Green Options

While the world quivers over a potential Swine Flu pandemic, a far deadlier outbreak of dengue fever has gone comparatively under-reported in South America and Australia.

Hundreds of thousands have been infected in South America, and in Australia the outbreak is being called the worst seen in 50 years. While the swine flu scare may be an overreaction in comparison, both outbreaks do highlight a clear link between environmental degradation and the spread of disease.

The Xingu River — home to some 600 species of fish — is one of the largest tributaries running through the Amazon. But not if the Brazilian state power company has their way.

What would be the world’s third largest dam, called the Belo Monte, would flood over 200 square miles of tropical rainforest; about the size of Tucson, AZ. It would also flood the homes of 19,000 people.

This week, U.S. President Barack Obama will head to Trinidad and Tobago for the 5th Summit of the Americas. He will meet with leaders from Western Hemisphere Nations and discuss a number of pressing issues such as the worldwide economic crisis, U.S. relations with Cuba, trade, energy, conservation, illegal immigration, poverty, and drugs.

Should we expect anything meaningful to happen on the conservation front as a result of the summit and Obama’s new approach toward international relations?

The Rio state government will build concrete walls around some of the city’s biggest slums (pictured on the hillside above) in an attempt to halt deforestation of the surrounding jungle, officials said.

Seven miles of walls, reaching a height of three metres (10ft) will be built around sections of at least 11 slums this year, Icaro Moreno, the president of the state’s public works department, said.

Next Wednesday night, March 25th, tune into HBO2’s premiere of the documentary They Killed Sister Dorothy at 8 pm if you want to begin to understand the violence and injustice that surrounds the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. If you aren’t going to be home, then set your Tivo.

I was fortunate enough to see Daniel Junge’s film last month at the City of the Angels Film Festival in Los Angeles. The documentary follows the aftermath of the murder of 73 year-old Sister Dorothy Stang, known as the Angel of the Amazon, a Catholic nun and rainforest activist shot in the back while trying to empower local communities to set up sustainable farms while fighting illegal logging and land grabs.

It’s beginning to become a perennial question I ask myself when a celebrity goes on an environmentally-themed speaking tour or does something “green” I’m supposed to appreciate.  Should I care?

This time, I woke up to read news about how today is the first day of Prince Charles’s South American environmental-themed tour. First country up: Chile. Among his activities he will participate in a round table discussion about global warming and also will attend a kick-off event for an energy efficiency campaign, all while along the side of conservation-credible Chilean President Michelle Bachelet. But the fun doesn’t end there.

In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8th, a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women, the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) and Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) have released three new case studies and a video on the impacts of monoculture tree plantations on women in Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and Brazil.

These tree plantations provide rubber for car and bus tires, palm oil for processed foods and pulp for toilet paper - all items being used in the west. They are also destroying local communities according to WRM and FoEI.

In the case of Nigeria, in 2007, the French tire maker Michelin came in to the Iguóbazuwa Forest Reserve, a biologically diverse region supplying food for around 20,000 people. Michelin bulldozed the forest and local farm lands to convert them into rubber plantations. Women living there lost their subsistence farms and the local forest which provided medicinal herbs and plants.

The World Bank approved a loan to the Brazilian government for the improvement of environmental management programs.

Focus areas for the programs are forests, water conservation, and energy efficiency. (Climate change will be addressed with an integrated approach that includes all aspects of the programs.) For example, destruction of the Amazon rainforest causes biodiversity loss and contributes to climate change, so decreasing deforestation protects biodiversity and prevents additional global warming.

Over 1,000 indigenous rights activists formed human banners across a stretch of deforested Amazon rain forest this week at the World Social Forum in Brazil.

“We are the guardians of the forest,” said Marco Apurina, vice-coordinator of Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira. “This is a critical moment for indigenous peoples to unite with non-indigenous, activists, teachers, environmentalists, unions, government. The Amazon rainforest needs everyone to work together now to defend it before it’s too late.”

The United Nations plans to introduce a new carbon offsetting scheme to fund preservation and restoration of the fast depleting rain forests but first it must rectify the discrepancies in the Kyoto carbon offsetting mechanism.

Brazil’s government has announced plans to increase their soldiers in the Amazon Rainforest from 17,000 to 30,000 over the next 9 years, as well as build new forts and improve others. Why have they chosen to invest $488.6 million in this plan?