Sunday 9 January 2011

Why Environmental Rights and Justice in Africa?

Why Environmental Rights and Justice in Africa?




The United States Environmental Protection Agency Office of Environmental Justice defines EJ as follows: "Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, colour, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”


The Rio Declaration of 1992 requires States to enact national legislations for environmental management and to ensure that citizens participate in this management through granting them access to information held by public authorities concerning the environment and by ensuring effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings including provision of redress and remedy.


Access to justice requires that government agencies and others respect, not only the other procedural rights of access to information and participation, but also that substantive environmental rights are protected so that citizens have an opportunity for seeking redress whenever there is failure to respect environmental rights.


In recent years, international environmental organisations have paid increasing attention to the judiciary and other legal stakeholders as focal points for the promotion of environmental law at national level. The Judiciary is a crucial partner in the development, interpretation, implementation and enforcement of environmental law. The laws that conserve, protect, and restore environmental resources must be implemented and their compliance assured.


The effective implementation of international treaties and other agreements require each country to have the capacity to develop the necessary policies, legislation and institutions, and to have access to trained staff and work in partnership with the civil society.


Environmental justice’s two basic premises are first that everyone should have the right and be able to live in a healthy environment, with access to enough environmental resources for a healthy life, and second, that it is predominantly the poorest and least powerful people who are missing these conditions. This is because global environmental problems (e.g. climate change), and lack of access to scarce environmental resources (e.g. energy and water), tend to affect the poorest and most vulnerable people hardest.


Efforts such as these, that support people and organisations to address underlying issues such as land rights, intellectual property rights, overexploitation of water resources, and sound environmental governance, are promoted by environment and development practitioners. However, the access to justice approach is not yet fully integrated in these efforts. For example, in the case of water services, the discrimination that women suffer in terms of land rights, inheritance, education rights, and access to employment and finance, are prime factors behind their unequal access to these services.


In Africa, the poor depend on their natural resources for their survival. They have to make difficult choices between conserving the environment and meeting their basic needs. Hunger and poverty often compel the poor to over-exploit and thus degrade the natural resource base on which their own livelihoods depend. This calls upon Governments to design new or strengthen existing environmental laws that protect the interests of the poor. Environmental justice needs to be promoted in Africa where socio-economically and ecologically disadvantaged people are most likely to be the first victims and the greatest sufferers of the impact of environmental degradation and global warming. Active, robust, informed participation by civil society is thus essential to environmental governance.


For environmental protection to be effective in African counties, civil society and governments must possess the technical and organisational capacity to address legal challenges for the benefit of their citizens.


Human Rights, Poverty and the Environment


In Africa, most people now accept that human health and survival is threatened by ecological problems like air pollution, deforestation, water shortage and climate change. In this sense a clean and healthy environment is essential for the effective protection of human rights in the continent. The poor is the most vulnerable to environmental degradation and most disadvantaged in regards to access to clean, affordable and sustainable development services.


Environmental inequalities exist not only among world nations, but within them as well. In rich countries and poor countries alike, certain populations often bear disproportionate burdens from the effects of environmental degradation. In Africa, children are especially prone to environmental risks because of poor sanitary conditions. A recent World Health Organization survey reported that ‘two-thirds of the preventable diseases occurring worldwide from environmental causes occur among children’.


International development agencies argue that there is a need to recognise and improve understanding of the dimension of the poverty-environment nexus, in order to achieve poverty reduction goals by 2015. According to the World Bank, when poor countries are impoverished due to corruption and bad governance; their people suffer, they need more aid, they exploit available natural resources to survive until there are depleted, they create refugees, they engage in conflicts and they withdraw from world markets.


Environmental development rights contribute directly to MDG-7 on ensuring environmental sustainability. In addition to MDG-7, the environment plays a cross-cutting role in several MDGs. According to environmental experts, environmental sustainability is the foundation on which strategies for achieving all other MDGs must be built, and not only causally link environmental degradation to poverty, hunger, and gender inequality and health conditions. Other examples of synergies can be found in the links between the right to clean drinking water and MDG 4 on reducing child mortality.


Environmental justice in Africa is all about integrating rights into environmental services and resources and environmental programming to help to make interventions more focused on poor people. Working to integrate rights into sustainable development help to make interventions more focused on poor people, and thus contribute directly to the first MDG on eradicating extreme poverty and the links between rights to clean drinking water and MDG-4 on reducing child mortality.


Environmental organisations, decision-makers, local lawyers, and scholars need to understand the laws and, more importantly, how they can use them to advocate for environmental protection and the health and well-being of the country’s people. Local grassroots organisations that protect, represent and involve the interests of poorer residents play a vital role in empowering the poor to claim their rights. Social mobilisation and active support for partnerships with local environment and other civil society groups, has been found to be a useful strategy for building the capacity of right-holders to claim their rights and hold SD and environment authorities accountable.


Africa Network for Environmental Rights (ANER)’ Human Rights based approach


The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro formulated the link between human rights and environmental protection largely in procedural terms. Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration states as follows: “Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level. At the national level, each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities, including information on hazardous materials and activities in their communities, and the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes. States shall facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation by making information widely available. Effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings, including redress and remedy, shall be provided.”


ANER  is human-rights based because human rights and sustainable development are mutually reinforcing. Access to environmental services and resources; and environmental protection are essential to the realisation of basic human rights, including the rights to food, health and even life itself. So too, a human rights framework that ensures transparency and accountability and that empowers citizens to contribute to the management of natural resources, helps to achieve environment goals.


A human rights-based approach places people at the centre of development because it is based on the perceptions, needs, and legitimate claims of people. This leads to the design and implementation of programmes that are more likely to have direct benefits for poverty reduction, education, health, and gender equality.


Integrating these principles into programming requires a specific effort to identify the individuals and groups most marginalised and vulnerable in regards to access to environmental services and resources; such as women, children, minorities, indigenous groups, migrants, elderly, persons living with disabilities and persons living with HIV/AIDS.


At a national level, asserting procedural rights, such as the right to information, the right to participation and the right to judicial redress, has provided communities and NGOs with an important tool for ensuring sound environmental governance. These rights are well established in international and national legal instruments. In countries that lack comprehensive environmental laws and resources to implement and enforce those laws, particularly in Africa, they play an essential role in protecting individuals from environmental damage. They also enable those concerned groups to voice their objections to environment damage and hold governments to account. Wider legal and political issues, such as discriminatory laws, lack of land rights, and corrupt and ineffective institutions, may be the major cause for why the poor and the vulnerable are unable to exercise and enjoy their environmental services and resources and environment related rights.


Poverty: A Cause and Effect of Environmental Degradation


Poverty is linked to the environment in complex ways, particularly in natural resource-based African economies. About two-thirds of the population live in rural areas, deriving their main income from agriculture. Land degradation, deforestation, lack of access to safe water, and loss of biodiversity, compounded by climatic variability, are the concerns that invariably arise from assessments of their natural environment.


Degradation of resources reduces the productivity of the poor who most rely on them, and makes poor people even more susceptible to extreme events (weather, economic, and civil strife). Poverty makes recovery from these events extremely difficult and contributes to lowering social and ecological resistance. The poor, with shorter time-horizons, and usually less secure access to natural resources, are unable, and often unwilling to invest in natural resource management. Moreover, poor people are often the most exposed to environmental damage since they cannot purchase safe water or have the option of living in a less polluted area (The World Bank, 1997).


In fact, poverty and environmental protection are closely linked, as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Africa’s development blueprint, makes clear. NEPAD’s environmental action plan states, “Africa is characterized by two interrelated features: rising poverty levels and deepening environmental degradation ... poverty remains the main cause and consequence of environmental degradation and resource depletion in Africa. Without significant improvement in the living conditions and livelihoods of the poor, environmental policies and programmes will achieve little success.”


The impacts of climate change on the next generation are now inevitable. However, there is a lot that can and must be done to help developing countries to adapt and to protect the most vulnerable. With climate change, by 2080, an extra 600 million people worldwide could be affected by malnutrition. An additional 400 million people could be exposed to malaria. And an additional 1.8 billion people could be living without enough water. By 2050, 200 million people could be rendered homeless by rising sea levels, floods and drought. The continent of Africa stands to suffer the most from climate change whilst having contributed the least to the problem. The region is already experiencing significant impacts from climate change including increasing desertification.


Women and the Environment


In Africa, a woman’s role in the management of natural resources assumes a multidimensional nature. Unfortunately, the central and crucial role that women play is often both overlooked and unappreciated. Women are the ones who spend hours collecting firewood, water and other natural resources. There is a great need for women to have independent rights/access to land and other natural resources. They seek to manage the environment, although their struggle for survival often results in environmental damage from activities such as fuel-wood collection


Although women make tremendous contributions to the economy, women's contributions are not valued in the same way as men's. Much of women's work is not underpaid, it is entirely unpaid. Among the majority of African rural and low-income urban dwellers, women perform all domestic tasks, while many also farm and trade. They are responsible for the care of children, the sick and the elderly, working for or producing food, in addition to performing essential social functions within their communities.


The negative outcomes of the loss and/or degradation of natural resources often fall most heavily on women, adding to their responsibilities and multiple roles in families and communities. Women usually have no rights and/or access to land for varying legal and cultural reasons yet they are the majority of the world's agricultural producers, playing important roles in farming, fisheries, forestry and farming. They are the least titleholders among the property holders in the world. African women, particularly those in rural areas, are the main custodians of indigenous knowledge in natural resource conservation, management and food preparation. In spite of efforts to link African women to activities that promote sustainable development, these women have continued to face problems in almost all sectoral development activities dealing with natural resources management. Development interventions to alleviate poverty should emphasise the critical role played by African women in the conservation and management of natural resources by initiating and strengthening policies and support that minimise gender inequalities.


Civil wars in Africa affect women who endure the most of increased morbidity and mortality over time. Conflicts affect different aspects of female health. Women often endure the most of war, poverty and disease in sub-Saharan Africa. Whether it is brutal rapes in Darfur and eastern Congo or the toll taken by HIV/AIDS, women often receive little help dealing with the consequences. The raping of women and young girls has become practically a war strategy in Africa's conflicts. In some countries, women are also increasingly becoming heads of households partly due the loss of their partners to conflicts. This means that they are solely responsible for providing for their families and take part in farming activities yet they do not have the legal rights to own land and other natural resources (which are the main source of livelihood.


Since many women do not own land, women and girls constantly face the threat of becoming economically unstable and dependant on their male relatives or husbands. In the eventuality of economic despair, they may turn to means such as prostitution or transactional sex, or bowing to certain cultural practices such as wife inheritance that may expose them to sexually transmitted diseases and other health risks. During times of war and conflict, sanitation facilities in refugee camps are generally poor and women rely on foreign aid to cater for their needs. Women are the worst hit by shortages of water and poor sanitation because they have to travel longer distances to search for water under very insecure conditions.


Water and poor sanitation


According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the proportion of urban dwellers with access to safe drinking water in sub-Saharan Africa has only declined slightly over the last 20 years, from 86 percent in 1990 to 83 percent to date. Additionally, low-income urban dwellers have to pay disproportionately high prices for water sometimes up to 50 times the price paid by higher income groups. This problem has been worsened by a high rate of urbanisation resulting in highly density slums with poor environmental conditions. Africa has been experiencing the world’s most rapid rate of urbanisation at nearly 5 per cent per annum. The most severe problems with access to safe drinking water are in high-density slums, where the risk of contamination from unsafe water and poor sanitation is highest.


Africa remains one of the world's regions endowed with abundant water resources that, sadly, are not efficiently utilised. With 17 large rivers and more than 160 lakes, the continent only uses about 4 percent of its total annual renewable water resources for agricultural industry and domestic purposes. Currently, about 50 percent of urban water is wasted, as is 75 percent of irrigation water. An adequate supply of clean water, appropriate sanitation and good hygiene are the most important preconditions for sustaining human life, for maintaining ecological systems that support all life and for achieving sustainable development. The seventh of the eight Millennium Development Goals calls for governments to cut by half the percentage of their population living without safe water and basic sanitation. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region that looks set to miss both of these targets unless a concerted effort is made.


Poor sanitation leads to poor health. More than 700,000 African children die every year from diarrhoea. Diarrhoea can also lead to chronic malnutrition. Millions of children who survive suffer from chronic malnutrition, which is responsible for over half of all child deaths on the continent. Sickness forces children to miss school and can damage their ability to learn. It has been shown that providing schools with basic sanitation, including separate toilets for boys and girls, improves attendance and encourages more girls to enrol. In rural Africa, 19 per cent of women spend more than one hour on each trip to fetch water, an exhausting and often dangerous chore that robs them of the chance to work and learn. Women without toilets are forced to defecate in the open, risking their dignity and personal safety.

Saturday 8 January 2011

Desertification, Agriculture, Indigenous Knowledge and Health

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification

Facebook Update

http://www.facebook.com/pages/United-Nations-Convention-to-Combat-Desertification/147888359084?sk=photos#!/pages/United-Nations-Convention-to-Combat-Desertification/147888359084?v=wall


Education Kit on Combating Desertification

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/ecological-sciences/specific-ecosystems/drylands-desertification/publications-drylands-desertification/learning-to-combat-desertification/


Traditional African medicine is a holistic discipline involving extensive use of indigenous herbalism combined with aspects of African spirituality.

Despite numerous attempts at government interference, this ancient system of healing continues to thrive in Africa and practitioners can be found in many other parts of the world.

http://trytostayhealthy.blogspot.com/2010/12/traditional-african-medicine.html


Herbal Medicine and Its Powerful Healing Properties

Did You Know That Herbal Medicine Is As Old As Time?

In the ancient world there were no medical doctors and when people became unwell they would go to the village elder with the knowledge of the healing effects of various plant leaves, stem, flower and root that grew wild in the local natural environment.

Medicine from herbs is one of oldest forms of healthcare. It has a long and respected history of plants and parts of the plant being used for medicinal purposes based on the observation and testing of indigenous people.
Use of leaves, flowers, stems, berries, and roots of plants to prevent, relieve, treat and cure various medical conditions is known as herbal medicine.

http://healthnew.org/2010/12/herbal-medicine-and-its-powerful-healing-properties/

Sustainable agriculture A pathway out of poverty for East Africa’s rural poor Examples from Kenya and Tanzania

http://www.sustainet.org/download/sustainet_publication_eafrica_part1.pdf

Monday 3 January 2011

Biodiversity, Wildlife, HIV/AIDS, Climate Change, Urban Environment, Environmental Assessment

The Congo Basin

African forests are a key piece of the climate puzzle and they are the livelihood of tens of millions.
The Congo Basin rainforest is the second largest on earth, taking up an area three times the size of France. About half lies within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the rest stretches across Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/forests/africa/

Africa's Future Lies in a Green Energy Grid

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Dec 14, 2010 (IPS) - Development in Africa could falter as climate change grips the continent, increasing the length and severity of droughts and floods by altering precipitation patterns, among other impacts.

The region needs a major shift in its economic development policies and thinking towards decentralised, green economic development, experts now say.

"The world's big economies are largely living off financial transactions which are unconnected to development," warns Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Africa: Key Issues at Cancun

http://www.africafocus.org/docs10/can1012a.php


Adaptation: An Essential Response to Climate Change

Adaptation has been the “ugly duckling” of climate change for decades. In the climate change policy community, no one wanted to talk about adaptation — instead, we wanted to see emissions reduced to the point where no one need worry about impacts like sea level rise or droughts.

http://blog.conservation.org/2010/12/adaptation-essential-response-to-climate-change/

Urbanization and Environmental Sustainability

Now home to half of the world's people, cities are increasingly at the forefront of our most pressing environmental challenges. While the current pace of urbanization is not unique in human history, the sheer magnitude of urban growth--driven by massive demographic shifts in the developing world--is unprecedented, with vast implications for human well-being and the environment. However, where cities pose environmental problems, they also offer solutions. As hotspots of consumption, production, and waste generation, cities possess unparalleled potential to increase the energy efficiency and sustainability of society as a whole

http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/287

Climate change winners and losers in Sahel

Submitted by Camilla Toulmin on Wed, 22/12/2010 - 07:29

Earlier this month, I spent a week in Mali, going back to the villages which I have studied for the past 30 years. While international climate negotiators met in Cancun, Mexico, for the UN summit on climate change, I was keen to catch up on how climate change was affecting livelihoods in the West African Sahel.

This year has brought heavy rain to much of the region and with it, a mixed bag of impacts on yields of the local staple crop, millet. For farmers in the Kala region north of Segou in central Mali, the heavy rainfall has been good for the long-cycle sanyo millet, which takes 6–7 months to mature. But the fast-growing souna millet, which matures in 3–4 months, has performed poorly. This is partly due to impoverishment of soils. “When rain falls heavily you need a lot of power in the soil — that power is supplied by animal dung. That’s what creates the heat that supplies energy to the crop,” says local farmer Ganiba Dembele, showing me the yellow leaves of the souna millet. He and other farmers recognise that their plots need to be replenished with dung each year if they are to produce well, particularly in wetter growing conditions. “We’ve increased the size of our fields so much, we can’t get enough dung from our flocks and herds to keep them well-fertilised. It’s lucky we have sanyo to make up the deficit,” he adds.
http://www.iied.org/sustainable-markets/blog/climate-change-winners-and-losers-sahel

CLIMATE CHANGE: Adaptation Fund starts delivering

Johannesburg, 24 September 2010 (IRIN) - In what is being hailed as a breakthrough for a "collective effort" by developed and developing countries, the Adaptation Fund set up by the UN to help poor countries cope with the unfolding impact of climate change has finally become operational.

Last week, the Fund's board approved two adaptation projects, one in Senegal - threatened by sea-level rise, less rainfall and high temperatures - and the other in Honduras, which faces increasing water shortages.

The two projects worth a total of about US$14 million are not only the first to be approved by the board but also the first to get money directly from the Fund. Developing countries had been lobbying for direct access, and have now been granted control over how to spend the funds.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=90571

Indigenous peoples key to timber trade policy

ITTO's Civil Society Advisory Group (l to r): Chen Hin Keong, Global Forest Trade Programme Leader, TRAFFIC; Cecile Ndjebet, Coordinator, Cameroon Ecology and President of REFACOF – African Women’s Network for Community Forest Management; Emmanuel Ze Meka, Executive Director, ITTO; Christine Wulandari, FKKM – Indonesian Community Forestry Communications Forum; Augusta Molnar, Rights and Resources Institute; Francis Colee, Green Advocates, LiberiaYokohama, Japan, 18th December 2010—The views of indigenous peoples and community-based organizations are an essential element of forestry and climate change debates, and their opinions are vital in shaping policies and decisions in the forestry sector, a key timber meeting in Japan this week was told.
http://www.traffic.org/home/2010/12/18/indigenous-peoples-key-to-timber-trade-policy.html
Assessing Utilization of Low-input Agriculture Technologies (liats) in Malawi: Adoption and Challenges for the Malawian Subsistence Farmer
http://www.tropical-gardener.com/articles/assessing-utilization-of-low-input-agriculture-technologies-liats-in-malawi-adoption-and-challenges-for-the-malawian-subsistence-farmer/

Environmental Assessments for Sierra Leone Help Sustainable Development

Freetown, 20 December 2010 The vital role of environmental assessments in supporting the sustainable use of Sierra Leone's rich natural heritage has won high level support at a seminar entitled 'Environmental Assessment: A Tool for Sustainable Development', which took place last week in the country's capital of Freetown

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=653&ArticleID=6871&l=en


Kenya: HIV-Positive Woman On Food Aid Now Selling Food To WFP

Anne Rono is a small farmer, but after contracting HIV, lost the strength to farm her land. With the help of antiretroviral drugs and nutritious food, she’s not only back on her feet but selling her crops to WFP through an innovative new programme that links small farmers to markets.

http://www.wfp.org/stories/kenya-hiv-positve-woman-food-aid-now-selling-food-wfp

Community-based initiatives more effective against female genital cutting – UN

18 November 2010 – Initiatives to encourage communities in Africa to abandon female genital mutilation or cutting are more effective when used to reinforce the positive aspects of local cultures and build trust by implementing development projects, the findings of a United Nations study released today show.
“Rather than ‘fighting’ against local culture and presenting traditional behaviours as negative, effective programmes propose alternative mechanisms to signal adherence to shared community values and to frame the discussion surrounding FGM in a non-threatening way,” it states.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36793&Cr=women&Cr1=

UN survey shows declining water availability in Africa, highlights solutions
25 November 2010 – The amount of water available per person in Africa is declining and only 26 of the continent's 53 countries are currently on track to reduce by half the number of people without sustainable access to clean drinking water by 2015, according to a survey by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released today.
Furthermore, only five countries in Africa are expected to attain the target of reducing by half the proportion of the population without sustainable access to basic sanitation by 2015, the deadline of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a series of targets agreed to by all countries and leading development institutions to meet the needs of the world's poores

Scientists show waves of deforestation across East Africa

A new study co-authored by a WWF scientist documents waves of forest degradation advancing like ripples in a pond 75 miles across East Africa in just 14 years.

Scientists from 12 organizations in Europe, Africa and the US demonstrated that forest exploitation begins with the removal of the most valuable products first, such as timber for export, followed by the extraction of less valuable products such as low value timber and charcoal in strict sequence. This ‘logging down the profit margin’ in tropical forests follows the same pattern of removal seen for fish in unmanaged oceans.
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/how_we_work/conservation/forests/news/?uNewsID=194429

WWF and Mozambique government join forces to protect marine resources

WWF and Mozambique agreed to work together to boost marine life protection and develop joint mechanisms to better investigate and monitor fisheries of the country with a coastline of nearly 3000 kilometres.

With such a vast coastline, a continental shelf and an Exclusive Economic Zone of about 508.092 km², Mozambique has a great interest in improving marine resource management, a key factor for food security and sustainable development.

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/news/?uNewsID=197671


Madagascar drought forces farmers into charcoal devastation

Toliara, Madagascar - 2 years of drought and late arrival of the rainy season in south western Madagascar have forced hundreds of farmers into charcoal producing which is devastating forests, according to WWF field staff at Tollara.

“Charcoal production in the South of Madagascar is particularly unsustainable as people cut the natural spiny forest, a unique ecosystem which exists nowhere else” says Bernardin Rasolonandrasana, Spiny Forest Eco-regional Leader for WWF in Toliara. “We are horrified to see the amount of charcoal currently coming out of those forests.”

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/how_we_work/conservation/forests/news/?uNewsID=194629

Logistics "acrobat" supports WWF in Goma

David Mapendano is a logistician for WWF in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. He supports the Virunga Environmental Program, or PEVi. He explains what motivated him to seek a career in conservation, and the day-to-day challenges he faces.

It all began at the summit of Nyiragongo. My secondary school had organized a climb up the volcano. At the edge of the crater I gazed at the view in front of me. I was enticed by the beauty of the site and immediately convinced that it should be preserved at all costs. I was 17 years old. I then started a little vegetable garden at home, where I grew carrots, cabbages and other vegetab

http://wwf.panda.org/?uNewsID=195534

Prospects improve for vital world water treaty

Africa needs stronger fisheries management, ministers told

Banjul, Gambia: African countries need to take fisheries management seriously, the first ever continental meeting of fisheries ministers has been told.

The Forum of South West Indian Ocean Civil Societies reminded the inaugural Conference of African Ministers on Fisheries and Aquaculture (CAMFA) that 200 Million Africans were dependent on fisheries for food and livelihood.
http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/news/?uNewsID=195130

UNESCO recognizes threats to Madagascar rainforest

http://wwf.panda.org/?uNewsID=194431


The United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has placed the Atsinanana Rainforest in Madagascar on its list of World Heritage in Danger sites because of an ongoing government-influenced illegal logging crisis and continuing lemur bush meat consumption in some of the national parks that are part of the forest.

UNESCO in a statement noted that despite a decree outlawing the exploitation and export of precious woods, Madagascar continues to provide export permits for illegally logged rosewood and ebony. It also said that other countries that have ratified the World Heritage Convention are known destinations for this timber

WWF welcomes Central African clampdown on smugglers

Yaound̩, Cameroon РAn operation by special police forces earlier this week in Central African Republic (CAR) led to the arrest of an important wildlife smuggler and seizure of elephant tusks and cat skins.

This comes amidst a series of similar successful operations in Cameroon, Gabon and Republic of Congo. WWF applauds these efforts as they give a clear warning to wildlife traffickers in the region.

The RALF (French acronym for Strengthening of the Wildlife Law Enforcement) project aims to increase wildlife law enforcement activities and judiciary follow-up of wildlife crimes in the CAR, targeting mainly high-level wildlife traffickers. It works closely with the Ministry of Forests and Wildlife, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Interior.

http://wwf.panda.org/?uNewsID=197635


Traditional Knowledge Protection for African Cultures

Nine of the seventeen nations that form the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) signed a protocol on the protection of Traditional knowledge and folklore. The protocol is meant to protect creations derived from traditional knowledge of ARIPO member states. The protocol contains sections on assignments, licenses, and the recognition of knowledge holders. There are also provisions for compulsory licenses when there is a superceding state need. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) praised the protocol in an August 31 statement calling it “an historic step for ARIPO’s seventeen member states, and a milestone in the evolution of intellectual property.”

http://www.ipbrief.net/2010/09/23/traditional-knowledge-protection-for-african-cultures/

Mapping Ecosystems, the Better to Conserve Them

Environmentalists have a special affinity for maps. Whether terrestrial or marine, the environment and its ills are tied to a geography that can be expressed in a rectilinear scale.
As science progresses, so do the maps. Witness the latest effort from the state of Massachusetts.
To ensure that largely private efforts to set aside land do the most public good, the state Department of Fish and Game has just unveiled the latest and most elaborate version of its online BioMap, complete with instructions on how to use it.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/mapping-ecosystems-the-better-to-conserve-them/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Saving critical wilderness areas in Rwanda's forests

The forests of the Congo Basin are still exceptionally intact. But with this unique ecosystem threatened by political unrest in the region, a series of projects aims to ensure they stay that way.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6179577,00.html

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