• INTERNATIONAL
  Climate Change Biggest Threat to Cloud Forests

• INDONESIA
  Indonesia Acts to Conserve Forests, Turtle Nesting Beach

• SOUTHEAST ASIA
  Three Countries Sign Sustainable Seas Pledge

• CHINA
  China Prepares to Squeeze Out Ivory Traffickers

• IRAN/USA
  Earthquake Research Groups Seek Lessons from Bam

• VIETNAM/USA
  Vietnamese Agent Orange Victims Sue for Damages

• AUSTRALIA
  Australia Proposes Global Trade Ban for Great White Shark

• CANADA
  Alcan Creates Million Dollar Sustainability Prize

Climate Change Biggest Threat to Cloud Forests

So writes Philip Bubb of the UN Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), co-author of a new report on cloud forests released in conjunction with the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity taking place through February 20 in Kuala Lumpur.

"A unique feature of these forests is that they can capture moisture through condensation from the clouds, which also makes these habitats very sensitive to climate change," writes Bubb.

If temperatures rise one degree in the lowland this equates to two degrees in the mountains and can result in the clouds lifting and the cloud forest drying out. "The El Nino of 1987, which some researchers have suggested was more intense as a result of global warming, caused several weeks of dry weather in the Monteverde cloud forest of Costa Rica. As a result, 25 of the 50 frog and toad species disappeared and only five have returned," he writes.

The report, "Cloud Forest Agenda," compiled by researchers from UNEP-WCMC and colleagues from IUCN-the World Conservation Union and UNESCO, is the first major report of the Mountain Cloud Forest Initiative.

For the first time, researchers mapped cloud forest distribution, maps that show cloud forests are rarer than thought, with the true area 20 percent less than the previous estimate. Cloud forests cover an area of just under 400,000 square kilometes, or less than 2.5 percent of the globe's tropical rain forests.

Contrary to previous estimates, the majority of these moist humid forests are found in Asia rather than Latin America. The maps show 60 percent of cloud forests are found in Asia with around 25 percent in Latin America and 15 percent in Africa.

The report makes it clear that conserving and restoring cloud forests is not a only a matter of aesthetics or a love of nature, but one of crucial economic importance for millions of people in the developing world. Priority countries may include Indonesia and Papua New Guinea that have been found to hold expanses of cloud forest.

The ability of cloud forests to strip and retain moisture from cloud and fogs is key to abundant, clean and predictable water supplies in many areas, especially during dry seasons. The cloud forests of La Tigra National Park in Honduras provide over 40 percent of the water for the 850,000 people living in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

Other cloud forests supply water to Quito, Ecuador, Mexico City and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. All the water used by the Tanzanian capital in the dry season for drinking and powering hydroelectricity originates in the cloud forests of the Uluguru Mountains.

The forests of Mount Kenya guarantee the dry season river flows to the semi-arid lowlands with the headwaters of the River Tana supplying water to over five million people. River systems in the Mount Kenya area also supply other urban centres, Kenya's blossoming international exports of flowers, as well as wildlife and tourist centres.

Cloud forest shelter species such as the endangered spectacted bear, the mountain gorillas of Africa and the resplendent Quetzal, a colorful bird that is the national symbol of Guatemala.

In Peru, over 30 percent of the country's 272 species of endemic mammals, birds and frogs are found in cloud forests. The Centinella Ridge in Western Ecuador has about 90 endemic plant species in a forest area of just 20 square kilometers.

New species are often discovered in cloud forests. A new genus of the cow family and two new species of barking deer were discovered in the Annamite cloud forests of Laos and Viet Nam as recently as 1996.

But clearing for agriculture, road construction and tourist developments, including golf courses, are threatening cloud forests in Southeast Asia and South America.

Clearance of cloud forests for illegal opium or coca leaf is reported in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela. Cloud forests in Jamaica are threatened by an introduced Australian tree, and feral pigs in Hawaiian cloud forests have led to plant and bird extinctions.

UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said, "I hope this study will not only trigger improved awareness of the need to conserve cloud forests, but lead to new partnerships and initiatives to conserve and restore them. Good work in this area is already being undertaken in some countries. This report underscores how much more is needed, particularly in Africa and areas of Asia, now known to be holding significant reserves of these fragile mountain habitats."

The findings will be presented to environment ministers and experts attending the 8th Special Session of UNEP's Governing Council and 5th Global Ministerial Environment Forum taking place in Jeju, South Korea, in late March where water will be high on the agenda.

Read the full report online at: http://www.unep-wcmc.org/press/cloud_forest_agenda

Indonesia Acts to Conserve Forests, Turtle Nesting Beach

With only 10 important remaining nesting sites in the Pacific, leatherback turtles face a population crash, according to WWF, the conservation organization which counts only 3,000 nesting females today as compared to 90,000 in the 1980s.

Slaughter of turtles and overharvesting of their eggs, habitat degradation, accidental catch by longline hooks, and drowning due to entanglement in fishing nets are the main threats to the species, WWF says.

At least one quarter of the remaining Pacific leatherback population comes ashore each year to lay their eggs on the Indonesian beach of Jamursba-Medi, the beach that the Indonesia government has pledged to protect.

The Indonesian government has called on fishing nations and the fishing industry to find solutions to reduce the accidental catch of turtles by hooks or nets. Turtle excluder devices (TEDS) on trawl nets and new hooks can reduce the accidental catch of turtles and their deaths by drowning from fishing in many parts of the world, including the United States, Australia, parts of Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

Last week at the conference, the Indonesian government made a commitment to establish 12 new forest protected areas, totalling one million hectares, this year.

"The establishment of these new protected areas is part of Indonesia's commitment to fulfilling our obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity," said Koes Saparjadi, director general of forest protection and nature conservation at the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry, who made the announcement. "Conserving these forests is not only important for Indonesia and its people but also for the international community."

The 12 protected areas to be created include the important wildlife habitats of Tesso Nilo, in Sumatra, and Sebangau, in Borneo.

Endangered species such as elephants, tigers and orangutans will be protected from logging and development, and the protected areas will also shelter more than 500 different indigenous communities.

The pledge comes at a time when the Indonesian forests, and the animals, plants, and indigenous populations of these forests are under what the WWF calls "extreme threat from illegal logging, forest conversion, and habitat loss, and factors such as poor governance and lack of law enforcement."

This results in an annual loss of an estimated 3.6 million hectares of forest, and some US$4 billion to the economy of Indonesia.

Tesso Nilo is one of the largest remaining blocks of dry lowland rainforest in Sumatra. According to WWF, it is home to 350 Sumatran elephants and an important population of the endangered Sumatran tiger.

WWF research also found Tesso Nilo to have the highest vascular plant diversity per area ever recorded by science, with 218 different species of plants identified within a 200 square metre area.

But some 300,000 hectares of Tesso Nilo's forest have been converted to industrial plantations since 1984, and less than 180,000 hectares remain today. WWF warns that if this trend continues, one of the world’s most diverse forests will disappear.

Borneo's largest remaining lowland forest, Sebangau is home to an orangutan population estimated between 2,500 and 4,500.

WWF points out that local indigenous Dayak communities maintain the ecological and spiritual values of this large coastal and inland swamp forest belt, and have insisted upon conservation and sustainable use of Sebangau's remaining forest areas.

"The commitments made today will have global significance when they become reality," said Dr. Claude Martin, director general of WWF International. "Government, conservation organizations, industry, local communities, and funding organizations need to collaborate to fully realize these pledges and also ensure these protected areas are effectively managed for future generations."

To ensure that established protected areas in Indonesia do not remain parks in name only, the government will conduct an assessment of the management effectiveness of these areas using a tool developed by WWF. An action plan will then be developed to follow up on the findings of the assessment, and a wider partnership established to ensure implementation of the plan.

But on Monday, Greenpeace took action to protect Indonesian forests that the activist organization says should not be necessary if the Indonesian government was taking care of its own forests.

Greenpeacers aboard the ship Rainbow Warrior discovered barges loaded with hundreds of logs soon to be exported from Indonesia and suspected to have been extracted illegally. The logs come from a region that includes the Tanjung Puting National Park, inhabited by dwindling numbers of orangutans where logging is forbidden.

Four activists from the UK, the Philippines, the United States, and Papua New Guinea displayed a banner with the message "Stop Forest Crime" on one of the log barges in central Kalimantan.

"We're doing the job that governments are failing to do," said Stephen Campbell of Greenpeace, speaking from the Rainbow Warrior. "The world's oceans and forests are in crisis but the international community has failed to take serious steps in the 12 years since the Rio summit to really protect life on Earth."

Three Countries Sign Sustainable Seas Pledge

The three nations signed the memo on the Sulu-Sulawesi Marine Eco-region (SSME) on Friday on the sidelines of the 7th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity, which has attracted at least 2,000 scientists, environmentalists, government officials and policy makers from around the world.

A tri-national Ecoregion Conservation Plan (ECP) for the million square kilometer area was developed through 12 workshops at the local, national and regional levels. The Sulu-Sulawesi region, covering the Sulu Sea between Sabah and the Philippines and the Sulawesi Sea, stretches down to the east coast of Borneo island. More than 1,200 fish species and some 500 coral species are found in these waters.

The ECP is aimed at protection for over 1,000 species of reef fishes, unusual fishes such as the coelacanth, five of the world’s seven species of marine turtles, endangered marine mammals such as the dugong, more than 400 species of algae, and 16 species of sea grass.

Signing for Indonesia was Marine Affairs and Fisheries Minister Rokhmin Dahuri, for Malaysia Science, Technology and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Law Hieng Ding, and for the Phillipines, Elisea Gozun, secretary of the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

At the signing ceremony at the Pan-Pacific Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, "Law said, “A truly sustainable path will require the close cooperation of all three nations and partnerships among all the stakeholders in the region."

China Prepares to Squeeze Out Ivory Traffickers

Later this month the first of a series of national enforcement training workshops will take place in Shanghai, the highest known ivory hotspot in China, and it will include an ETIS training component.

ETIS, developed and maintained by TRAFFIC, is one of the two monitoring systems operating under the auspices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Today, the ETIS monitoring system contains over 7,800 records of elephant product seizures which have taken place throughout the world since 1989, implicating 150 countries in the illegal ivory trade.

The first in depth statistical analysis of ETIS reported to Conference to Parties of CITES in 2002 demonstrates that illegal trade in ivory is directly correlated to the presence of large scale, unregulated domestic ivory markets.

Located in both African and Asian countries, these markets have become increasingly more active since 1996 and account for the greatest volume of ivory being seized throughout the world, TRAFFIC says.

Ivory consumption has rapidly increased in recent years, and the Chinese government has tried to stem the tide with legislative and regulatory measures to control trade in ivory.

The Chinese government has supplied information to ETIS on ivory seizures and TRAFFIC says China continues its efforts to interdict the flow of ivory coming into country.

"However, we recognize that countries may need support and assistance in effectively implementing these legislative and regulative measures,” said Dr. Xu Hongfa, TRAFFIC wildlife trade program coordinator in Beijing.

The ETIS toolkit has been developed to provide detailed guidelines to the global enforcement community on how to convert the information from the seizure actions and investigations into a specific format that enables a statistical analysis of pattern and trend of this illegal trade. A Chinese version of the ETIS training toolkit will be produced.

“The partnership with TRAFFIC on the ETIS collaboration demonstrates China’s commitment in fulfilling its obligation to the CITES,” said Dr. Meng, the deputy director general of the National Office of the Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora Import and Export Management Office in Beijing.

Earthquake Research Groups Seek Lessons from Bam

American structural and geotechnical engineers, a physician, engineering seismologists, and environmental and risk experts from the national, nonprofit technical society will work closely with colleagues from the International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology in Teheran.

The Bam earthquake resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 people, with an additional 50,000 seriously injured. Over 90 percent of the buildings in Bam collapsed and numerous others are inhabitable, leaving more than 100,000 homeless throughout the earthquake stricken region.

The earthquake destroyed the historical citadel of Arg-e-Bam, adding severe cultural loss to its growing list of serious effects.

By contrast the San Simeon earthquake that struck central California on December 22, 2003 killed only two people and damaged about 40 buildings.

EERI President Thomas O'Rourke said the reconnaissance is an international, cooperative effort between the two institutes to collect perishable data, determine the causes of damage and loss of life, observe emergency response operations, apply and test advanced technologies for data acquisition and restoration management, and recommend measures to reduce the chances of such destruction in the future.

As part of its mission, EERI manages a Learning from Earthquakes program, supported by the National Science Foundation. Through this program EERI organizes reconnaissance activities for virtually all serious worldwide earthquakes, including the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge earthquakes on US soil and the 1988 Armenia and 1999 Turkey earthquakes in the Mideast. Most recently, EERI published a reconnaissance report about the Bourmerdes earthquake that struck Algeria in May 2003.

The Bam and San Simeon earthquakes remind us of the danger associated with seismically active regions, and the accentuation of that danger by the types of buildings subjected to earthquake forces, said O'Rourke, who pointed out that both were 6.5 magnitude earthquakes that occurred at about the same five mile depth. Their results were dramatically different.

For both earthquakes, the main causes of damage and death are weak and vulnerable buildings. In California, most damage was confined to unreinforced masonry structures that were built of brick and mortar with no special support features or metallic strengthening. These structures were constructed before modern building codes, and are widely recognized as susceptible to earthquake shaking.

The buildings in Bam were typically adobe structures, made of dried mud bricks with little or no reinforcing or seismic detailing. The collocation of many such buildings and a shallow earthquake of significant magnitude led to catastrophe.

Although Bam is situated in a seismically active region, there has been a long absence of serious earthquakes at or near its location. As a result, Bam is a grim example of a low probability, high consequence event. Although earthquakes at Bam are infrequent in historical terms, they are inevitable.

O'Rourke said the crucial factor in the differing levels of death and destruction caused by earthquakes is the implementation of building construction codes, not the intensity of the tremor.

An Iranian-American architect, Nader Khalili, has developed a ceramic construction material as a substitute for traditional adobe. Calling it "super adobe," he says the method are based on ancient clay building styles. They use a dome-shaped design and withstand severe heat, cold, rain, snow, wind and earthquakes.

For more information on "super adobe," see the website: http://www.thesustainablevillage.com/servlet/display/product/detail/26658/.

Information about the Bam earthquake may also be found at the EERI website: http://www.eeri.org/.

Vietnamese Agent Orange Victims Sue for Damages

The assocation, set up in Hanoi in January, will act as the legal representative of Vietnamese Agent Orange victims. Professor Nguyen Trong Nhan was named president.

As its first act, the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange filed a lawsuit on behalf of three people before the U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn, New York.

The three Vietnamese plaintiffs, a man named Nguyen Van Quy, and two women, Nguyen Thi Phi Phi and Duong Quynh Hoa, all had worked in areas sprayed with Agent Orange, the lawsuit says.

Phi has had four miscarriages. Hoa has breast cancer and high levels of dioxin in her blood. Quy also has cancer, and has two children with birth defects.

Many American veterans and Vietnamese have blamed Agent Orange, which contains the toxic dioxin, for illnesses from cancer and diabetes to spina bifida.

The U.S. government claims there is no direct evidence linking dioxin with the illnesses. But about 10,000 Vietnam War veterans in the United States receive disability benefits related to Agent Orange exposure.

In 2002, Vietnam and the United States held their first joint scientific conference on Agent Orange and its effects since the war ended in 1975.

A new study released last year found high levels of dioxin in food samples in Vietnam, more than 30 years after the defoliant was sprayed across the country.

Australia Proposes Global Trade Ban on Great White Shark

Environment Minister Dr. David Kemp said Friday that scientific evidence suggests the great white shark is rare, and the global population of this species has declined by at least 20 percent over the last three generations, and even more in some areas.

The shark made famous by the film "Jaws" is vulnerable to fishing vessels hunting it for fins and teeth, and also vulnerable to being caught in nets and lines set for other species.

"Products derived from the great white shark include trophy items such as jaws and teeth, and fins for foods like shark fin soup," said Kemp. "Increasing demand for these products has increased their value. Recent reports have identified sums of up to $50,000 paid for jaws from South Africa and $600 for individual teeth."

A CITES listing would make it illegal for any of the 161 countries that are Parties to the CITES convention to trade in great white shark products.

"Great white sharks mature very slowly and females give birth to a small number of young only every two to three years, so that the international trade in shark products can have a major impact on population numbers," Kemp said.

As a highly migratory species, this shark needs global protective action to escape extinction.

The great white shark is classified as vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which documents species that are facing a high risk of global extinction. But the IUCN notes that "a global status of endangered may prove more accurate for this shark as further data are collected."

"While we don't know how many great white sharks remain in the world's oceans, all the scientific evidence points to a decline in the abundance and average size of the species," Kemp said.

Australia successfully lobbied for the listing of the great white shark on the Convention for Migratory Species in 2002. The species is fully protected in Australia under the Commonwealth's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

While it also receives protection in the United States, South Africa, Namibia, Malta and the Maldives, "only a global trade ban will give the great white a fighting chance of survival," Kemp said.

Alcan Creates Million Dollar Sustainability Prize

Alcan manufactures aluminum and packaging, and recycles aluminum. Alcan believes that business success is inextricably linked to the principles and practice of sustainability, the company said in a statement announcing the prize. Based in Montreal, Alcan employs 88,000 people and has operating facilities in over 60 countries.

The Alcan Prize for Sustainability is organized with the International Business Leaders Forum, and will be awarded by a panel of international judges chaired by the World Economic Forum's co-chief executive José-Maria Figueres, former president of Costa Rica.

The prize is open to all not-for-profit, nongovernmental, civil society organizations that have made and continue to make significant contributions that integrate economic, environmental and social sustainability for the benefit of present and future generations.

The adjudication panel will also have the discretion to award Alcan Bursaries to organizations selected as finalists by the judges. The bursaries will enable a senior member of a nonprofit group that reaches the finals to take the one year, part time Post Graduate Certificate in Cross Sector Partnership accredited by the University of Cambridge.

A short list of finalists will be announced in June and the winner of the first annual prize is expected to be named in January 2005.

The closing date for entries is March 31, 2004.

For entry details and requirements please visit http://www.alcanprizeforsustainability.com