the remaining live whales back into the waves.

During the day, curious crowds gathered around the carcasses of the dead animals. Some snapped photos with their mobile phones, while children played on the carcasses, dousing them with water to create a slippery slide.

Local fishermen said they would need government help to remove the dead whales from the beach. They said they feared the rotting carcasses could cause disease and infection.

"COLLECTIVE SUICIDE"

"All animal carcasses should be destroyed and shouldn't be eaten. But this is Africa, and if the area is not secured, people are tempted to cut off a piece of flesh, some for their animals, like their dogs, and some to eat themselves," said Kabore Alassi, a professor from Dakar's Veterinary School.

Witnesses said some residents dragged off whale carcasses.

Local experts said a similar mass beaching of whales had occurred at the same spot some 30 years ago. Some residents had fallen ill after eating meat from the dead whales.

They had no precise explanation for the mass stranding.

"It's like a collective suicide. Even when you push them out, they still keep coming back," said Ali Haidar, president of the Oceanium marine conservation organisation in Dakar.

"It's something to do with their navigational and orientation systems getting disturbed," he added.

Haidar said that when around 250 whales beached on the shore in neighbouring Mauritania two years ago, experts believed the animals had been disturbed by offshore seismic and sonar exploration by international oil companies.

The sonar systems of submarines patrolling or involved in military exercises could have a similar effect on whales.

It was also possible that the pilot whales at Yoff had been driven ashore by chemical pollution in the water, Haidar said.

(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/)

(Additional reporting by Finbarr O'Reilly, Normand Blouin, Diadie Ba and Pascal Fletcher; writing by Pascal Fletcher; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Story by Emmanuel Braun

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

LOS ANGELES - About 45 minutes north of downtown Los Angeles, a machine the size of a small truck flattens tons of food scraps, paper towels and other household trash into the side of a growing 300-foot pile.

To Waste Management which operates the landfill, this is more than just a mountain of garbage. Pipes tunnelled deep into the mound extract gas from the rotting waste and send it to a plant that turns it into electricity.
Apart from the huge-wheeled compactor driving over garbage on its surface, it looks like an ordinary hillside. And it doesn't even smell. Yet it produces enough energy to power 2,500 homes in Southern California.
Trash, rubbish, whatever you call it, the 1.6 billion tonnes of stuff the world throws away each year -- 250 kilograms per person -- is being touted as a big potential source of clean energy.
As concerns about climate change escalate and prices on fossil fuels like oil and natural gas soar to record levels, more companies are investing in ways to use methane gas to power homes and vehicles.
Around the world, landfills where municipal waste is collected and buried are one of the biggest producers of methane, a gas whose greenhouse effect is 21 times worse than carbon dioxide. If instead that gas is collected and burned to generate electricity, proponents say the resulting emissions of carbon dioxide are less harmful to the environment than the original methane.
In the United States, trash haulers like Waste Management and Allied Waste Industries Inc are rapidly expanding the number of gas-to-energy projects at their landfills, while start-up companies are developing the latest technologies to transform garbage into ethanol, gas and electricity.
"We are able to take that resource and turn it into real value financially for us. In a very basic sense it helps improve our earnings," said Ted Neura, senior director of renewable energy development for Phoenix-based Allied Waste, which is turning waste into energy at 54 of its 169 US landfills, with 16 more projects in the works.
The "green" credentials that go along with the waste-to-energy projects are an added benefit, Neura said.
"You begin to look at landfills a little differently when you couple them with a renewable energy project," he said.
Environmentalists aren't quite as enthusiastic. Nathanael Greene, director of renewable energy policy for the Natural Resources Defence Council, said touting the benefits of landfills was akin to putting "lipstick on a pig." Instead, we should be trying harder to reduce waste.

BIOGAS AROUND THE GLOBE

RUBBISH TO REVENUE

TRASH TO TRUCKS