The price of opposing illegal logging
A Malaysian tribal leader and prominent logging opponent, Kelesau Naan, has been found dead, probably murdered by loggers.
This from Richard Parry at the Times:
Kelesau Naan never went to school. He signed his name with a thumb print and spent his entire life living in the jungles of Borneo. But among his tribe, the Penan, he was a visionary and an inspiration.
For years, he had organised his people in a desperate defence of their home and heritage: the pristine rain-forest in the deep interior of the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
As headman of the village of Long Kerong, Mr Naan – who was in his 70s but did not know his exact age – had put his name to a lawsuit asserting the Penan’s right of ownership over their native land. He organised blockades of the logging roads to try to prevent the bulldozers and chainsaws destroying his home as they had stripped the rest of the island.Â
He joins a long list of people murdered for opposing the logging of tropical forests around the planet. New Zealand continues to import the timber and outdoor furniture sourced from the forests like those Kelesau Naan was trying to protect. The Times has a short list of some of the better known martyrs:
— Sister Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old American nun, was shot dead in Brazil in 2005 while fighting to protect the Terra do Meio region from loggers. Within days, the area was declared a protected site
— Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper and environmental activist, became a posthumous icon in Brazil after he was murdered in 1988 by ranchers opposed to his campaign to protect the Amazon from deforestation
— Aldo Zamora was collecting data on illegal logging for Greenpeace in Great Water forest, Mexico, when a logging gang ambushed his car and killed him in May 2007
— Kinkri Devi went on hunger strike against a court’s refusal to hear her case against a mining project in Himchal Pradesh. She won her case and an award for her efforts. She died this week
Let’s remember them by disentangling ourselves from the trade in illegally logged tropical timber.
January 7th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
You keep trying to hold the uncaring and unthinking Government to account Frog. They will not listen to the people, but they might listen to the Greens. Threaten not to support them on things *they* care about, and be highly principled about it.
How’s it going with the Hector Dolphin thing too, BTW?
January 12th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
‘No convincing evidence for decline in tropical forests
Claims that tropical forests are declining cannot be backed up by hard evidence, according to new research from the University of Leeds.
This major challenge to conventional thinking is the surprising finding of a study published today in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences by Dr Alan Grainger, Senior Lecturer in Geography and one of the world’s leading experts on tropical deforestation.
“The picture is far more complicated than previously thought,â€? he said. “If there is no long-term net decline it suggests that deforestation is being accompanied by a lot of natural reforestation that we have not spotted.â€?’
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/uol-nce010708.php
January 15th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Thanks for the link to
http://www.eurekalert.org/
“Cellphone Cause Traffic Congestion” is one of the best headlines I have seen on a science press release for some time. The mechanism by which cellphones cause traffic congestion is a good example of a complex problem being identified from a different field of research.
Many of the other press releases reveal good news for efforts to take energy efficiency to a whole new level. I particularly liked the breakthroughs in “growing” nanofibres inexpensively. One for use as anodes in li-ion batteries to make them an order of magnitude more efficient. Another to directly generate electricity from any very hot surface. That should allow car makers to dispense with alternators and shrink the size of radiators. Reduced engine load and less weight to be carried around, and easily retrofitted to the existing vehicle fleet. As long as it’s cheap what more could you ask of an AGW solution?