June 5, 2008
June 4, 2008
Papua New Guinea Forests Being Cut and Burned Away
At the same time that the government of Papua New Guinea is seeking compensation for conserving the carbon-trapping capacity of its the world’s third largest expanse of tropical forests, destruction of these forests is occurring so fast that by 2021 most of the areas accessible to loggers will have been cleared or degraded, a new report based on satellite images reveals.
The images are contained in an extensive report, “The State of the Forests of Papua New Guinea,” produced by scientists at the University of Papua New Guinea Remote Sensing Centre and their colleagues at the Australian National University.
Scientists at the UPNG Remote Sensing Centre discovered that even in so-called conservation “protected areas” forest destruction is occurring at the same pace as in unprotected regions.
Where roads extend through virgin Papua New Guinea forests, loggers are on their way.
The researchers spent five years analyzing satellite images that document 30 years of destruction in an area that contains a major portion of the world’s third largest tropical forest. Only the Amazon and Congo forests are bigger.
The scientists estimate that in 2001, Papua New Guinea’s accessible forests were being cleared or degraded at a rate of 362,000 hectares a year – amounting to a combined annual rate of deforestation and degradation of 1.41 percent.
At that pace, by 2021, the authors estimate that 83 percent of the country’s accessible forest – and 53 percent of its total forested area – will be gone or severely damaged.
The forests are under pressure from industrial logging, agricultural expansion and forest fires, the satellite images show.
“Government officials may claim that they wish rich countries to pay them for conserving their forests, but if they are allowing multinational timber companies to take everything that’s accessible, all that will be left will be lands that are physically inaccessible to exploitation and would never have been logged anyway” said Phil Shearman, the report’s lead author and Director of the UPNG Remote Sensing Centre.
“It’s fair to wonder why the government should be compensated after encouraging this industry for so long in the past, or why they should get paid in the future to conserve forest that cannot be reached,” Shearman said.
The report concludes that the data on forest destruction justifies curtailing current logging industry activities and scrapping new large-scale projects.
It also calls for the government and international development partners to reorient conservation and commercial forestry activities so that they respect the rights of local communities that legally own the forest, and enable members of those communities to better use and conserve the forest for their own development needs.
“The unfortunate reality is that forests in Papua New Guinea are being logged repeatedly and wastefully with little regard for the environmental consequences and with at least the passive complicity of government authorities,” Shearman said.
Dr. Julian Ash from the Australian National University said that “by providing an objective, realistic picture of what is actually taking place, the study can offer an opportunity to institute genuine and verifiable programs that will lead to real conservation, sustainable forestry and meaningful participation in carbon trading markets.”
In order to avoid further damage, Shearman and his colleagues say that any new forestry programs should involve small and medium-scale, locally-owned and managed operations where commercial activities are more likely to be environmentally sustainable and the benefits are more likely to flow to forest communities.
“Papua New Guinea is still one of the most heavily forested countries in the world,” Shearman said. “For the first time, we have evidence of what’s happening in the PNG forests. The government could make a significant contribution to global efforts to combat climate change. It is in its own interest to do so, as this nation is particularly susceptible to negative effects due to loss of the forest cover.”
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June 3, 2008
June 2, 2008
Nicaraguans launch anti-hunger march
World Food Program (WFP) summons an anti-hunger demonstration in Nicaragua to bring greater attention to the issue in this Latin nation.
Held in the northeastern city of Matagalpa Sunday, the demonstration was attended by senior government officials including ministers of agriculture, education, health and foreign affairs, local media reported, according to Xinhua.
More than 1,000 children from Matagalpa, one of the departments hardest hit by hunger and high rates of chronic bad nutrition, also participated in the march.
Agriculture Minister Ariel Bucardo vowed to push forward the program “Zero Hunger,” a government-sponsored program which aims at aiding close to 75,000 poor families to overcome poverty by providing livestock like pigs or production subsidies.
The World Food Program (WFP) initiated more anti-hunger demonstrations in 70 other cities around the world.
Expressing support for the rally, president of the WFP’s Nicaragua branch William Hart said that it could help the country on its way to eliminate hunger.
WFP Nicaragua is helping feed more than half million people in the country, including 400,000 elementary school students in Matagalpa.
About 6 million children die each year from bad nutrition in the world, while 840 million people are struggling with hunger, according to the WFP.
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May 31, 2008
The secret of Vanuatu’s happiness
The South Pacific country of Vanuatu has been voted the happiest place in the world so what makes its inhabitants such a happy lot?
The twin pillars of a classically happy life – strong family ties and a general absence of materialism – are common throughout this island nation
Jean Pierre John is living the dream. That popular fantasy of owning one’s own island, complete with swaying coconut palms, coral sea and tropical forest, is his for real.
On the island called Metoma, in the far north of Vanuatu, Jean Pierre can look around and truly say that he is master of all he surveys.
This single fact would put Jean Pierre in an exclusive club, you would think, one made up of billionaire businessmen, royalty and rock stars.
But Jean Pierre is none of these things. In fact, he could not be more different.
On Metoma, Jean Pierre and his family live in thatched huts.
They have no electricity or running water, no radio or television, and their only mode of transport is a rowing boat, which pretty much limits them to trips to the neighbouring island.
On top of that, they have little money and few opportunities to make any.
No money?! Suddenly their island life does not sound all that glamorous. But here’s the thing, the Johns really are happy.
This may sound surprising but living on their island they want for nothing.
Local produce
All the family’s food comes from on or around Metoma. Coconuts, yam, and manioc – their staple diet – are all grown on the island and then, of course, there is a sea full of fish to harvest.
And if fish protein gets boring, there is always the occasional fruit bat, from a colony that roosts on the island.
Indeed, food is so easy to gather that the family appears to have a lot of relaxation time.
When the Johns do have money – perhaps when they sell one of the few cows they own – they will buy soap powder and kerosene for their lamps.
But if not, they are just as happy to make do with island solutions – sticks which can be crushed to make soap and coconut oil in place of kerosene.
Some useful items are even washed up onto their island – buoys from boats are cut in half to make bowls and old fishing nets are recycled as hammocks.
It may sound like a Robinson Crusoe existence, and in many ways it is, but the Johns are not castaways. They live on Metoma out of choice.
Jean Pierre had not heard that Vanuatu had been voted happiest country in the world but, when I told him, he nodded in a knowingly happy sort of way
It is not as if they have not experienced some of the trappings of a more modern world.
Jean Pierre grew up on one of Vanuatu’s larger islands and still makes the occasional visit. His eldest son, Joe, even went to school in the nation’s capital.
In fact Joe, a very easy-going 28-year-old, had recently returned to Metoma to live full time and he told me that the only thing he missed was hip hop music, but that it was a small price to pay for living on the island.
No money worries
Jean Pierre had not heard that Vanuatu had been voted happiest country in the world but, when I told him, he nodded in a knowingly happy sort of way.
So what is his secret of happiness?
“Not having to worry about money,” he immediately replies, while picking his nose in an uninhibited way.
If you asked the same question in the UK, you would probably get the same response. The only difference is that, in Jean Pierre’s case, it means not needing any money, rather than having bundles of it.
We can all repeat the mantra “money can’t buy you happiness” until we are blue in the face, but deep down, how many of us in the West really believe it to be true?
But I can see that Jean Pierre’s happiness is more than just a question of money. It also comes from having his family around him, and there is undoubtedly an enormous respect between them.
Absence of materialism
His children – and this includes those of adult age – do anything their father asks, not out of coercion but because they genuinely want to please.
Forget the Waltons, the Johns are the real McCoy: one happy family.
While talking to Jean Pierre, I find myself wondering whether he is the most contented person I have ever met.
But he is keen to know whether I am having a good time on his island too. Every day he asks me if I am happy. When I tell him things are great, his eyes light up and he replies in pidgin, “Oh, tenkyu.”
Whether happiness can truly be measured is a debatable point, but there is no doubt that Metoma – or indeed Vanuatu as a whole – has the ingredients to encourage a greater sense of happiness.
The twin pillars of a classically happy life – strong family ties and a general absence of materialism – are common throughout this island nation.
The simple things in life, it seems, really do make you happy.
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May 27, 2008
Poverty Thrives Amid Unprecedented Prosperity
Global poverty is thriving — rather ironically — amidst one of the most prosperous times in human history.
Kul Chandra Gautam, a former assistant secretary-general and deputy executive director of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, points out that world economic output was never more prodigious: last year it hit the 60-trillion-dollar mark.
At this time of unprecedented global prosperity, in which someone becomes a new billionaire every second day, “We have the contrasting situation of nearly one billion people living on less than a dollar a day and 800 million going to bed hungry every night,” he added.
And according to the U.S.-based Forbes magazine, the number of billionaires worldwide reached 1,125 this year, a staggering increase from 179 in 2007.
They emerged not only from rich countries such as the United States, Germany and Japan but also from developing countries, such as Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Belize, China, India, Mexico and Venezuela.
Addressing the third forum of the Tokyo-based Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC), Gautam said it is because of poverty that nearly 10 million children die every year from causes that are readily preventable.
“It is poverty that keeps 93 million children out of primary schools, the majority of them girls, and it is poverty that lands millions of children in child labour, often in hazardous circumstances, when they should be going to school.”
The recent dramatic rise in food and petroleum prices is also bound to further impoverish the already poor, “and as usual, children are likely to be its main victims”, Gautam said.
The Arigatou Foundation of Japan, the organisers of the Hiroshima Forum, is convinced the time has come for the world’s religious institutions, and all those who profess religious faith, to come forward and join hands in this global fight to alleviate the suffering of children and promote their well-being.
Since its founding in May 2000, GNRC has emerged as an important global alliance of religious organisations and people of faith committed to interfaith dialogue and action aimed at improving the lives of children.
One of the themes of the Hiroshima Forum, currently underway, is “the ethical imperative to ensure that no child lives in poverty”.
The United Nations estimates that over 600 million children live in absolute poverty worldwide. The reduction of extreme poverty by 50 percent is one of the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with a target date of 2015.
But Dr A.T. Ariyaratne, founder and president of the Sarvodaya Movement, one of the most successful grassroots movements in Sri Lanka, is sceptical about reaching that goal.
“Poverty and powerlessness go hand in hand — both at the political and economic level,” he said. In most developing countries, Ariyaratne said, the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen by the day.
He dismissed as a “bunch of lies” some of the statistics doled out by national governments to bolster the argument that poverty is on the decline in their respective countries.
“I have met a number of political leaders — even at the cabinet level — who don’t even know what the Millennium Development Goals are,” Ariyaratne said.
The Venerable Kojun Handa, supreme priest of the Tendai Buddhist denomination, singled out the “deep economic disparities” in which children are deprived of their basic necessities, including adequate food and education.
“At the same time, if we turn our eyes to those regions of the world that are considered ‘advanced nations,’ including Japan, we see a ubiquitous emphasis on excessive material wealth.”
He said these rich nations believe in the ultimate superiority of their economies and the many negative facets of an internet-based society in which children are corrupted through the damage inflicted upon them.
Still, Gautam quoted his former boss and mentor, the late Jim Grant of UNICEF, who said there had been more progress for children in the last 50 years — during the second half of the 20th century — than perhaps in the previous 500 years.
In Asia alone, over a billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the past half century, of whom 400 million were from China.
India is rapidly following a similar trend. The Republic of Korea has seen its per capita income increase from 100 dollars to 17,000 dollars.
Late last year, UNICEF reported that for the first time since it started keeping records, the annual number of child deaths decreased to below 10 million. This accounted for a 60-percent reduction in the under-five mortality rate since 1960.
“This is a remarkable testimony to the continuing progress in child survival and success of many health interventions,” said Gautam.
Smallpox, which used to kill five million people a year in the 1950s, was eradicated during our lifetime. Polio, which used to cripple millions, is on the brink of eradication. Deaths due to measles, one of the biggest killers of children, declined by 90 percent in Africa in the last seven years, he noted.
“There are more children in school today than ever before, and gender disparity is rapidly declining at the primary school level,” he added.
“And thanks to the heightened sensitivity created by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, issues such as child labour, trafficking and abuse of children, children in armed conflict and other violence against children are being systematically exposed, and action taken to address them.”
“And many non-governmental organisations (NGOs), faith-based and inter-faith groups like the GNRC, and civic leaders are championing the cause of children,” he said.
Overall, he said, children are much higher on the world’s political agenda. Increasingly, they figure prominently in election campaigns, parliamentary debates and national legislation.
The fantastic communications capacity in the world today makes it possible to bring the blessings of science and technology to the doorsteps of even the poorest people in the most remote corners of the world.
And child-oriented programmes are benefiting from this information and communications revolution.
But the bad news is that much of this progress has bypassed the bottom billion people in the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, Gautam said.
Civil wars and conflict, and the pandemic of HIV/AIDS have exacerbated the fight against poverty by weakening the economies and social fabric of many countries, specifically in Africa.
“We all thought there would be an era of peace, and a huge peace dividend, following the end of the cold war. But regrettably, ethnic conflicts and tensions spread following the collapse of the Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia,” he added.
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