EarthAction

7 Days in the Life of Avaaz...

Colombian Deputy Minister receives Avaaz petition delivery last week :)

We may have won our campaign to stop Colombia’s massive deforestation!

The team and members brought a million-strong petition (and several cute kids) to a key minister this week, and got 42 election candidates signed on to our 5-point forest pledge! After satellite pictures we obtained showed massive deforestation in Colombia, the President flew over the land we were campaigning for, and it looks like we’re going to win! Here's an update (in Spanish) from Ana Sofia.

Who wouldn't want to protect this?

We might help win the largest ocean reserve in the Atlantic!

Last week we met with the key official pushing this ocean-saving plan at the Ministry of Environment in Brazil. As we entered the room, they were looking at the final draft of the project and the official told us: “We need Avaaz to win this! When are you launching this campaign?!” The minister actually wanted our help to win over the rest of the Cabinet and the President! Video update from Diego (in Portuguese) here.

Our fake far-right leader on his fake tour of southern Italy got over 100 media hits!

We worked our hearts out to stop a far-right win in Italy!

With a fascist-led coalition close to winning the election on Sunday, we were flat-out for a month -- reaching millions of voters in close races over email, on Facebook, and in the media, asking them to cooperate across a splintered opposition, and vote for the candidate most likely to defeat the far-right. Our polling showed our impact, and Avaaz was constantly attacked in the right-wing press (e.g. here and here) and our Senior Campaigner Luca got threatening phone calls.

The election largely turned on the South, so last week we also staged a hilarious fake tour of the South by the far-right leader -- who once said Southerners smelled worse than dogs -- that generated over 100 media articles! Examples here, here and here, and here’s an update from Luca (in Italian). The media likes to hype the fascists, but the result was a clean sweep of the south and the far-right coalition is FAR short of the majority we feared!

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Protect Wild Salmon

Juvenile sockeye salmon swimming past salmon farms are exposed to piscine reovirus shed by the farm salmon. Photo by Tavish Campbell

 

Finally, good news!  Washington State, on the West Coast of the USA, is the first government anywhere, to legislate removal of Atlantic salmon farming from a region of our oceans.

It was a tough fight, but determined organizations and citizens won an impressive and life-saving victory. 

I have released a new 5 minute innovative film - behind-the-scenes on farm salmon science because, frankly it is hard to believe. The film is spreading rapidly. You can see it here:

Alexandramorton.typepad.com

We are getting closer to finally closing this disastrous chapter in our history, but for now the next generation of wild salmon leaving BC rivers face the same exposure to farm lice and disease and they really are in no condition to survive this. 

Thank you for sticking with me on this!

Alexandra Morton

Handcarts vs. Drudgery

Photo from KoruCarts Facebook Page

Some 40 million people (mostly women and children) frequently carry heavy loads, often to the detriment of their health, security, education and development (UNDP). 37% of Africa's population is at least 30 minutes away from a water source (WEDO).

Many organisations are drilling for water, and providing pumps closer to communities, though this can produce mechanical and social problems of its own. The water must still be contained and carried, often more frequently than before.

What can we do to reduce the load-carrying drudgery that is impeding progress for so many?

Supermarkets provide us with shopping carts so we can easily gather and carry our goods. Would it not be reasonable and appropriate, if the load-carriers were provided with their own form of shopping cart, a durable handcart?

Unfortunately, such handcarts are rarely available in areas where they are most needed, and wheelbarrows make a poor substitute.

Non-profit KoruCarts were created to - 

• Design and test a range of suitable and acceptable handcarts.
• Provide handcart-related advise and technical services.
• Promote the concept of handcart distribution for developmental purposes.
• Establish partnerships with governments and humanitarian organisations.

We now offer a range of handcart designs that you can import or have made locally.

This is the steel KoruCart Alpha model, which can be made in four capacities and wheel sizes -

Other styles and materials are available, including sheet-metal and wickerwork.

Please consider how EarthAction and KoruCarts could defeat drudgery, using handcarts.

You can contact KoruCarts at korucarts@gmail.

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China Hosts First Global Environmental Summit on Desertification

Photo: Greentumble.com

For many years the EarthAction Network worked with its 2,500 partner NGOs in more than 160 countries to encourage nations to write, ratify, and fully implement the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Below is an update on this critically

important UN Treaty.Ordos, 06/06/17 - Zhang Jianlong, Minister of State Forestry Administration, China, this morning opened the first ever United Nations conference on sustainable development hosted in China. The thirteenth session of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is taking place from 6-16 September, in Ordos, Inner Mongolia.

The 196 country Parties attending the session are expected to agree on a 12-year Strategy to contain runaway land degradation that is threatening global food and water supply.

Ministers are expected to announce their targets for land restoration and agree on measures to address the related emerging threats of forced migration, sand and dust storms, and on actions to strengthen resilience to droughts.

Close to 80 ministers are expected to attend the Conference during the high-level segment, when most of the emerging issues will be addressed and country commitments of the targets will be announced.

Speach: Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary, UNCCD
Press Conference: Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary, UNCCD

About UNCCD: The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is the only legally binding international agreement on land issues. The Convention promotes good land stewardship. It's 196 Parties aim, through partnerships, to implement the Convention and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The end goal is to protect our land, from overuse and drought, so it can continue to provide us all with food, water and energy. By sustainably managing land and striving to achieve land degradation neutrality, now and in the future, we will reduce the impact of climate change, avoid conflict over natural resources and help communities to thrive.

NGO in Togo, West Africa Looking to Build Relationship with Organizations in the USA & Elsewhere

Free distribution of school items to the needy children in a primary school.

A non-profit organization in the country of Togo (official name: the Togolese Republic) on the West coast of Africa wants to build a relationship and collaborate with NGOs in the USA and elsewhere. The Togolese NGO is called UMESPE, Univers des Maillons de l’Espoir pour l’Enfance, (Universe of Links of Hope for Children). They have been a Partner organization in the EarthAction Network for many years and we encourage all interested NGOS to contact them directly:  Atchou AYENA <ayena.pastor@gmail.com>

In the words of UMESPE:

Our vision: A world without poverty that deprives children of access to the necessary knowledge and training on which the excellence of the human person depends and its genuine and constructive participation in the life of a peaceful world.

Our mission: To contribute to the creation or strengthening of the conditions for access to primary health care and basic education for children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

Our strategy: Fighting child poverty by supporting hard-working and organized parents to produce more and make more money in order to create by themselves the conditions necessary for the development of their children. We help grassroots communities build infrastructures such as school buildings and health centers.

Our projects: We mainly work in rural areas with peasant groups or cooperatives. We focus on agricultural activities including the production, processing, and conservation of harvests. Since 2002, we have been working with partners from Italy including Gocce Per l’Africa, Progetti Solidarièta Oikos, SB Sociale, the Italian Valdese Church. The collaboration with these partners has resulted in the creation of one health center, 2 rice production and threshing centers, buildings for 1 kindergarten and 3 primary schools. In addition, five agricultural cooperatives have benefited from our technical and financial support.

Now we are looking to build relationships with American organizations that could:

• send volunteers to the health center and agricultural cooperatives that we work with to provide technical support;
• technically or financially support UMESPE:
  • to carry out school infrastructure construction projects for 4 primary schools;
  • to create a training and support center for agricultural initiatives;
  • to create a health center in an isolated rural area.

If you or your NGO is interested in collaborating with UMESPE, contact: Atchou AYENA <ayena.pastor@gmail.com>

      

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Save Pirin National Park: WWF urges immediate international action

Sofia - Pirin National Park in Bulgaria, which shelters possibly the oldest tree in the Balkan peninsula, could be added to UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger. WWF urges immediate action against multiple threats to the mountain and launches an international campaign to save the park.
 
Pirin has exceptionally beautiful mountain scenery, glacial lakes, continuing evolution of flora, and is an example of healthy, functioning Balkan uplands ecosystems. The natural coniferous forests shelter the 1,300 year old endemic Bosnian Pine tree called Baykusheva mura – it is believed to be the oldest one on the Balkan peninsula. Pirin is home to brown bears, grey wolves, chamois and 159 bird species among which is the Eurasian three-toed woodpecker, the rarest woodpecker in Europe.
 
A new draft management plan of Pirin National Park has been designed recently that allows construction on 12.5-times bigger territory compared to the current area and could lead to commercial logging affecting nearly 60 per cent of the park. The plan would jeopardize the pristine nature and ecosystem values of the northern park territories as well as its status as a UNESCO site. Government has to take actions.
 
“National laws, European nature directives and international treaties should ensure that Pirin is protected. Unfortunately, the proposed management plan envisages the construction of two new ski zones in Pirin and the expansion of an existing one. This would be a breach of World Heritage regulations to which Bulgarian government has agreed”, says Vesselina Kavrakova, WWF-Bulgaria Country Head.
 
In 2010, UNESCO has already excluded the existing ski areas above the towns of Bansko and Dobrinishte from the World Heritage site. For the construction of these facilities, more than 160 ha of forests, including old-growth, were cleared, with trees 120-300 years old.
 
“We cannot allow any further destruction to put Pirin at risk with the communities depending on it. With a petition launched today we urge the Bulgarian government to take immediate actions to save the Pirin World Heritage and EU Natura 2000 site by halting any proposed construction and commercial logging and ensuring the future of its outstanding universal value. We have weeks to halt the approval of the proposed management plan. After that, construction and deforestation in Pirin will be very difficult to stop”, Kavrakova added.
 
Help us #SavePirin: https://makeyourmark.panda.org/pirin
 

 

Read more HERE

Victory in Landmark Climate Case!

FEDERAL COURT AFFIRMS CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF KIDS AND DENIES MOTIONS OF GOVERNMENT AND FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY IN YOUTH’S LANDMARK CLIMATE CHANGE CASE

Eugene, OR – On April 8, 2016, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin of the federal District Court in Eugene, OR, decided in favor of 21 young Plaintiffs, and Dr. James Hansen on behalf of future generations, in their landmark constitutional climate change case brought against the federal government and the fossil fuel industry. The Court’s ruling is a major victory for the 21 youth Plaintiffs, ages 8-19, from across the U.S. in what Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein call the “most important lawsuit on the planet right now.” These plaintiffs sued the federal government for violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, and their right to essential public trust resources, by permitting, encouraging, and otherwise enabling continued exploitation, production, and combustion of fossil fuels.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Philip Gregory with Cotchett, Pitre, & McCarthy of Burlingame, CA, said: “This decision is one of the most significant in our nation’s history. The Court upheld our claims that the federal government intensified the danger to our plaintiffs’ lives, liberty and property. Judge Coffin decided our Complaint will move forward and put climate science squarely in front of the federal courts. The next step is for the Court to order our government to cease jeopardizing the climate system for present and future generations. The Court gave America’s youth a fair opportunity to be heard.”

As part of Friday’s historic decision, Judge Coffin characterized the case as an “unprecedented lawsuit” addressing “government action and inaction” resulting “in carbon pollution of the atmosphere, climate destabilization, and ocean acidification.” In deciding the case will proceed, Judge Coffin wrote: “The debate about climate change and its impact has been before various political bodies for some time now. Plaintiffs give this debate justiciability by asserting harms that befall or will befall them personally and to a greater extent than older segments of society. It may be that eventually the alleged harms, assuming the correctness of plaintiffs' analysis of the impacts of global climate change, will befall all of us. But the intractability of the debates before Congress and state legislatures and the alleged valuing of short term economic interest despite the cost to human life, necessitates a need for the courts to evaluate the constitutional parameters of the action or inaction taken by the government. This is especially true when such harms have an alleged disparate impact on a discrete class of society.”

 

100% Renewable Energy: What We Can Do in 10 Years By Richard Heinberg

If our transition to renewable energy is successful, we will achieve savings in the ongoing energy expenditures needed for economic production. We will be rewarded with a quality of life that is acceptable—and, perhaps, preferable to our current one (even though, for most Americans, material consumption will be scaled back from its current unsustainable level). We will have a much more stable climate than would otherwise be the case. And we will see greatly reduced health and environmental impacts from energy production activities.

But the transition will entail costs—not just money and regulation, but also changes in our behavior and expectations. It will probably take at least three or four decades, and will fundamentally change the way we live.

Nobody knows how to accomplish the transition in detail, because this has never been done before. Most previous energy transitions were driven by opportunity, not policy. And they were usually additive, with new energy resources piling onto old ones (we still use firewood, even though we’ve added coal, hydro, oil, natural gas, and nuclear to the mix).

Since the renewable energy revolution will require trading our currently dominant energy sources (fossil fuels) for alternative ones (mostly wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and biomass) that have different characteristics, there are likely to be some hefty challenges along the way.

Therefore, it makes sense to start with the low-hanging fruit and with a plan in place, then revise our plan frequently as we gain practical experience. Several organizations have already formulated plans for transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy. David Fridley, staff scientist of the energy analysis program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and I have been working for the past few months to analyze and assess those plans and have a book in the works titledOur Renewable Future. Here’s a very short summary, tailored mostly to the United States, of what we’ve found.

This piece first appeared in YES magazine 

Climate politics at a dead end – How to build a new road

- by Patrick Mazza

Climate politics is dead-ended. 

 

It may seem strange to make such a statement in the wake of the much-heralded U.S.-China climate deal announced November 12.  So let me clarify.

 

President Obama did announce the intent to reduce U.S. carbon emissions 26-28% by 2025, while China said it would peak carbon emissions and generate at least 20% of its energy from non-fossil sources by 2030. 

 

All well and good, but far from the 6% annual emissions cuts required to hold overall global warming under 2° Celsius, the minimal borderline between climate disruption that is merely severe and that which is utterly catastrophic (though many scientists believe the cutoff is more like 1.5°C). In other words, the U.S.-China agreement represents only a slower road to climate hell.

 

Okay, but it’s a start, right?

 

“The agreement with China is a good first step. But we hope it is but a first step because it is not enough to prevent significant climate change,” noted Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

 

Unfortunately, it may be the last step possible in the current political environment.  Republican election victories in the U.S. Senate and states around the country have put legislative progress on global warming into a deep freeze. 

 

To view the entire article, click here.

 

Image: Greenpeace

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Stop the “Carbon Cowboys” from Turning the Amazon Rainforest into their Private Palm Oil Plantation

Image source: Andre Penner, CTV news

RIGHT NOW, the world’s remaining rainforests are being cut down and replaced with palm oil and soybean plantations, and cattle ranches. Here’s an Action Alert from Friends of the Amazon. Please take the action they suggest to send a message to the President of Peru.

“Currently, scammers are cheating native Amazonians out of their land under the pretext of creating REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) projects. These unscrupulous businessmen have been termed "Carbon Cowboys." While they say that they want to protect the forest, what they really want is to get the land for free and cut down the forest and replace it with palm oil plantations. They lie and say that they are representatives of the United Nations and the World Bank and promise the communities "billions of dollars" from carbon offset credits. Using these tactics, they trick vulnerable and trusting people into signing unfair contracts with hidden clauses giving the scammers a power of attorney that essentially gives these conmen the forest for free, allowing them to harvest the timber and replace the native forest with monocultures of palm oil trees.”