Tag Archives: japan

Friends of the Earth International strongly denounces Japan’s inaction on climate

WARSAW, POLAND, November 15, 2013 — Friends of the Earth International today strongly denounced the Japanese government which stated at the UN climate talks that it is breaking its promises to reduce climate change-causing greenhouse gases. [1]

Japan is the world’s fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

While the planet is hurtling towards catastrophic climate change, and thousands are dead due to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, Japan announced it will not reduce its carbon emissions as much as previously promised. This Japanese announcement flies in the face of the scientific evidence recently released by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change,” said Dipti Bhatnagar, International Coordinator of the Climate Justice & Energy programme, Friends of the Earth International.

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2011 Top Ten Articles on Climate Connections

Note:  The following are the top ten articles from Climate Connections from 2011 according to those the number of views each received.  Several of these are original articles/photos from GJEP’s Jeff Conant, Anne Petermann and Orin Langelle, and were also published in magazines, over the wires and cross-posted in other websites/blogs over the past twelve months.  We have posted them in reverse order, from number 10 through number 1.

Please subscribe to our news blog on this page or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

–The GJEP Team

10. A Broken Bridge to the Jungle: The California-Chiapas Climate Agreement Opens Old Wounds (April 7) GJEP post

Photo: Jeff Conant

By Jeff Conant, Communications Director at Global Justice Ecology Project

When photographer Orin Langelle and I visited Chiapas over the last two weeks of March, signs of conflict and concern were everywhere, amidst a complex web of economic development projects being imposed on campesino and indigenous communities without any semblance of free, prior, and informed consent. Among these projects is a renewed government effort to delimit Natural Protected Areas within the Lacandon Jungle, in order to generate carbon credits to be sold to California companies. This effort, it turns out, coincides with a long history of conflicting interests over land, and counterinsurgency campaigns aimed at the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), as well as other allied or sympathetic indigenous and campesino groups.  Continue article

photo: Kim Kyung-hoon / Reuters. caption: Officials in protective gear check for signs of radiation on children...

9. Nuclear Disaster in Japan; Human Health Consequences of Radiation Exposure and the True Price of Oil  (March 15) Cross-posted from Earthbeat Radio

Nuclear power plants across Japan are exploding as the country struggles to cool them down and recover from the massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami. Joining host Daphne Wysham to discuss the latest on the disaster is Damon Moglen. Damon is the director of the climate and energy program for the Friends of the Earth.  Continue article

8.  Today’s tsunami: This is what climate change looks like (March 11) Cross-posted from Grist

March 11 tsunami leads to an explosion at Chiba Works, an industrial (chemical, steel, etc.) facility in Chiba, Japan.Photo: @odyssey

So far, today’s tsunami has mainly affected Japan — there are reports of up to 300 dead in the coastal city of Sendai — but future tsunamis could strike the U.S. and virtually any other coastal area of the world with equal or greater force, say scientists. In a little-heeded warning issued at a 2009 conference on the subject, experts outlined a range of mechanisms by which climate change could already be causing more earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity.  Continue article

7.  2011 Year of Forests: Real Solutions to Deforestation Demanded (February 2) GJEP post

As UN Declares International Year of Forests, Groups Demand Solutions to Root Causes of Deforestation

Insist Indigenous & Forest Peoples’ Rights Must Be at the Heart of Forest Protection

New York, 2 February 2011-At the launch of the High Level segment of the UN Forum on Forests today, Mr. Sha Zhukan, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs will declare 2011 “the International Year of Forests.” Civil society groups advocating forest protection, Indigenous Rights, and climate justice are launching a program called “The Future of Forests,” to ensure that forest protection strategies address the real causes of global forest decline, and are not oriented toward markets or profit-making.

Critics from Global Justice Ecology Project, Global Forest Coalition, Dogwood Alliance, Timberwatch Coalition, BiofuelWatch, and Indigenous Environmental Network charge that the UN’s premier forest scheme: REDD… Continue article

6. Chiapas, Mexico: From Living in the jungle to ‘existing’ in “little houses made of ticky-tacky…” (April 13) GJEP post

Selva Lacandona (Lacandon jungle/rainforest)

Photo Essay by Orin Langelle

At the Cancún, Mexico United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) last year, journalist Jeff Conant and I learned that California’s then-Governor Arnold Swarzenegger had penned an agreement with Chiapas, Mexico’s Governor Juan Sabines as well as the head of the province of Acre, Brazil.  This deal would provide carbon offsets from Mexico and Brazil to power polluting industries in California—industries that wanted to comply with the new California climate law (AB32) while continuing business as usual.

The plan was to use forests in the two Latin American countries to supposedly offset the emissions of the California polluters.

Conant and I took an investigative trip to Chiapas in March.  When we arrived… Continue photo essay

Overview of the March. Photo: Petermann/GJEP-GFC

5. Photo Essay: Global Day of Action Against UN Conference of Polluters (COP) in Durban (December 3) GJEP post

3 December 2011–Thousands of people from around the world hit the streets of Durban, South Africa to protest the UN Climate Conference of Polluters.

Photo Essay by Orin Langelle/Global Justice Ecology Project and Anne Petermann/Global Justice Ecology Project-Global Forest Coalition. Continue photo essay

4. Showdown at the Durban Disaster: Challenging the ‘Big Green’ Patriarchy (December 13) GJEP post

GJEP's Anne Petermann (right) and GEAR's Keith Brunner (both sitting) before being forcibly ejected from the UN climate conference. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

Dedicated to Judi Bari, Emma Goldman, my mother and all of the other strong women who inspire me

An action loses all of its teeth when it is orchestrated with the approval of the authorities.  It becomes strictly theater for the benefit of the media.  With no intent or ability to truly challenge power.

I hate actions like that.

And so it happened that I wound up getting ejected from one such action after challenging its top-down, male domination.  I helped stage an unsanctioned ‘sit-in’ at the action with a dozen or so others who were tired of being told what to do by the authoritarian male leadership of the “big green’ action organizers–Greenpeace and 350.org.  Continue article

3. Photo Essay from Vermont: The Recovery from Hurricane Irene Begins (August 31) GJEP post

Route 100--this and other washed out bridges and culverts cut off the town of Granville, VT from the outside world

As of Tuesday, 30 August 2011, there were still thirteen towns in the U.S. state of Vermont that were completely cut off from the outside world due to the torrential rains of Hurricane Irene.  This was because roads like Route 100, which runs north and south through the state, sustained catastrophic damage to its culverts and bridges for many miles.    In all, over 200 roads across the state were closed due to wash outs from the heavy rains that pelted the state for nearly twenty-four hours on Sunday, August 28.

Text: Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

Photos: Orin Langelle, Co-Director/Strategist, Global Justice Ecology Project  Continue photo essay

2. Environmental Destruction, Effects of Climate Change to Worsen in Philippines (January 6) Cross-posted from  Bulatlat.com

By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL

MANILA – The year 2010 should have been an opportunity for the new administration to implement fundamental reforms to protect the environment and national patrimony, especially since during the former administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the state of the environment of the country has gone from bad to worse. Continue article

1. Permafrost Melt Soon Irreversible Without Major Fossil Fuel Cuts (February 22) Cross-posted from IPS News

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Feb 17, 2011 (IPS) – Thawing permafrost is threatening to overwhelm attempts to keep the planet from getting too hot for human survival.

Without major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, as much as two-thirds of the world’s gigantic storehouse of frozen carbon could be released, a new study reported. That would push global temperatures several degrees higher, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable.

Once the Arctic gets warm enough, the carbon and methane emissions from thawing permafrost will kick-start a feedback that will amplify the current warming rate, says Kevin Schaefer, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado. That will likely be irreversible.  Continue article

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Earth Minute Remembers Nuclear Disasters in Japan

This week’s Earth Minute, a collaboration between Global Justice Ecology Project and the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Los Angeles Pacifica radio, commemorates the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and ties them to the current nuclear crisis going on at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

To listen, go to: http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_110809_070010sojourner.MP3 and scroll to minute 33:40.

Also on the program is nuclear power expert Arne Gunderson about the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan at minute 19:30.

This week’s Earth Minute transcript:

On this day, sixty-six years ago, the Japanese city of Nagasaki was devastated by an atomic bomb, dropped by the United States.  Three days earlier, Hiroshima was similarly bombed.  Today these cities lead the nuclear disarmament movement.

And since the ongoing disaster at Fukushima, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are also calling for a ban on nuclear energy.

To the Japan-based World Peace Appeal group, the Fukushima meltdown is the fourth nuclear disaster suffered by the Japanese people, after Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the atomic tests on the Bikini Islands. They explain:

“The human tragedy of the past disasters that included fatalities, cancer and other radiation induced diseases, illustrates the hidden and lingering problems of nuclear power.  We must sustain the awareness raised by Fukushima and speak out about the dangers we face if we continue to pursue nuclear energy.”

“We must never again repeat the mistake of forgetting.”

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.

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Earth Minute on KPFK Radio’s Sojourner Truth Show

Listen to this week’s Earth Minute with Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project, which focuses on the nuclear nightmare in Japan as a potentially worse catastrophe than Chernobyl.

Click here to listen

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Earth Minute

Listen to today’s Earth Minute on KPFK’s Sojourner Truth Radio Show. Anne Petermann discusses the link between natural disasters and climate change and stresses the dire need to harness our collective human power to transform the planet into one with just and humane societies.

Click here to listen!

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Victory for Developing Countries Over Northern Business Interests at Biodiversity Summit

Global Justice Ecology Project is the North American Focal Point for the Global Forest Coalition.  GJEP’s Executive Director, Anne Petermann, was in Nagoya for the negotiations.

-The GJEP Team

_____________________________________________________

Conference Adopts Binding Decisions Against Biopiracy and Geo-engineering

by Global Forest Coalition www.globalforestcoalition.org

1 November 2010 –  The Global Forest Coalition congratulates Southern countries on their success in reaching a legally binding agreement to equitably share the benefits of genetic resources at the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan.

The conference, which was baptized as a ‘re-birth of environmental multilateralism’ after the failed climate talks in Copenhagen, also adopted a strategic plan with concrete targets to reduce biodiversity loss, restore 15% of the world’s degraded areas and significantly increase the financial contribution of donor countries to biodiversity conservation.

Negotiations were stalled for most of last week when it was clear Canada and the EU did not want to agree on a strong and legally binding protocol and strong commitments to provide financial resources to conserve biodiversity.

The conference was marked by a significant divide between developing countries and industrialized counties over market-based and other pro-business approaches to biodiversity. While the EU and other Northern countries pushed for market-based mechanisms, including as a financial resource for biodiversity conservation, many Southern countries pointed at the serious environmental and social risks of these mechanisms, and proposed strong policies and measures instead.

As a result of this opposition, references to risky innovative financial mechanisms like the Green Development Mechanism were removed from the final outcomes of the conference.

Southern countries also expressed strong concern about the potential impact of climate change mitigation measures like monoculture tree plantations, REDD+ and bio-energy on biodiversity and the rights and needs of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. As a result, the conference adopted a world-wide moratorium on geo-engineering, including large-scale biochar and other forms of large-scale carbon sequestration by tree plantations.

The Conference calls upon countries to prevent negative impacts of other climate changes mitigation measures like bio-energy and REDD+, on biodiversity and people. The meeting also urges governments to be precautious with the use of the synthetic biology or invasive alien species like eucalypt for bio-energy production.

“It is clear that Southern countries are increasingly concerned about the commodification of nature through market-based approaches like carbon markets and the potential impacts of these markets on Indigenous Peoples, local communities and women” says Simone Lovera, Executive Director of the Global Forest Coalition.

“We are happy that, in the end, the EU and other Northern countries realized that the survival of our planet’s biodiversity is of fundamental importance for the survival of mankind and thus needed to be prioritized over the interests of pharmaceutical companies and carbon traders”.

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7 Generations Walk and Hunger Strike Against Nuclear Power Plant

Note: Japanese activists arrived at the UN CBD COP-10 meetings 45 days
after beginning their 800 kilometer walk–to protest the fact that the
Japanese government is allowing the construction of a new nuclear power
plant in one of the most pristine areas remaining in Japan–a place with
many endangered and endemic species.

It is not unprecedented for the host country for the UN Biodiversity
Convention to be simultaneously causing massive destruction of
biodiversity.  In 2008, the CBD COP-9 took place in Germany only days
after Germany struck a deal with Brazil to exchange nukes for agrofuels.
And Brazil hosted the COP-8 in 2006 at the same time that they were
allowing GE soy to expand uncontrollably into the Amazon forest.  Ain’t
irony great?

–Anne Petermann, for the GJEP Team

_____________________________________________

Source: 7 Generations Walk

Nagoya, Japan–Anti-nuclear activists from Japan began the 7 Generations
Walk on 25th August 2010, walking over 800km from Kaminoseki-cho in
Yamaguchi Prefecture to the UN Biodiversity COP-10 in Nagoya.  This is
their statement:

We have started a hunger strike in protest of the nuclear plant, for the
sea and for future generations.  Our leader, who is also a monk, has not
eaten or drank anything for 7 days as of today.

On the morning of 15th October, barges gathered off Kaminoseki-cho in
Yamaguchi Prefecture, the
planned site of the Kaminoseki nuclear power plant, to begin filling in
the sea. This place is a biodiversity hot spot, full of endangered
species. Also, it’s the gateway of the Seto Inland Sea. The effect of this
reclamation and the eventual nuclear power plant is immeasurable.

We started the walk to spread the message of co-existence and to think
about what we
want to hand on to future generations.

While we walked, we felt a connection with the land, ocean and sky and
realized that we are able to live only because of nature.

Take action:

Call, fax and email the following to protest the construction of this
nuclear power plant in the biodiverse and beautiful Seto inland sea of
Kaminoseki-cho.

Chogoku Electric Power company: +81-082-241-0211 ph  /  +81-082-523-6185 fax

email: go to https://www.energia.co.jp/cgi-bin/energia/contact/contact.cgi

Imori Industry: +81-820-22-1500 or +81-80-5612-6710 or +81-80-1939-4251

Yamaguchi Prefectural Governor: +81-83-933-2570 ph / +81-83-933-2599
email: mailto:a12900@pref.yamaguchi.lg.jp

Contact the Japanese Embassy in the US:

+1-202-238-6700 ph / +1-202-328-2187

(You can search the internet contact information for other Japanese
Embassies.)

For more information: http://7gwalk.org 7gwalk@gmail.com

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Update on the Negotiations at COP-10: Will Biodiversity Survive the Process?

Note: A very important intervention by Anne Petermann follows her analysis in her latest dispatch from UN CBD in Japan.

–The GJEP Team

Anne Petermann today (21 October), speaks on behalf of Global Justice Ecology Project, in an intervention on Biofuels and Biodiversity at the UN CBD in Nagoya, Japan. Photo: Simone Lovera/GFC

–Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director and North American Focal Point for the Global Forest Coalition.

Wednesday (yesterday) began the CBD COP-10 Working Group negotiations
directly related to the work of Global Justice Ecology Project.  The first
item on the agenda: Biodiversity and Climate Change, under which fell
topics including geoengineering–on which ETC Group is here leading a
valiant effort for a strong moratorium–and REDD, the Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and forest Degradation scheme.

While several countries spoke in favor of a moratorium on geoengineering,
REDD received extensive support.  With all of the propaganda here in
favor of REDD and other market-based conservation schemes, this outcome is
hardly surprising.

Out of the 6 hours of official negotiating time allotted yesterday, the
agenda item on climate change took approximately 4.5 hours, with countries
running on and on in their interventions and most positions firmly
entrenched.

After sitting in that oppressive lifeless artificial room for so long,
when the item finally concluded at 5:15pm, I fled to find some fresh air
and natural light.  The next item on the agenda was dry lands
biodiversity, and as the negotiations were scheduled to end at 6 pm I
concluded there was no way they would get to the next agenda item–forest
biodiversity–before the end of the day.

At 6:30 pm, however, Simone Lovera–our colleague from Global Forest
Coalition, arrived late to our scheduled side event on REDD and informed
me that not only had they started negotiations on forest biodiversity,
they had actually finished them in less than one hour, with no observer
organizations allowed to speak.

One hour?!  How to protect forest biodiversity is one of the key issues at
this COP.  With REDD coming down the pike, not to mention all the new and
emerging pressures on forests, the discussions around how to protect
forest biodiversity should have been a central focus of the negotiations.
Instead, they were swept under the rug.

And no observer organizations were allowed to speak.  “You can submit your
comments in writing…”  The excuse used to cut off the observers from
speaking was that the translators needed to leave.   I was advised by a
colleague to go back first thing in the morning and request permission
from the Chair of the Working Group to make an intervention before the new
agenda item was started, since there was no time the night before.  This I
did.  “No”—was the answer.  “Sorry, the item is closed.  We have to
stick to our schedule.  Submit your comments in writing.”

Right. Fine. Swell.

Today’s agenda was filled with agricultural biodiversity followed by
biofuels and biodiversity.  On the first item, there were numerous
comments from developing countries cautioning about the impacts of
industrial agriculture, including GMO crops, and especially “climate
ready” GMO crops–Monsanto’s latest scheme to monopolize the food supply,
using climate change as the opportunity.

Following that item came the next big contentious debate–this one on
biofuels–also known as agrofuels.

This item was pretty clearly divided between countries that intend to
benefit from biofuel production (led by Brazil, the global biofuel king)
and those countries whose lands and people are being negatively impacted
by the growing demand for land to grow biofuel crops.  This sector was led
by the African delegation.  In typical fashion, Canada, New Zealand, and
the EU made interventions that largely supported weakening the
precautionary text on the item, and emphasizing the “benefits to
biodiversity” from biofuels.  Short of the escape of GMOs or synthetic
organisms into the environment, which I suppose would technically add new
species into the ecosystem, it is unimaginable to me how biofuels could
increase biodiversity.

Just before the Working Group reconvened after lunch, I overheard one of
the participants say, “REDD is the ultimate intelligence test for
humanity.”

While the speaker meant this to mean that it is imperative to get forests
into the market as the best and only chance to save them and stop climate
change, I interpreted it quite differently.  It is an intelligence test
alright.  Will dominant culture change its ways in the face of full-scale
ecological crisis, or will it not?  If this COP meeting is any indication,
it ain’t lookin’ too good.

Einstein famously said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over
and expecting a different result.”  One could easily apply that logic to
REDD and the attempt to use the market to protect biodiversity.

We’ve seen for centuries how the use of the market on natural resources
has impacted those resources.  We have the climate crisis, the
biodiversity crisis, the ocean crisis, the food crisis, the water
crisis…  Privatizing and marketing natural resources has driven Planet
Earth to the point where, to quote John Trudell, “civilized man may make
survival on Earth for civilized man impossible.”

Miracle of miracles, the Chair of the Working Group decided to allow some
observer organizations to make comments at the tail end of the biofuels
and biodiversity section.  What follows is the intervention that I made on
behalf of Global Justice Ecology Project.  It is a bit short because,
while “Parties” (i.e. countries) were allowed to go on endlessly, observer
organizations were strictly limited to one-minute interventions.  (The
marginalization of social justice and Indigenous Peoples Organizations at
these UN events is quite striking–the climate COPs are even worse.)

Intervention on Biofuels and Biodiversity:

Thank you Madam Chair.  I am speaking on behalf of Global Justice Ecology
Project.

Demand for trees for bioenergy is growing exponentially.  Second
generation biofuels will add to this problem.  Before emissions from
deforestation can be reduced or biodiversity protected, this rapidly
growing demand on forests must be stopped.  You cannot simultaneously
support REDD and promote biofuels and bioenergy.

The UN definition of forests must also be changed so that it is
science-based. As it is, it allows destruction of forests for conversion
into biofuel and bioenergy tree monocultures. Saying a tree monoculture is
a forest is like saying a cornfield is a native grassland. Even socially
and ecologically destructive genetically engineered trees are possible.

Demand for biofuels and bioenergy is also driving GMO tree development.
In the Southern U.S. alone, industry plans to plant half a billion GMO
eucalyptus trees every year just for bioenergy and biofuels.  These
plantations will replace some of the most biologically rich forests in the
world.  GMO eucalyptus should be considered an invasive alien species.
It’s ability to escape and colonize native ecosystems, destroying
biodiversity, is well documented.

In conclusion, demand for wood for fuel production is predicted to lead,
by 2050, to the almost total replacement of forests and grasslands with
biofuel and bioenergy monocultures.  This is an unparalleled threat to
biodiversity and to the land security of Indigenous and Local Communities.

There are no positive impacts on biodiversity from biofuels or bioenergy.
All references to positive impacts should be deleted.  This body must
protect biodiversity by enacting a moratorium on large-scale biofuel and
bioenergy development, and by prohibiting the use of GMO trees or
synthetic organisms in biofuel or bioenergy production.

Thank you.

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