It’s The Year of Living Dangerously all over again.

Orangutan (Photo: Tom Theodore/Dreamstime)

On Tuesday, two journalists were arrested in Sumatra while covering a politically sensitive topic – palm oil harvesting and the ensuing decimation of Southeast Asia’s old-growth, carbon-capturing rainforests, and the subsequent release of giant CO2 pockets that lie beneath the forests and their peat swamps.

More disturbing than the reporters’ deportation, though, is how little we consumers seem to realize that, not only are we what we eat, but when it comes to palm oil, we are eating our own lifeblood. We’re ‘eating’ our oxygen, we’re ‘eating’ our fellow species. We’re consuming our own future by driving up carbon emissions much faster than we can offset them. We are the snake eating its own tail.

Mass deforestation, due to the rapid establishment of palm oil plantations backed by multinational corporations, has recently made Indonesia the third-largest carbon emitter in the world. Think of it, number three  – after the more industrialized China and the United States.

Indonesia’s neighbors, Malaysia and Papaua, New Guinea, also are top producers of palm oil, making Southeast Asia a veritable carbon drain. Because of rapid rainforest loss in these sensitive areas, experts estimate that between 50 and 60 endangered orangutans perish each week, as their habits are destroyed or they are killed by workers. Roughly two football fields worth of rainforests are felled every minute by palm oil plantations, bellowing out stored carbon.

In addition, recent studies show that global deforestation creates one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions; and conversely, that tropical forests now absorb one-fifth of the world’s carbon emissions that are caused by burning fossil fuels.

“Rainforests are one of the biggest ways that carbon gets absorbed from the atmosphere, so rainforests and trees and peat swamps – the whole ecosystem – takes in a large amount of carbon and stores it,” says Margaret Swink, of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), which in the past year has stepped up its protests against companies like Cargill, which uses palm oil in many manufactured foods.

“It only releases when you destroy it – burning being the worst way. When rainforests are cut and burned, you’ve just released millennia of carbon absorption into the air, which is why rainforest destruction is such a threat. …You’ve just released all this carbon into the atmosphere, but because it’s a cycle (remember studying the carbon cycle in fourth-grade science?), you’ve also taken away the thing that was removing carbon from the atmosphere … and so when you replant a palm-oil plantation, it doesn’t absorb as much carbon that those older trees – as that whole ecosystem did” for many thousands of years.

And we, the current people generation, get a double carbon-whammy.

But until, say, two to five years ago, who knew that some of our favorite foods – holiday season or not – contain palm oil derivatives to preserve, add flavor to or fry foods to a golden crispness? Things like cocoa mix, crackers, potato chips, margarine, instant soups, cakes, chocolate bars, cookies, even certain types of granola are all formulated with palm oil.

Yet, as the holidays hover around us and we try to figure out what we’re really giving thanks for, we can take simple steps to slow rainforest destruction. We can learn about campaigns, such as RAN’s recent Call Cargill campaign and check out our pantry for products that rely on palm oil.

“Palm oil is the leading driver of deforestation in the second-largest standing rainforest, which is in Indonesia,” says Swink, who used to work for the Peace Corps in Cameroon; seeing trucks drive past her house, hauling thousand-year-old trees led her to RAN, headquartered in San Francisco.

“There are three areas of tropical rainforests still left in the world – the Amazon, Indonesia and Malaysia. Then there’s the Congo Basin. … But in Southeast Asia, we’re seeing the fastest rate of deforestation. RAN has been looking at the incredible rate of destruction, intersecting that with climate change. And Indonesia is now the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet, after the U.S. and China. But with the USA it’s fossil fuels and transportation that create the emissions. With Indonesia, it’s mostly deforestation. So when you take it all together, palm oil is a really large threat in terms of deforestation leading to climate change.”

As organizations like RAN, 350.org, Greenpeace, Rising Tide North America , World Wildlife Fund and the Rainforest Alliance amplify the clarion call, some companies are taking note. Gucci Group just declared its commitment to abandon paper products (i.e., those tony shopping bags) from Asian Pulp and Paper – and specifically from Indonesian plantations and rainforests, following Tiffany and a few other luxury brands’ leads.

And Cadbury recently announced that as a direct result of a New Zealand zookeepers’ boycott, it has vowed to dump palm oil and return to cocoa butter (but there’s a catch: that’s only in New Zealand).

Burning forest to make way for plantations in Sumatra (Photo: Mark Edwards, WWF-Canon)

These companies are responding to the dire situation that’s resulted over the past 70 years of deforestation by various industries, mainly logging and agriculture, in these Southeast Asian rainforests.

Aside from the devastating impacts on climate change, the forest destruction is taking a big toll on the biodiversity of the area. World Wildlife Fund estimates that converting natural forest to palm plantations results in the loss of 80 to 100 percent of the mammal, bird and reptile species in these normally rich ecosystems. (For a good graphic depiction of the rainforest losses, see the WWF’s report on Borneo and Sumatra and maps of the region, which show, for instance, that Sumatra has lost 85 percent of its natural forest.)

All this begs the basic question: Why are palm oil derivatives in so many foods and emulsive products, to begin with?

The answer “is easy,” says Brihannala Morgan, an activist with Rising Tide North America who lived in Indonesia for nine years and is now based in the Bay Area, where she is a graduate student in forest and climate policy at UC-Berkeley.

“Palm oil is the cheapest oil in the world, second only to soybean oil,” she says. “It’s about how much oil you can produce per hectare of land, and you can produce more palm oil per hectare than almost any other oil. So the laws of supply and demand apply. …It’s used not only in foods but in industrial lubricants, biofuels. But, in foods, it’s mostly for preserving. I’m not a food chemist, but all these things have to have some kind of oil, and they pick the cheapest, for the highest profit. In most countries besides the United States – and we’re only responsible for five percent of all palm oil consumed – but in other countries, it’s used for a frying oil – particularly in China and India, which have populations that are becoming wealthier and can afford more fried foods.”

Gucci Group said it plans to implement an industry-leading paper policy.

From Green Right Now Reports

Luxury brand Gucci Group said today it is joining forces with Rainforest Action Network and will eliminate all paper made from Indonesian rainforests and plantations and by controversial suppliers such as  Asia Pulp and Paper. The company said this is a first step in its plan to implement an industry-leading paper policy.

Rainforest Action Network officials said they are pleased to sign up the famous luxury house in its ongoing effort to protect Indonesian and other endangered forests. Since the beginning of Fall 2009, RAN has been urging the fashion world to more closely examine their paper supply chains and to sever any connection with paper suppliers like Asia Pulp and Paper who are actively destroying Indonesia’s rainforests.

“The Gucci Group’s actions and commitments confirm its place as an industry leader,” Lafcadio Cortesi, RAN’s Forest Campaign Director, said in a statement. “This move sets a bar for others in fashion and retail and demonstrates the foresight our society needs for our children and grandchildren to have standing rainforests and a stable climate.”

The Gucci Group’s move commits some of fashion’s most famous brands, including Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and Balenciaga to perhaps the luxury industry’s strongest paper policy. With its new policy, the Gucci Group has pledged to reduce the amount of paper it uses, eliminate fiber from high conservation value forests, and only to purchase recycled products or those certified by the Forest Stewardship Council by December 2010. With this policy, they are ensuring that all paper categories used by the group, from copy paper to shopping bags, do not come from endangered forests such as those in Indonesia.

Gucci Group’s new policy puts them at the front of a growing list of major companies, including Tiffany & Co., H&M Group, Staples and Unisource who acting to clean their supply chains of rainforest paper and severing relationships with companies who continue to destroy rainforests in Indonesia or elsewhere.

“Standing rainforests are not a luxury, they’re a necessity if the world wants to stop climate change,” Mimma Viglezio, Executive VP Global Communications at the Group, said in a statement. “Our actions are lowering our own carbon footprint, but we hope that they will also raise awareness inside the fashion industry that it’s possible for our industry to make a difference for rainforests and for the climate.”

Worldwide, the degradation and destruction of tropical rainforests is responsible for 20 percent of all annual greenhouse emissions. The carbon emissions resulting from Indonesia’s rapid deforestation account for around eight percent of global emissions — more than the combined emissions from all the cars, planes, trucks, buses and trains in United States. This huge carbon footprint from forest destruction has made non-industrialized Indonesia the third-largest global greenhouse gas emitter, behind only the U.S. and China.

While the world scrambles to find clean energy solutions, somewhere, every minute of every day, saws buzz through a forest, cutting down one of nature’s antidotes to carbon pollution.

Saving forests in the Congo will help save endangered gorillas (Photo: John Martin)

Each year the world loses about 50,000 square miles of wooded lands, enough to fill an area the size of Pennsylvania. The rapid clearing of tropical forests accounts for nearly 20 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions (partly due to trees being burned) — more than all transportation vehicles combined.

Increasingly, though, companies and non-profits are trying to stem the loss of woodlands to curb global warming and save habitat and native economies.

On Tuesday, The Walt Disney Company announced it will invest $7 million to save and restore forests in the Amazon, the Congo and the United States.

The projects aim to fight climate change, improve the quality of life in local communities and save jeopardized wildlife from gorillas in Africa to songbirds in North America.

“Disney has always been a conservation leader,” said Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger, in a statement. “Now, more than ever, it’s essential to take swift action to preserve our most vulnerable natural environments for future generations and to be innovative in achieving that goal.”

Rainforest Management in the Congo and the Amazon

Disney is giving $4 million to increase protection of forests in the Tayna and Kisimba-Ikobo Community Reserves in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Alto Mayo conservation project in Peru, two vital tropical forest regions.

The programs, managed by Conservation International, will help secure watersheds and save habitat for plants and animals, many of them threatened or endangered, including the gorilla and okapi in the Congo and the Andean spectacled bear and yellow-tailed woolly monkey in Peru.

The majority of Disney’s contribution will finance community management of these forests, help expand sustainable livelihood practices among local villages and provide for an analysis of the carbon-saving aspect of the project.

Both of these tropical forest efforts are expected to decrease carbon emissions by stopping slash and burn agriculture and to benefit local communities economically. CI estimates that Disney’s expenditure will prevent 900,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere over the next five years.

“This commitment by Disney represents the largest single corporate contribution ever made to reduce emissions from deforestation and will help build confidence in these activities that generate such compelling climate, local community and biodiversity benefits,” said Peter Seligmann, CEO and Chairman of Conservation International.

Reforestation in the Lower Mississippi Valley

Disney also is partnering with The Nature Conservancy to provide more than $2 million to support a pilot reforestation project in the Lower Mississippi Valley.

Restoring forests in the Mississippi Valley will help preserve habitat and mitigate carbon air pollution (Photo: Emily Whitted)

Working with private landowners in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, The Nature Conservancy expects to restore up to 2,000 acres of former forest land, planting trees in permanent easements to assure their longevity.

The reforestation will help alleviate carbon pollution and also expand the North American habitat of migrating songbirds and the black bear.

“Protecting forests is one of our most powerful tools in the fight against climate change,” said Mark Tercek, President and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, in a news release. “This innovative project will give private landowners the support they need to join the global fight against climate change and restore local habitats for the betterment of both people and nature. We are proud to partner with Disney to protect critical habitat and ensure these incredible forests will be around for generations to come.”

Redwood Forest Management in Northern California

Disney also will invest $1 million in The Conservation Fund’s forestry work along California’s North Coast, where the group owns and sustainably manages two redwood forests in Mendocino County.
The project was set up to demonstrate that improved forest management, with selective harvests and verified carbon offset sales, can benefit the environment and the economy. Indeed, here in an area rich in natural resources, the well-being of humans, plants and animals are closely entwined: Healthy forests, watersheds and streams are needed to support Coho salmon, steelhead trout, spotted owl and other wildlife — and the people

Northern California Forest (Photo: Matthew Gerhart, Conservation Fund)

that depend on them.

Lawrence Selzer, president and CEO of The Conservation Fund, joined the other environmental leaders in issuing a statement of gratitude for the Disney gift:

“Across America, forests are shrinking; 35 acres here, 500 there,” Selzer said. “The decline is so incremental, it masks a crisis. In partnership with leading companies such as Disney, we are pioneering new approaches to forest conservation and climate change. We’re proud to collaborate with Disney on this critical effort.”

Disney’s forest preservation investment is part of the company’s plan, announced last March, to meet aggressive 3 to 5 year goals to reduce emissions, waste, electricity and water use, and to limit its impact on ecosystems.

In addition to the investment announced today, Disney has recently committed to planting close to 3 million trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Rainforest and in the fire-ravaged areas in the mountains surrounding greater Los Angeles through contributions from the  Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund and local donations.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

In June, Greenpeace released “Slaughtering the Amazon,” a three-year investigation into deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Greenpeace found that people were taking over protected lands in order to expand their cattle ranches. This was not only illegal, but large quantities of greenhouse gases were being released into the atmosphere as a result of the rapidly depleting forests.

Adidas, Nike and Timberland have committed to cancel supplier contracts unless their products were guaranteed to be free from Amazon destruction.

Deforestation accounts for around one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the world’s trains, planes and cars combined, and Greenpeace estimates that the cattle industry is responsible for  80 percent of all deforestation.

Now, just four months after the release of “Slaughtering the Amazon,” positive steps are being taken by some of the big companies implicated.

“Each of the companies, JBS-Friboi, Grupo Bertin, Minerva and Marfrig, declared the adoption of environmental and social standards to ensure their products are free from cattle raised in newly deforested areas of the rainforest,” according to a Greenpeace statement.

Greenpeace says there now will be a strong monitoring of supply chains and clear targets for the registration of farms that both directly and indirectly supply cattle. There also will be steps taken to end the purchase of cattle from protected land and from farms that use slave labor.

Bertin, one of the largest leather traders named in the report, supplies shoe manufacturers such as Adidas, Nike and Timberland. Since the release of the investigation, all three manufacturers have committed to cancel supplier contracts unless their products were guaranteed to be free from Amazon destruction.

“This is an important step in the fight to stop the destruction of one of the world’s most critical rainforests and vital to helping tackle climate change,” said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Amazon campaign director, in a statement.

Gov. Blairo Maggi of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, which has the largest cattle herd in Brazil, has also announced that the state would support efforts to protect the Amazon and would provide high-resolution satellite images for monitoring.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Palm Oil, an ingredient found in most processed food, has been the subject of much environmental debate in recent years over its role in deforestation. It is commonly found in cooking oil and as an ingredient in cosmetics, soaps, detergents, and some plastics. Palm oil also has been considered for use in the production of biodiesel.

There have been many attempts to make palm oil sustainable. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was even established in 2003 to do just that. Unfortunately, six years later, there is still no system that can effectively trace palm oil beyond the processor to the plantation level. Companies that manufacture products using palm oil have little way of knowing where the controversial substance originated — which leaves the question of whether and to what degree palm oil is sustainably farmed up in the air.

This week, a press campaign run by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) and aimed at putting the best spin on the industry ran aground when Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned a magazine ad by the Malaysian boosters.

The headline of the MPOC’s magazine advertisement read: “Palm Oil: The Green Answer.”

As if that were not misleading enough, the ad made many more claims, such as:

• “Palm oil is the only product able to sustainably and efficiently meet a large portion of the world’s increasing demand for oil crop-based consumer goods, foodstuffs and biofuel … Malaysia’s forest cover is certain to be maintained.”
• “With the increased attention paid to oil crops, and oil palm in particular, a number of criticisms have been leveled at Malaysia’s palm oil industry, from accusations of rampant deforestation and unsound environmental practices to unfair treatment of farmers and indigenous people. These allegations – protectionist agendas hidden under a thin veneer of environmental concern – are based neither on scientific evidence, nor, for that matter, on fact.”
• “In addition to its green credentials, Malaysia’s palm oil industry also plays an important role in the industrialization of the country and the alleviation of poverty, especially amongst rural populations.”

The advertisement violated substantiation, truthfulness, and the environmental claims sections of the Advertising Standards Authority’s Code, according to the group’s assessment.

“Although we acknowledged that some Malaysian palm oil companies had sought certification from the RSPO [the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil], we understood that the scheme and the certification of biofuels in general was still the subject of debate,” stated the Advertising Standards Authority’s Assessment.

They report explained that “palm oil had played a role in the development of the Malaysian economy in its shift from reliance on rubber and tin mining” and it acknowledged MPOCs assertion that this created one million jobs.

But it also noted that environmental and human rights groups had legitimate complaints about palm oil producers. Friends of the Earth, for instance, contends that palm oil production creates adverse social impacts by displacing indigenous communities affected by deforestation.

Issues over housing and land rights and low wages and poor treatment of workers “compromised MPOCs claim that palm oil had a societal benefit,” the advertisers assessment stated.

The advertising regulators concluded that the magazine ad must no longer appear in its current form.

There is no such thing as sustainable palm oil, at least not yet, according to the ASA.

Malaysian leader presses palm oil’s virtues

The MPOC fired back on Wednesday, complaining that the ASA was relying on FOE’s biased environmental conclusions and arguing that palm oil, being the cheapest vegetable oil, should be available to consumers, especially the poor.

“Today, the ASA ruled that an advertorial in The Economist highlighting the economic importance and environmental sustainability of Malaysian Palm Oil should not appear in any other UK media outlets. The ruling followed a complaint by Friends of the Earth about the advertorial. By censoring our message, this relatively small group of people is blocking the entire British public’s access to a diverse range of views and information about Palm Oil,” wrote the Malaysian group’s CEO Tan Sri Datuk Dr. Yusof Basiron.

“Consumers have a right to have information about the various products and services available to them and a right to determine for themselves which they want. Consequently, we are deeply concerned that the ASA is acting as an interested party in the public debate on palm oil rather than as a neutral and objective arbiter.”

“Amazon deforestation dropped 46 percent for the period August 2008 – July 2009 when compared to the same period a year before,” according to a report published  in Em Questao, the digital newsletter of the Secretariat of Communications of the Presidency of Brazil. The data was collected by Deforestation Detection in Real Time (DETER) and the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The results marked the lowest accumulated index since the survey began in May 2004.

The improvement, or slowing of deforestation, appeared mainly due to stricter law enforcement. In the last year, the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) seized approximately 125 thousand cubic meters of timber or about one thousand truck loads per month.

Law enforcement is responsible for approximately 90 percent of the reduction in deforestation indexes, according to Brazil’s Minister of the Environment Carlos Minc. Over the last year, IBAMA seized 62 boats, 237 trucks and 44 tractors, and the federal police initiated 650 probes and arrested 298 people in connection with illegal logging.

Further reductions in the deforestation rate are expected this year, according to Minc. The government plans to achieve this through Macro Ecological-Economic Zoning in the Amazon Region and Arco Verde Legal Land Operation, the Amazon fund to finance preservation activities, and sustainable land use.

Preserving the tropical rainforests in Brazil is a key goal of environmental groups around the world because the undisturbed forests are highly effective at absorbing and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Acre for acre tropical forests can generally hold more carbon than forests in more temperate climates.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

They started out as pets, perhaps living in little boys’ bedrooms, being shown off to friends and wrapping around arms. But then the Burmese pythons grew, and grew, and grew (about 7 feet in a year), and they weren’t so cute or easy to deal with any more.

So, trying to do the right thing, their owners gently released them into the wild, near the large, shallow “river of grass” that flows through much of south Florida, known as the Everglades.

Problem solved.

Not quite. Those pet pythons grew — up to 20 feet long and 250 pounds –and they eat anything from deer to bobcats to wood storks to endangered species. Less than a decade ago, there were only a few in the Everglades. Today, more than 100,000 of them are slithering around south Florida, crushing what was an already delicate ecosystem.

Even though the state is aggressively trying to find them and restrict the sale of them as pets, the python hunters will never catch up. And the giant reptiles are spreading, south into the Florida Keys and north into Central Florida. One estimate predicts they will eventually inhabit about one-third of the United States.

And that’s not taking global warming into account.

If there’s any wisp of a silver lining to this mess, it’s that the python problem has turned the nation’s attention toward the depth and scope of invasive exotic animals, fish, reptiles and plants.

The U.S. spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year to try and staunch the flow of invasive species. But the damage the invaders cause brings that total to about $35 billion annually, according to National Invasive Species Council. Worldwide, the economic toll from invasives tops $1.4 trillion, according to the Nature Conservancy, which publishes a list of ways people can help reduce that number.

The invaders tend to spread rapidly, eating or killing the food and habitats of native species. They can clog streams and rivers, alter entire ecosystems and potentially wipe out endangered species. They can cause major forest fires, destroy rangeland and even decrease tourism.

It’s hard to put a number on them in the US: The Fish and Wildlife Department estimates as many as 50,000 non-natives are here now, but of those, about 4,300 are trouble-making invasives.

“I can tell you that for the Nature Conservancy, wherever we work, globally and nationally, invasive species have been identified as one of the greatest threats to biodiversity,” said Doria Gordon, the Director of Conservation Science for Florida’s chapter of the Nature Conservancy.

Though relatively few imports become invasive, when they do, they can become a monumental problem, she said. Florida is a state where climate, population and ports create an ideal environment for voracious invasives. Reptiles such as monitor lizards, Cuban tree frogs and iguanas are growing quickly and gobbling up native species. “The Cuban frogs are capable of eating most of our native tree frogs,” she said.

The animals and reptiles may be more interesting, but it is the plants that really wreak havoc on the environment. They take over because, as exotics, they lack natural pests in their new territory. (Just as invading wildlife is able to run amok because their natural predators live on another continent.)

“Hydrilla and water hyacinth have been problems for years,” she said. “They constrain navigation and water flow, create hazards to navigation and power generation,” she said.

But Gordon reserves special scorn for a plant that poses perhaps the biggest threat to Florida’s native areas: Old World climbing fern.

Calling it a fern is misleading – it’s more like ivy on steroids. Native to Africa and Asia, Old World found its way into a nursery decades ago. Now, it covers large swaths of Florida’s uninhabited land, rapidly moving north thanks to wind-blown spores. Old World blankets the ground, bushes and even the top of forests, smothering everything it covers – like a leafy version of The Blob.

How can such a pervasive plant be controlled? “We try to contain them. At the edges, where densities are low, we can keep knocking them backwards,” Gordon said. Right now the northern boundary of Old World climbing fern’s range is near Orlando. “We’re now starting to look for spores in the air there,” she added.

“The real effort is to find a biological agent that can control the vine,” Gordon said, rather than using huge quantities of pesticides. Finding a living thing to battle back another living thing has only worked for a few species. “It’s difficult to find one that will only attack that specific species and not anything else.”

Hawaii is a perfect example of such well-intentioned plans gone wrong.

First Polynesians, then Europeans, arrived to the islands with their dogs, pigs, lizards, plants, cattle and sheep. The Westerners, unfortunately, brought along rats, too. The rats ate sugar cane and the unique flightless birds of the islands. To kill the rats, the mongoose was brought in. Unfortunately, the mongoose ate the birds, not the rats. Rats are nocturnal and the mongoose is not. Thus, dozens of the dwindling species of rare birds in Hawaii were wiped out.

Today, Hawaii’s struggle with non-native plants, animals and reptiles is worse than any other state, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Unleashing one exotic to battle another has happened on the mainland as well, according to Richard Mack, professor in the school of biological sciences at Washington State University. “Ironically, most of our problems we brought upon ourselves. Two-thirds of the plant invaders were deliberately introduced (via horticulture), and it backfired,” he said.

“The problem is that we don’t have a good handle on this. The funds, resources, they haven’t been allocated.”

There’s a cycle to it all, Mack said. “One of these invaders arises and causes havoc. There’s a call to deal with it and it takes a sustained effort and incredible persistence to get rid of one of these species.

“There may be initial success – the population numbers go down. That’s mistakenly taken as a sign that public funds can be pulled back. But these are living organisms, so they go back and build up their populations and it gets as bad as it was before,” he said.

Thus, money to combat the invasives dries up, and often the task of trying to control the pests falls on area communities.

One of the bad actors in the U.S. now, Mack said, is cheatgrass. It came from Eurasia about 200 years ago. “It’s had a devastating effect in the far west,” he said. Despite its size, it is a strong competitor with native plant species and is a factor in major forest fires in California or Nevada. “It also causes downstream siltation and erosion in the river systems in the west,” Mack said.

And who can forget what has come to be known as the “Vietnam of entomology,” the fire ant fiasco in the Southwest?

When we put our shoes on, we don’t really think about where they’ve been before they got to us.

Most likely, they were manufactured somewhere overseas, China or Vietnam perhaps, then shipped to the United States. But where did the material used to manufacture them come from? Are your shoes made of leather? If so, there’s a chance they’re contributing to climate change — and the illegal destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Greenpeace International says rainforests are being needlessly lost not just to the meat trade but to the leather industry, as cattle ranches expand illegally in Brazilian Amazon region.

In June, Greenpeace released Slaughtering the Amazon, a three year investigation into the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon. The group found that illegal incursions by cattle ranchers were rapidly depleting the forests, which released large quantities of greenhouse gases otherwise stored in the tropical environment.

“Forest destruction accounts for almost 1/5 of global emissions-that is more climate pollution than all the world’s cars, trucks, trains, planes, and ships combined,” said Lindsey Allen, Forest Campaigner for Greenpeace.

“Slaughtering the Amazon” estimates that illegal expansion of cattle ranches is responsible for 80% of all deforestation, and according to Greenpeace, “the cattle sector in the Brazilian Amazon is the largest driver of deforestation in the world, responsible for an average of one acre lost every 8 seconds.”

Usually, this would be when we would expect for someone to tell us to pay attention to where our steak is coming from. It’s true that Brazil is now the world’s largest beef exporter, and the meat trade is a huge player in deforestation. But the actual beef is not the only big money maker.  The hides of the cattle play a larger role than you might imagine in its value.

Leather accounts for more than one quarter of the total value of the cattle trade for Brazil. The report states that “the Brazilian leather industry’s total export revenue in 2008 was $1.9 billion from some 24,800,000 million hides.” The largest use of the leather is not furniture or garments, but shoe production.

Bertin, the world’s largest leather trader, receives their hides from the Brazilian Amazon and supplies brands such as Nike, Adidas/Reebok, Timberland, Prada, Geox, and Clarks.

These surprising details contained in the “Slaughtering of the Amazon” were eye-opening to these shoe manufactures. Nike took the first step.

“When Greenpeace brought this issue to our attention we knew that Amazon deforestation is a serious concern and one that required we immediately look into our supply chain and leather sourcing,” stated Kate Meyers, Corporate Communications Manager for Nike. The company has developed a new policy that’s asking suppliers to verify where they’re getting their leather.

Putting Leather on a More Sustainable Track

Nike is giving suppliers until July 1, 2010, to create a transparent system showing none of the leather came from ranches responsible for illegal deforestation. Nike also will require that suppliers join the Leather Working Group by December 2009.

“Our hope for the new policy is that through the Leather Working Group the industry will work together over the next 12 months to institute a traceability system that the entire industry can use,” said Meyers.

The Leather Working Group (LWG), founded in 2005, is engaged in reducing environmental impacts through the footwear leather supply chain. They audit leather manufacturers, ranking them on environmental stewardship. The LWG will help set the traceability and measurement requirements for the new system, which will be incorporated into current protocol.

Other shoe companies also are trying to make changes. Adidas/Reebok released their policy last week.

Greenpeace, however, is not certain the Adidas/Reebok plan goes far enough, because it may not hold all suppliers accountable. The Adidas/Reebok policy restricts all leather trading with the Amazon Biome suppliers, but Greenpeace worries that other leather traders could still receive leather from the rainforest  and sell to Adidas/Reebok.

“The policy in our opinion needs to be strengthened a bit…We believe it is better to set a timeline to suppliers of leather to commit to an end of new deforestation within the Amazon,” said Oliver Salge, Head Forest and Oceans Campaigner for Greenpeace. Adidas/Reebok and Greenpeace are currently working together to develop a stronger policy.

Meanwhile, Bertin also is under guidance from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation to tighten its supply chain and make sure its operations do not encourage illegal deforestation or the illegal use of lands belonging to indigenous people.

For consumers who want to be part of the solution, environmentally friendly shoes are popping up everywhere.

• Online mega-shoe store Zappos has eco-friendly and vegan categories.

• La Sportiva has a new line of recycled shoes. Their new sustainable shoes are made of recycled rubber for the outsole and recycled nylon for the mesh, laces, webbing, and lining.

• Another brand, Simple shoes, whose slogan is “shoes for a happy planet”, offers a 100% sustainable product. You will never guess what things they use to make their shoes. Simple Shoes (pictured, right) are made out of materials such as hemp, bamboo, corks, car tires, and coconut shells.

(Photo credits: Greenpeace International, Nike, Simple Shoes.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Greenpeace’s report “Slaughtering the Amazon” notes that Brazil’s thriving and expanding cattle trade, which has made it the world’s largest exporter of beef and the top producer (along with China) of leather, has out-sized environmental consequences.

“The cattle sector in the Brazilian Amazon is responsible for 14% of the world’s annual deforestation. This makes it the world’s largest driver of deforestation, responsible for more forest loss than the total deforestation in any country outside Brazil except Indonesia,” according to the report, the result of a three-year investigation by Greenpeace International.

The report’s findings suggest dire consequences for the planet if illegal deforestation associated with the beef and leather industries is not stopped because the Amazon rainforests absorb and hold huge quantities of carbon pollution.

“The Amazon is estimated to store 80-120 billion tonnes of carbon. If destroyed, some fifty times the annual GHG emissions of the USA could be emitted,” according to the report, which relied on government and research institute statistics.

“Slaughtering the Amazon” details how the cattle industry is growing in Brazil, fueled by favorable laws that encourage rapid growth and global companies such as Bertin, JBS and Marfrig that profess neutrality, but actually source from ranches that have moved into rainforest areas, according to the Greenpeace report, released in June.

“Greenpeace has identified hundreds of ranches within the Amazon rainforest supplying cattle to slaughterhouses in the Amazon region belonging to these companies. Where Greenpeace was able to obtain mapped boundaries for ranches, satellite analysis reveals that significant supplies of cattle come from ranches active in recent and illegal deforestation.”

Greenpeace investigators go on to explain that these goods travel into the food chain, unbeknown to consumers and often unchecked by Blue Chip companies worldwide. The products effectively vanish into the global market, becoming meat in packaged meals, leather upholstery in cars and fine Italian shoes.

Greenpeace supports many possible solutions including:

• More responsibility on the part of consumer companies in how they source and verify raw goods.
• Stronger world support for the Amazon Fund set up in Brazil  to help stop deforestation by providing alternative financial support to landowners and people living in the tropical regions — an idea that’s been roundly praised but thinly funded, mainly by Norway and Germany, according to Greenpeace.
• Leading industrialized countries must cut their carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2020 (compared with 1990 levels) to avoid a “tipping point” in which climate change careens forward unchecked. Greenpeace (among many other groups) wants world leaders to agree to this level of commitment at the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December.
• A world commitment to zero deforestation by 2015 in the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and the Paradise forests of Southeast Asia, because these forests help slow global warming and also because they are home to indigenous peoples.

Kimberly-Clark, the world’s largest personal paper products company, announced new policies today in which the paper maker will greatly increase the use of recycled and sustainably grown wood fibers in its products, which include the Kleenex, Scott and Cottonelle brands.

The move will help save forests around the globe and make the Dallas-based company a leader in producing sustainable paper products, said Greenpeace media officer Daniel Kessler. “We worked with Kimberly-Clark on this policy and it’s a landmark for forest protection; 100 percent of Kimberly-Clark’s fiber will come from sustainable sources.”

For five years, Greenpeace had pressured Kimberly-Clark to become more environmentally sensitive about the raw material used for its paper products. Greenpeace’s “Kleercut” campaign protested Kimberly-Clark’s use of virgin wood fiber in Kleenex tissues, organizing blockades and demonstrations and arguing that the company’s use of trees from Canada’s Boreal Forest and other virgin sources was contributing to world-wide deforestation.

The new fiber-sourcing policies announced Wednesday bring the long-running Kleercut campaign to an end and make public Kimberly-Clark’s plans for more sustainable business practices.

Over the next three years, Kimberly-Clark will dramatically adjust its sourcing for disposable paper products, aiming to ultimately get all of its fiber from sustainable sources. By the end 2011, the global paper product maker has promised that 40 percent of its North American tissue fiber – representing an estimated 600,000 tons – will be either recycled or certified as sustainably grown by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC). That represents an increase of more than 70 percent over 2007 levels.

“We are committed to using environmentally responsible wood fiber and today’s announcement enhances our industry-leading practices in this area,” said Suhas Apte, Kimberly-Clark Vice President of Environment, Energy, Safety, Quality and Sustainability, in a news release.

“It is our belief that certified primary wood fiber and recycled fiber can both be used in an environmentally responsible way and can provide the product performance that customers and consumers expect from our well-known tissue brands. We commend Greenpeace for helping us develop more sustainable standards.”

Paper companies, including Kimberly-Clark, have long argued that consumers prize softness in tissues and toilet paper, which the companies used to justify their use of virgin wood fibers for disposable personal care products.

But consumer tastes and desires are changing, and the focus on softness may be lessening as people become more aware of environmental degradation associated with common household products.

“Consumers vote with their dollars. We know that as consumers become increasingly concerned with supporting environmentally friendly products, they increase pressure on companies to do the right thing,” Kessler said, noting that an estimated 20 percent of global greenhouse gases come from deforestation.

The temperate Boreal Forest, like the tropical rainforests in the Southern Hemisphere, is a huge carbon sink, holding in the ground carbon that adds to the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels when released. Environmentalists from Greenpeace to Prince Charles of Great Britain are passionately trying to save the forests to mitigate global warming.

Under the new agreement, Kimberly-Clark will not purchase of any fiber from the Canadian Boreal Forest that is not FSC certified by 2011, helping preserve the forest as well as endangered animals that depend upon it.

“Today, ancient forests like the Boreal Forest have won,” said Richard Brooks, Greenpeace Canada Forest Campaign Coordinator in the news release. “This new relationship between Kimberly-Clark and Greenpeace will promote forest conservation, responsible forest management, and recycled fiber as far and wide as possible.”

Dallas-based Kimberly-Clark employs 53,000 people around the world, and posted sales of $19.4 billion in 2008, according to company statements. It makes products under the Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex and Depends brands.

Greenpeace has posted a web page where consumers can thank Kimberly-Clark for this move toward more sustainable practices.

Kimberly-Clark also has other sustainability initiatives.

(Image credit: Greenpeace.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

By Melissa Segrest
Green Right Now

Up close they are such delicate creatures, their bright orange wings outlined in black and accented with white spots. But when they migrate by the millions each year — from Canada through the United States and most to a specific mountainous region of Mexico and back – monarch butterflies become one of nature’s most breathtaking spectacles.

Their tiny brains are hard-wired with biological clocks, and their eyes detect ultraviolet light variations to guide them. Every year, generations of the beautiful monarchs travel from 1,200 to 2,800 miles to their winter and summer habitats. Because most adults only live four weeks, they only travel part of the way. Then their offspring continue the trek, and on and on until they reach their habitats.

Their amazing migration has become a “threatened phenomenon,” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Forest clearing in Mexico, climate change from Canada to Mexico, diminishing habitats in the U.S. and a decline in the monarchs’ primary source of food – milkweed – are blamed for changes and disruptions that may forever alter the butterflies’ spectacular migrations.

The summer destination for butterflies who live east of the Rocky Mountains is a very specific spot in central Mexico: a 217-square-mile area of 12 mountaintops covered in oyamel fir trees. More than a billion butterflies spend winters there.

For years, that mountainous home has faced deforestation for agriculture, intentional forest fires and wood for heat. Losing the shelter of their trees exposes monarchs to wind and cold — millions of them have already died, according to a report in Science Daily. University of Kansas researchers who have created the Monarch Watch program to track the insects in their Mexican habitat (also known as the Monarch Biosphere Reserve) say the monarch populations have been decreasing yearly.

Other researchers say climate change is harming monarchs’ habitats in both the north and south. In the mountains of Mexico, the climate is predicted to get wetter and colder in the next half-century, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. Monarchs cannot survive rain followed by freezing temperatures.

In the eastern U.S. and Canada, monarchs may face global warming’s hotter, drier summers, which would push their migration farther north, making it longer. Hot, dry weather could impact their food supply – the monarch primarily eats and lays its eggs on the milkweed plant – as well as their ability to reproduce and survive. Urban sprawl in the U.S. – particularly in California, where monarchs from west of the Rockies spend their winters — is eating away at the insects’ habitat and food supply, scientists and environmental groups say.

The milkweed is considered a toxic and illegal weed in Canada, and in the U.S. many farmers kill it. There are about 115 species of milkweed in the U.S. and Caribbean, which allows the plant to grow in all climate zones monarchs pass through. Not all of those species are toxic to livestock.

In America, many fields planted with soybeans and corn are increasingly genetically modified in ways that diminish or eliminate milkweed.

Last year, the three nations where monarchs fly came together to create the North American Monarch Conservation Plan. They pinpointed threats to the monarch migrations, recommended steps to stop deforestation and habitat loss, and supported research of changes in breeding habits and monitoring migrations.

A key component of the study is to develop alternate ways for those who are clearing Mexico’s mountain forests to make a living. Also, Mexico’s government has issued three federal decrees to protect monarch habitats in their country.

There are many other programs in place to study and aid the monarchs’ migration. The Monarch Watch program supports “waystations” that provide nectar sources and plenty of breeding space. In 2007, the conservation plan says, there were more than 1,800 waystations.

Journey North, the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary Foundation, the Michoacan Reforestation Fund, the Monarch Program, and Monarchs in the Classroom are other programs that raise money to support the insects and increase awareness of them.

There are also 13 monarch butterfly “sister-protected area networks” that stretch from Mexico to Long Point National Wildlife Area in Ontario, large spaces of land that provide all the monarch essentials.

You can help track the numbers of monarchs (and other butterflies) in your area by joining the North American Butterfly Association’s annual Fourth of July butterfly count (the count actually occurs over a period of days around July 4). Volunteers can join the association and then sign up online or use their site to locate the organizer in your area and join in the counting of beautiful butterflies.

Photo credits: (Photo from MonarchLab, University of Minnesota; Monarch on Bottlebrush flower, from North American Monarch Conservation Plan; dead monarches on a forest floor, from Ecolife Foundation; cluster of monarchs in winter habitat, photo from Texas Parks and Wildlife, Monarch Migration page

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

As summer sets in, many of us are looking to shade those windows any way we can, and one of the greenest solutions is to add greenery. Outside the window, that is.

A shade tree can mitigate the heat gain on a west or south-facing window and truly cut down on electricity costs. The trouble is — it takes a few years to maximize its effect. Even if you plant a big tree, it will be a while before it’s settled in and leafing out.

Which brings us to a project at Purdue University. Scientists there have been studying a new hybrid species of the American chestnut, a tree that can grow much faster and larger than other hardwood varieties. They think it could be a good bet to shade your windows, built new forests that could be sustainably harvested and in the process sequester a whole lot of carbon more efficiently than many other trees could.

They’ve compared the American chestnut to quaking aspen, red pine and white pine and found that the chestnut grew faster and had three times more biomass than the other species. It also sequestered more carbon than the other trees, except when compared with a black walnut in one study location.

“Each tree has about the same percentage of its biomass made up of carbon, but the fact that the American chestnut grows faster and larger means it stores more carbon in a shorter amount of time,” said Douglas Jacobs, an associate professor of forestry and natural resources at Purdue.

As a bonus, much of that carbon could be retained when the chestnuts are converted into wood products, he noted.

Many years ago, the original (non-hybrid) American chestnut was used for fine furniture because it is a dense hardwood. However, beginning in the early 1900s, it experienced a blight caused by a fungus that spread across it’s natural U.S. territory from New England, across New York and south to Alabama. Fifty years later, the tree was nearly gone, according to a report on the Purdue project in Science Daily.

But arborists are creating a hybrid American chestnut through interbreeding with the blight-resistant Chinese chesnut that results in a tree that’s “94 percent American chestnut,” according to the report.

The catch: That hybrid tree will be available sometime in the next decade.

“We’re really quite close to having a blight-resistant hybrid that can be reintroduced into eastern forests,” Jacobs said. “But because American chestnut has been absent from our forests for so long now, we really don’t know much about the species at all.”

Actually, there is a group of chestnut enthusiasts who know as much as there is to know and are collaborating to bring the native American tree back to its Appalachian roots. Intrigued? Visit the American Chesnut Foundation. They’re still promising a blight-resistant American chestnut that will be forest-ready before the end of the decade.

Are they jus-nuts? It doesn’t appear so. Not only are they pushing the research on the blight-resistant variety, they provide people with traditional American chestnut seeds and seedlings (if you live east of the Mississippi — they don’t want to spread any potential blight westward). Order on the site to get your personal forest underway.

The Purdue research is being funded by The Stry Foundation, Electric Power Research Institute and Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center.

(Photo credits: Chesnut, The American Chesnut Foundation; Researcher with seedling, Purdue University/Nicole Jacobs.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media