THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS
Monday, 26 March 2007
UNEP and the Executive Director in the News

Five years to save the orang utan (The Guardian)

Africa Renewable Sources the Key to Energy Crisis? (Inter Press Service)

Mombasa Environmental Initiative (IAAF)

State of emergency for Orang Utan (Brunei Times)

UNEP boss says water is enough for everyone (Africa Science News Service)
Other Environment News

Australian city aims for world first climate change blackout (Agance France Presse)

Mild winter encourages birds to abandon gardens for country life (Independent Online)

Amazon 'faces more deadly droughts' (BBC)

Biofuel demand makes food expensive (BBC)

Pill stops cow burps and helps save the planet (The Guardian)

Australian State's Farm Land "100 Pct in Drought" (Reuters)

Global Warming May be bad for Asthma Sufferers (Reuters)

Biomass energy the best solution to natural oil crisis (Antara News)

The days of the bulb with incandescence are counted (Le Monde)

Riches await as Earth's icy north melts (Associated Press)
 El cambio climático también genera vida (El Pais)
Environmental News from the UNEP Regions
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ROAP
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ROA
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ROLAC
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ROWA
Other UN News

UN Daily News of 23 March 2007
 S.G.’s Spokesman Daily Press Briefing of 23 March 2007
Communications and Public Information, P.O. Box 30552, Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: (254-2) 623292/93, Fax: [254-2] 62 3927/623692, Email:cpiinfo@unep.org, http://www.unep.org

The Guardian: Five years to save the orang utan
Sunday March 25, 2007
A shocking UN report details how the booming palm oil industry is wiping out one of man's closest relatives as its forest habitat disappears. David Smith asks if it's too late to save them
The Orang Utan, one of man's closest and most enigmatic cousins, could be virtually extinct within five years after it was discovered that the animal's rainforest habitat is being destroyed even more rapidly than had been predicted.
A United Nations report has found that illegal logging and fires have been overtaken as the primary cause of deforestation by a huge expansion of oil palm plantations, which are racing to meet soaring demand from Western food manufacturers and the European Union's zeal for biofuels.
Palm oil is seen by critics as a cautionary tale about good intentions. As a vegetable oil it can enhance a healthy diet, and as a biofuel it can reduce carbon emissions which contribute to climate change. Yet it transpires that humans' pursuit of an ethical lifestyle could inadvertently mean a death sentence for one of the great apes.
The paradox was brought to world attention by Friends of the Earth, whose ongoing campaign for producers, manufacturers and retailers to commit to sustainable palm oil was recognised at last week's Observer Food Monthly awards with the honour for best ethical contribution to the industry.
The UN's environment programme report, 'The Last Stand of the Orang Utan: State of
Emergency', says natural rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia are being cleared so rapidly that up to 98 per cent may be destroyed by 2022, and the lowland forest strongholds of orang utans much sooner, unless urgent action is taken. This is a full decade earlier than the previous report estimated when it was published five years ago. Overall the loss of orang utan habitat is happening 30 per cent more rapidly than had previously been thought.
Responding to the findings, the Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation UK, a charity which works to rescue, rehabilitate and release the animals into protected forest, warned that at the current rate of deforestation by the palm oil industry, orang utans in the wild could be close to extinction by 2012.
Sir David Attenborough, the broadcaster and naturalist, told The Observer: 'Every bit of the rainforest that is knocked down is less space for orangs. They have been reduced very seriously in the past decade. Western governments and companies need to be proactive.'
Satellite images reveal that illegal logging is now taking place in 37 out of 41 national parks in
Indonesia and is probably still on the increase. The report says: 'At current rates of intrusions, it is likely that some parks may become severely degraded in as little as three to five years, that is by 2012.'
The UN also highlights the growing threat posed by palm oil harvesting, noting that large areas of Indonesian and Malaysian forest have been cleared to make way for plantations. As consumer awareness about healthy eating and ethical shopping grows, palm oil is an
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increasingly popular alternative to trans fatty acids - more closely associated with heart disease - and is found in one in 10 supermarket products including margarine, baked goods and sweets, as well as detergents and lipsticks.
There has been much soul searching among environmentalists because palm oil is also in demand for biofuels, seen as one of the best ways of reducing dependence on fossil fuels and so combating global warming. Palm oil is currently considered the most productive source of biodiesel fuel, and Indonesia and Malaysia account for 83 per cent of its global production.
Since 2003 the European Union has been among the chief culprits. Its biofuels progress report earlier this year specified Indonesia among the list of countries for cheap biofuel production, prompting Greenpeace to warn: 'Booming EU demand for biofuels could kill Indonesian forests.' Britain imports one million tonnes every year, double what it did in 1995.
But the new UN report warns: 'Today, the rapid increase in [oil palm] plantation acreage is one of the greatest threats to orang utans and the forests on which they depend. In Malaysia and
Indonesia, it is now the primary cause of permanent rainforest loss. The huge demand for this versatile product makes it very difficult to curb the spread of plantations.'
Displaced from their rainforest habitat, the orang utans struggle to survive in the oil palm plantations and are regarded as an agricultural pest. Mindful of the potential loss in profits, farmers have carried out a vicious extermination programme.
Michelle Desilets, director of the Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation UK, said: 'They are left hungry so they go in search of food in the plantations and destroy the plants. They become easy targets. Some plantation owners put a bounty of $10 or $20 on the head of orangutans, which is worth a few weeks' salary for the workers.
'Workers don't usually have guns: the orang utans that get shot are the lucky ones. We've seen them beaten to death with wood sticks or iron bars, doused in petrol and set on fire, trussed up in nets or tied up with wire which cuts through their flesh. Often a mother is killed and eaten while its baby is sold on or kept as a pet. In the local plantations where we're working, the managers have now agreed not to offer the bonus. But there's still a macho thing about bringing down an adult male.'
The foundation's struggle to save the animals will be shown in the series Orang Utan Diary starting on BBC2 on 2 April. Desilets said that the palm oil industry was now a severe threat to orang utans' very existence. 'The plantations are huge, the size of a county in England: you can drive for two hours and you're still in one. In the UK, when a product says "vegetable oil" it might mean palm oil, so you're not aware that you might be party to this killing. We put the functional survival of orang utans in the wild at no more than five years. There will always be some remote pockets but the population will be too small to reproduce and in one or two generations it will die out. When the last orang utan dies I will give up all hope in humanity.
But for the time being we still have hope.'
Campaigners will move up a gear this week. Hardi Baktiantoro, director of Indonesia's Centre for Orang Utan Protection, has flown to Britain to work with the group Nature Alert to push for greater accountability. He said: 'With my own hands I have rescued countless baby orang utans orphaned by palm oil companies. With my eyes I have witnessed these same companies extinguish all natural life where pristine rainforests once stood. The situation is so desperate in
Indonesia that I have come to Great Britain to ask for help with introducing Orang Utan
Friendly palm oil into food and other household products.'
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After a year of hard campaigning, including demonstrations outside stores, Friends of the Earth persuaded Tesco and other supermarkets to work with producers and manufacturers on a scheme for certifying sustainable palm oil which should include labelling products so consumers can be sure they are not buying from a source which harms orang utans.
Supermarkets said they were trying to tackle the issue although they have been criticised for moving too slowly. A spokesman for Tesco said: 'We are deeply concerned about the loss of rainforest - and the orang utans it supports - and believe that we can make a real contribution to work on this important area. It is a complex problem.'
Sean Sutcliffe, chief executive of the Biofuels Corporation, the biggest biofuels company in the
UK, said: 'The existing deforestation is driven by demand from food and cosmetics. Palm oil should be part of the solution: the key is to make sure that standards are put in place.'
_____________________________________________________________________________
Inter Press Service: Africa Renewable Sources the Key to Energy Crisis?
March 24, 2007
Stephanie Nieuwoudt
Nairobi
Biofuel and other renewable energy sources may hold the key to Africa's energy crisis. Without intervention, this crisis is set to grow. Southern African cities such as Lusaka in Zambia, Harare in Zimbabwe, Gaborone in Botswana and Dar-Es-Salaam in Tanzania will be affected.
"The continent is rich in renewable resources which can benefit the majority of people within a few years," Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), said in an address at the ministerial meeting of the Tokyo International
Conference on African Development (TICAD) which ended in Nairobi yesterday (March 23).
TICAD was initiated by Japan in 1993 to address threats posed to the environment. Since then the United Nations (UN), the Global Coalition for Africa, the UN Development Programme and the World Bank have joined the initiative.
Steiner warned that the continent is in danger of being locked into a development path that will always place it behind the rest of the world. African countries should look at their own resources for their developmental needs and strategies.
Steiner added that if the global powers were serious about meeting the UN's Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) it was necessary to re-think expensive energy proposals.
Although he had praise for the New Partnership for Africa's Development, a continental economic restructuring plan, he pointed out that some of its energy proposals will only benefit the poorest people in the next 20 to 30 years.
To harness hydro-electricity, as NEPAD proposes, means dams have to be built which could lead to the displacement of communities and which often have negative environmental effects.
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More than 80 percent of Africa's population are without electricity. This means that human development suffers as schools, hospitals, businesses and computer networks all rely on electricity.
According to a new report by the World Bank, "Global Economic Prospects - Managing the
Next Wave of Globalization 2007", the world population is expected to rise from 6.5 billion to 8 billion by 2030. This translates into an annual growth rate of 60 million people.
More than 97 percent of this growth will take place in developing countries. The mathematics is simple: more people will demand more fuel resources. Moreover, the energy needs of the urban resident are greater than that of the rural resident.
Back in 1999, a report by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat), titled "Energy-Environment Linkages in African Cities", made it clear that while most of Africa was essentially rural, the rate of urbanisation was alarming.
A number of cities already dominated their respective national economies by 1999. Apart from the ones in Southern Africa, others were Lagos in Nigeria, Cairo in Egypt, Nairobi in Kenya and Kampala in Uganda.
2007 is the year in which the majority of people in the world will for the first time in human history be living in urban areas, Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of UN Habitat, told the conference.
Tibaijuka said that 75 percent of energy is consumed in cities and towns, which demands investment in urban energy generation and delivery. "No country has ever reduced poverty without investing substantially in energy. Energy is central to all human development goals.
You cannot have water provision or education or health without energy."
In Africa, due to the lack of electricity, millions of people are dependant on natural vegetation in their continuous search for firewood to cook. Forests are destroyed in the process, which has a negative effect on the environment as eco-systems are wiped out.
The destruction of natural vegetation could lead to desertification when there are no water catchment systems to feed rivers and streams. And when there is no water, the population in such an area suffers in many ways. They cannot plant crops and their animals die.
The question is whether African countries are up to the task of developing their own resources.
The Nobel laureate and Kenya's assistant minister of environmental affairs, Wangari Maathai said that "Africa is not poor. But the people of Africa are poor.
"They do not have the skills to use the resources they have in abundance. There can be no development in Africa if the continent does not use its resources effectively."
As an example of a cheap and effective way to store water, Steiner cited the harvesting of rainwater in Kenya. For between 100 and 150 US dollars, a household of eight people can in a short time be assured of a constant source of water.
He challenged African countries to be brave and set their own agenda in establishing a framework for individual countries to invest in their futureùinstead of relying on developed nations to point the way to development.
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IAAF: Mombasa Environmental Initiative
Saturday 24 March 2007
Mombasa, Kenya - A tree planting ceremony was held on 23 March 2007, on the occasion of the 35th IAAF World Cross Country Championships, Mombasa, Kenya (24 March).
A total of 650 trees were planted around the course where the championships will be staged today.
Athletes from participating countries were involved in watering the planted trees and leaving labels with their names under each tree.
The President Lamine Diack and Vice-Presidents of IAAF, together with Kenyan officials planted each a tree at the venue.
The Environmental Project was funded by the IAAF and Green Africa Foundation, and the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was involved in the formulation and implementation of mitigation measures that will be adopted to abate the increase of CO2 emissions before, during and after the event.
President Diack said “I sincerely hope that the city of Mombasa will do its utmost to preserve this environmental legacy for future generations.”
________________________________________________________________________
Brunei Times: State of emergency for Orang Utan
26-Mar-07
David Smith, LONDON
THE endangered orang utan could be virtually extinct within five years after it was discovered that the animal's rainforest habitat is being destroyed even more rapidly than had been predicted.
A United Nations report has found that illegal logging and fires have been overtaken as the primary cause of deforestation by a huge expansion of oil palm plantations, which are racing to meet soaring demand from Western food manufacturers and the European Union's zeal for biofuels.
Palm oil is seen by critics as a cautionary tale about good intentions. As a vegetable oil it can enhance a healthy diet, and as a biofuel it can reduce carbon emissions which contribute to climate change. Yet it transpires that humans' pursuit of an ethical lifestyle could inadvertently mean a death sentence for one of the great apes.
The paradox was brought to world attention by Friends of the Earth, who have an ongoing campaign for producers, manufacturers and retailers to commit to sustainable palm oil.
The UN's environment programme report, "The Last Stand of the Orang Utan: State of
Emergency", says natural rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia are being cleared so rapidly that up to 98 per cent may be destroyed by 2022, and the lowland forest strongholds of orang utans much sooner, unless urgent action is taken. This is a full decade earlier than the previous report
6

estimated when it was published five years ago. Overall the loss of orang utan habitat is happening 30 per cent more rapidly than had previously been thought.
Responding to the findings, the Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation UK, a charity which works to rescue, rehabilitate and release the animals into protected forest, warned that at the current rate of deforestation by the palm oil industry, orang utans in the wild could be close to extinction by 2012.
Sir David Attenborough, the broadcaster and naturalist, said: "Every bit of the rainforest that is knocked down is less space for orang utans. They have been reduced very seriously in the past decade. Western governments and companies need to be proactive."
Satellite images reveal that illegal logging is now taking place in 37 out of 41 national parks in
Indonesia and is probably still on the increase. The report says: "At current rates of intrusions, it is likely that some parks may become severely degraded in as little as three to five years, that is by 2012."
The UN also highlights the growing threat posed by palm oil harvesting, noting that large areas of Indonesian and Malaysian forest have been cleared to make way for plantations. As consumer awareness about healthy eating and ethical shopping grows, palm oil is an increasingly popular alternative to trans fatty acids more closely associated with heart disease and is found in one in 10 supermarket products including margarine, baked goods and sweets, as well as detergents and lipsticks.
There has been much soul searching among environmentalists because palm oil is also in demand for biofuels, seen as one of the best ways of reducing dependence on fossil fuels and so combating global warming. Palm oil is currently considered the most productive source of biodiesel fuel, and Indonesia and Malaysia account for 83 per cent of its global production.
Since 2003 the European Union has been among the chief culprits. Its biofuels progress report earlier this year specified Indonesia among the list of countries for cheap biofuel production, prompting Greenpeace to warn: "Booming EU demand for biofuels could kill Indonesian forests." Britain imports one million tonnes every year, double what it did in 1995.
But the new UN report warns: "Today, the rapid increase in [oil palm] plantation acreage is one of the greatest threats to orang utans and the forests on which they depend. In Malaysia and
Indonesia, it is now the primary cause of permanent rainforest loss. The huge demand for this versatile product makes it very difficult to curb the spread of plantations."
Displaced from their rainforest habitat, the orang utans struggle to survive in the oil palm plantations and are regarded as an agricultural pest. Mindful of the potential loss in profits, farmers have carried out a vicious extermination programme.
Michelle Desilets, director of the Borneo Orang Utan Survival Foundation UK, said: "They are left hungry so they go in search of food in the plantations and destroy the plants. They become easy targets. Some plantation owners put a bounty of US$10 or US$20 on the head of orang utans, which is worth a few weeks' salary for the workers.
"Workers don't usually have guns: the orang utans that get shot are the lucky ones. We've seen them beaten to death with wood sticks or iron bars, doused in petrol and set on fire, trussed up in nets or tied up with wire which cuts through their flesh. Often a mother is killed and eaten while its baby is sold on or kept as a pet. In the local plantations where we're working, the
7

managers have now agreed not to offer the bonus. But there's still a macho thing about bringing down an adult male."
Desilets said that the palm oil industry was now a severe threat to orang utans' very existence.
"The plantations are huge, the size of a county in England: You can drive for two hours and you're still in one. In the UK, when a product says 'vegetable oil' it might mean palm oil, so you're not aware that you might be party to this killing. We put the functional survival of orang utans in the wild at no more than five years. There will always be some remote pockets but the population will be too small to reproduce and in one or two generations it will die out. When the last orang utan dies I will give up all hope in humanity. But for the time being we still have hope."
Campaigners will move up a gear this week. Hardi Baktiantoro, director of Indonesia's Centre for Orang Utan Protection, has flown to Britain to work with the group Nature Alert to push for greater accountability. He said: "With my own hands I have rescued countless baby orang utans orphaned by palm oil companies. With my eyes I have witnessed these same companies extinguish all natural life where pristine rainforests once stood. The situation is so desperate in
Indonesia that I have come to Great Britain to ask for help with introducing Orang Utan
Friendly palm oil into food and other household products."
After a year of hard campaigning, including demonstrations outside stores, Friends of the Earth persuaded Tesco and other supermarkets in the UK to work with producers and manufacturers on a scheme for certifying sustainable palm oil which should include labelling products so consumers can be sure they are not buying from a source which harms orang utans.
Supermarkets said they were trying to tackle the issue although they have been criticised for moving too slowly. A spokesman for Tesco said: "We are deeply concerned about the loss of rainforest and the orang utans it supports and believe that we can make a real contribution to work on this important area. It is a complex problem."
________________________________________________________________________
ChemWeek's Business Daily: Denmark to Host Post-Kyoto Summit
The government of Denmark will host a United Nations environmental summit meeting in
December, 2009, and says it aims to secure an agreement at the meeting for a climate change treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. The government says it hopes that the U.S., which rejected the Kyoto agreement, as well as China and India, will add their signatures to the treaty.
The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
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A f f r i i c a S c i i e n c e N e w s s S e r v i i c e : : U N E P b o s s s s s a y s s w a t t e r i i s s e n o u g h f f o r e v e r y o n e
Date: 23 Mar 2007
The Executive Director of the UN environmental Programme, Dr Achim Steiner said yesterday that although there is enough freshwater on the planet for six billion people, it is however shared unevenly and that too much of it is wasted, polluted and unsustainably managed.
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He said that the reality of climate change compels the world to pay even greater attention to water scarcity given the predicted variability and more extreme weather events likely over the coming years and decades.
Steiner said “the text book planning of a dam on the basis of a one in 100 flow is becoming a hydrological lottery of receding certainty”. Adding that glaciers, water stores and water sources for millions of people alongside wildlife and economically productive ecosystems, are melting three times faster than in the 1980s and could disappear in the decades to come.
Fortunately, World Water Day 2007, he said, comes in a year of unprecedented momentum on climate change both scientifically and politically. Let us hope that the tide of political opinion is genuinely changing in favour of a meaningful, fair and equitable emissions-reduction regime for when the Kyoto Protocol treaty expires in five short-years time. Even without climate change,
Steiner said addressing water scarcity remains an issue in need of resolution.
Environmental degradation, from deforestation to the draining of wetlands is aggravating scarcity as are inefficient forms of irrigation, over-exploitation of underground aquifers and pollution to rivers, lakes and streams. The UNEP’s last Governing Council adopted a new water policy and strategy for the organization. The GC said that solutions do not always need to be large-scale or require deep, fathomless pockets, rather, the GC said there is, mathematically, enough rain falling on Africa to more than supply 13 billion people. It is a similar story across large parts of the globe including Asia and Latin America. Reducing water scarcity by, for example, rainwater harvesting has multiple benefits. A Maasai community in Kenya is now storing over half a million litres. It is not only a buffer against drought. Small kitchen gardens and wood lots have also sprouted contributing to food, energy security, overcoming poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
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Agance France Presse: Australian city aims for world first climate change blackout
Sun Mar 25, 2007
Other Environment News
By Lawrence Bartlett
SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia's largest city will be plunged into darkness for an hour on Saturday in an attempt at a world first blackout to raise awareness of global warming, organisers say.
A successful switch-off could then be copied by major cities around the world in a drive to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change, according to international conservation group WWF.
The lights will go out in landmark headquarters buildings in Sydney's central business district, on the iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House, and in tens of thousands of suburban homes.
"Earth Hour", which begins at 7:30 pm (0930 GMT) on March 31, has been planned for 10 months by WWF in partnership with city authorities, businesses and a major newspaper group.
"We've been astounded at the level of support we have got," WWF Australia communications director Andy Ridley told AFP.
A thousand businesses have signed up, including many of the top blue-chip companies on the
Australian stock market -- and even McDonald's is going to turn off its "Golden Arches" signs, he said.
"The first commitment is lights off for an hour, and then as we go forward we're looking to try and set ourselves a target of reducing emissions by five percent over the next year."
Scientists link dangerous global temperature increases to the greenhouse effect, in which gases emitted by burning fossil fuels to produce energy trap heat in the atmosphere.
Last month Paris conducted a similar campaign, dimming lights for five minutes in the French capital and turning off the lights of the Eiffel Tower.
Twenty-seven thousand Sydney households have also registered their support online, though many times that number are expected to participate in the blackout.
The only lights deliberately left on will be those connected with public safety, such as streetlights.
Top restaurants have signed up and will serve diners by candlelight, with some offering meals using local produce rather than ingredients flown or shipped in from abroad.
"We're not asking people to go and live in a cave and eat cold beans; that can't be the way we approach the problem of global warming," Ridley said, dismissing some early criticism that business would suffer.
"The idea of this is there are simple things that are putting emissions up into the air and we can do simple things to start cutting back on them, but that doesn't mean you close your restaurant."
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As for those at home who are faced with an hour of darkness on a Saturday night, "we hope people will be catching up with their neighbours and having barbecues.
"It's really about moving away from the despair that global warming seems to produce and starting thinking of what can we do about it."
Ridley said that if successful, the Sydney blackout would be a world first.
"I think people have tried it before, but nobody has successfully done it and I don't think anyone has tried it it on the scale we are trying.
"If it's as successful as we hope, we hope to take it around the world and do this in every major city we can get to join us."
Australia, already the driest inhabited continent on earth, is expected to be particularly hard hit by global warming and has already claimed a world first in fighting climate change.
The government announced last month that traditional incandescent light bulbs would be phased out by 2010 in favour of the more fuel-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.
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Independent Online: Mild winter encourages birds to abandon gardens for country life
26 March 2007
By Michael McCarthy,
The recent near-record warm winter has been pretty good for birds - so good, in fact, that many of them have deserted our gardens.
This year's Big Garden Birdwatch run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has shown smaller numbers of several songbirds in gardens, most notably those whose winter numbers are usually swelled by seasonal migrants from the continent.
Milder winter temperatures across Europe, the RSPB believes, and bumper fruit crops in hedgerows and woodlands contributed to more birds feeding in the countryside and fewer visiting UK gardens.
Above-average winter temperatures across Europe have resulted in reduced migration to the
UK, and consequently numbers of song thrushes and blackbirds spotted in gardens have declined by 65 per cent and 25 per cent respectively in a single year. Ruth Davis, the RSPB's head of climate change policy, said: "A snapshot in winter gives only part of the picture, but the varying birds visiting our gardens is one example of the impact climate change is having on the natural world."
Participants in the Big Garden Birdwatch also noted a decrease in the number of resident birds.
Greenfinches have dropped four places down the birdspotters' top 10, from sixth to tenth - a decline of more than a quarter since 2006.
Big Garden Birdwatch, which has been running since 1979, is thought to be the biggest natural history mass-participation exercise in the world. Participants are asked to watch their gardens or
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visit a park for one hour and record all the species of birds they see. Over the last weekend in
January this year, more than 400,000 people counted 6.5 million birds.
House sparrows retained the top spot with an average of 4.42 per garden, although their numbers have fallen by more than half since 1979.
________________________________________________________________________
BBC: Amazon 'faces more deadly droughts'
23 MARCH 2007
By James Painter
Latin America analyst
Two years ago the world was shocked by pictures of hundreds of rotting fish floating in the world's second largest river.
Stranded villagers stared in bewilderment at dried out banks, and helicopters delivered food and water to isolated river communities.
They were the images of the widespread drought in 2005 in the Amazon - an area of lush rainforest in most people's imagination. It was the worst in some areas since records began, and prompted the Brazilian government to declare a state of emergency.
Nearly two years on, the world may have forgotten the drought, but the scientific community has not. Meeting at Oxford University this week, many of the world's leading experts on climate change and Amazonia have been grappling with issues critical to the future climate of the world.
Did global warming cause the drought? How likely is it that such droughts will be repeated in a warming world? And just how much devastation did the drought cause?
There was broad consensus that the 2005 drought was linked not to El Nino - the periodic phenomenon which begins with a warming of waters in the Pacific - as with most previous droughts in the Amazon, but to warming sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic.
Peter Cox, professor in climate change dynamics at the University of Essex in the UK, thinks the same factors which caused the drought are likely to be repeated.
What drives it, he says, is the warming of the North Atlantic Ocean in the Tropics relative to the
South - this causes less rain to fall.
So how often could such droughts happen?
We can't say for sure that any individual drought (...) is caused by global warming - but we can say the probability of such an event will increase as a result of human-induced climate change
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The Hadley Centre climate change model predicts that, under current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the chances of such a drought would rise from 5% now (one every 20 years) to 50% by 2030, and to 90% by 2100.
"We can't say for sure that any individual drought such as the one in 2005 is caused by global warming," says Mr Cox.
"But we can say the probability of such an event will increase as a result of human-induced climate change and could be very common indeed by the end of the century."
The Hadley Centre model is one of several global climate models (GCMs) attempting to predict weather changes in the Amazon.
It is best known for warning of catastrophic losses of forest in the Amazon over a period of decades known as "forest dieback".
Other models show very different patterns of rainfall over the Amazon, but experts at the conference regard the Hadley model as one of the more robust.
"The Hadley Centre model does a credible job," says Carlos Nobre, the Brazilian chair of the
International Geosphere-Biosphere programme.
"What all the GCMs predict is much greater variability in the weather, and the Hadley model captures that well."
Human factor?
There is less uncertainty about the impact and the unusual nature of the 2005 drought.
"Most Amazonian droughts occur in the north-eastern Amazon, but this one started in the west and south-west, and its impact spread as far as the centre and east."
Downstream in the city of Manaus, the Amazon's level dropped three metres lower than average.
Many communities dependent on the river for transport were left stranded as tributaries dried out. For the first time, a very large spread of forest fires was recorded in the south-west region.
New research by Luiz Aragao at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute shows the extent of the fires.
"An area of 2,800 sq km (1081 sq miles) was lost due to an extensive leakage of fires into newly-flammable forest," he says.
That is an area more than 1.5 times the size of Greater London.
Mr Aragao's research shows the fires occurred mainly where there was human activity which could ignite them.
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In other areas affected by the drought where there are few humans, such as south-eastern Peru, there was little evidence of any fires.
High impact
The more alarming predictions for the Amazon say the combination of forest fires, drought, deforestation, changes in land use (such as soya production) and global warming will combine to push the Amazon over a "tipping point" into a cycle of destruction.
However low the probability, changes to the Amazon are likely to be a 'high impact' event on the world's climate.
Scientists at the conference were keen to stress they do not know the risk of this occurring, but talked instead of "corridors of probability".
There is disagreement over these corridors.
"The Hadley Centre model predicts it is very likely indeed that the Amazon will be severely impacted by climate change over the next few decades," says Professor Cox.
"But if you take all the models, then maybe a 10 to 40% probability is more defensible."
But however low the probability, changes to the Amazon are likely to be a "high impact" event on the world's climate.
As one conference speaker pointed out: "You wouldn't get on a plane if you knew there was a
10% chance of it crashing."
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BBC: Biofuel demand makes food expensive
23 march 2007
By Nils Blythe
Business correspondent, BBC News, Chicago
Chicago Board of Trade is an extraordinary place.
People yell orders and give frantic hand signals to seal their bargains.
The traders wear garish jackets, so that someone across the floor will know who he or she is dealing with.
The latest prices of consignments of corn for future delivery are displayed on giant electronic boards along the walls.
And, although the price fluctuates minute by minute, over thelast year wholesale corn prices have roughly doubled.
A fifth for ethanol
The reason for the surging price is increasing demand from refineries that are buying corn - or maize as it is sometimes called - to turn it into ethanol.
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The ethanol is then blended with conventional fuels for use in ordinary cars.
"We are using 20% of our corn for ethanol," says Roy Huckabay, executive vice president of the Linn Group, which advises commodity investors.
"When the energy markets went bananas over the last year, the value of corn as an energy source sky-rocketed."
Lucrative work
The US Government is promoting the use of ethanol with subsidies.
And President George W Bush has set ambitious targets for increasing the use of bio-fuels in future.
Ethanol produces lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fossil fuels.
But many observers think that the big attraction of bio-fuels for the Bush administration is that they will reduce America's dependence on imported oil.
The policy is also making some American farmers very happy.
Sam Martin manages 19,000 acres of land, mainly in Illinois.
He has always used some of the land to grow corn, but is now adding to the area that will be seeded with corn this spring.
"2007 should be a wonderful year," he says with an optimism uncharacteristic of the often hardpressed farming community.
"At the coffee-shop people were talking about doctors quitting and taking up farming."
Cheap food no more
But the impact of soaring corn prices on consumers is likely to be less beneficial.
Corn is used directly by the food industry in things like corn flakes.
It is also widely used for feeding animals like pigs and chickens.
And food companies are warning that high corn prices will feed through to everyone's grocery bills.
In Mexico, there have been street demonstrations about the rising cost of tortillas, which are made from corn.
And rising food costs are unlikely to be the only impact of biofuel refineries buying into the corn market.
In places like Illinois, the price of agricultural land has started to rise.
That will eventually feed into the cost of other agricultural commodities.
Sam Martin puts it succinctly.
"I think that cheap food is history," he says.
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Perverse consequences
This trade-off between greener fuels and higher food prices is one of several difficult issues thrown up by the rapid development of the biofuels industry.
The world has already witnessed the absurdity of virgin rainforests in Asia being torn down to make way for palm oil plantations.
Palm oil, like corn, has become hugely profitable because of demand from biofuel producers.
But the environmental benefits of the biofuels are outweighed by the loss of the rainforests.
Biofuels can make a contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But the processes by which they are produced need to be kept under constant review to make sure that they do not have perverse consequences.
And that includes forcing up the price of essential foods.
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The Guardian: Pill stops cow burps and helps save the planet
Friday March 23, 2007
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Cut down on flying, sell the car and recycle your bottles. But if you really want to tackle global warming, you should stop your cow from burping.
According to scientific estimates, the methane gas produced by cows is responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions. And now, German scientists have invented a pill to cut bovine burping.
The fist-sized plant-based pill, known as a bolus, combined with a special diet and strict feeding times, is meant to reduce the methane produced by cows.
"Our aim is to increase the wellbeing of the cow, to reduce the greenhouse gases produced and to increase agricultural production all at once," said Winfried Drochner, professor of animal nutrition, who has led the ground-breaking project at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart.
"It is an effective way of fighting global warming."
Prof Drochner wants to use the pill to trap some of the energy from the methane, which is naturally produced in the fermentation process when a cow digests grass and is later mostly burped out through their mouths. Until now it has been wasted.
"We could use the energy to boost the cow's metabolism," he said. The idea is that the cows would use the methane to produce glucose instead of passing it as wind. In turn this should help them to produce more milk.
"The fist-sized tablets mean that microbiotic substances can slowly dissolve in the cow's stomach over several months," said Prof Drochner.
Over the past 50 years the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has increased six-fold.
With meat consumption growing, it is set to rise further.
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Reuters: Australian State's Farm Land "100 Pct in Drought"
March 26, 2007
SYDNEY - Australia's lingering drought, one of the worst on record, has produced a first-ever official declaration that all agricultural land in the southeastern state of Victoria is in drought.
Federal Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran said that government drought assistance to farmers and farm-dependent small businesses in the state had increased by "an extraordinary"
83 percent.
Victoria and New South Wales, the adjacent state, have been hardest hit by Australia's worst drought in a century, which began in 2002.
More than 90 percent of New South Wales is still officially in drought.
Australia's weather bureau last month declared an end to the drought-triggering El Nino weather condition, and forecast a return to more normal weather. But dry conditions have continued to decimate summer crops and raise new fears about big winter crops as the wheat planting season approaches.
The government has said that the drought will cut 0.75 percentage points from Australia's GDP in 2006/07. Drought slashed Australia's last winter crop production by around 60 percent, hitting wheat exports hard.
Australia is the second-largest wheat exporter in the world, after the United States, exporting mainly to Asia and the Middle East.
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Reuters: Global Warming May be bad for Asthma Sufferers
March 26, 2007
OSLO - Global warming may be bad for asthma sufferers because of longer plant growing seasons and signs that weeds scattering vast amounts of pollen are conquering new territory, experts say.
But higher temperatures might bring benefits for some sufferers because house mites and viruses that thrive in winter in centrally heated homes will not flourish if people do not need to use their heat systems.
By Spring, pollen has been in the air for months in the northern hemisphere even in countries where snows bring a winter respite from coughing and wheezing for allergics.
In south Sweden, for instance, hazel trees have been flowering since December.
"In the United States the incidence of asthma is up nearly four times since 1980," said Paul
Epstein, Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard
Medical School.
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"No one has really been looking at the aerobiology dimension (such as pollen). But I think it helps account for it," he said. Other triggers range from mites and dust to viruses and food.
And any warming may make things worse, he told Reuters.
A draft UN climate report due for release on April 6 says that plant growing seasons have become longer because of a warming trend blamed on human burning of fossil fuels.
It says that the world's agricultural potential is likely to rise, especially in temperate countries, if temperatures rise by up to 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit). Above that level, farm potential will fall in all regions.
"The pollen season will probably last almost all around the year" even in southern Scandinavia, said Aslog Dahl, of the Botaniska Analysgruppen at Sweden's Gothenburg University. Hazel trees have flowered three times before New Year in the region in modern times, all in the past six years.
BEECH, BIRCH
Long-term effects on human health could be mixed.
Big pollen producers such as American ragweed were getting a foothold in southern
Scandinavia. But tree species such as beech, which do not flower every year, were growing better and might push annually flowering birch forests north.
Epstein ran a study showing that ragweed, for instance, produced 60 percent more pollen if grown with double the normal concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. At the same time, the stalks grew just 10 percent more.
"Warming is touted as good for agriculture, but weeds may be reacting disproportionately fast," he said. "This is an issue with great importance for human health and agricultural yields."
But Britain's GlaxoSmithKline PLc, one of the world's top drugmakers, said there were fewer than usual visits to US doctors by patients seeking its Advair asthma drug in the winter. The drug is marketed as Seretide in Europe.
"It was a mild winter and there were fewer physician visits for asthma as a result," said
Gwenam White of Glaxo. She said asthma was often triggered by viral infections caused by house dust mites.
Story by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
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ANTARA News: Biomass energy the best solution to natural oil crisis
03/26/07
Semarang, Central Java, The use of biomass energy was the best solution to overcoming the current oil/gas crisis hitting Indonesia and the world.
Prof Dr. Ir, Bambang Pramudo, professor of the Diponegoro state universty`s technical school, said here on Sunday the people could not always depend on oil and gas as these resources would be depleted sooner or later, so that alternatives must be sought.
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The sustainable use of biomass might be the best alternative, he said.
Indonesia is member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). But at the same time Indonesia is also an oil importing country, as its oil production cannot meet its need in full.
"Indonesia`s oil production now reaches one million barrels per day, while its consumption stands at 1.3 million barrels, leaving a deficit of 300,000 barrels per day which should be imported," Bambang said.
He further said that Indonesia`s oil reserves accounted for 0.5 percent of the world`s, and its gas only 1.7 percent.
"It is estimated that in the next 18 years, Indonesia`s oil reserves would be depleted, while gas reserves in the next 50 years," he said.
According to him, more saddening is that while Indonesia`s gas reserves stood at 1.7 percent of the world`s, the country is number one natural gas exporter with a volume of 25 million tons per year.
"The gas reserve will be depleted soon, as we continue exploiting it for domestic needs and exports," he said.
Considering that the country`s natural oil and gas reserves are depleting, Indonesia has to make use of its flora as an energy produced from oil/gas into biomass.
Indonesia is the biggest agrarian country capable of supplying basic material for biomass by raising plants or from the wastes of agriculture, plantations and annimal farms.
Biomass energy is also environmentally friendly and technically the use of biomass energy could be combined with coal.
"A strong commitment of the people, industry, research institutions and the government is badly needed for a smooth concersion of biomass into energy," Bambang said. (*)
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Le Monde: Les jours de l'ampoule à incandescence sont comptés
24.03.07
Haro sur les bonnes vieilles ampoules à incandescence qui chauffent plus qu'elles n'éclairent !
Première mondiale, le gouvernement australien a annoncé, le 20 février, son intention de les interdire d'ici à 2010 pour réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre. On estime que seulement
5 % de l'énergie consommée par les ampoules à bulbe avec filament est transformée en lumière.
Selon le ministre australien de l'environnement, cette interdiction contribuera à faire diminuer les émissions de gaz à effet de serre de 800 000 tonnes par an d'ici à 2012, et divisera le coût de l'éclairage par trois pour chaque foyer.
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L'exemple australien fait des émules. La Californie, sous l'impulsion de son médiatique gouverneur républicain Arnold Schwarzenegger et du député démocrate Lloyd Levine, veut se doter d'une loi qui interdira la vente des mêmes ampoules d'ici à 2012. Ce projet s'inscrit dans l'objectif de l'Etat de réduire d'un quart ses émissions de CO
2
d'ici à 2020. "Si tous les
Californiens remplaçaient leurs ampoules incandescentes par des fluo-compactes, cela
équivaudrait - en quantité de dioxyde de carbone émis - à fermer une ou deux centrales
électriques ou à retirer 400 000 voitures des routes" , a estimé Arthur Rosenfeld, membre de la commission de l'énergie californienne et professeur de physique à l'université de Berkeley.
Au Canada, les provinces d'Ontario et de Colombie-Britannique songent à un projet similaire.
Au Royaume-Uni, le ministre des finances, Gordon Brown, qui devrait bientôt succéder à Tony
Blair, a aussi annoncé dans son discours du 13 mars une interdiction progressive des ampoules trop gourmandes. L'Europe, poussée par le Royaume-Uni et surtout l'Allemagne, envisage cette solution, mais avec une application très progressive : une décision concernant les foyers privés pourrait être prise en 2009.
Les ampoules à bulbe avec filament peuvent être remplacées par des lampes dites à décharge ou fluo-compactes, trois à cinq fois moins gourmandes en énergie et six à huit fois plus durables (6
000 à 8 000 heures). Leur lumière est, pour l'instant, plus bleue et moins flatteuse, mais cela devrait s'arranger, selon les industriels. Quant à leur prix, de 5 à 6 euros au lieu de 50 centimes, en moyenne, il est rentabilisé dès la première année grâce aux économies d'énergie.
Les fabricants se préparent activement à cette nouvelle donne. Devançant l'appel, Theo van
Deursen, le PDG de Philips Lighting, leader mondial de l'éclairage, a appelé, le 7 décembre
2006, lors du forum européen de l'énergie, à arrêter la production des lampes à incandescence.
Isabelle Rey-Lefebvre
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Associated Press Writer: Riches await as Earth's icy north melts
Sun Mar 25 2007
By DOUG MELLGREN
HAMMERFEST, Norway –
Barren and uninhabited, Hans Island is very hard to find on a map. Yet these days the Frisbeeshaped rock in the Arctic is much in demand — so much so that Canada and Denmark have both staked their claim to it with flags and warships. The reason: an international race for oil, fish, diamonds and shipping routes, accelerated by the impact of global warming on Earth's frozen north.
The latest report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the ice cap is warming faster than the rest of the planet and ice is receding, partly due to greenhouse gases. It's a catastrophic scenario for the Arctic ecosystem, for polar bears and other wildlife, and for Inuit populations whose ancient cultures depend on frozen waters.
But some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez
Canal did in the 19th century.
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The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic has as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. Moscow reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the
Arctic sector approaching $2 trillion.
All this has pushed governments and businesses into a scramble for sovereignty over these suddenly priceless seas.
Regardless of climate change, oil and gas exploration in the Arctic is moving full speed ahead.
State-controlled Norwegian oil company Statoil ASA plans to start tapping gas from its offshore
Snoehvit field in December, the first in the Barents Sea. It uses advanced equipment on the ocean floor, remote-controlled from the Norwegian oil boom town of Hammerfest through a 90mile undersea cable.
Alan Murray, an analyst with the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, said most petroleum companies are now focusing research and exploration on the far north. Russia is developing the vast Shkotman natural gas field off its Arctic coast, and Norwegians hope their advanced technology will find a place there.
"Oil will bring a big geopolitical focus. It is a driving force in the Arctic," said Arvid Jensen, a consultant in Hammerfest who advises companies that hope to hitch their economic wagons to the northern rush.
It could open the North Pole region to easy navigation for five months a year, according to the latest Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, an intergovernmental group. That could cut sailing time from Germany to Alaska by 60 percent, going through Russia's Arctic instead of the
Panama Canal.
Or the Northwest Passage could open through the channels of Canada's Arctic islands and shorten the voyage from Europe to the Far East. And that's where Hans Island, at the entrance to the Northwest Passage, starts to matter.
The half-square-mile rock, just one-seventh the size of New York's Central Park, is wedged between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Danish-ruled Greenland, and for more than 20 years has been a subject of unusually bitter exchanges between the two NATO allies.
In 1984, Denmark's minister for Greenland affairs, Tom Hoeyem, caused a stir when he flew in on a chartered helicopter, raised a Danish flag on the island, buried a bottle of brandy at the base of the flagpole and left a note saying: "Welcome to the Danish island."
The dispute erupted again two years ago when Canadian Defense Minister Bill Graham set foot on the rock while Canadian troops hoisted the Maple Leaf flag.
Denmark sent a letter of protest to Ottawa, while Canadians and Danes took out competing
Google ads, each proclaiming sovereignty over the rock 680 miles south of the North Pole.
Some Canadians even called for a boycott of Danish pastries.
Although both countries have repeatedly sent warships to the island to make their presence felt, there's no risk of a shooting war — both sides are resolved to settle the problem peacefully. But the prospect of a warmer planet opening up the icy waters has helped push the issue up the agenda.
21

"We all realize that because of global warming it will suddenly be an area that will become more accessible," said Peter Taksoe-Jensen, head of the Danish Foreign Ministry's legal department.
Shortcuts through Arctic waters are no longer the stuff of science fiction.
In August 2005, the Akademik Fyodorov of Russia was the first ship to reach the North Pole without icebreaker help. The Norwegian shipyard Aker Yards is building innovative vessels that sail forward in clear waters, and then turn around to plow with their sterns through heavier ice.
Global warming is also bringing an unexpected bonus to American transportation company
OmniTrax Inc., which a decade ago bought the small underutilized Northwest Passage port of
Churchill, Manitoba, for a token fee of 10 Canadian dollars (about $8).
The company, which is private, won't say how much money it is making in Churchill, but it was estimated to have moved more than 500,000 tons of grain through the port in 2007.
Managing director Michael Ogborn said climate change was not something the company thought about in 1997.
"But over the last 10 years we saw a lengthening of the season, which appears to be related to global warming," Ogborn said. "We see the trend continuing."
Just a few years ago, reports said it would take 100 years for the ice to melt, but recent studies say it could happen in 10-15 years, and the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark and
Norway have been rushing to stake their claims in the Arctic.
Norway and Russia have issues in the Barents Sea; the U.S. and Russia in Beaufort Sea; the
U.S. and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage; and even Alaska and Canada's Yukon province over their offshore boundary.
Canada, Russia and Denmark are seeking to claim waters all the way up to the North Pole, saying the seabed is part of their continental shelf under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Norway wants to extend its claims on the same basis, although not all the way to the pole.
Canada says the Northwest Passage is its territory, a claim the United States hotly disputes, insisting the waters are neutral. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to put military icebreakers in the frigid waters "to assert our sovereignty and take action to protect our territorial integrity."
Politics aside, there are environmental concerns. Apart from the risk of oil spills, more vessels could carry alien organisms into the Northwest Passage, posing a risk to indigenous life forms.
The Arctic melt has also been intensifying competition over dwindling fishing stocks.
Fish stocks essential to some regions appear to be moving to colder waters, and thus into another country's fishing grounds. Russian and Norwegian fishermen already report catching salmon much farther north than is normal.
"It is potentially very dramatic for fish stocks. They could move toward the North Pole, which would make sovereignty very unclear," said Dag Vongraven, an environmental expert at the
Norwegian Polar Institute.
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Russia contests Norway's claims to fish-rich waters around the Arctic Svalbard Islands, and has even sent warships there to underscore its discontent with the Norwegian Coast Guard boarding
Russian trawlers there.
"Even though they say it is about fish, it is really about oil," said Jensen, the consultant in
Hammerfest.
In 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the sovereignty issue "a serious, competitive battle" that "will unfold more and more fiercely."
With all the squabbling over ownership, Tristan Pearce, a research associate at the University of
Guelph's Global Environmental Change Group in Canada, reminded Arctic nations of who got there first: indigenous peoples like the Inuits and the Sami.
"Everybody is talking about the potential for minerals, diamonds, oil and gas, but we mustn't forget that people live there, all the way across the Arctic," he said. "They've always been there and they have a major role to play."
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El Pais : El cambio climático también genera vida
"Son los efectos positivos del cambio climático. La naturaleza utiliza los cambios para volver a generar vida". De esta forma explica Josep-Maria Gili, miembro del proyecto CLIMANT -que estudia las consecuencias del calentamiento global en la Antártida-, qué es lo que está ocurriendo en los fondos marinos del continente helado. Gili y el oceanógrafo Enrique Isla presentaron el pasado miércoles en la sala de prensa del Centro Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas (CSIC) de Madrid las primeras conclusiones de su trabajo. Ambos forman parte del grupo de 40 científicos de 12 países que, a bordo del rompehielos alemán Polarstern , recorrieron durante 10 semanas la costa oriental de la península Antártica. Ahora tienen por delante casi dos años de investigación en el laboratorio para analizar y estudiar las muestras obtenidas durante su viaje.
Imagen de la zona explorada por los científicos, vista desde el rompehielos alemán 'Polarstern'-
CSIC
La expedición surge a raíz del colapso de dos grandes masas de hielo (las plataformas Larsen A, en 1995, y Larsen B, en 2002), que ha creado un espacio antes inexistente de más de 5.000 kilómetros cuadrados y que ha permitido acceder a fondos marinos escondidos bajo una gran capa de hielo durante al menos 1.000 años.
El proyecto, el primero español enmarcado dentro del Año Polar Internacional (IPY, en sus siglas en inglés), tiene como objetivo estudiar lo que los científicos denominan acoplamiento bento-pelágico, es decir, la relación entre el ambiente en el fondo del mar (bentos) y las condiciones existentes en la columna de agua justo bajo la capa de hielo y próxima a la superficie (pelagos).
Isla, responsable del proyecto en España, explica que lo encontrado "induce a pensar que las condiciones ambientales son parecidas" en ambas zonas, a pesar del aparente contraste entre una y otra, observable por ejemplo en relación a la temperatura: los fondos marinos, según los investigadores, son sumamente estables -"hace unos 35 millones de años que no ha variado la temperatura cerca del fondo del mar [uno o dos grados bajo cero]"-, mientras que la superficie es "especialmente sensible a cambios en la atmósfera".
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"Mucha más vida"
Pero al margen de esa misión principal, los investigadores han descubierto que, tras el desprendimiento de los bloques de hielo, los fondos marinos están ya casi recuperados. Lo que esperaban que llevase cientos de años, se va a completar, según sus predicciones, en pocas décadas. "Nos hemos encontrado con especies colonizando los fondos antárticos de una forma sorprendentemente rápida. Hay mucha más vida de la que esperábamos en tan sólo cuatro años
[en 2002 fue cuando cayó el segundo bloque de hielo, el Larsen B]". Se trata de especies colonizadoras, y no invasoras, según afirma Gili, ya que en ese lugar antes de su llegada no había ninguna otra. Los expertos precisan, no obstante, que en cualquier campaña se encuentra al menos una veintena de nuevas especies.
"Estamos ante un experimento natural sobre el efecto del cambio global en los ecosistemas antárticos totalmente inesperado, cuyos resultados podrán ayudar a replantear algunos de los paradigmas sobre el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas polares", explica Isla. Los científicos han observado, además del sorprendente hallazgo, las esperadas grandes extensiones de lecho marino sobre el que el desplazamiento de los icebergs ha dejado un suelo sin evidencia de vida visible.
La aceleración en los procesos de cambio del ecosistema antártico justificaría, en opinión de los expertos, acudir a la zona una vez cada año. Pero las dificultades para que esto ocurra son muy grandes, especialmente las de tipo económico. Sólo en las diez semanas que estuvieron allí, el combustible utilizado, explica Isla, supone un gasto de unos 6 millones de dólares (4,5 millones de euros). Por eso, y a pesar de que tenían previsto volver a finales del próximo año, el equipo ha pospuesto su nueva misión hasta finales de 2009, "coincidiendo con el verano antártico", dice Isla.
En cualquier caso, hasta entonces no les faltará trabajo. Isla espera que las muestras obtenidas ayuden "en el análisis de cómo el cambio climático está presionando ecosistemas especialmente sensibles, así como en el estudio de cómo las plataformas continentales antárticas han cambiado a través de los pulsos glaciares".
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24

ROAP MEDIA UPDATE
THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS
Monday, 26 March, 2007
UN or UNEP in the news

Fashion victims - The Australian

UN marks World Water Day with calls for integrated management of vital resource -
Associated Press of Pakistan
General Environment News

Strong earthquake hits Japan coast - Taipei Times

Pollution levels soar in North - The Nation

Sydney to go dark for the environment on Saturday - Taipei Times

One marine biologist having a whale of a time Bangkok Post
UN or UNEP in the news
T h e A u s t t r r a l l i i a n S y d n e y , , A u s s t t r r a l l i i a : : F a s s h i i o n v i i c t t i i m s s
Do fickle international style trends harm or help wildlife? Natasha
Bita reports from Milan, March 24, 2007
CHINCHILLAS are cute little critters, prized as pets but once hunted to the edge of extinction for their precious pelts. Italian luxury label Loro Piana seems to have a soft spot for the fluffy rodents, which hail from the Andes but are widely bred in captivity. Rather than slaughter them for their fur, Loro Piana combs them. Each brushing provides 10g to 15g of hair, which is blended with cashmere to create E4800 ($8000) overcoats.
The company's owner, Pier Luigi Loro Piana, obviously learned from the mistakes of his father, whose processing of the golden-fleeced vicunas - relatives of llamas - in the 1950s made them an endangered species. Only 6000 survived in the Andean wild by 1960 and the UN banned all trade of thefleece.
"The animals were killed to shear them because it was too difficult to farm them," Loro Piana says.
"But in the '80s we suggested to the Peruvian authorities to start up a program where we could breed vicunas and shear them, as you shear sheep or cashmere."
The Peruvian government fenced off the vicunas' mountain habitat and the natural population swelled to 180,000 by 1994. Local farmers are allowed to round up the wild animals every few years for shearing, selling the superfine fleece to Loro Piana to craft into $23,000 suits and
$3300 scarves.
"Now a vicuna alive is worth more than one dead," Loro Piana boasts. "Now it is like a goldmine."
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Loro Piana is not the only big-name brand to cotton on to the trend for eco-friendly fashion.
After lobbying by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, influential designer Miuccia
Prada recently declared fur to be boring and produced a winter collection of faux furs created from hi-tech blends of wool and cashmere.
Giorgio Armani is another convert after PETA protesters showed him a video of animals being slaughtered for their pelts. Using the logic that "if you eat it, you can wear it", the Italian designer now prefers "ecological fur": rabbit processed to resemble chinchilla or mink. Instead of reptile pelts, he uses "mock croc" of stamped cow leather. Paul McCartney's designer daughter Stella has long refused to work with fur or even leather for her label, owned by the
Gucci Group. British fashion retailers Topshop and Marks & Spencer banned fur from their stores last year.
"Designers are starting to listen to their clientele," PETA anti-fur campaigner Anita Singh says.
"At the end of the day, the person who purchases a piece of fur trim on a coat is paying the fur industry to beat and bludgeon and strangle these animals."
Yet even as top designers shed fur, fashion is taking a toll on other, less charismatic, animals: reptiles, frogs, birds and coral. About 10 million reptile skins are traded worldwide each year, crafted into high-priced belts, bags and boots.
Australia set its kangaroo-cull quota last year at 3.8 million animals, shot for their meat and leather. The skins are exported to make supple leather for football boots or shaved to make lustrous designer garments.
Top Italian leather producer Italhide is offering designers a menagerie of skins, including zebra, springbok, elephant, hippopotamus and a range of snakes, fish, frogs and lizards. Exotic hides pop up regularly on European catwalks, from Salvatore Ferragamo's gazelle-skin handbags and shark-skin boots to Roberto Cavalli's gilded python gowns and Gianfranco Ferre's bleached toad-skin jackets.
The UN's secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Fauna and Flora (CITES), based in Switzerland, wants the fashion industry to do more to safeguard the source of its supplies.
"The fashion industry benefits from the wildlife but probably doesn't invest enough in the conservation of the species," CITES legal officer Juan Carlos Vasquez tells Inquirer.
"They're the ones making money from it. These guys don't know how many crocodiles there are in the Amazon or Indonesia. They don't care. They just want a certain volume of skins every month. We need to change their behaviour. If the fashion industry says crocodile jackets are a trend, that will have an impact on the crocodile population as well."
Even elephant ivory could soon find its way back into fashion. After an 18-year ban (apart from a one-off sale of 50 tonnes in 1989), African nations are pushing for permission to export it once more. CITES members will meet in The Hague in June to decide whether to let Botswana,
Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania resume hunting elephants, on the condition that the proceeds from ivory sales are ploughed back into elephant conservation.
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The US wants CITES to overturn a trade ban on lynx, a rare wildcat valued for its fur. At the same time, it wants to restrict trade in pink and red coral, popular in jewellery. Over-fishing, the
US argues, has depleted global harvests from 300 tonnes a year in the '70s to just 10 tonnes today.
Uganda wants to hunt endangered leopards and export 50 a year as trophies and skins. Brazil is seeking approval to start selling up to one million wild-caught black caiman - listed by CITES as an endangered species - by claiming that the Amazon hosts 16 million of the crocodilians.
In the meantime, Australia has watered down what were the world's strictest regulations over the import of wildlife products. For years, cult fashion labels Gucci and Fendi have been unable to import most lizard skin, snakeskin and even some crocodile products to Australia. Until last month, wildlife products could be imported if they carried certificates proving they had been bred in captivity. Wild-caught specimens could be brought into Australia only if the Department of the Environment and Water Resources was satisfied their hunting would not harm the species' survival in the wild.
Under legislative changes on February 19, the federal Government scrapped the requirement for its department to give a green light to foreign hunting schemes. Instead, it will permit the import of wildlife products approved by CITES, regardless of whether they are captive-bred or wildcaught.
"Australia had stricter measures, just to double-check," a department spokesman says. "But it's well-recognised it was reasonably difficult to communicate with some of the governments in the developing countries and we will rely more on the CITES secretariat to monitor the global trade."
The director of the UN Environment Program's World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Jon
Hutton, describes Australia's tough environmental regulations - which impose 10-year prison terms for wildlife smuggling - as weird. "It is much talked about that Australia is schizophrenic on this issue," he tells Inquirer from Cambridge in England. "Your farmers slaughter hundreds of thousands of birds, but you can go to jail if you export one of them. If your farmers could make money from cockatoos, they might value them more."
Hutton says the UN monitoring centre is unaware of "any major conservation issues" caused by trade in reptile leather.
"There's a big move towards the more reputable fashion houses having a sustainable, certified product, so they can put their hand on their heart and say, 'This is not causing a problem,"' he says.
The wildlife trade watchdog TRAFFIC International estimates one million crocodile skins are sold each year, 72 per cent of the animals being captive-bred and 22 per cent "ranched" using eggs or hatchlings taken from the wild. Only 6 per cent are hunted. Before CITES came into force in 1975 to regulate wildlife trade, virtually all crocodiles killed for their leather - up to two million a year - were caught in the wild.
Surprisingly, TRAFFIC is concerned that the industry relies so heavily on farmed crocodiles that it is neglecting their natural habitat. "It is unwise to turn its back on the wild supply," it noted in a report last year.
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A leading consultant to CITES on the crocodile trade, Australian environmental scientist
Grahame Webb, director of the Darwin-based Wildlife Management International, says wild hunting or ranching of reptiles can improve conservation.
"Crocodiles eat people, so people don't like them," Webb says. "The only way to change that is to make them as valuable as you can. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out that if you've got a tiny patch of swamp with some crocs and you're making $5000 or $10,000 out of it, that's big bucks. So you look after the swamp and you don't let anyone kill the crocs.
Otherwise you'd just shoot them at night when no one's the wiser."
Conservation aside, cruelty is another issue that concerns consumers. How harmful is that
$10,000 python-pelt handbag? British reptile biologist Clifford Warwick, who consults for animal-rights groups, has watched reptiles skinned alive on Asian snake farms.
"They're all pretty brutally killed," he says. "Some are drowned, others decapitated, others gutted. When you take the snake's head off, you don't kill it outright. It typically takes an hour to die. Farmers don't care about the pain of the animals. All they want to do is make a fast buck for a garment or a belt." It's enough to make your skin crawl. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21434422-28737,00.htmlb
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A s s s o c i i a t t e d P r r e s s s s o f f P a k i i s t t a n
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P a k i i s s t t a n : : U N m a r r k s s W o r r l l d W a t t e r r D a y w i i t t h c a l l l l s s f f o r r i i n t t e g r a t t e d m a n a g e m e n t t o f f v i i t a l l r r e s o u r r c e
Written by pub, Saturday, 24 March 2007
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 23 (APP) ' With some 700 million around the world currently suffering from water scarcity, integrated cross-border management of this vital resource is
"crucial", U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday in a message marking World
Water Day.
"The state of the world’s waters remains fragile, and the need for an integrated and sustainable approach to water resource management is as pressing as ever.
Available supplies are under great duress as a result of high population growth, unsustainable consumption patterns, poor management practices, pollution, inadequate investment in infrastructure and low efficiency in water-use," he noted.
"Yet even more water will be needed in the future: to grow food, to provide clean drinking water and sanitation services, to operate industries and to support expanding cities. The watersupply-demand gap is likely to grow wider still, threatening economic and social development and environmental sustainability."
He stressed that international cooperation will be crucial since many of the world’s rivers and aquifers are shared among countries. “The way forward is clear: strengthening institutional capacity and governance at all levels, promoting more technology transfer, mobilizing more financial resources, and scaling up good practices and lessons learned,” he said.
Of the hundreds of millions of people currently facing water shortages an estimated 425 million are children under 18, and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann M.
Veneman kicked off the Walk for Water Event in New York City to mark the Day.
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"In many parts of the world women and children walk long distances to fetch water for their families for drinking, washing and cooking," she said. “Access to clean drinking water is critical for the health of children around the world.”
Many top restaurants in the city are asking diners to pay $1 for tap water they normally get for free, with the funds going to UNICEF’s drinking water projects around the world.
UN World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan noted that over 1.6 million people die every year because they lack access to safe water and sanitation, 90 per cent of them among children under five, mostly in developing countries.
"For every child that dies, countless others suffer from poor health, diminished productivity, and missed opportunities for education. Much of this illness and death could be prevented using knowledge that has existed for many years," she said.
Diseases such as cholera, typhoid, malaria and dengue could rise due to climate change, which makes availability of freshwater less predictable because of more frequent flooding and droughts, she warned.
UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner also stressed the dangers of climate change. “If we want to avoid ‘Water Scarcity’ as the permanent theme for the 21st century, a big par t of the solution is cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 60 to 80 per cent,” he said, referring to humankind’s role in heating up the planet.
UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Director-General Jacques Diouf pointed to the agricultural sector’s role as the number 1 user of water worldwide and its consequent duty to take the lead in addressing rising global demand and its potential drain on the earth’s natural resources.
"With the right incentives and investments to mitigate risks for individual farmers, improving water control in agriculture holds considerable potential to increase food production and reduce poverty, while ensuring the maintaining of ecosystem services,” he said.
"The potential exists to provide an adequate and sustainable supply of quality water for all, today and in the future. But there is no room for complacency. It is our common responsibility to take the challenge of today's global water crisis and address it in all of its aspects and dimensions."
UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General Koïchiro
Matsuura stressed the threat to peace and poverty eradication posed by the growing scarcity and competition for water. “It is imperative to secure a more effective and equitable allocation of this vital resource,” he said in a message. http://www.app.com.pk/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6575&Itemid=2
G e n e r a l E n v i i r o n m e n t t N e w s s
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T a i i p e i i T i i m e s s : : S t t r r o n g e a r r t t h q u a k e h i i t t s s J a p a n c o a s s t t
AP, TOKYO, Monday, Mar 26, 2007, Page 1
A powerful earthquake struck Japan yesterday, killing at least one person and injuring 162 as it damaged buildings and triggered a small tsunami along the coast, officials said.
The magnitude 6.9 quake struck at 9.42am off the north coast of Ishikawa prefecture, Japan's
Meteorological Agency said. The agency issued a tsunami warning urging people near the sea to move to higher land.
A small tsunami measuring 10cm hit the shore 36 minutes later, the agency said. The warning was lifted after about an hour.
Lower intensity temblors continued to strike the region throughout the afternoon. A strong temblor with a preliminary magnitude of 5.3 struck at 6.14pm, but there was no tsunami danger, the agency said. Public broadcaster NHK said the quake appeared to be an aftershock.
The morning quake toppled buildings, triggered landslides, cut power, interfered with phone service, broke water mains and snarled public transportation. The casualties were suffered along the country's Sea of Japan coast, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency
(FDMA).
Fear of aftershocks and more landslides caused by the loosening of soil waterlogged by overnight rains continued to plague the quake zone.
Television footage of the quake showed buildings shaking violently for about 30 seconds. Other shots showed collapsed buildings and shops with shattered windows, streets cluttered with roof tiles and roads with cracked pavement.
At least 146 people were injured in Ishikawa, 11 seriously, the FDMA said.
Another 16 people were injured in neighboring prefectures, three seriously, it said.
Many of the injured were knocked down by the shaking or hurt by falling objects and broken glass, media reports said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki confirmed the death of a 52-year-old woman. NHK said she was crushed by a falling stone lantern.
"We are doing our best to rescue the victims," he said. "We are also doing our best to assess the extent of the damage."
Kyodo News agency reported about 30 soldiers had arrived to help with disaster relief, and military aircraft were examining the damage. Some 375 firefighters from seven other prefectures were also dispatched to help, the FDMA said.
"We felt violent shaking. My colleagues say the insides of their houses are a mess, with everything smashed on the floor," Wataru Matsumoto, deputy mayor of the town of Anamizu near the epicenter, told NHK.
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The quake also knocked down at least 45 homes in Ishikawa, and partially destroyed another
227, the FDMA said. Most of the injuries and damage were concentrated in the city of Wajima, it added.
Takeshi Hachimine, seismology and tsunami section chief at the Meteorological Agency, said the affected area was not considered earthquake-prone. The last major quake to cause casualties there was in 1933, when three people died. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2007/03/26/2003353883
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HAZE CRISIS
T h e N a t t i i o n : : P o l l l l u t t i i o n l l e v e l l s s s s o a r i i n N o r t t h
MAE HONG SON - Fine dust particles hit danger level again as efforts to create rain are thwarted; Burma blamed for fires
The smoke haze crisis in this North province worsened yesterday with dangerous-pollution levels jumping a third in 24 hours.
Readings of fine-dust particles jumped sharply between Saturday and yesterday to reach a dangerous 246 micrograms per cubic metre (mpcm) from an already serious 166 mpcm. Finedust particles are those smaller than 10 micrograms. The acceptable level is 120 mpcm.
Artificial-rainmaking efforts have been foiled because conditions necessary for cloud seeding were unavailable in Thai airspace. Rain helps dampen the airborne dust.
"Satellite images show forest fires raging over a large stretch of Burma and they are less than 10 kilometres from our province," Mae Hong Son Disaster Prevention and Mitigation chief Khom
Jittariyapong said yesterday.
He added winds were blowing haze from fires into Mae Hong Son. "Without rain, the crisis will persist," he said.
Earlier this month, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai suffered from smoke haze, too. But, rain and artificial rainmaking eased problems there.
Khom reported Mae Hong Son Governor Direk Konkleeb had encouraged communities to build dykes. "Dykes can raise humidity," Khom said.
Mae Hong Son remains a disaster zone.
The governor will ask the Cabinet to revoke a 1999 resolution allowing people to occupy degraded forest.
"Residents have occupied degraded forest and lit fires to burn off weeds and forest scrap. We have asked them to help prevent forest fires, but they have lit them themselves. We are considering stern action," Direk said.
Since February, 574 forest fires were reported in Mae Hong Son.
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Deputy Prime Minister and Social Development and Human Security Minister Paiboon
Wattanasiritham, who chairs a committee looking into the problem, said the smoke crisis has been continuously worsening, with Mae Hong Son affected the most.
Paiboon said the level of fine-dust particles had jumped from 89 mpcm to 174 mpcm in Chiang
Rai and from 115 mpcm to 171 mpcm in Chiang Mai due to two forest fires, one in Burma and another in Thailand that was started by farmers over the past weekend.
"Our committee has to revise its measures for uncontrollable problems, like forest fires in a neighbouring country," he said.
He said Mae Hong Son residents have been building 809 dams to raise the humidity level. http://nationmultimedia.com/2007/03/26/national/national_30030197.php
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T a i i p e i i T i i m e s s : : S y d n e y t t o g o d a r r k f f o r t t h e e n v i i r r o n m e n t t o n S a t t u r r d a y
AP, SYDNEY, Monday, Mar 26, 2007, Page 5
EARTH HOUR: This is the latest of several environmental initiatives being embraced by
Australia, a major coal user and one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases
Thousands of residents and hundreds of businesses and officials in Australia's biggest city have pledged to switch off the lights and darken Sydney for an hour this week to show concern over global warming.
Organizers hope the event will be a dramatic start to a campaign encouraging Australians to conserve energy by turning off lights and other electrical equipment -- steps they say could cut
Sydney's greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent a year.
If all goes according to plan, the iconic Sydney Opera House and harbor bridge, along with dozens of skyscrapers and thousands of homes across the city, will go dark at 7:30pm on
Saturday. Essential lights like aircraft beacons will remain on.
"Earth Hour is an awareness program," wrote Philip McLean, the group executive editor of coorganizer Fairfax Media, in a special section of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that invited people to join in. "It aims to educate the community about the simple measures that can be taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions."
The City of Sydney council, New South Wales State government, and businesses have signed on to the event, part-organized by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). A week ahead of time, more than 30,000 people had registered on a Web site to take part.
Every weekday, thousands of workers pour out of Sydney's skyscrapers for home, leaving millions of lights and computer screens blazing in empty offices, generating millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year, the WWF says.
If businesses turned off lights, computers, photocopiers and unused appliances, Sydney could cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent over the next 12 months, said Andy Ridley,
WWF's communications director in Australia.
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Earth Hour is the latest of several environmental initiatives being embraced by Australia, a major consumer of carbon-emitting coal and one of the world's largest per capita producers of greenhouse gas.
Ridley said Earth Hour was about getting people to think more about how they could change their energy consumption.
"It isn't about moving into a cave and eating beans from a can. We can live a great life [and] make these small changes that will start us on a journey to cutting our emissions," he said. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2007/03/26/2003353916
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B a n g k o k P o s s t t : : O n e m a r r i i n e b i i o l l o g i i s t t h a v i i n g a w h a l l e o f f a t t i i m e
Thailand was Brad Norman's first stop when he set off to set up a global project to help save the world's largest fish, the whale shark
An enormous, spotted whale shark (Rhincodon typus) glides through the clear water at
Richelieu Rock in the Andaman Sea, providing a rare treat for scuba divers snapping their underwater cameras. Now, thanks to Brad Norman's whale shark project, photos like these can help with efforts towards the conservation of the whale shark.
Norman, a marine biologist and conservationist from Perth, Western Australia, recently visited
Thailand, which was the starting point of a 20 country tour promoting the project. He embarked on the tour after being awarded a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2006 for his research into the mysterious shark.
The whale shark, which is still relatively scientifically unknown, is found in the warm waters around the equator. As part of the project, an online database has been created that enables images captured by snorkellers and scuba divers to identify individual sharks by their spot patterns, which are unique to each shark. This enables Norman's team to track migrations and assess the health of the whale shark population. Part of the reason for Norman's visit to Thailand was to raise awareness of how local stakeholders, including dive operators, scientists and local villagers, can participate in a project designed to both help conserve the whale shark and boost local economies by promoting ecotourism.
Norman has been in discussion with the Phuket Marine Biological Centre, WildAid, as well as local dive operators and ecotourism resort managers on how best to promote his cause in
Thailand.
Norman said he was excited about the response in Thailand. ''It was absolutely fantastic. The current interest in Thailand is really positive and this is only the initial stage.''
In addition to this encouragement, people from around the world have begun to submit photos to the database, which may be found at www.whaleshark.org/.
''We've already had 2,500 submissions from people in 36 different countries,'' Norman said.
Anyone can add to the online whale shark database by submitting photos of the patch of skin behind the whale shark's gills. A computer program adapted from software designed to map stars in the night sky is used to compare whale shark images. This program was adapted by
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software engineer Jason Holmberg and astrophysicist Zaven Arzoumanian, in collaboration with Norman.
''It's a great synergy between a marine biologist, a mathematician and an astrophysicist, coming together to build something that can be of great value to conservationists and provide a methodology for monitoring wildlife,'' said Norman.
He says this non-evasive tagging is even adaptable to other species that also have unique markings.
The program can match images with a 92 per cent confidence rate, only occasionally producing false matches, often due to unusual camera angles or from objects such as fish obscuring the shark's spots. Norman said divers who submit photos can also stay involved with the project by getting automatic email updates if their shark is spotted again.
Since a marine biologist can't be everywhere at once, Norman is encouraging local tourism operators and interested individuals to take a greater role in the project. With a little training, he said, anyone can complete the two minute task of manipulating the photograph and searching the database to find out, for example, how many whale sharks were found in Thailand in the past week or the average length of whale sharks sighted in Thai waters.
''People can have ownership of sharks in their own area,'' he said. ''It's a community monitoring project that enables us as scientists and conservationists to have thousands of pairs of eyes, thousands of research assistants worldwide to participate in our programme.''
One company already involved in the project is the ecotourism operator Golden Buddha Beach
Resort. Being the closest land base to the famous Richelieu Rock, where whale sharks have been sighted, the resort will act as an information hub for Thailand. Its staff have been trained by Norman and will help manipulate images sent in from all over Thailand for the database and will be encouraging its guests and other dive operators to get involved in the project.
''We hope to attract guests that are keen on diving but that would also like to contribute something to a worthy cause,'' said Richard Rhodes, one of the resort's owners said.
Norman and Rhodes have approached the local fishing village on Golden Buddha Island, where the community leader of Tha PaeYoi village, Yodsapol Saedaeng, was excited to help and said he would inform the resort when fishermen sight whale sharks.
The growth in whale shark tourism has potential to benefit local villagers, with many already employed at the resort and keen to provide their wealth of local knowledge to interested visitors.
A booming whale shark ecotourism industry at Ningaloo Reef in Australia now adds around
A$10 million (257 million baht) a year to the local economy, and provides 7,000 tourists each year the opportunity to swim with whale sharks. Norman is encouraging other countries to also embrace ecotourism as an alternative to hunting. ''A whale shark is worth a lot more alive than dead,'' said Norman.
Ecotourism, if managed properly, is both an economic and ecologically sustainable alternative to hunting, he said.
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At Ningaloo Reef, Norman said one particular shark has been returning for the last 12 years, indicating the fish are not overly stressed by divers.
While the whale shark is protected in Thai waters it is still hunted in other countries. However,
Norman said there have been some positive changes. Fishermen in the Philippines stopped hunting whale sharks in 1998 and have embraced whale shark ecotourism. India stopped hunting whale shark in 2001, and Norman hopes that Taiwan will stop in the very near future.
Norman and other scientists have also worked hard to have the whale shark internationally recognised as a threatened species. The whale shark is now listed as vulnerable to extinction on the World Conservation Union's ''Red List'' of threatened species and international trade in whale shark meat and fins is now strictly regulated as a result of the species being listed in 2002 in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) Appendix II. Although
Norman has seen thousands of whale sharks through his work, he said he is still thrilled every time he spots one. ''It's a rare and wonderful experience. It's absolutely out of this world ... what's so special is seeing something in its own natural environment.''
While Norman disagrees with keeping whale sharks in captivity, due to their high mortality rate when taken from the wild, he does believe aquariums have a role to play in educating the public about whale shark conservation.
Phuket Aquarium, in cooperation with the WWF, has displayed a fibreglass whale shark and provides detailed information about the shark.
Dr Somchai Bussarawit, head of the reference collection and Phuket Aquarium at the Phuket
Marine Biological Centre, said he hopes this initiative will raise public awareness about the vulnerable shark and will ensure that divers know they can help with its conservation through
Norman's project.
Norman's guidelines for interacting with whale sharks ensure there is minimal impact when divers are lucky enough to encounter a whale shark. One of them is a strict ''no touching'' rule.
''It's such a slow-moving gentle giant that people often grab onto a fin. Although it may not appear to be doing damage to the animal, the whale sharks will get sick of it after a while and they won't come back,'' he explained.
Some of the guidelines that Norman has helped create include keeping a three metre distance from the sharks, not having too many people in the water at the same time, not impeding their paths and keeping boats at a safe distance.
''I think that's really the way ecotourism should be _ leaving no footprints. See something in its natural environment but don't impact upon it,'' Norman said.
With plans to travel to other locations around the world including the Seychelles, the Maldives, the Galapagos Islands, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia, to name just a few, he said he can only hope that these other countries have the same response to the project that Thailand has had, and play their part in ensuring the future survival of the mysterious whale shark.
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Robert Brewster assisted in the writing of this story. For information about the Golden Buddha
Beach Resort's whale shark project, visit www.goldenbuddharesort.com/, or the Ecocean whale shark database at www.whaleshark.org/. http://www.bangkokpost.com/Outlook/26Mar2007_out57.php
REGIONAL OFFICE FOR AFRICA - NEWS UPDATE
26 March 2007
General Environment News
Africa: Renewable Sources the Key to Energy Crisis?
Inter Press Service (Johannesburg): Biofuel and other renewable energy sources may hold the key to Africa's energy crisis. Without intervention, this crisis is set to grow. Southern African cities such as Lusaka in Zambia, Harare in Zimbabwe, Gaborone in Botswana and Dar-Es-
Salaam in Tanzania will be affected. "The continent is rich in renewable resources which can benefit the majority of people within a few years," Achim Steiner, the executive director of the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said in an address at the ministerial meeting of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) which ended in
Nairobi yesterday (March 23). http://allafrica.com/stories/200703250013.html
Kenya: Maathai Raises Sh6.7 Billion for Congo Basin
] The East African Standard (Nairobi): Nobel laureate Prof Wangari Maathai has helped raise
$50 million (Sh6.7 billion) to protect the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem. British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, announced this in his Budget speech read to the House of
Commons on Wednesday. Maathai also thanked the UK for backing the project. In a statement, she said: "The Congo rainforests in Central Africa plays an important role in absorbing carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas." Maathai and former Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Paul
Martin, will advise on the Fund's management. The initiative will protect the Congo Basin, which spans ten countries in central Africa whose Heads of State appointed Maathai as the
Goodwill Ambassador in 2005. http://allafrica.com/stories/200703231176.html
East Africa: Locust Infestations in Horn of Africa Prompt New Alert From UN Agency
UN News Service (New York): Eritrea, Sudan and northern Somalia are strongly advised to carefully monitor "a developing and potentially dangerous situation" arising from secondgeneration locust infestations that are now developing, according to the latest United Nations update on of the crop-devouring insects. "There have been several new developments in the past few days in three key areas," UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said, noting that the second-generation infestations from an outbreak in Eritrea in December are now concentrating in a 60 kilometres by 60 kilometres area on the Red Sea coast straddling the Sudanese-Eritrean border. http://allafrica.com/stories/200703230995.html
Rwanda: Nyanza Water Project to Cost Frw1.2 Billion
The New Times (Kigali): A gravity water project in Agasasa marshlands, Nyanza District is to cost about Frw1.2 billion. This was disclosed by the coordinator of Rural Sector Support Project
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(RSSP), Geraldine Mukeshimana, this week during the official launching of the project. She noted that the project, which is funded by RSSP, will boost water production for both domestic and farm use. Reports indicate that this area is prone to water shortages especially during the dry season. "The gravity water will help rice growers to cultivate their fields twice a year in this swamp of over 150 hectares of rice," Mukeshimana, who was the chief guest at the function remarked. http://allafrica.com/stories/200703240086.html
Uganda: More NFA Managers Resign Over Mabira
The Monitor (Kampala): Several senior and middle level managers at the National Forest
Authority have resigned or refused to renew their contracts, in protest of what they describe as poor governance of the forestry sector. The approval by Cabinet to give away 7,100 hectares of
Mabira forest to Mehta group of Companies for sugarcane growing has sparked protests from environmentalists and civil society.
Sunday Monitor has learnt that the Finance Director of the National Forestry Authority Anatoli
Batamani and the spokesman, Gaster Kiyingi, have resigned in protest against the impending giveaway of Mabira Forest to the Mehta Group. http://allafrica.com/stories/200703250006.html
Malawi: Country to Roll Out 'Fertiliser Trees' Project
SciDev.Net
(London): Malawi will this year implement a 'fertiliser trees' project to reduce the amount of fertiliser needed by smallholder farmers. Fertiliser trees are varieties of shrubs that capture nitrogen from the air and transfer it to the soil, a process known as nitrogen-fixing. This restores nutrients and increases crop productivity -- with potential to double or triple harvests.
The trees can be interplanted with crops for 1-3 years before being cut and left to decompose, providing fuel and more fertiliser. http://allafrica.com/stories/200703230939.html
Namibia: Contingency Plan for Oil Pollution
The Namibian (Windhoek): The Ministry of Works, Transport and Communication has drawn up a National Oil Spill Contingency Plan for Namibia. The plan provides for a safe, timely, effective and coordinated response to any oil spill affecting Namibia's coastal and marine environment. The plan was compiled with the assistance of the International Maritime
Organisation and in collaboration with all stakeholders. Cabinet granted approval to the
Ministry of Works, Transport and Communication and the Office of the Prime Minister to implement the National Oil Spill Contingency Plan at the earliest opportunity. http://allafrica.com/stories/200703230758.html
Namibia: We Want No Chernobyl - Earthlife
The Namibian (Windhoek): Plans by the Russian government to build a series of "small nuclear power plants" in Namibia, as disclosed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov last week while on a blitz visit to Windhoek, has given rise to strong opposition from environmentalists.
The group Earthlife Namibia says it strongly opposes nuclear power generation in Namibia. "It would be far too dangerous and would put coming generations into serious jeopardy," says
Bertchen Kohrs, Chairperson of Earthlife Namibia. http://allafrica.com/stories/200703230739.html
Côte d'Ivoire: Traditional Practices Exact a Steep Toll
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Inter Press Service (Johannesburg): For Dua Kouadio, it is déjà vu of the worst kind: the destruction of yet another harvest by a bush fire run amuck. "This is the second time that this has happened to me. Last year, some people started a fire which destroyed my yams," he tells
IPS, seated in a scorched field that previously housed three hectares of cashew nuts -- his entire, annual harvest of the crop. Many other residents of the eastern Ivorian region of Bondoukou where Kouadio lives have had similar experiences: according to water and forestry officials, this part of the country is more ravaged by bush fires than any other. http://allafrica.com/stories/200703230974.html
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ROWA Media Update
26 March, 2007
Bahrain
Renewable energy a solution to ecology deterioration
In its effort to educate people about ways to reduce environmental stress in the Kingdom, the
University of Bahrain’s College of Engineering, in collaboration with World Renewable Energy
Congress, will hold a short course on Renewable Energy for Electricity, Water and Air
Conditioning on April 22-26, Dean of the College, Dr. Hussain El Madani told the Tribune.
The course will discuss typical energy resources and their environmental damage, environmentally-friendly power generation technologies and their benefits, and the difficulties in implementing them. Given Bahrain’s undersized land area, its dependence on oil and natural gas, the harsh climate and rapid industrial growth, its environment is understandably under great stress and is anticipated to continue in deterioration.
The conventional burning of fossil fuels such as natural gas to generate electricity, for example, leads to high concentrations of harmful greenhouse gasses and pollutants in the air, making pollution a great devastator in Bahrain. Some pollutants have in fact increased in the Kingdom in 2006. According to Environmental Affairs, SO2 has increased from 5 parts per billion (ppb) in 2002 to 7 ppb in 2006 while the Ozone (O3) has increased from 30 ppb to 51 ppb. Increase in pollution could cause breathing problems and cancer in people, harm plants, animals, and their ecosystems, cause acid rain which corrodes buildings, contaminates water resources and, most importantly, increase global warming. To reduce pollution, Environmental Affairs has a
Ministerial Order 10 (1999) that makes companies and industries abide by certain pollution percentages and hold them accountable if such percentages are exceeded. It also has a machine that reads the opacity of cars and makes sure it does not exceed 40 percent.
Using environmentally-friendly recourses and technologies such as renewable energy, however, can be even more helpful in reducing environmental stress because it can produce clean energy that can in turn reduce pollutants and greenhouse gasses such as CO2, says Dr. Shaker Haji, an assistant professors in the Department of Chemical Engineering-Bahrain University. Unlike petroleum, which can be depleted, renewable energy is energy derived from resources that are regenerative and that cannot be depleted such as hydro, solar, wind, and geothermal energies, says Dr. Haji. It can be used in unison with energy produced conventionally to reduce the environmental damage that such production causes, he adds. Given the high availability of solar energy in Bahrain, Dr. Al-Madani extrapolates that 10 percent of the energy demand can be met by renewable energy which would consequently decrease emission of greenhouse gasses and pollutants by ten percent.
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http://www.bahraintribune.com/ArticleDetail.asp
UAE
DHL promotes natural gas fleet
Dubai: DHL is leading the UAE's efforts towards alternative fuel vehicles.
Under the slogan "we travel naturally", DHL has announced its plans to add compressed natural gas powered vans (CNGs) to its UAE express delivery fleet.
With natural gas continuing to develop as an alternative fuel of choice, and a forecast of 20 per cent natural gas share of road traffic fuel consumption in the UAE by 2012, the express and logistics leader is putting two environmentally-friendly units through a pilot testing phase as part of a plan to expand its UAE natural gas fleet in the coming years.
DHL UAE general manager Janet Jweihan said: "We are the first company in the UAE express industry to put these types of vehicles on the road throughout the testing phase as part of the normal delivery fleet.
"It's our intention to make our business as safe on the environment as possible and we are committed to operating in an environmentally sound manner. We will endeavor to ensure natural gas vehicles account for at least 50pc of DHL express delivery fleet in the UAE by 2009 after the testing phase reaches its outlined goals."
DHL UAE was recently upgraded to ISO 14001 accreditation, the internationally recognised standard for Environmental Management Systems (EMS), after continuous extensive improvements.
Developments included advanced staff training to raise environmental awareness, as well as publishing DHL's environmental policy as part of the parent company DPWN's first sustainability report in June 2006, setting clear environmental objectives and targets.
Gasoline and diesel powered vehicles contribute to 80pc of environment pollution in the UAE followed by factories, a recent study conducted by the Strategic Planning Department for
Transport at the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) in Dubai revealed. http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/arc_Articles.asp?Article=174204&Sn=BUSI&IssueID=30005
Oil, gas industry main source of air pollution
By a staff reporter
26 March 2007
ABU DHABI — The oil and gas industry is the main source of air pollution, followed by power and transportation sectors, according to the first State of the Environment report, released by the
Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi this month.
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Sulphur dioxide and particulate matter are causing concerns, the report says, adding that
Sulphur dioxide pollution is mainly a problem in Medinat Zayed, Habshan and Ruwais.
Pollution levels in these areas are either close to or exceed air pollution limits.
Nitrogen dioxide levels have shot up in parts of Abu Dhabi City, Al Ain and Ruwais, according to the report. There is a relatively high, naturally occurring level of particulate matter in the air exceeding the air quality limits in areas like Mafraq, Shahama, Samha, Sas Al Nakhl and Al
Ain, it adds.
Emissions
The global mean temperature is rising because of emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from fossil fuel consumption, it says.
The UAE has one of the highest per capita emission rates in the world, as per the report.
Climate change may affect Abu Dhabi by raising the sea level, more flooding and extreme weather. Destruction of coral reef habitats has also been linked to climate change. Two episodes of coral bleaching took place in 1996 and 1998 in which live coral cover in some reefs declined by more than three-quarters. Recovery is now beginning to take place.
Ozone layer
The ozone layer has been reduced on an average by three per cent since 1980 and an ozone hole is created over Antarctica during spring every year. Due to the Montreal Protocol consumption of ozone depleting substances is decreasing globally and the ozone layer is expected to recover significantly by 2050. The UAE is in the process of phasing out the consumption of ozone depleting substances. Import of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and Halon will be banned in
January 2010.
Furthermore, the report talks about how human beings have undoubtedly been having an impact on natural environments and biodiversity in the Arabian Gulf region for millennia. The earliest known archaeological sites within the Abu Dhabi date from over 7000 years ago.
However, the severity of human impacts has increased enormously within recent years, and particularly during the past half century. This is thanks to the burgeoning human population and the extremely rapid rate of development since the coming of an oil-based economy in the 1960s, the report says.
The great majority of Abu Dhabi’s 1.6 million or so inhabitants live in the coastal zone and it is here that human impacts are most directly felt, it says. However, people are increasingly also affecting the fragile, arid-land environments of the interior.
Fossils
The report also mentions that Abu Dhabi is very rich in archaeological and palaeontological resources. Important fossils date to the Cretaceous period, between 66 and 144 million years ago. The Baynunah formation, in the emirate’s western region, has some of the world’s best exposures of Late Miocene fossils from 6-8 million years ago.
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Various examples of Bronze Age remains can be found. In fact, two Bronze Age chronological subdivisions – the Haft period (3200-2600 BC) and the Umm an-Nar period (2600-2000 BC) – take their names from regions in the emirate.
Research also indicates that the ‘falaj’, an underground water channel system, was indigenous to the region around 3,000 years ago, during the Iron Age.
Currently, about six per cent of the emirate’s total area is green by means of irrigation. This includes agricultural areas, forests, parks, gardens and roadside plantations.
About the marine resources, the report says physical alterations such as land reclamation, dredging and the construction of breakwaters, along with increasing urban sprawl has resulted in the loss, degradation and fragmentation of coastal and marine habitats in Abu Dhabi.
Furthermore, urbanisation, which is being driven by a dramatic increase in the population growth rate, has led to increased pollution loads, particularly in the near shore area where the deterioration in water quality has impaired natural processes and the productivity of coastal ecosystems.
In addition to these, the waste treatment contributes to a number of environmental problems such as emissions of greenhouse gases, heavy metals and other environmentally hazardous chemicals. If not properly handled, landfills will leak and contaminate groundwater, gases evaporate and contribute to global climate change, and toxic fumes will escape and threaten the health of people, says the report. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theuae&xfile=data/theuae/2007/ march/theuae_march822.xml
Focus on saving water
By a staff reporter
26 March 2007
ABU DHABI —Water conservation is one of the top priorities for the UAE and the country has been successful in meeting the ever-growing demand for water, according to Minister of
Environment and Water Dr Mohammed Saeed Al Kindi.
“Ground water reserves can’t meet the increasing demand for water, created by rapid urban development, increase in population and the rising standard of living and agricultural, industrial and tourism developments,” said Al Kindi, addressing the Middle- East Power and Water
Conference 2007, yesterday. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theuae&xfile=data/theuae/2007/ march/theuae_march819.xml
Ajman sewage plant to be ready by next month
By a staff reporter
26 March 2007
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AJMAN — The emirate’s Dh800 million sewerage reticulation and treatment scheme will reach a major construction landmark in April when the waste water treatment plant will be ready to receive influents.
The project is supported by His Highness Shaikh Humaid bin Rashid Al Nuaimi, Member of the
Supreme Council and Ruler of Ajman.
Shortly afterwards, the first batch of properties will be connected to the system according to a precise schedule. Currently, about 40 per cent of the project is completed and more than 100 km of pipeline which is on schedule will be fully operational by the end of next year.
It will then serve 75,000 homes and businesses on 12,500 plots of land, treating 50,000 cubic metres of sewerage to produce irrigation quality water every day.
“As the project advances, residents of Ajman will start feeling the substantial benefits of the new sewerage system. A healthier environment, a more vibrant economy, and a more attractive property investment destination, will all combine to make the emirate a better place for living,” said Shaikh Rashid bin Humaid al Nuaimi, Chairman of Ajman Municipality and Planning
Department and Chairman of Ajman Sewerage Company.
“With total support from the local authorities, all parties involved in the project are working day and night to complete the work on schedule and make the full system operational.”
Further, property owners can engage private contractors which have been officially authorised by the Ajman Municipality and Planning Department under the patronage of the Ajman Ruler to undertake connection work to the pipeline and more will be licensed as the project progresses.
Property owners will be notified when their connections become available. Municipality has enacted regulation to organise connection process. The late connections will incur penalty.
Tenants will pay monthly fees.
“Investing in such massive project underlines the commitment of the Ajman authorities to give residents the best modern facilities and to create an environment that is attractive to investors,” said Olivier Crasson, General Manager of Ajman Sewerage Company.
He added, “This is a world-class development that will bring great benefits to the emirate and its people.” http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theuae&xfile=data/theuae/2007/ march/theuae_march811.xml
10 winners of Dubai best practices award
By a staff reporter
26 March 2007
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DUBAI — The Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living
Environment (DIABP) will be distributed on Wednesday at a ceremony to be held at the
Godolphin Ballroom of Emirates Towers Hotel.
The ceremony, to be held under the patronage of Shaikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum,
Deputy Ruler of Dubai, UAE Minister of Finance and Industry, and Chairman of Dubai
Municipality will see the distribution of awards to 10 winners of the award from Rwanda,
Palestine, India, Colombia, Philippines, Peru, Spain, Burkina Faso, Vietnam and Cameroon in the Best Practices category and two winners from Brazil and New Zealand in the Best Practice
Transfers category.
Eng. Hussain Nasser Lootah, Chairman of the DIABP Board of Trustees and the Acting
Director General of Dubai Municipality said that an independent jury of international experts that met in Palermo, Italy recently had selected the 12 winners from a list of 48 initiatives, short-listed out of 715 submissions.
He said the winners were all deemed to have made outstanding contributions in improving the quality of life in cities and communities. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theuae&xfile=data/theuae/2007/ march/theuae_march812.xml
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UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
DAILY NEWS
23 March, 2007
====================================================================
Security Council to vote tomorrow on Iran’s nuclear programme
23 March - The Security Council is set to vote tomorrow afternoon regarding possible further sanctions against Iran because of its nuclear programme, the president of the 15-member body said today, adding that the Iranian Foreign Minister will attend the discussions in New York.
Ambassador Dumisani S. Kumalo of South Africa, which holds the rotating presidency this month, made his remarks after the Council was briefed by the head of the UN committee monitoring the previous sanctions that were imposed on Tehran in December last year.
“The voting is at 3 p.m. The President of Iran is unable to come but the Foreign Minister will be here, arriving tomorrow around midday I’m told… All members of the Council, including
South Africa, reiterated our desire to have the Security Council act together and send one message. So we are all working towards this goal,” Ambassador Kumalo told reporters.
Iran insists its programme is purely for energy production but other countries maintain it is for making weapons, and three months ago the Council imposed limited sanctions and called on
Tehran to suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.
Earlier this month, the UN atomic watchdog agency suspended 22 technical aid projects in Iran in conformity with the sanctions. The decision by the Board of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) followed a report by Director- General Mohamed El Baradei that Tehran had continued uranium enrichment despite the Council’s call that it suspend such activities.
Security Council President Amb. Dumisani Kumalo
In his report Mr. ElBaradei said that because of the lack of “the necessary level of transparency and cooperation” from Iran, the IAEA could not provide assurances that the Iranian programme was solely for peaceful purposes and stressed that the issue was in a class of its own because of
Tehran’s 20 years of undeclared activities in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
It was the discovery in 2003 of Iran’s hidden activities that gave rise to the current dispute and
Mr. ElBaradei stressed that “the IAEA’s confidence about the nature of Iran’s programme has been shaken because of two decades of undeclared activities.”
Mr. ElBaradei has suggested a “time-out” to allow for talks, with Iran suspending uranium enrichment and the international community suspending sanctions.
Ban Ki-moon speaks out against attempt on Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister’s life
23 March - One day after meeting in Baghdad with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Salam Z. Al-
Zubai, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today spoke out against the attempt on his life, wishing him a speedy recovery and conveying condolences to those killed in the attack.
Mr. Ban was “shocked and dismayed to hear that the Deputy Prime Minister had been injured in an assassination attempt earlier today,” a UN spokesperson said in a statement.
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“The Secretary-General greatly valued the opportunity to meet with Mr. Al-Zubai yesterday to hear his views on the current situation in Iraq,” the statement added, reiterating Mr. Ban’s admiration for the Deputy Prime Minister’s “readiness to serve Iraq at a great personal risk.”
The Secretary-General sent a personal message to Mr. Al-Zubai, offering his condolences for those killed and injured and wishing him a full and speedy recovery from his injuries, according to the statement.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon World needs to do more to help people of Southern
Sudan: UN emergency chief
23 March - The international community must do more to help the people of Southern Sudan, especially the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) now returning to their homes following the end of the civil war two years ago, the United Nations humanitarian chief said today in the southern city of Juba, while also highlighting the urgent need for peace in the strife-torn Darfur region.
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John
Holmes made his remarks on the second day of his two-week, three-country mission to Africa.
While in Juba, he met with First Vice President of Sudan and President of the Government of
Southern Sudan, Salva Kiir, Vice President ofthe Government of Southern Sudan, Riek Machar, along with UN and other officials.
“I am very encouraged by what is happening here, but the needs are tremendous. We all – UN, donors and NGOs (non governmental organizations) – need to do much more to support the
Government and people in Southern Sudan. Recovery and development activities need to be accelerated, and the benefits of peace to become more apparent,” he said. While what is largely viewed as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis unfolds in Darfur, securing funding for
Southern Sudan remains a significant challenge, noted the Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
In his meetings with the President and Vice President Mr. Holmes stressed the importance of reaching a political solution in that region as being important for the whole of the country. “If there isn’t a peaceful resolution in Darfur, it is much harder to maintain peace in the rest of
Sudan, including in the South. The President of the Government of Southern Sudan seems very willing to engage on this issue, and to bring his considerable experience to the table.”
Mr. Holmes will now travel on to Darfur and visit field locations this Saturday and Sunday in the region, where at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million forced to flee their homes over the past four years because of fighting between Government forces and allied Janjaweed militias against rebel groups battling for more autonomy.
In a related development, as part of UN efforts to try and re-energize the stalled peace process in Darfur, the Secretary- General’s Special Envoy Jan Eliasson has arrived in Khartoum from
Eritrea, where he was scheduled to meet with African Union (AU) Special Envoy Salim Ahmed
Salim on a five-day mission to the country
.
Security Council extends UN mission in Afghanistan
23 March - The Security Council today extended the mandate of the United Nations Assistance
Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) by another year, welcoming the mission’s recently expanded
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presence in the provinces and voicing concern at the harm caused by the production and trafficking of opium.
In a resolution adopted unanimously, the Council also urged the Afghan Government and members of the international community to do more to implement the Afghanistan Compact, five-year UN-backed blueprint launched early last year which sets benchmarks for certain security, governance and development goals.
The resolution stresses the importance of meeting the benchmarks, particularly those focused on
“the cross-cutting issue of counter-narcotics,” and calls for accelerated reform in the justice sector as called for in the Compact. Council members said the Mission’s increased number of regional and provincial offices outside the capital, Kabul, had improved the delivery of services to Afghans, and encouraged this process to continue, especially in the southern and eastern provinces.
But they expressed alarm at the effects of widespread corruption in the fight against drugs and efforts to boost governance, saying it was undermining Afghanistan’s security and development. The resolution called on the Government to implement all the elements of its
National Drug Control Strategy, including enlisting regional support against illegal trafficking and money laundering linked to the industry.
The mandate extension was endorsed days after Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued his latest progress report on Afghanistan, which he found had reached “a critical juncture” as it dealt with an emboldened insurgency, popular alienation and numerous human rights issues.
“It is time for the international community to reconfirm its commitment to Afghanistan and to move expeditiously to consolidate the accomplishments of the last six years,” Mr. Ban wrote.
Originally established in March 2002, UNAMA has now had its mandate extended until 23
March 2008.
Deploring casualties, Ban Ki-moon appeals for halt to fighting in DR Congo
23 March - With sporadic fighting continuing in capital of the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC), Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today appealed for a complete halt to all violence threatening civilians, who have received assistance from the UN mission in the country
(MONUC).
Mr. Ban “deplores the unnecessary loss of life and condemns the looting and destruction that have taken place,” according to a statement issued by his spokesperson.
Government forces have restored order in Kinshasa, where fighting broke yesterday out in the
Gombe district between Government soldiers (FARDC) and the guards of former Vice-
President Jean-Pierre Bemba, who was def eated last year by current President Joseph Kabila in the run-off round of landmark presidential elections, the first such polls in more than four decades in the country.
“The DRC has reached a critical turning point,” the Secretary-General said, and the “recent violence in Kinshasa underscores the urgent need for a new political culture in the country.”
Mr. Ban urged all parties to forgo violence and instead vigorously pursue political dialogue at all levels, calling on the Government to “provide the nec essary space for effective participation
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of all political parties in debate and in decision making,” as well as for authorities to respect fundamental human rights.
MONUC reported today that although the situation remains tense, some of the fighters loyal to
Mr. Bemba have already surrendered to UN forces. “MONUC welcomes the restoration of order in Kinshasa by Government forces,” according to a press statement released by the mission. “However, MONUC also deeply regrets that force was used to resolve a situation that could and should have been settled through dialogue.”
The mission called on the Government to treat the defeated militia, followers of Mr. Bemba, responsibly by applying the Geneva Conventions.
While no exact figures are available yet on the death toll and number of casualties following 24 hours of fighting, MONUC estimates that more than 10 people have died and many more have been wounded, among them members of Mr. Bemba’s guards, FARDC soldiers, Congolese
Police and civilians. The mission is focusing on securing the Gombe district which has seen the heaviest fighting, and is utilizing 25 armoured personnel carriers aiding in the evacuation of the its staff and Congolese as well as expatriate civilians. Yesterday, MONUC moved more than 600 people out of areas deemed potentially dangerous in Kinshasa.
MONUC has moved two military companies into Kinshasa from other parts of the DRC and has provided first aid to victims of violence and has distributed water and rations to schoolchildren holed up in schools and at MONUC’s headquarters. “MONUC also expects to be granted secure access, on an urgent basis, to civilians in need of food, shelter and medical care,” the mission said, pledging continued efforts to help those in need of protection. The Secretary-General’s
Special Representative to the DRC, William Lacy Swing, has been in contact with both sides and also with international officials to bring an end to the violence, and has issued repeated appeals for calm over the UN radio station in the country. Meanwhile at UN Headquarters, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose
Migiro called to discuss the situation Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, who is also the
Chair of the organ of peace and security for the South African Development
Community, of which the DRC is a member.
Yesterday, the Security Council issued a press statement calling for an immediate cessation of the fighting. “The members of the Security Council are particularly concerned about the spillover of the violence on the civilian population, including children,” it said.
The DRC is rebuilding following the end of a six-year civil war, widely considered the most lethal conflict in the world since World War II, which cost four million lives in fighting, hunger and disease.
23 March - Iraqis fleeing their strife-torn homeland regained the top spot among asylum seekers in the world’s 50 industrialized countries last year for the first time since 2002, rising 77 per cent over 2005 to 22,200, but the overall trend in applications by all nationalities fell for the fifth straight year, according to United Nations figures released today.
“The sharp increase in the number of Iraqi asylum seekers in 2006 is significant when set against the general downward trend in the total number of asylum applications in industrialized countries,” UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in
Geneva.
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But he noted that the number paled when put beside the vast majority of uprooted Iraqis who remain in the Middle East – an estimated 1.9 million within the country and some 2 million primarily in neighbouring countries such as Syria and Jordan. Overall statistics for the industrialized countries showed that some 300,000 applications for refugee status were submitted last year, 10 per cent fewer than in 2005. After having been the second largest recipient of new asylum seekers in 2004 and 2005, the United States was again the main country of destination. France, which had been the leading destination in 2005, saw a sharp decrease of 39 per cent in asylum applications last year.
An estimated 51,000 people applied for asylum in the US in 2006, accounting for some 17 per cent of all applications in industrialized countries. Compared to the size of its national population, however, the US had only one asylum seeker per 1,000 inhabitants, while the average in European Union countries was 3.2 per 1,000. “The decreasing number of overall applications can be attributed to improved conditions in some of the main countries of origin of asylum seekers, but also to the introduction of restrictive policies in many industrialised countries which, in some cases, are discouraging asylum seekers from applying,” Mr. Redmond said.
“UNHCR has repeatedly expressed concern that the drive to keep the number of asylum seekers as low as possible may be resulting in some refugees being denied the protection they need,” he warned. The main countries of origin of asylum applicants were Iraq (22,200), China (18,300),
Russia (15,700), Serbia and Montenegro (15,600) and Turkey (8,700). Russian figures include asylum seekers from Chechnya. Apart from Iraqis, other groups recording a significant rise were Lebanese (66 per cent), Eritreans (59 per cent) and
Bangladeshis (42 per cent).
The last time Iraqis topped the list was in 2002, prior to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, when they lodged more than 50,000 asylum claims in Europe and other industrialized countries.
To help deal with the overall problem of Iraqis uprooted by the conflict in their homeland
UNHCR has called an international conference in Geneva for 17-18 April focusing on their humanitarian needs, inviting all 192 UN Member Governments, 65 international organizations and 60 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to participate.
As violent clashes resume in Somalia, Security Council calls for political dialogue
23 March - The United Nations Security Council today called for an end to the violence that has recently flared in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, while urging a political dialogue to bring lasting peace to the warravaged country, which has not had a functioning government since
1991.
“The members of the Security Council expressed their concern about the resumption of violent clashes in Somalia, especially in the capital, Mogadishu, and outrage over the shooting down of a cargo airplane which took off from the city’s airport,” Ambassador Dumisani S. Kumalo of
South Africa, which holds the rotating presidency this month, told reporters in a press statement following closed-door consultations.
The warring factions were called on “to desist from further acts of violence, adhere to international humanitarian law, and mafford unimpeded access for relief workers.” Council members also reiterated their call for an immediate, all-inclusive political dialogue, which is essential for the return of peace and stability in Somalia, according to the statement.
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Council members voiced particular concern about the humanitarian situation in Somalia, “which continues to deteriorate, greatly increasing the suffering of Somalis,” the President said.
Strongly condemning the desecration of soldiers’ bodies in Mogadishu, the statement pointed out that this is considered a violation of international humanitarian law.
The Council’s press statement came one day after the chief United Nations humanitarian official for Somalia called on all combatants, whether in uniform or not, to desist from further “acts of aggression and to respect civilian life” in Mogadishu. “This is a tragic situation,” UN
Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Eric Laroche said in a statement issued in Nairobi, neighbouring Kenya. “Tens of thousands of people are fleeing Mogadishu and civilian casualties are mounting daily.
“The dragging of bodies through the streets is barbaric. This is a gross violation of international humanitarian law, and these kinds of acts must cease immediately,” he added, referring to reports that insurgents dragged soldiers’ bodies through the streets of Mogadishu before burning them on Wednesday. The UN estimates that more than 40,000 people fled Mogadishu due to conflict in February. Recent statements by the warring parties naming areas to be targeted for security operations are already causing further displacement of civilians.
Movement of local UN staff in Mogadishu is severely restricted by the violence, while humanitarian access from outside the city is currently impossible.
Mr. Laroche called for immediate access to all civilians affected by the recent upsurge in violence. “The neutral and impartial humanitarian response desperately required can only take place if there is unimpeded access,” he said. Violence in the capital has increased since the
Transitional Federal Government (TFG), backed by Ethiopian forces, dislodged the Union of
Islamic Courts (UIC) from Mogadishu and much of the rest of the country at the end of last year. Somalia has been beset by factional violence and lacked a functioning central government since 1991, when the regime of Muhammad Siad Barre was toppled.
UN council calls for universal support for pact on economic and social rights
23 March - The United Nations Human Rights Council today called on all remaining countries that have not signed and ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR) to do so, and to ensure that those rights are implemented without discrimination of any kind.
In a resolution adopted without a vote during its session in Geneva, the Council urged all countries – whether they have signed and ratified the covenant or not – to secure those rights with the help of their national development policies and any forms of international assistance.
The resolution calls for particular care to be paid to any citizens or communities living in extreme poverty, and asks States to encourage civil society to play a greater role in decisions relating to all economic, social and cultural rights.
The 31-article ICESCR, which entered into force in January 1976, had 155 States Parties as of last week. During its meeting today the Council also adopted a decision, again without a vote, commending the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for its work in developing the issue of transitional justice and human rights, and encouraging the Office to continue.
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It also discussed reports on the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK), Burundi and Myanmar. In his report, Vitit Muntarbhorn, Special Rapporteur on the situation in the DPRK, said the country continued to violate human rights in a systematic and pervasive manner, carrying out torture, public executions and persecutions of dissidents, with ordinary citizens bearing the brunt of the abuses. Some recent legislation could be used to repress political dissent, he added. He also voiced regret that
Pyongyang had refused to cooperate with him.
Responding, DPRK delegate Choe Myong Nam said Pyongyang categorically rejected the report and did not even accept Mr. Muntarbhorn’s mandate, describing it as politically motivated and unrelated to human rights. Akich Okola, Independent Expert on the situation in
Burundi, said food security remained a major problem in the small
Central African nation, due mainly to overpopulation. Although the human rights situation is likely to improve following the signing of a ceasefire between the Government and rebels, he said the justice system was weak because of corruption, political interference, poor training and a lack of equipment.
Describing the report as a reflection of the real situation, Burundi’s representative Françoise
Ngendahayo added that it was important to recognize that the Government had made significant progress in terms of its political will. Bujumbura has set up an independent human rights commission and enshrined many key rights under its national constitution.
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Special Rapporteur on the situation in Myanmar, expressed grave concern at the way fundamental freedoms of political opponents and human rights defenders had been criminalized by the Government. He noted the continuing house arrest of democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whose detention has been extended for another 12 months, and the increased militarization in ethnic areas in the east of the country.
But Myanmar’s delegate U Nyunt Swe described Mr. Pinheiro’s report as essentially the same as the one delivered last year and said the Government had granted amnesty to more than
22,000 prisoners during the last two years, a sign of its commitment to national reconciliation.
Timor-Leste: UN envoy urges all presidential candidates to campaign fairly
23 March - Welcoming the end of voter registration and the official start of the campaigning period for next month’s presidential election in Timor-Leste, the chief United Nations envoy to the small country today reminded all eight candidates to play their part to ensure that the poll is free and fair and conducted without violence.
Atul Khare, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, urged the candidates and parties to respect each other in the run-up to the election, the first since Timor-Leste gained independence from Indonesia in 2002. “It is important for each of the eight candidates to send strong and clear messages about their political vision for this emerging democracy,” Mr. Khare said in a statement released by the UN Integrated Mission in
Timor-Leste (UNMIT).
“But it is equally important for this emerging democracy that the campaign is conducted freely, fairly and without violence, without intimidation and without misuse of State resources.”
Earlier this month all eight candidates signed a code of conduct committing themselves, and their supporters, to either accept the election results or challenge them only through competent
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courts and to conduct campaigns that are positive and not based on personal attacks against other candidates.
Other clauses include a commitment to respect the rights of competing candidates and to refrain from exercising any illegitimate influence on voters.
The code was drafted by the Technical Secretariat for the Administration of Elections, the national body which will run the election on 9 April, and was approved by the National
Electoral Commission. The Commission will also supervise the campaigning, which is also being monitored by national and international election observers. Campaigning ends on 6 April, allowing for a two-day information black-out ahead of the poll. Mr. Khare added in his statement that UNMIT was willing to offer assistance to national authorities during the election period whenever needed.
Eric Tan, the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative, told a press conference yesterday in Dili, the Timorese capital, that nearly 1,000 UN Police (UNPOL) officers and more than 2,400 Timorese national police officers will be on duty across the country during the election campaign. The police will concentrate on protecting polling stations, securing election materials and responding to any security issues such as armed clashes, fires or roadblocks.
Voter registration ended on Wednesday after being extended by five days because of disruptions, but Mr. Tan said the registration process proceeded smoothly overall.
West African meningitis outbreak sparks warning from UN aid agencies
23 March - United Nations humanitarian agencies are stepping up their efforts to combat a deadly outbreak of meningitis across West Africa, warning that the highly contagious disease could spread even more rapidly in coming months during the traditional annual migration period within the region. Since the start of the year 798 people have died and 8,557 cases have been recorded across nine countries that form part of the so-called “meningitis belt,” a sub-
Saharan region stretching from Senegal to Ethiopia that is particularly prone to epidemic s and is home to an estimated 300 million people.
The worst affected country is Burkina Faso, where 583 people have died and more than 7,300 cases diagnosed between 1 January and 11 March. Some 22 of Burkina Faso’s 55 districts are now classed as being in a state of epidemic. At the same time, deaths or diagnosed cases have also been reported in Benin, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Togo, according to a statement released today by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA). With the support of the UN World Health Organization (WHO), Burkina
Faso’s Government has launched a $3 million appeal for international assistance, and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has provided
$200,000. Canada and several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have also provided financial or technical support.
The UN Central Emergency Respond Fund (CERF), set up to quickly disburse funds during crises, has made $1.7 million available for anti-meningitis operations in northern Côte d’Ivoire, while Niger is also increasing training of health-care workers and ensuring extra stocks of medicines are in place if needed. But Hervé Ludovic de Lys, OCHA’s representative in West
Africa, warned that additional assistance is urgently needed across the region. “The open borders and traditional seasonal migration which characterizes the Sahel sub-region starting in
May-June could lead to the rapid spread of the disease in the coming weeks,” Mr. de Lys said.
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“Despite the efforts undertaken by governments, the chronic nature of such outbreaks should prompt us to re-evaluate the effectiveness of the education, prevention and response initiatives implemented over the last several decades.”
Meningitis bacteria, which affect the lining surrounding the brain and spinal cord, are transmitted from person to person through droplets of respiratory or throat secretions. Close and prolonged contact – such as kissing, sneezing and coughing, and sharing eating or drinking utensils – promotes the spread of the disease. Symptoms include a stiff neck, high fever, sensitivity to light, confusion, headaches and vomiting, and a small percentage of survivors can suffer brain damage or hearing loss or acquire a learning disability.
UN health agency adds 4 TB drugs to pre-qualified list, easing access to treatment
23 March - At a time when the tuberculosis virus is producing increasingly drug-resistant strains, the United Nations health agency today added four new medicines to its list of prequalified products, one of them the first to be included for strains of TB that are resistant to standard treatment.
“The addition of these four medicines will reinforce efforts to scale up access to antituberculosis medicines in high-burden areas and in countries which may have only limited capacity to control and monitor pharmaceuticals,” the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement. Manufactured by the generic producer MacLeods of India, the medicines are the first TB products to be added to the list in two years and will increase the choice of quality products available to procurement agencies to tackle the disease that killed an estimated 1.6 million people in 2005. Nearly 9 million others were suffering from TB that year.
One of the new products, Cyc loserine, is particularly important because it is a second-line medicine, necessary for cases that are resistant to standard treatment. There is also a fixed-dose combination, ethambutol + isoniazid, which is the first product combining these two basic medicines to be pre-qualified. The other two medicines are Ethambutol and Pyrazinamide.
Product assessment reports on the quality and bioequivalence of these newly pre-qualified products and manufacturing site inspection findings will soon also be published. These procedures make the WHO prequalification process the most transparent of all similar quality assurance programmes to date.
Locust infestations in Horn of Africa prompt new alert from UN agency
23 March - Eritrea, Sudan and northern Somalia are strongly advised to carefully monitor “a developing and potentially dangerous situation” arising from second-generation locust infestations that are now developing, according to the latest United Nations update on of the crop-devouring insects. “There have been several new developments in the past few days in three key areas,” UN Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) said, noting that the second-generation infestations from an outbreak in Eritrea in December are now concentrating in a 60 kilometres by 60 kilometres area on the Red Sea coast straddling the Sudanese-Eritrean border.
Late instar hopper bands and newly fledged adults are present in pearl millet crops in wadis and in natural vegetation on the coastal plains. Within a week, the majority of these populations will become adults and form small immature swarms. As vegetation is drying out on the coast, the
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swarms are likely to move further north along the coast in Sudan as well as west into the
Eritrean highlands, the FAO warned.
Ground control operations are in progress in both countries and will be supplemented by aerial operations, expected to start this week, to try to reduce the scale of the expected migration.
As a result of good rainfall and breeding during the past few months, small hopper bands are also present in the Silil area on the northwest coast of Somalia near Djibouti. A few small immature swarms have already formed and more are expected in the coming weeks. These swarms could move in any direction – up the escarpment towards the Ethiopian border, northwest towards the Eritrean highlands, east along the coast, across the Gulf of Aden to southern Yemen, or simply stay on the coast and eventually breed once the long rains commence, the FAO added.
A locust swarm Honouring missing UN staff, Ban Ki-moon calls for heightened security for personnel
23 March - Increased security is crucial in allowing United Nations personnel – peacekeepers, civilian staff and others – to carry out their tasks without fear of harm, Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon said today in observance of the International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members.
“Kidnapping, assault, robbery, theft, harassment and detention continue to be grim realities for
United Nations personnel and our colleagues in the media and non-governmental [NGO] community,” Mr. Ban said, as 14 UN staff members are under arrest, detained or missing to date. “Let us pledge to redouble our efforts to provide staff with the protection and measures they need to carry out their vital missions,” he added in his message on the occasion on 25
March.
Given the surge in the number of UN staff working in the field, as well as the Organization’s increased activities in more sensitive tasks such as criminal justice, staff security is critical. “I urge governments and all involved to uphold their responsibilities, from prevention to protection – and prosecution when violations and crimes have occurred,” Mr. Ban said. “Legal protection is essential for international and national staff alike,” he said, urging Member States to respect the Convention on the Safety of UN and Associated Personnel, to which 81 countries are party and another 43 have signed.
Mr. Ban also paid tribute to Alec Collet, who, while working for the UN Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Beirut, was abducted by armed men 22 years ago on 25 March, which is the official date of the Day’s observance. He has not been seen since and his case has not been resolved.
Asphyxiation, beating, drowning claim 28 lives in exodus from Somalia to Yemen UN
23 March - At least 28 people died from asphyxiation, beating or drowning and many were badly injured by smugglers in a renewed surge of people smuggling from Somalia to Yemen which saw more than 1,100 brave the perilous exodus across the Gulf of Aden in the past 6 days alone, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.
“Others are suffering from various skin problems from prolonged contact with sea water, human waste, diesel and other chemicals,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman
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Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva. “They are not allowed to move during the voyage,” he added of the trip which can take two days or more.
This latest drama follows a tragedy in February in which at least 107 bodies were found along a remote stretch of the Yemen coastline after a people-smuggling boat capsized in one of the deadliest single incidents in a perilous voyage that has brought some 30,000 migrants from
Somalia since January last year. Over 500 people died during that period and at least 300 remain missing yesterday, according to initial reports, four boats carrying more than 500 people landed on the Yemeni coasts. At least 25 people reportedly died during the journey. “When our staff arrived on the beach yesterday, some had already been buried,” Mr. Redmond said. “We are still awaiting more details from the survivors, most of whom were taken to UNHCR’s reception centre.
On 17 March, four boats arrived from Bosaso in Somalia carrying some 625 people who were spotted by the Yemeni armed forces. “In an attempt to distract the armed forces, the smugglers on one boat threw 35 Somalis into the water and took the remaining 215 passengers, many with their hands bound by ropes, closer to the shore where they were forced to disembark,” Mr.
Redmond said.
Yemeni security forces managed to rescue the remaining 35 two hours later by helicopter but by then all the smugglers had escaped and at least three people had died, he added.
UNHCR has repeatedly drawn attention to the dangers of people smuggling across the Gulf of
Aden, which finds a ready market in Somalia among Somalis and Ethiopians fleeing civil conflict or drought, and horror stories abound of clubwielding smugglers beating their passengers, even including pregnant women, throwing them overboard and stealing their money.
UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Erika Feller and Middle East and North
African Director Radhouane Nouicer recently visited the region to underline the enormous challenges faced by Yemen. They expressed UNHCR’s commitment to appeal for additional funding and international action to help Yemen, and to develop projects to improve the living conditions and self sufficiency of the refugees in Yemen.
They also agreed to work closer with the Yemeni authorities to manage the mixed migration flows arriving in Yemen and to ensure protection and durable solutions for those who need it as well as safe returns for those who do not.
UNHCR has been helping Yemen provide assistance, care and housing to over 100,000 refugees already in the country.
UN launches emergency aid response to fighting in Central African Republic
23 March - Calling it “a major humanitarian crisis,” the United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF) is launching emergency action to provide immediate aid to women and children in the northeast of the Central African Republic (CAR) who have been driven from their homes by recent fighting between the Government and rebels.
“Thousands of children have been abandoned to their fate, they are traumatized by the violence and their basic needs are not covered. They need an urgent assistance,” UNICEF country representative Mahimbo Mdoe said of the fighting in which 70 per cent of the houses in Birao, the region’s main town, were torched and virtually all its 14,000 residents uprooted.
UNICEF is supporting the first UN assessment, flying in a joint technical team tomorrow on a two-day mission to evaluate immediate needs and the appropriate response. The agency’s office
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in CAR is preparing contingency stocks for an emergency operation starting as early as next week. This will include health kits, shelters, blankets, jerrycans and other nonfood items.
The area on the border of Sudan’s conflict-torn Darfur region has suffered from a spill-over of the violence there as well as from fighting between the Government and armed opposition militias that has uprooted over 200,000 people in recent months, about 50,000 of whom have sought refuge in neighbouring Chad, amid reports of summary executions, ethnic violence and burning of villages.
Prior to this month’s fighting, some 14,000 people lived in Birao, but after a visit on
Wednesday, UN country humanitarian coordinator Toby Lanzer estimated that no more than
600 people remain, the rest having fled the violence and believed to be living in the bush.
In addition to the burning of houses, which makes the population’s return virtually impossible before the start of the rainy season in May, the town’s schools and hospital were destroyed or looted.
Overall 1 million people in CAR, a quarter of the population, are affected by widespread and deteriorating insecurity in a country which, according to the UN Human Development Index, is the sixth least developed country in the world. Indicators for maternal and under-5 child mortality, already very poor, and now on a continuing downward decline.
UN refugee chief set to celebrate successful repatriation of over 400,000 in Angola
23 March - The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will embark on a four-day trip this weekend to Angola where he will attend a ceremony commemorating the fact that over 400,000 refugees who have returned home to the southern African nation which is recovering from an almost three-decadelong civil war that sent almost half a million people fleeing across its borders and displaced millions internally.
High Commissioner António Guterres will arrive in Angola on Sunday, and his itinerary includes meetings with Prime Minister Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos and other government authorities, representatives from the country’s neighbours, donors and UNHCR’s partners on the ground, the agency’s spokesperson Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva today.
Mr. Guterres will also visit Viana refugee camp on the outskirts of Luanda, which houses thousands of Congolese refugees who have been residing in Angola for nearly four decades.
UNHCR is currently working with the Angolan Government to grant these refugees permanent residency.
UNHCR chief
António Guterres
The repatriation event, which will take place next Tuesday in the capital Luanda, marks the official end of the organized voluntary repatriation programme. Of the 457,000 Angolans believed to refugees in the country’s neighbours when the peace accord was reached at the end of the civil war in 2002, nearly 410,000 have returned home.
UNHCR launched the assisted return programme with the help of neighbouring countries in
2003. The agency and other Governments, in particular Zambia and the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) which housed the majority of Angolan refugees, coordinated the returns. Other refugees returned home from Namibia, the Republic of Congo, Botswana and South Africa.
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During the four-year UNHCR repatriation scheme, the agency organized the return of almost
140,000 refugees in total, with the last of the refugees arriving this month by air from the DRC.
UNHCR also aided over 100,000 Angolans who returned to their country on their own, while an additional 154,000 are believed to have repatriated and re-integrated without the agency’s assistance. Approximately 47,000 Angolans did not accept UNHCR’s offer of voluntary repatriation and the agency is seeking other solutions for them within Angola, UNCHR is concentrating on efforts towards sustainable reintegration of refugees, both internal and from abroad, through the construction or rehabilitation of 75 health posts, clinics and nurses’ houses, in addition to 60 schools and teachers’ homes. Microcredit has been extended to 10,000 people.
“Securing the future of the returnees – as well as the millions of internally displaced who have come home – is a long-term development need that is beyond the resources or mandate of
UNHCR,” Mr. Redmond said, calling on the Government of Angola and its development partners to spearhead rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts.
Juvenile justice system set up in Kosovo with UN help
23 March - The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has teamed up with the European
Agency for Reconstruction (EAR) to support the development of the juvenile justice system in
UN-administered Kosovo, focusing on rehabilitation rather than prison.
“European and international standards require that correctional facilities should be used for children only as a last resort and responses to juvenile crime emphasize rehabilitation rather than punishment,” UNICEF representative in Kosovo Robert Fuderich said of the 1.2 million
Euro project, a partnership between the two agencies, the provisional self-government authorities, civil society and academia. It will help officials ensure that children’s rights are respected in the justice system. Research, training and new operating procedures will be developed based on good practices in European Union Member States.
In partnership with Terre Des Hommes, a network of 11 national organizations promoting children’s rights, the Human Rights Centre at Pristina University and others, the project will also introduce innovative approaches to prevent children from becoming involved in crime.
The effort is welcomed by Justice Minister Jonuz Salihaj. “Kosovo has a modern Juvenile
Justice Code. It is aligned with international standards, but we need support to implement the law. Our staff is motivated and we are looking forward to cooperating with UNICEF as the specialized agency for children,” he said. The UN has run the Albanian-majority Serbian province ever since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid ethnic fighting.
Kosovo: UN regrets withdrawal of Romanian police in probe of demonstrators’ deaths
23 March - The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Kosovo today asked Romania to make available police officers it had withdrawn, despite a request that they be kept there for a few more weeks, should they be needed in the probe into the deaths of two people when UN police used rubber bullets against pro-independence demonstrators last month.
The UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which has run the Albanianmajority Serbian province ever since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid ethnic fighting, said it expected the Romanian authorities to “adhere to their obligations and continue to cooperate and assist fully” with ongoing investigation.
“UNMIK regrets that the Romanian authorities did not agree with the request of UN
Headquarters that 11 of these officers remain in Kosovo until 6 April to continue cooperation with the investigation,” the mission said in a statement.
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“If required by the investigation, such cooperation must include an assurance that any of the
Romanian police officers who have left the mission area shall be made available as requested for the purposes of the investigation on the territory of Kosovo. UNMIK reaffirms its commitment to ensure that a full and impartial investigation is concluded in a timely manner,” the statement added.
The deaths occurred on 10 February during a demonstration by the ethnic Albanian
Vetëvendosja (self-determination) group shortly after the UN envoy for the future status of the province, where Albanians outnumber Serbs and others by 9 to 1, issued a plan widely seen by both sides as proposing independence under international supervision. The group wants immediate self-determination while Serbia rejected independence.
At the time Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative in Kosovo Joachim
Rücker demanded the resignation of UN Police Commissioner Stephen Curtis without prejudging the probe’s outcome, calling the loss of life tragic regardless of the circumstances.
“We are at a critical juncture in the history of Kosovo and nothing must be allowed to interfere in the confidence of those involved in this process,” he said then.
UN pushes ahead with multinational enrichment plan to prevent nuclear proliferation
23 March - Pushing ahead with efforts to set up a multinational framework for uranium enrichment to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation and the possibility of their falling into the hands of terrorists, the United Nations atomic watchdog agency is exploring with Russia the possible establishment of an international enrichment centre in Siberia.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Deputy Director General Yury Sokolov led the
UN side in talks this week with Russian officials at the Angarsk Electrolysis Chemical
Complex, a manufacturer of low-enriched uranium, which Russia is proposing should be the site of an international centre.Low enriched uranium is the fuel for nuclear power plants, but enriched to a higher degree it can be used to make nuclear weapons.
Mr. Sokolov told a press conference that the Agency’s main point of concern about proposals discussed with Russia was provision of a mechanism to ensure that States which have been isolated for political reasons continue to receive nuclear fuel. Russian officials told the press conference that the talks had made positive progress. Russia is currently in negotiations with
Kazakhstan to establish a joint enrichment facility at the Angarsk complex, which is north of
Irkutsk in south eastern Siberia.
Nuclear fuel pellets
Both IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei and Russian President Vladimir Putin have proposed putting enrichment under multinational control to reduce proliferation risks. The system would provide assurance of supply to States considering developing nuclear power and avoid the need for them to build their own nuclear fuel production capability.
The so-called front end of the nuclear fuel cycle, when fuel is enriched, as well as the back end, when spent fuel is reprocessed, provide points that pose proliferation risks because material can be potentially diverted and used to produce weapons.
A cornerstone of Mr. ElBaradei’s proposal is a fuel bank of last resort that would offer users of the system the insurance of guaranteed delivery if their regular supplies were interrupted. “The longer we delay in placing sensitive nuclear operations under multinational control, the more
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new countries will seek to build such facilities,” he said in a speech last year, calling for a unified international approach “so that no one country would have exclusive control over the most sensitive parts of the fuel cycle.”
In September, the Nuclear Threat Initiative donated $50 million provided by United States billionaire Warren Buffet to the proposed fuel bank on condition that the contribution is matched by an amount of $100 million.
The proposals for international uranium enrichment centres come amid a revival of interest in nuclear power as a means of generating electricity and fears about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Mr. ElBaradei is to present a paper about supply assurance to the next meeting of the
IAEA’s Board of Governors in June.
UN reports progress towards ensuring developing countries’ access to bird flu vaccine
23 March - The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today reported further progress towards ensuring access to vaccines for developing countries in the event of a human bird flu pandemic and other vaccine-related aspects of pandemic preparedness, including the building of up to half a dozen new production facilities.
“Most countries with resource constraints do not have the means to access influenza vaccines,”
WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research Director Marie-Paule Kieny said ahead of a two-day technical meeting opening in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Monday on options for ensuring vaccine access, including on sharing influenza viruses.
“If we are to be well-prepared for an influenza pandemic, it is essential that developing countries have access to vaccines. WHO is working to make this happen,” she added, calling for more funding for the 10-year $10-billion project.
Experts fear the current H5N1 bird flu virus could mutate and become more easily transmissible in humans, unleashing in a worst case scenario a human pandemic with a death toll in the millions. Under WHO’s Global Pandemic Influenza Action Plan to increase vaccine supply, launched in October, up to six projects to establish in-country manufacturing capacity of vaccine are now in the final stage of approval in two Latin American and four Asian countries, three of which have had human H5N1 influenza cases. This effort is supported with $18 million from the Government of Japan and the United States Department of Health and Human
Services. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Associations has said it is willing to
collaborate with WHO towards helping developing countries gain access to vaccines through technology transfer and other appropriate strategies.
WHO and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) are also investigating financing avenues so that developing countries can access products manufactured by multinational vaccine producers.
Currently under consideration are the establishment of a virtual international pandemic influenza stockpile and
Moreover encouraging progress has been made in a third key area identified in the Global
Action Plan – research and development – with over 40 clinical trials of vaccines already completed or ongoing, all reported safe and well tolerated in all age groups tested.
“We are pleased with progress in the pandemic influenza vaccine area since our Global Action
Plan was published. For this work to continue to advance in a timely manner, additional funds are needed for this 10-year, $10 billion effort to protect the world from what could be a devastating public health crisis,” Dr. Kieny said. “We urge other countries and donors to step up and join Canada, Japan and the United States in supporting this critical work.” H5N1 has
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infected 281 people worldwide, 169 of them fatally, nearly all of them believed to have been infected by poultry.
But experts fear any mutation could result I in easy human-to-human transmission. The socalled Spanish flu pandemic of
1918-1920, which spread easily between humans, is estimated to have killed from 20 million to
40 million people.
UN court starts deliberating in maritime dispute between Nicaragua and Honduras
23 March - The United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) has begun its deliberations in the dispute between Nicaragua and Honduras over the delineation of their maritime border in the Caribbean Sea after public hearings in the case ended today.
Nicaragua brought proceedings against its Central American neighbour in 1999 at the ICJ, saying diplomatic negotiations over the disputed maritime boundary had failed, and asking the
Court to rule on the boundary and determine which country has sovereignty over the islands and cays within the area of dispute.
The dispute affects the territorial seas, the exclusive economic zones and the continental shelves of the two countries, the ICJ, which sits in The Hague, is a UN court that adjudicates disputes between States. In a press statement released today, the Court said it will deliver its judgement at a date to be determined. Public hearings in the matter began on 5 March and concluded today with the presentation of final submissions.
UN peacekeepers bring in fresh water for Haitian orphans
23 March - It may be a mere drop in the ocean, but for 160 children in a Haitian orphanage it meant much more when United Nations peacekeepers delivered 9,000 litres of clean, fresh water: it meant that they were not alone in the battle against poverty and the diseases brought by contaminated supplies. “It is our way of being close to the people and showing them our solidarity,” Major Irantha Ranathunga of the Sri Lankan contingent of the UN Stabilization
Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) said of the water delivery to the 105 girls and 55 boys at Santo
3 Karo Christian orphanage at Léogane.
Yesterday’s delivery marked World Water Day but help from the UN’s Sri Lankan contingent, which is based nearby, comes on a regular basis. “We are happy to benefit from this regular support from the Sri Lankan soldiers every week,” the orphanage’s principal, Reverend Jean
Claude Charlier, said. “In the whole area, there are wells but they don’t hold drinking water.”
The water deliveries are just one small part of the humanitarian aid brought daily by
MINUSTAH, set up in 2004 to help reestablish peace in the impoverished Caribbean country after an insurgency forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to go into exile.
From helping to set up local municipal administrations to providing electricity, education and health services to restoring a library to laying out a football field, no task is too small or parochial for the UN peacekeepers as they try to make a section of the News and Media
Division, Department of Public Information (DPI) difference for the people on the ground in one of the poorest countries on earth.
As to water, UN World Health Organization (WHO) country representative Paulo Teixeira noted that while his agency recommends a daily supply for 50 litres per person, some people in
Haiti do not even have access to eight litres a day. “In urban agglomerations water is badly distributed and in rural areas, people can find water but with great difficulty,” he said. One of
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the first actions of UN peacekeepers after they cleared out criminal gangs terrorizing one of the violence-ridden country’s most dangerous areas, the Cité Soleil neighbourhood in Port-au-
Prince, the capital, earlier this month was to ship in thousands of litres of clean water.
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DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY THE OFFICE OF THE SPOKESPERSON FOR THE
SECRETARY-GENERAL
23 March, 2007
====================================================================
The following is a near verbatim transcript of today’s noon press briefing by Marie
Okabe, Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General.
I’m sorry I’m late. I was waiting for a statement being approved in Cairo, where the
Secretary-General is. The first statement is on the attack on the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq.
**Secretary-General Statement on Iraq Attack
“The Secretary-General met with the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Mr. Salam Z. Al-
Zubai, yesterday in Baghdad. He was shocked and dismayed to hear that the Deputy Prime
Minister had been injured in an assassination attempt earlier today. The Secretary-General sent a personal message to Mr. Al-Zubai, offering his condolences for those who were killed and injured in the attack and wishing him a full and speedy recovery from his injuries.
“The Secretary-General greatly valued the opportunity to meet with Mr. Al-Zubai yesterday to hear his views on the current situation in Iraq. He reiterates his admiration for the
Deputy Prime Minister’s readiness to serve Iraq at a great personal risk.”
**Secretary-General on Iraq
In a meeting with a group of reporters travelling with him today, the Secretary-General made it clear that his position on any possible increase of the United Nations role in Iraq has not changed because of the incident yesterday, in which a mortar exploded nearby while he was giving a press conference.
He said that he will consider upon his return to New York how the United Nations could do more for the Iraqi people and for political and development work in that country. At the same time, he noted that United Nations activity has been largely constrained by the security environment, and that the situation in Iraq is still very volatile.
The Secretary-General added that he was very moved during his meeting with United
Nations staff in Baghdad, saying: “From my meeting with them, I was very much assured and grateful to them that, even in such an exceptional situation, they were working with a sense of dedication and duty.”
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** Iraq Refugees
The UN refugee agency, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), today announced that Iraq had regained the top spot among asylum seekers in the world's industrialized countries in 2006. There is more on that from UNHCR upstairs.
**Secretary-General in the Middle East
The Secretary-General is in Cairo today, where he arrived earlier in the day from
Baghdad. After meeting with the United Nations country team he was to meet with the
Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, which should be taking place now. He will also attend a dinner hosted by the Foreign Minister. The Secretary-General continues his visit in Egypt tomorrow.
**Secretary-General Statement on the Democratic Republic of the Congo
“The Secretary-General continues to follow with concern the developments unfolding in
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The civilian population continues to be threatened by fighting in the heart of the city. He urgently appeals once again for a complete halt to all fighting. He deplores the unnecessary loss of life and condemns the looting and destruction that have taken place.
“The Democratic Republic of the Congo has reached a critical turning point. The recent violence in Kinshasa underscores the urgent need for a new political culture in the country. The
Secretary-General urges all parties to turn away from violence and to actively pursue political dialogue at all levels. He urges the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to provide the necessary space for effective participation of all political parties in debate and in decision making and urges the Congolese authorities to observe due process and respect for fundamental human rights.”
** Democratic Republic of the Congo -- Update
Following yesterday’s hostilities between the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and the guards of former Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba in
Kinshasa, the United Nations Mission there reports today that sporadic fighting continues but order has generally been restored.
While MONUC welcomes the restoration of order by Government forces, it deeply regrets the fact that force was used to resolve a situation that could and should have been settled through dialogue. MONUC deplores the loss of life, damage to property, looting and the serious risks caused to civilians living in the capital.
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In response to the unrest, MONUC moved two military companies into Kinshasa from elsewhere in the country. They have helped provide first aid, for example, to victims of the violence, as well as water and rations to school children holed up at their schools and people sheltered at MONUC headquarters.
The Secretary-General’s Special Representative, William Swing, is in contact with the different sides as well as with international officials, and issued repeated public appeals over the
UN Radio station calling for an end to the violence.
** Democratic Republic of the Congo -- DSG
Here at Headquarters, the Deputy Secretary-General called Tanzanian President Jakaya
Kikwete in his capacity as chair of the Organ of Peace and Security of the South African
Development Community (SADC) to discuss the situation in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo.
**Security Council
The Security Council this morning unanimously adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan by one year, until 23 March 2008. It then heard a briefing about the sanctions adopted under resolution 1737, concerning Iran, by the chairman of that sanctions committee, Ambassador Johan Verbeke of Belgium. This is a periodic briefing, as called for in that resolution.
After that, Council members resumed consultations on the draft resolution on nonproliferation, concerning Iran, which they had also discussed yesterday afternoon.
**Chissano
Following a briefing yesterday afternoon in the Security Council on the situation in the
Great Lakes by the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Lord’s Resistance Army affected areas, former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano, the Security Council adopted a presidential statement in which it stressed its support for a negotiated settlement in the conflict in northern Uganda.
** Sudan
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
John Holmes today travelled to Juba, Southern Sudan. While there, Mr. Holmes met with First
Vice-President of the Sudan and President of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS), Mr.
Salva Kiir, and Vice-President of the Government of Southern Sudan, Dr. Riek Machar.
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While the largest humanitarian crisis in the world unfolds in the north, securing funds for Southern Sudan in the shadow of Darfur remains a significant challenge. The Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs notes this in a press release they have on this subject upstairs.
John Holmes, said from Juba today: “The United Nations, donors and NGOs all need to do much more to support the Government and people in Southern Sudan. Recovery and development activities need to be accelerated and the benefits of peace to become more apparent.”
** Sudan -- Eliasson
Jan Eliasson, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur, has arrived in Khartoum from Asmara after having constructive meetings with Eritrean officials, including the President on the coordination of Eritrean mediation efforts in Darfur with those of the United Nations and the African Union.
Jan Eliasson is about to meet with African Union Special Envoy for Darfur, his counterpart, Salim Ahmed Salim. The two will be in the Sudan on a five-day mission in their attempts to re-energize the stalled peace process in Darfur.
I have just been informed that Security Council consultations have adjourned. For those of you who need to go out there, they will resume this afternoon at a time to be confirmed.
Back to the briefing.
** Somalia
The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Eric Laroche, has condemned the recent violence in Mogadishu, calling on all combatants, uniformed or not, to desist from further acts of aggression and to respect civilian life.
Laroche said the desecration of bodies of fallen fighters is a barbaric act and a gross violation of international humanitarian law. Meanwhile, the Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs reports that the humanitarian situation in Mogadishu continues to deteriorate.
We have more on both of these subjects upstairs.
**Human Rights Council
In Geneva, the Human Rights Council today heard presentations from independent experts on the human rights situations in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea; Burundi;
Myanmar and Liberia. Human Rights Council members are currently holding a general debate on a number of country situations.
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Afterwards, if there is enough time, the members will vote on certain drafts before them. You can find all relevant documents and draft resolutions on the Human Rights Council webpage. I think somebody asked me about this yesterday.
**Timor-Leste
The United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste reports that the official campaign period began yesterday for the eight declared contenders in the April presidential election, following the completion of voter registration all across that country.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday in the capital Dili, the Special Representative to the Secretary-General for Timor-Leste, Atul Khare, said he was pleased that the registration went smoothly and without major security incidents.
The two-week campaigning period will see rallies, meetings, campaign posters and media publicity across Timor-Leste’s 13 districts. All campaigning will be supervised by the National
Electoral Commission (CNE) and monitored by both national and international election observers.
The campaign period ends on 6 April, ensuring a two-day information black-out ahead of the election. And we have more on this upstairs.
**Meningitis Epidemic
We also have a press release on a meningitis epidemic that erupted in Burkina Faso and is also affecting eight other countries in West Africa. You can read more about that upstairs.
**International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members
Sunday will be the International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff
Members. The Secretary-General is marking the occasion in a message recalling that 14 staff members are currently under arrest, detained or missing. There are copies of that message upstairs.
**United Nations Global Initiative on ICT
On Monday, the first global forum on the United Nations Global Initiative for Inclusive
Information and Communications Technologies is taking place here at United Nations
Headquarters. Some 200 participants from industry, Government, academia and civil society are expected to attend the all-day meeting, which will address how such technology can improve the lives of people with disabilities. We have the full week ahead for you so that you can plan your coverage of the United Nations next week. And that’s what I have for you today.
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Mr. Abbadi?
**Questions and Answers
Question: Regarding the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the latest report indicates that Jean-Pierre Bemba has taken refuge in MONUC’s premises. Can you confirm that? And also, does the Secretary-General have any reaction to the alleged information that Iran has taken
15 British marines in the sea?
Deputy Spokesperson: On the latter, I have nothing. On Mr. Bemba’s whereabouts, the
United Nations Mission has not reported on that.
Question: On the DRC, it’s reported and I think it’s true that Mr. Bemba has been indicted for treason. There’s now a court proceeding against him. Does MONUC or the
Secretary-General have any comment on the utility of that in terms of maintaining the peace?
Deputy Spokesperson: (The Deputy Spokesperson referred the question to the above statement by the Secretary-General.)
Question: I have two more questions. You have a press release upstairs about UNMIK in Kosovo and the Romanian soldiers who left the country despite the request that they stay there. Can you explain, what are the duties of a troop contributing country? If they’re under investigation for having killed these demonstrators in Kosovo, can they just leave the country?
And is the United Nations just asking Romania to voluntarily produce them, or is there some legal requirement that peacekeepers answer to charges of absence?
Deputy Spokesperson: I had that item, I don’t know why it’s not in my pile so I cannot read it out and I don’t really have too many details on that. Let me get you more after the briefing.
Question: I guess it’s to understand whether they call on them to make them available but it’s not clear at all whether there is a duty on Romania’s part, or on these troops’ part, to answer to this.
Deputy Spokesperson: It’s up to the troop contributing countries, obviously, to investigate. The file is given to the national authorities for them to look into, but I will give you the precise language on that particular case.
Question: And to me also please. Can I follow up on Kosovo? What would be the scenario after the 26 th ? We are going to have a presentation of Mr. Ahtisaari’s plan. He is not going to be here? Or, he is going to be here?
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Deputy Spokesperson: My only understanding at this moment of the Kosovo report is that it is coming out on Monday. After that, I think the Security Council President for the month of March told you at his press conference here, I believe he said it was something that would be taken up in the month of April. So we will now have to find out from the April
Security Council Presidency when they will schedule the discussions on that report.
Question: On the 26 th
, there is not going to be any discussion, or it is going to start on the 26 th
? I’m asking whether this date is going to be the starting point for discussion and then it will continue.
Deputy Spokesperson: You would have to ask the Security Council members. The report is going to the Security Council members on Monday.
Question: Is Mr. Ahtisaari coming?
Deputy Spokesperson: I don’t have a date for when the discussions are, so we will have to find out. Nothing has been officially decided on the date for the debate. It’s not in the
Security Council programme for the month of March. It’s something that the Council members will have to agree on. Yes?
Question: I’m sorry if I missed some information before. Is the Security Council definitely meeting tomorrow on the draft resolution regarding Iran?
Deputy Spokesperson: I think this is why everybody ran out of the briefing room right now when the Security Council consultations finished. The Council President is probably announcing right now what the scenario is for the resolution. But if there is a vote, we’ll be here. Yes?
Question: Yesterday, when UNDP’s David Morrison was asked…to a number of questions he said the Board of Auditors answers that, he’s asked the Board of Auditors to make themselves available. I know the Secretary-General has been asked the same thing. Is there some way, given the interest in the audit of DPRK-UN programmes, to get the Board of
Auditors to explain the delays, to just give some kind of a briefing? It seems that everyone has said to them they should speak, but they have not spoken.
Deputy Spokesperson: I’ll look into it for you, okay. No other questions? Have a good weekend and we’ll probably see you tomorrow.
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