Dear Friends,

This is the 198th Edition of the Mangrove Action Project News, 30 April, 2008.

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on...
I have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains?
Nature remains.
---Walt Whitman 1819-1892

For the Mangroves,

Alfredo Quarto
Mangrove Action Project

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MAP's Mission:
Partnering with mangrove forest communities, grassroots NGOs, researchers and local governments to conserve and restore mangrove forests and related coastal ecosystems, while promoting community-based, sustainable management of coastal resources.

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Contents for MAP NEWS, 198th Edition, 30 April 2008

FEATURE STORIES
MAP Launches Shrimp Consumer Awareness Campaign in Seattle Area

MAP WORKS
Saving Mangroves at the top of his to-do list
Mangrove Forest Ecology, Management and Restoration" training workshop, March 2-5, 2009
Next Calendar Children's Art Contest for 2009 Open For New Submissions
Film on Shrimp Farming at Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival - May 4

AFRICA
Eritrea
Mangrove project creates fish, fire and hope in Eritrean desert

Nigeria
*** Action Alert *** A Letter of Protest to the FAO Concerning Shrimp Farming In Niger Delta

 

Farmer blames prawn farm ponds for crop woes

 

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FEATURE STORIES

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29 April 2008

MAP Launches Shrimp Consumer Awareness Campaign in Seattle Area
 
MAP recently launched a Seattle-based campaign, "Shrimp Less, Think More," urging consumers to greatly reduce their consumption of imported shrimp, while shedding light on the environmental, social, and health problems associated with the shrimp aquaculture industry.

Since 1992, Mangrove Action Project has been opposing the expansion of shrimp farming, which pollutes land and waterways and poses the single greatest threat to mangrove forests worldwide.  Mangroves are vital marine nurseries that support a great diversity of sea life and provide protection from coastal erosion and storm damage.  Many indigenous and traditional peoples rely on mangroves for food and resources, and the expansion of shrimp farms has resulted in hardship and displacement for already marginalized communities.

Imported shrimp also raises questions and concerns about food safety. In the U.S., the FDA inspects only a small percentage of imported seafood (around 1%), so the shrimp reaching consumers may be diseased or contaminated with a toxic stew of antibiotics, fertilizers, and other residues. 

 

Over those last 16 years, MAP has battled against this voracious industry as it continued to grow, fueled by the parallel growing appetite for cheap, farmed shrimp among the consumer public in the wealthy nations. 

At a time when shrimp is America's most popular seafood, MAP is asking consumers "all you can eat, but how much can you stomach?"  Most consumers don't realize that 90% of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. is imported, mostly from Asia and Latin America, where mangroves are being cleared to establish the extensive stretches of shrimp ponds dug into the once productive wetland soils.

To more effectively address these issues, MAP has decided to focus on the source of the problem-the consumer public and the market demand which fuel the destructive shrimp farming industry. MAP's campaign aims to educate consumers about the effects of their seafood choices, reduce overall shrimp consumption, promote local and more sustainable sources of wild shrimp, and influence the shrimp purchasing and labeling policies of grocery stores, seafood markets, and restaurants.

MAP is urging consumers to avoid all imported shrimp and to only buy U.S. wild-caught or farmed shrimp. In the Pacific Northwest, we are lucky to have seasonably available local sources of sustainably harvested wild shrimp, including spot prawns and Oregon pink shrimp. You should eat local shrimp for the same reasons you eat food from the farmers' market-it doesn't take a toll on the environment, it's healthier, and it's definitely more flavorful. And be sure to ask grocery stores and restaurants where their seafood comes from, and if it is sustainably farmed or wild-caught

As part of the campaign, MAP will be participating in the following upcoming events (further details on the Campaign Blog!):

Sustainable Seafood Panel Discussion
Date: April 29
Time:  noon
Location: Seattle University

Eat Local Now! Annual Dinner
Date: April 29
Time:  6-9 pm
Location: Ballard High School, Seattle

Vancouver Spot Prawn Festival
Date: May 3
Location: Vancouver, Canada

Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival
Date:  May 4
Location:  Johnson Hall, University of Washington, 1:00pm, room 175

And save the date, May 21, when MAP staff and advisors will get together with friends and colleagues for a campaign networking event in downtown Seattle.

We appreciate your support to stop the destruction caused by shrimp farming, and we invite you to become involved in our campaign by attending events, volunteering, or supporting the campaign through a donation http://www.mangroveactionproject.org/donate

Visit MAP's new Campaign Blog Shrimp Less, Think More in order to learn, comment, and contribute! http://shrimpless.wordpress.com/  

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MAP WORKS

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8 April 2008

Saving Mangroves at the top of his to-do list

By Diana Somerville and Patrick Loafman

"If there are no mangrove forests, then the sea will have no meaning. It's like having a tree with no roots, for the mangroves are the roots of the sea," Mad-Hu Ranwasii, a Thai fisherman told Alfredo Quarto. This native's personal grief over loosing mangroves changed Quarto's life.

Once an engineer for Boeing before leaving for Japan with Greenpeace, Quarto now lives on an organic farm east of Port Angeles. In 1992 he founded the Mangrove Action Project, a local organization with global goals: To reverse the loss of mangroves and promote the rights of indigenous peoples to manage their coastal ecosystem's sustainably. ( www.mangroveactionproject.org )

Mangroves are dense tangles of tropical forests where sea turtles and manatees swim beneath the stilt-like mangrove roots as tropical birds and crab-eating monkeys clamor above. Belizean mangroves are home to five hundred species of birds.

A variety of trees collectively called mangroves, uniquely adapted to survive daily tidal flooding of salt water, knit together the ocean and land. Mangroves provide natural buffers against the destructive power of typhoons and hurricanes.

Significantly, about 70 percent of all commercial seafood from tropical oceans spend some part of their lives in mangrove estuaries. Half of the world's mangrove forests are gone; those remaining are declining rapidly.

It's difficult to assess the impact of the loss of mangroves on the collapse of global fish stocks.

A major reason for mangroves' disappearance: commercial shrimp farming. Nearly half the mangroves have been clear-cut to excavate ponds for raising shrimp. But these "ponds" last only for about five years before they're too contaminated with waste to support shrimp or other life. So they're abandoned.

Oil drilling and urbanization of coastal areas also threaten mangroves.

Most mangroves are in tropical areas outside of the US --but it is the US, Canada, Japan and Europe, the major consumers of farmed shrimp, that are fueling this destruction.

By choosing wild caught shrimp over farmed shrimp, you and your dollars can say no to this destructive practice.

You'll also vote against the human rights abuses connected with shrimp farming.

"In one of the first villages I visited along the Andaman coast of Thailand in March of 1992, I found that two villagers had been shot and killed because they were protesting shrimp farms expanding illegally into their surrounding mangrove areas," says Quarto.

That's no isolated incident, but a pattern of violence. Just last month in Ecuador, Olger Jaramillo was shot in the back and killed by a security guard of the Posa Linda shrimp farm while collecting clams.

Heavily armed guards at private shrimp ponds deter local fisherman from reaching the remnant mangroves, denying indigenous people their livelihood to provide wealthy nations with cheap shrimp.

Quarto's home in Port Angeles is the roots of an increasingly international organization with regional offices in Thailand, Indonesia and Latin America.

Quarto's an example of how one man's passion prompts global change. Quarto will speak about sustainable seafood noon Saturday, April 12 in Seattle as part of Greenfest.

Greenfest, at the Washington State Convention Center April 12 and 13, includes 125 speakers and 350 exhibits. (See: www.greenfestivals.org ).

Source:  Peninsula Daily News
http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/

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ANNOUNCEMENT: "Mangrove Forest Ecology, Management and Restoration" training workshop, March 2-5, 2009, Hollywood, Florida, USA.
The seventh "Mangrove Forest Ecology, Management and Restoration" training workshop will be held at the Anne Kolb Nature Center, in Hollywood, Florida, USA, March 2-5, 2009. The training site is within a 500 ha mangrove restoration project at West Lake Park operated by Broward County. The award-winning project was designed by Roy R. "Robin" Lewis III, who will be teaching the course. Mr. Lewis has taught this very successful course in Cuba, Nigeria, Thailand, Vietnam, India and Sri Lanka.

More details at mangroverestoration.com or contact me at lesrrl3@aol.com .

Robin Lewis
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Next Calendar Children's Art Contest For 2009 - Open For New Submissions

Feb. 2008

Dear Friends of the Mangroves,

We are sponsoring our 9th international children's art competition and would like to invite children in your country to enter this contest and learn more about the important role that mangrove forests play in the lives of the coastal communities in particular and for marine life in general.

Specifically we would like you to contact schools and teachers in your area and provide them with information regarding this contest, and also to act as a liaison between MAP and the local schools as a resource person regarding mangrove and ecological information. In addition, we would ask you to collect the winners from each school participating within your country, and send the three best entries on to MAP at the above address for the final judging, and possible inclusion in the calendar. We must receive the art work by July 31, 2008 for the 2009 Art Calendar.

This provides an opportunity for participating NGOs to build relationships with teachers and to provide school children with environmental information. Educating children on the importance of mangrove and coastal ecosystems is critical to effecting long term change. Without this information, current generations will grow up placing little value on the environment (as modeled by their parents) unless they are given new eyes with which to see coastal ecosystems and mangrove forests.

See MAP's website for more information and downloadable material that is ready to have your name added as the local contact representative and duplicated for distribution to teachers in your country.

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance in helping you implement this exciting educational project in your country. We will send all student winners, participating NGOs and schools copies of our calendar as well. And, the winning students will receive a signed official certificate announcing their great achievement in the 2009 Children's Mangrove Art Contest.

Yours sincerely,
Monica Alicia Paz Gutierrez-Quarto,
Calendar Project Coordinator
Mangrove Action Project
monicagquarto@olympus.net
tel. (360) 452-5866
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Senora Gutierrez-Quarto: the Children's Mangrove Calendar organizes my chaotic life and is pinned securely to the back of my office door.... I eagerly await the 2009 Edition.
Senectitudinally,
D. Reid Wiseman who is teetering on fragile prop roots
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Film on Shrimp Farming at Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival - May 4
It's All a Lie (10 min, UK)
In September, 2007, Environmental Justice Foundation investigators visited Caravelas, Bahia State, on the NE coast of Brazil where a proposal for a shrimp farm the size of London's Heathrow airport would turn coastal forests into a virtual wasteland, destroying sustainable livelihoods and threatening marine habitats. The film illustrates the delusion of local residents due to false promises made by the shrimp farming industry for jobs and a better life, and shows the devastation caused to alert Caravela's residents of the activity's reality. (Environmental Justice Foundation, 2007)
Date: Sunday, May 4
Time: 1pm
Location: Room 175, Johnson Hall, University of Washington, Seattle
Purchase Ticket for this event.

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AFRICA

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Eritrea
Editor's Note:  Though the work of Dr. Sato in Eritrea is impressive on the surface, we at MAP do want to offer some precautionary advice on this kind of approach to mangrove work. For one thing, this is not mangrove restoration, but afforestation, where mangroves are being planted in a landscape that originally functions as a non-mangrove ecosystem. One important concern we have is that one functioning and potentially vital ecosystem is converted to another, which could lead to the threat to, or extinction of, certain native species that utilize the original ecosystem and will be threatened by its loss.
Similarly, we caution about the present-day conversion of many important mud flats and salt flats to mangrove wetlands, which is now common practice among many so-called "restoration" programs, which are also merely afforestation programs that value the mangroves above the mud flats or salt flats. Yet this wide-scale conversion may adversely affect whole species of migratory birds or marine life that depend upon the original ecosystem functions.  For instance, the mud flats serve as feeding grounds for millions of migratory birds which could be devastatingly affected by loss of their regular feeding grounds.
For these reasons, MAP cautions those with such visions of mangrove bounty at the expense of other vital functions that may be lost forever in the process.
14 April 2008

Mangrove project creates fish, fire and hope in Eritrean desert
by Peter Martell
HIRGIGO, Eritrea (AFP) - Kneeling by the sparkling waters of the Red Sea, Ahmed Shengabay presses sand carefully over a mangrove seed.
"When this grows, it will provide protection for fish and food for my goats," Ahmed said smiling, waving at a long and thick line of tall trees already reaching high into the sky.
"We've planted all this already," the fisherman cum farmer added proudly, the mangroves lining the shore beside his small desert village of Hirgigo.
"The little fish like the mangroves, the big fish like the little fish -- and we like the big fish."
The seed-planting is part of a remarkable yet low-tech pilot project, designed as a model to improve the lives of desert coastal communities by using the salt-water trees to increase fish numbers, provide feed to raise livestock - and combat desertification.

Like many of the small villages scattered along Eritrea's Red Sea coast, Hirgigo is a harsh place to live.
The region is reputedly one of the hottest inhabited places on earth, with temperatures soaring well above 40 C (104 F) for much of the year, combined with an average annual rainfall of less than two centimetres (an inch).
The sun beats down hard on a dusty plain dotted with palm trees, squeezed between barren mountains and the sea.
"It's a tough land," said Simon Tecleab, a marine scientist who has been working on the project for the past ten years.
"Before, after the rains stopped, the villagers would have to go far to find food for their animals or they would just starve," he added.
Much of the original mangrove forest was destroyed by overgrazing by camels or cutting for firewood or the building of homes and boats.
But today, along the shore, mangrove trees stretch in a tall green band along some seven kilometres (four miles) of coast and over 100 metres (330 feet) thick, a budding ecosystem acting as nursery grounds for fish, crabs and oysters.
The mangroves -- now protected by fences from hungry livestock -- have therefore become crucial to the villagers.
"Mangrove leaves and excess seeds are carefully gathered so as not to damage the plants, then used as fodder for sheep and goats," Simon added, who teaches at Eritrea's College of Marine Sciences and Technologies in the port of Massawa, ten kilometres (six miles) to the north.
-- Somalia, Djibouti, Mexico and Peru could be next --
At Hirgigo, research into planting mangroves began a decade ago, challenging conventional wisdom that the saltwater plants also needed fresh water to grow -- a major limitation in the arid regions where the trees are needed most.
Mangroves grow along some 15 per cent of Eritrea's 1,350 kilometre (837 mile) long coastline, mainly in areas where seasonal freshwater streams run into the sea.
But Dr Gordon Sato -- a respected American bio-chemist and member of the US National Academy of Sciences -- reasoned that the trees needed not the freshwater but the minerals the streams brought from inland.
Planting low-cost slow-release fertilizer packs of nitrogen, phosphorous and iron alongside each seed, Sato and his team from the Eritrean Ministry of Fisheries found they were able to plant mangroves in areas even previously uninhabited by the trees.
"It opens up seemingly unproductive land to produce food, alleviate hunger and create wealth," Sato said, who named the scheme the Manzanar Project, after the US internment camp in the Californian desert where, as a Japanese-American citizen, he spent the Second World War.
Sato, who saw there how plants could be grown even in the harshest of conditions, believes that the simple technology of the project can be applied elsewhere in the world to counteract the global impact of deforestation, tackle poverty and bring desert areas into agricultural production.
"Countries such as Somalia, Djibouti, Mexico, and Peru immediately come to mind," the 80-year old scientist told AFP.
Residents say the project has had a massive impact on the community of about 3,000 people.
"There are already lots more fish to catch than before, and some day it will be full of big shrimps," Ahmed said, crouching to place a protective rusty tin can over the seed.
Nothing from the mangroves is wasted.
"We burn the dry branches remaining for cooking, which is a great help," said an elderly women, heaving a large bundle of sticks onto her back.
In the village, bare-foot children kick a half-deflated football between two huts, patched with ragged cloth reinforced with scraps of tin cans hammered flat.
The dust swirls as Halima Shifa Idriss, one of several women in the village who work planting the tree seeds, feeds her plump sheep with mangrove clippings.
"There were four sheep, now I have eight," Halima said, laughing as the animals reach up greedily to snatch another mangrove branch.
"That has made a big difference for my family."
Source:  AFP
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Nigeria
*** Action Alert ***

Editor's Note:  Please write letters of protest to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN expressing your concern about the FAO's current policies which are actively promoting shrimp aquaculture in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria. Nigeria contains the 4th largest area of mangrove forest in the world, and this program being supported by the FAO may spell disaster for these vital wetlands. Added to the already heavy handiness and ongoing destruction of the petroleum industry in Nigeria, the shrimp farming industry will deliver another serious blow to the health and future of both the Niger Delta mangroves and the millions of local residents dependent upon these mangrove wetlands for their livelihoods and protection.

A Letter of Protest to the FAO Concerning Shrimp Farming In Niger Delta

17 April 2008

Mr. Helder MUTELA,
FAO Representative, Nigeria
P.M.B. 396, Garki,
Abuja. Nigeria

Dear Sir,

ONE WRONG STEP TOO MANY: FAO SUPPORTS UNSUSTAINABLE SHRIMP FARMING AND FOOD INSECURITY INVESTMENTS IN NIGERIA.

It is with deep sense of commitment that we are endeared to the founding goal of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), "helping to build a world without hunger." Our passion for the FAO policy thrust of eradicating global hunger notwithstanding, to say the least, we are indelibly shocked by the organization's recent endorsement of Sulalanka Nigeria Limited proposal to establish shrimp farms in Southern Nigeria, especially in the fragile Niger Delta basin.

As reputable as the FAO clams to be, and given its repository of technical expertise, one would supposedly expect the world body to situate the proposed shrimp culture project within the context of her primary concern of ensuring rural food security, which convincingly would have led to an outright rejection of the project proposal. Farmed shrimp are rarely consumed by the poor, but almost exclusively sold to luxury consumers in domestic and international markets.

With utmost simplification of the highly complicated project, you (FAO) have advocated that farmed shrimp production and export to the North will diversify the Nigerian mono-product economy.  This position, we believe, you took unilaterally based on foreign exchange earning that will be an exclusive privilege of the investor, and as usual, those few corrupt officials in the corridors of power. Regrettably, you abandoned the concerns of poor Nigerians, the peoples of the Niger Delta in particular whose soaring hunger FAO's brief is meant to alleviate.

Sustainable diversification of the Nigerian economy can be achieved on balanced development; the intervention initiatives must be compatible with the natural environment. This includes eradicating poverty by empowering the people to use their strengths and assets like the mangrove to improve their livelihoods. This point has been succinctly buttressed by one of your sister organizations, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In her 2006 Niger Delta Human Development Report, UNDP stresses that the environment is very important for the Niger Delta people. "Nearly 60% of the delta Population depends on the natural environment - living and non-living for their livelihoods".

Evidence from Latin America and Asia points to the fact that shrimp farming is not sustainable, and is very unfriendly to the environment. Sulalanka's proposal to farm marine black tiger shrimp is targeting the remaining stands of mangrove in the Niger Delta which the livelihood of the delta people greatly depend upon. Like elsewhere around the globe where coastal shrimp aquaculture is practiced, significant mangrove area will be converted to shrimp ponds. The proposal by Sulalanka to establish shrimp culture facilities along inland water courses is bedeviled by more mangrove losses since mangrove  predominate in sheltered inland environments. Such overwhelming mangrove wastage which certainly will be associated with the farming project, negates the above pro-poor mechanism of subtle bottom-up community development, and will strip local communities of their age-long livelihood dependency on mangrove. Mangrove is the first line of defense of littoral communities. It protects shoreline against coastal erosion; provides fuel wood, ensures diverse and abundant seafood, etc.

It is common knowledge that scientists have estimated that 3/4 of the tropical world's fish catch is dependent on mangrove forests for food or habitat.  Mangrove forests serve as nurseries and breeding grounds for both near-shore and off-shore marine species. Specifically, the mangrove of the Niger Delta has been adjudged a key zone for the conservation of the western coast of Africa due to its extraordinary biodiversity. Again, studies have shown that about 60% of the fishes in the Gulf of Guinea breed in the mangrove of the Niger Delta. Does it make sense to plunder wild fisheries that had sustained humanity for ages for the sake of a monolithic, capitalist-driven shrimp culture investment?

Already, Niger Delta mangrove is threatened and gradually shrinking due to oil spill toxicity, over logging, spread of nypa palm, clearance for the passage of oil pipes and seismic lines, swamp reclamation for urban development, etc. Expanding the mangrove loss by converting it to shrimp ponds and the toxic antibiotic-laden wastewater arising from these operations, would, in synergy with other threats outlined above, constitute the proverbial last straw that would break the camel's back. Once the mangrove of the delta dies, the people's livelihoods go with it! Could the FAO accept such devastating trend, especially given her towering pro-poor, hunger-eradicating posture?

The FAO code of conduct for responsible fisheries, in Article 9, states that aquaculture development should not negatively impact on artisanal fisheries. How do you reconcile the above with the fact that Sulalanka shrimp project will ultimately lead to negative effects on swamp fisheries, inland and coastal wild fisheries. As well, if one looks at the record of shrimp farm ventures in Sri Lanka, Sulalanka's home country, one finds the industry there has a terrible track record with much damage to the coastal environment, shrimp diseases and pollution plaguing the industry, as well as a high percentage of abandoned shrimp ponds in Sri Lanka along with a declining wild fishery resulting from mangrove clearing. Why would the FAO allow Sulalanka to bring this bad track record to Nigeria?

In the purported "Stakeholders" workshop organized by Sulalanka in Lagos, Nigeria, the FAO was quoted (see Daily Trust and Thisday Newspapers, 19 March, 2008) as saying: unemployed youths who take to Okada riding and other tedious manual labour should avail themselves of the opportunity of the new technique for shrimp farming. Again, drawing from experiences in Latin America and Asia, we make bold to say unequivocally that local employment generated by shrimp farms is only temporary, requiring high labour inputs only to construct the ponds. After initial facility development is completed, the shrimp culture industry turns capital-intensive with the hitherto labourers becoming unemployed. Furthermore, representatives of targeted host communities as primary stakeholders did not take part in the Sulalanka-FAO Stakeholders workshop. This conspicuous exclusion of the local people preempts the many disadvantages the shrimp aquaculture project has in store for the former. Worse still, to the best of our knowledge environmental impact assessment studies have not been conducted for the project in line with best practices that the FAO Preach to justify the feasibility of the project in harmony with current principle of sustainable development.

Given the above sacrosanct reasons, we the undersigned organizations from Nigeria and around the world, therefore, ask that the FAO should without delay withdraw her support, which Sulalanka presently enjoys in her bid to further impoverish the people and degrade the environment of the Niger Delta through capitalist-driven shrimp culture.

We would appreciate hearing from you soon in these regards, and hope for your anticipated co-operation.

Sincerely,

NENIBARINI ZABBEY
Head, Conservation and Environment Programme
Centre for Environment, Human Rights and
Development (CEHRD).
6 Obo Nwanke Street,
Post Office Building Complex
Ogale-Nchia, Eleme
Rivers State, Nigeria

E-mail: nigerdeltaproject@yahoo.com
Website: www.cehrd.org.
Tel: +234-82557893, 82557885, 82557883

Cc: Rohana P. Subasinghe (PhD)
      Senior Fishery Resources Officer (Aquaculture)
      Fisheries and Aquaculture Management Division
      Fisheries and Aquaculture Department
      Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
      Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
      00153 Rome, ITALY
      E-mail: Rohana.Subasinghe@FAO.Org 

FAO Regional Office for Africa
FAO Building
#2 Gamel Abdul Nasser Road,
Accra, Ghana
P.O. BOX GP1528, Accra, Ghana
E-mail: fao-raf@fao.org

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Burma

20 April 2008

Crocodile kills man accused of illegal logging in Myanmar wildlife sanctuary
YANGON, Myanmar: A crocodile attacked and killed a man who was under arrest for alleged illegal logging in Myanmar, the country's state-run newspaper reported Sunday.
Myint Zaw was being transported by forest rangers in a boat in the Ayeywarwaddy river delta when the crocodile knocked him out of the boat and killed him, the Myanmar-language Kyemon daily reported.
Myint Zaw and three other men were arrested last month for possession of mangrove trees believed to have been illegally cut from Meinmahla Kyun Wildlife Sanctuary, southwest of the country's biggest city, Yangon, the paper said.
The men were being transferred to detention when the attack happened March 10, the paper said. No other details were available.
The wildlife reserve was established in 1994 and is inhabited by endangered saltwater crocodiles that live in the mangrove swamps.
Source:  The Associated Press

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Editor's Note: Though there are U.S. and EU trade sanctions against Burma's ruling junta because of extensive and ongoing human rights abuses, the illicit smuggling of Burmese farmed shrimp to other exporting nations, such as Bangladesh, poses another serious problem with farmed shrimp consumption, as unwary consumers are supporting this corrupt regime via their appetites for cheap shrimp.
22 April 2008
Demands to Stop Shrimp Smuggling from Burma
by Khaing Pray Htun
Bangladeshi shrimp traders demanded on Sunday that the illegal export of shrimp from Burma to Bangladesh be stopped due to its adverse effect on Bangladesh's shrimp husbandry projects along the border, according to a business report.
The demand was made by shrimp businessmen during a meeting with high authorities in Okia Town in Cox's Bazar District.
The illegal export of shrimps from Burma has created a serious problem for the Bangladeshi shrimp businessmen who have been losing profits from the competition.
At least ten shrimp businessmen went to Okia Town to meet with the Deputy Commissioner of Cox's Bazar District and demanded the government take action against the shrimp smuggling.
A businessman said that the Deputy Commissioner warmly welcomed the businessmen's demand and promised to present the problem to authorities higher up.
He also said that the shrimp businesses in Bangladesh were losing by the day as tens of thousands of shrimp from Burma are entering Bangladesh illegally through sea routes and being sold at cheaper prices.
Shrimp from Burma is cheaper than Bangladesh produced shrimp and local Bangladesh companies are buying the imported shrimp at the border town of Teknaf to package and export the shrimp internationally, including to European countries.#
Source:  Narinjara News
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Indonesian

6 March 2008

Fisherfolk of Indonesia ask themselves for a halt to aquaculture expansion in resolution

THE PREPARATION COMMITTEE OF FISHERFOLKS ORGANIZATION INDONESIA (KPNNI)
 
Secretariat : Jl. Empang Tiga No.19A Pejaten Timur Jakarta Selatan 12510
Telp/Faximile : +62-21-79197814; Email : kpnni@yahoo.com ; dedy_ramanta@yahoo.com
 
INDONESIAN FISHERFOLK RESOLUTION[1]
 
With blessings of the Almighty God, we are the fisherfolks and coastal communities in Indonesia, participants of  the "Consolidation of National Fisherfolks in Indonesia", dated March 4th - 5th 2008, at YTKI Building, Jakarta-Indonesia, hereby declare our testimonies and pleas to Indonesian administrative regulators, as follows:

1.      Since New Era Regime (1966 until 1998), the providence of fisherfolks and coastal communities in Indonesia have always been abandoned. Development programs have been conducted to put more weight on rice fields and land infrastructure development issues. Fisherfolks and coastal communities are not seen as important sectors for development programs. Although more than 67% regencies/municipalities in Indonesia are factually coastal regencies/ municipalities, facing right to the sea waters. Other facts show that more than 65% of Indonesian people totally live relying on marine and coastal resources.

2.      that SBY - JK regime, has never been  better than the former regimes. Economy politics established by this regime still refers to the characters and features of anti-civilian leadership, in service to and submissively tormented by the capital power, relying heavily on foreign  debts, including for  marine and fishery activities;

3.      that SBY - JK regime, has deliberately shown off as the representative of the capitalist interests which is anti-fisherfolk through the Law No. 27/2007 regarding the Management of Coastal areas and small islands (UU PWP-PPK). HP-3 (Right of Coastal Water Authority) certificates facilitate the government to give privilege to the large capitalist to authorize and exploit the sources of livelihood of the fisherfolks and communities at the coastal areas and small islands, for more than 20 years, as with  the Law No.25/2007 on capital investment (UUPM);

4.      that the marine conservation politics that SBY - JK are adherent to, have limited the access for the fisherfolks to manage the sources of livelihood in the marine and coastal areas. The approach of terrestrial-bias marine conservation which is anti-fisherfolks and used as foreign debt preconditioning prove to cause conflicts which destroy the fisherfolk livelihoods both materially and physically. The cases of Komodo National Park in East Nusatenggara (2003-2004); Wakatobi National Park in Southeast Sulawesi (2002-2007); and Bunaken National Park in North Suawesi (2001-2005) were among the conflicts involving security officers (TNI/POLRI), National Park Management Office, supported by International Conservation Organizations such as WWF, TNC,  NRM and CI;

5.      The government of SBY-JK has deliberately let the industrial and mining (tailing) effluent discharge that cause damage and polluted the  sources of livelihood of fisherfolks in the sea. Sea is not the garbage bin for industrial interests;

6.      Development politics conducted at this moment, still places fisher-women as sub-ordinate of  marine and fishery sector development interests;

7.      Politics of divide and rule to make fisherfolks and coastal communities discord through community development funds from environment obliterator companies (as mining and oil and gas industries) have stimulated conflicts and violations of Human Rights (HAM) in many coastal area and small islands in Indonesia;

8.      Conflict fishery between artisanal fishers of Indonesia confronting fishery industries and foreign armadas has been going up to this moment. Cases of traditional fisherfolks in Bengkalis regency in Riau province against Jaring Batu/Jaring Dasar groups since 1983 until now could be said to represent that conflict. Central and local governments are seen to let this conflict to continue  that costs heavy materially than physically. At least 5 (five) traditional fisherfolks are noted to die in the conflict;

9.      We question the government which always claim their policies are in the name of Indonesia fisherfolks which are always applied  through organizations such as Indonesia Fisherfolk (HNSI) that are so far, do not absolutely bring any optimal benefits for the welfare and quality of life improvement to Indonesian fisherfolks and coastal communities;

10.     that in accordance with the above mentioned testimonies, appraisal and facts, We thus demand  the state administrators to:

a.      Improve the security of the safety and welfare of the fisherfolks and coastal communities by applying political economic policies that take sides for the fulfillment of the basic needs of fisherfolks and coastal communities including safety from disasters;

b.      Immediately change  all the political economic policies to have no more servility to the capital power or rely on foreign debts given by international financial instituions (IFI's) that have been funding marine and fishery projects in Indonesia, such as World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB); including the supports from the international conservation organizations such as WWF, TNC, NRM and CI which are anti-civilians (people) and which are actually trading off fisherfolks living sources.

c.       Cancel Law No.27/2007 concerning Management of coastal area and small islands;

d.      Stop making parcel and  zoning coastal and marine areas in the name of National Parks and marine conservation efforts;

e.      Stop the coast reclamation programs;

f.      Stop expanding the aquaculture and fishery industries;

g.      Stop the illegal fishing practices in all Indonesia waters;

h.      Stop disposing effluents into the sea;

i.      Stop the exploitation of marine and coastal resources, such as sea sand;

j.      Stop violence and criminalization acts to fisherfolks throughout Indonesia;

k.      Improve the quality of lives of fisherwomen to get their rights on the marine and coastal resource management;
 
We call on all fisherfolks and civil society organizations in Indonesia to continue fighting and confirm our unity for the sake of the welfare of Indonesian fisherfolks.
 
Herewith the resolution of Indonesian fisherfolk and coastal communities that we declare.
 
Let's unite, Indonesian fisherfolks!!!
Jakarta, March 6th 2008
 
Participants of Indonesian National Fisherfolk Consolidation
SNKB-Riau, KOMPI-Jabar, SINAR-Sulut, LPSDN-NTB,
FPWK-Jatim, INSAN-Kalsel, PNK-Kaltim, SETAM-Jogjakarta, WALHI, SP Anging Mamiri Sulsel, Solidaritas Perempuan, PP SHI, FKNJ-Jakarta, FPMTN-Lampung
 
[1] For the firs time, resolution read during the action of  preparation comittee of Fisherfolks organitation Indonesia (KPNNI) at Marine and Fisheries Department of Indonesia, Jakarta, Thursday, 6th March 2008

Submitted by:  M.Riza Damanik
Marine and Coastal Campaigner
 
Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (WALHI)
Jl. Tegal Parang Utara No.14 Jakarta 12790, INDONESIA
Phone. +62 21 794 1672, 791 93363
Fax. +62 21 794 1673

Mobile. +62 818 77 3515
email: riza@walhi.or.id ; mriza_damanik@yahoo.com
website: www.walhi.or.id

====================================

17 April 2008

Indonesian researchers tour area mangroves
Tour part of nationwide visit to learn about sea grant program
By JASON WITZ
PUNTA GORDA -- For Paulus Boli, the mangrove forests of Papua provide a vital barrier from coastal hazards like typhoons.
But restoring the natural habitat can prove difficult after a catastrophic storm.
Boli, along with a group of Indonesian researchers, visited Charlotte County Wednesday as part of a nationwide tour to learn about Sea Grant Extension programs.
The men visited the red mangrove shoreline fish habitat along the Peace River to view area restoration efforts. About 80 percent of the shoreline was destroyed by Hurricane Charley in 2004.
Boli, a lecturer at Papua State University, said he was excited to see the recovery efforts and how the two countries can learn from one another.
"We want to see how the program is done," he said.
Aside from severe weather control, Mahatma Lanuru, a 37-year-old lecturer at Hassanuddin State University, said mangroves play a big role in reducing seawater intrusion and erosion in Indonesia.
"It's very important to us," he said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an agreement with the Indonesian government to collaborate on research, and develop tsunami early warning systems in the Indian Ocean, as part of the Sea Grant Program.
In addition, NOAA works with the Indonesian Sea Partnership Program to provide scientific-based information to resolve marine and coastal problems.
The four researchers will spend a month in the United States, with several planned stops in Florida.
Mike Sprangher, Florida Sea Grant associate director for extension, said the agency decided to visit Charlotte County because of its ongoing efforts to restore damaged mangroves.

Following the hurricane, the agency gathered community volunteers to collect propagule seed pods to plant at the damaged spots. The project started in October, and is already producing results.
"Early on, we're seeing success, but it's going to be a long process," said Betty Staugler, Charlotte County Florida Sea Grant Extension agent.
Source:  The Sun-Herald

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22 April 2008
WWF rehabilitates mangrove area
JAKARTA: In conjunction with Earth Day the World Wildlife Fund-Indonesia and the Tarakan administration signed an agreement here Monday to rehabilitate the mangrove area on the island of East Kalimantan.

The reforestation is expected to reinstate the mangrove's function as a habitat of flora and fauna, which can be developed into a center for research, a tourist resort and a fish breeding area.

WWF-Indonesia executive director Mubariq Ahmad said many mangrove forests in Indonesia had fallen victim to fish ponds, the timber industry and shrimp refrigerating plants.

"Mangrove rehabilitation in Tarakan can be adopted in other areas in the country," he said.
Source:  The Jakarta Post

====================================
Vietnam

Mangroves to defend farms

18 April 2008

A $120m plan to boost mangrove forests may help combat the effects of climate-change.
HA NOI - A programme to recover mangrove forests throughout Viet Nam as part of a larger plan to cope with the increasing impacts of climate change on the farming sector will cost the country as much as VND1.9 trillion (US$120 million) by 2015.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Dao Xuan Hoc said the programme would be carried out soon, under an Action Plan that hoped to forecast and diminish the effects of climate change on the farming industry.
Initial project results will be used as a foundation for the ministry to work out comprehensive policies and strategies to deal with long-term climate change effects.
Doctor Phan Nguyen Hong, from the Viet Nam Mangrove Forest Ecological System Research Centre, said that mangrove recovery was important in dealing with frequent tidal surges, which are caused by climate change.
Natural mangrove forests and other wave-resistant trees, if protected, could act as walls against tidal surges, Hong said. The mangroves' interlacing roots could also block surging tides from hitting the man-made dyke systems.
Mangrove forests also provide shelter for a range of species, such as snails and small crabs, and as such could help maintain ecological diversity, Hong added.
The last few years have seen Viet Nam's efforts in dealing with climate change in the many agreements the nation has signed, such as the Kyoto Protocol, whose objective was to reduce Greenhouse gases that cause climate change, and the 2005 - 2015 Hyogo Framework for Action, which aided disaster reduction policy in Asian countries.
Viet Nam has also established the environmental police. In the latest move, the Vietnamese Government approved the National Strategy for Natural Disaster Prevention, Response and Mitigation last November.
The deputy director of the Science, Technology and Environment Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Nguyen Binh Thin, said that the ministry had taken climate change seriously, and various projects dealing with its impacts were underway.
The ministry was also looking for more support and assistance from international donors and non-governmental organisations to better deal with the climate change impacts on the farming sector, which is the backbone of Viet Nam's national economy.
Thin said that the agriculture ministry was helping farmers to adjust their crop times to suit the changing weather. For example, more diverse crops - some of which require less water than others - would work better in areas lacking water sources. The ministry also encouraged farmers to use stronger crop seeds that could survive under harsh conditions, such as drought-hit, salinated or insects-struck areas.

The General Statistics Office (GSO) reported that natural disasters in 2007 killed 435 people and cost the nation VND11.6 trillion ($725million), or 1 per cent of the GDP.
It has been forecast that global warming would trigger more natural disasters with increased damage capabilities to many countries worldwide, including Viet Nam, from now on till 2050.
The World Bank said that Viet Nam, endowed with more than 3200km of coastline and two large deltas, the Hong and Cuu Long (Mekong Delta), was one of the five nations hardest hit by climate change. If the sea level rose by five meters, Viet Nam would lose 16 per cent of its land, which would then threaten the lives of 35 per cent of the population.
Poor people would be most vulnerable to these disasters, the World Bank said.
According to the agriculture ministry, drought has plagued the farming sector for the past 10 years, causing huge damages to both humans and property, especially in the Central Highlands. Damages to the farming industry following the drought spell between late 1997 and early 1998, for example, were worth up to VND1.4trillion ($87.5 million).
Drought has dried up many water resources, and low levels in the Hong (Red) River - the biggest river in northern Viet Nam - has caused severe water shortages for farmers over the last five years. - VNS
Source:  Vietnam News
=================================
22 April 2008
Vietnam to invest over $53 mn for aquaculture biotechnology
More than VND 850 billion (US$53 mn) will be invested in a project to develop and apply biotechnology in Vietnam's fisheries sector from now until 2020. The project, presented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development at a conference in Hanoi on April 21, aims to create a breakthrough in aquaculture development and post-harvest technology.
The ministry said it hopes the project will help ensure sustainable development of the fisheries sector and improve the competitive edge of Vietnam's aquatic products. The project will focus on preserving and developing gene sources alongside developing new varieties of aquatic products. It will also support research on feed, disease prevention and treatment, and the management of aquaculture environments.
Control of processed product quality, development of an aquatic biotechnological industry, improving human resources and equipment, and promoting international co-operation are also earmarked for attention.
Aquaculture conference participants said fisheries has applied biotechnologies in production and processing, including traditional biotechnologies, however the sector still faces many difficulties. They said important concerns in applying biotechnology were the lack of staff, long-term strategies and the need for more investment.

Source: Nhan Dan
Via:  ICSF

=================================

The Philippines

18 April 2008

ADB blamed for mangroves destruction in Asean region

By Amy R. Remo

MANILA, Philippines -- A fisheries coalition has held the Asian Development Bank accountable for mangrove loss and falling fish stocks as it "promoted environmentally destructive aquaculture in the Philippines, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries in the '70s until the '90s.

In a statement, the Kilusang Mangingisda said the ADB and other international finance institutions offered billions of dollars in loans and grants to increase fisheries production and trade in Asia and worldwide, especially of high-value species like tuna and shrimp.

This resulted in an expansion of "intensive" aquaculture, which led to a massive loss of mangrove areas, the dwindling fishery stocks and to the present deficit in the supply of food fish in the country, KM chair Bonifacio Federizo argued.

KM blamed this huge support for creating an environmental catastrophe in the massive destruction of mangrove areas in the region.

"The ADB and World Bank funds fueled the expansion of intensive aquaculture in Southeast Asia, which converted most mangrove areas for the large-scale production of shrimp and other species for both export and major domestic markets," Federizo noted.

According to KM, the total area of mangroves lost is "mind-boggling."

In the Philippines, only 117,000 hectares remained out of 500,000 hectares of mangroves. Mangrove conversion to fishponds is the main reason for this huge loss, according to KM.

In Thailand, 203,765 hectares, representing 55 percent of total mangrove area, were lost while in Vietnam, only 60,000 hectares of an original 200,000 hectares in the Mekong Delta remained.

Federizo pointed out that the loss of mangroves "consequently led to a decline in wild-fish stocks in coastal areas and ultimately to the present deficit in food fish, which is estimated to average 403,000 tons yearly."

KM argued that the ADB has not owned up to its responsibility and that in fact, "aquaculture programs are now its priority over capture fisheries programs since it came up with a 1997 assessment that claimed its capture fisheries programs were a failure."

"We therefore hold ADB accountable for its role in causing large-scale damage of the coastal areas. We demand that it stop financing further intensive aquaculture expansion or maintenance," Federizo said.

He pointed out that only a few wealthy companies see any profits in intensive aquaculture. "On the other hand, millions of people in coastal communities, once protected by mangroves and other natural coastal barriers, now are left vulnerable to natural disasters," he added.

Citing data from the Food and Aquaculture Organization, Federizo said huge amounts were spent to develop large aquaculture complexes, build bigger and more efficient fish ports, as well as post-harvest processing facilities since the '70s.

Between 1985 and 1989, all forms of external assistance to the fisheries and the aquaculture sectors of developing countries averaged US$ 500 million a year," he added.

"From 1989 to 1995, the ADB and the World Bank were the prime supporters of aquaculture in Asia, accounting for 69 percent of total foreign funding and supported 40 percent of the total projects," he said.

Overall, from 1974 to 1996, aquaculture loan commitments worldwide had reached a total of $ 1.3 billion, the group said.

"The World Bank provided 77 percent of this amount, followed by the Asian Development Bank at 13 percent. The ADB loans were given exclusively to Southeast Asian nations, including the Philippines and Indonesia," he said.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer

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S. ASIA

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India

21 March 2008

Nature lovers upset as axe falls on mangroves for SEZ

By D V Maheshwari

Bhuj. When India celebrated the World Forest Day on Friday with a resolve to protect forest cover by 30 per cent, a team of nature lovers headed by the Mundra-based teacher and vernacular journalist, Ashwin Zunzuwadia completed a five-hour-long hazardous boat trip to the mangrove forest behind the sand dune called Bharadi Mata's dhunva near the new Mundra port. He was here to highlight the depletion of the mangrove cover for an upcoming SEZ project near the port town.

This mangrove-rich area constituting a reserve forestland of the forest department is soon going to be a part of the new Mundra Special Economic Zone (Mundra SEZ) to be set up by the Adani Group on 10,000 hectares of land close to the new Mundra Port.

"This the second biggest patch of mangrove forests in the state. Lakhs of lush green mangroves were destroyed in the nineties to create a new state-of-the-art port at Mundra. There was much hue and cry then, but even the forest department could not do much," said Zunzuwadia.

He said this useful sea vegetation, which is a strong natural barrier against the cyclone and salinity, is again due for a mammoth destruction. "Every thing is ready on paper to hand over 1,814 hectare mangrove forest land to the SEZ company," Zunzuwadi told this paper on Friday. Though the forest department admits this to be their land, it denies the wide presence of mangrove in the marshy land.

"The 1,814 ha mangrove forest area we are going to give for the SEZ, on compliance of certain conditions, has no dense mangrove cover. It is a land where no creek water comes in to keep the sea alive. It is a 'dead land'. We have also asked the SEZ company to pay a net present value of over Rs 165 crore for use of this land at a rate of Rs 9 lakh per ha as per the guidelines of the Supreme Court," said V T Korvadia, deputy conservator of the forest.

He said the company had already given them a substitute land at Koteshwar in western Kutch as compensation for this stretch of land.

When asked why is such a high price being charged from the company, and that too when there is no dense mangrove in the forests, the official said that the charges were due to the land being a coastal one.

He also informed that the land was granted to them only after a clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests. He said the process was started in 1998-99, and the approval of the Centre was received in 2004.

But Zunzuwadi contested the claims that the marshy land was without mangroves. "This is totally false. We visited 30 small creeks in small boats and nine creeks in bigger boats, accompanied by local experts including retired officials, to know the things by our own. We found that 65 per cent of the area is full of thick mangrove cover. At certain places, there are hardly one to two inches of space left between two trees. The trees are as tall as 20 to 22 feet. There are areas where dwarf trees of 3 to 4 feet height can be seen. The area is flat in this portion of the mangrove forest. The experts have opined that the mangrove forest is at-least some five centuries old," he said.

He said the mangrove forest cover was depleting rapidly in the country, and there was a need to rejuvenate the same in the Kutch area, but sadly they would now fall to the axe.

He said even the flat mud land in the area should be utilised for growing more and more mangroves, rather than be termed as a 'mangrove dead land' and be handed over to the SEZ.

Source:  Express India

==============================
30 March 2008

Time runs out for islanders on global warming's front

Rising sea levels threaten to flood many of the islands in the fertile Ganges delta, leading to an environmental disaster and a refugee crisis for India and Bangladesh. Dan McDougall reports from the Sundarbans.

Dependra Das stretches out his arms to show his flaky skin, covered in raw saltwater sores. His fingers submerged in soft black clay for up to six hours a day, he spends his time frantically shoring up a crude sea dyke surrounding his remote island home in the Sundarbans, the world's largest delta.

Alongside him, across the beach in long lines, the villagers of Ghoramara island, the women dressed in purple, orange and green saris, do the same, trying to hold back the tide.

For the islanders, each day begins and ends the same way. As dusk descends, the people file back to their thatched huts. By morning the dyke will be breached and work will begin again. Here in the vast, low-lying Sundarbans, the largest mangrove wilderness on the planet, Das, 70, is preparing to lose his third home to the sea in as many years; here global warming is a reality, not a prediction.

Over the course of a three-day boat trip through the Sundarbans, this reporter found Das's plight to be far from unique. Across the delta, homes have been swept away, fields ravaged by worsening monsoons, livelihoods destroyed. It confirms what experts are already warning: that the effects of global warming will be most severe on those who did the least to contribute to it but can least afford measures to adapt or save themselves. For these islanders, building clay walls is their only option.

Lying one-third in India and two-thirds in Bangladesh, the Sundarbans are where two of Asia's biggest rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, broaden and violently roll into the Bay of Bengal. The source of the problem is 1,500 miles away, at the source of the Ganges, where melting Himalayan glaciers are raising river and sea levels.

Lohachara island, once visible from Ghoramara, a mile to the east, is already gone beneath the waves, succumbing to the ocean two years ago, leaving more than 7,000 people homeless. Ghoramara itself has lost a third of its land mass in the past five years. To the north, Sagar island already houses 20,000 refugees from the tides.

According to the geologist Sugata Hazra, who is the director of the School of Oceanography Studies at Kolkata's Jadavpur University, the people of the Sundarbans are the first global-warming refugees.

He said: 'These people are victims of global warming. The accelerated melt of the Himalayan glacier is producing larger volumes of water in the rivers, water that violently carves its way through the flat delta where they live. The Sundarbans and the four million people who inhabit the Indian side are dreadfully vulnerable. The area has lost 72 square miles of land in the past few decades. This entire region is holding back a disaster and could ultimately serve as a warning of what is to come.'

The hamlet on Ghoramara in which Gita Pandhar, 25, lives is reached by a narrow path along a mud dyke braced against the sea. Each day, to get to the market, she must walk through two miles of deep, slippery mud.

'When I was young, this was all rice-fields and herds of cows. It was beautiful, a wonderful place to grow up, in isolation away from the mainland. The farmland my grandfather first tended is now poisoned with salt. All the arable land has been replaced by swamp. We used to burn dung as fuel, but there is nowhere to graze and now we have to cut the last of the wood here to cook with.'

Flooding is normal in the Sundarbans. Hundreds of waterways flow through it, carrying 92 per cent of the water from Tibet, Bhutan, India and Nepal. Most of this water arrives during the monsoon, flooding on average 33 per cent of the countryside.

According to Gita, the severity of the storms has made the area one of the most dangerous places to live in the world.

'The sea is so violent at night. We know nothing of global warming. The scientists who visit tell us the West and their pollution is to blame. This is a very backward area, so we are the first people to suffer from global warming and the last to find out why we are suffering.

'You can see our houses, they are made of the same mud that props up the dykes. When the water rushes through the dykes it does the same to our homes. When the typhoons come we lose everything.

'Nature used to give us food and crops, now all it gives us is misery, a cruel sea that covers us in sores, destroys our homes and threatens to take our families' lives. We are living in hell.'

As rising sea levels in the Sundarbans continue to destroy lives, critics argue that the Indian government remains consumed with protecting its own interests rather than the vulnerable. Over the past few years, in a construction project that will eventually reach across 2,050 miles, India has been quietly sealing itself off from Bangladesh, its much poorer neighbour. Fence sections totalling about 1,550 miles have been built since 2004, many traversing the fringes of the Sundarbans.

Today the frontier between the countries is defined by two rows of 10ft barbed-wire barriers. In New Delhi the belief is that the fence is being built to 'keep in' an anticipated flood of refugees from Bangladesh, a crowded country more prone to devastating floods than anywhere else on the planet.

'You've got an increasing population with a violently shrinking landmass,' said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management, who worries that the Indian government is not building the fence fast enough.

At night Ghoramara's landscape dramatically comes alive as water pours its way onto the beaches and through the mud dykes protecting the villages. At high tide, the water flows inland as the sea builds up, submerging most of the mangroves. Everywhere you look narrow channels of brackish water burrow into the land, snaking their way through the dense brush. Each evening tens of thousands go to sleep in fear of the sea.

'We have no safety net when the sea comes. So many times the embankment we have built collapses under the weight of the rising tide,' says Malata Bala Das.

'We can't rest our heads at night, we all listen for the water. Many of our young people have already left for Kolkata or the Andaman Islands to find work. It is a struggle here, but we are too old, we know no other life. Soon there will be only old people and grandchildren left, until our island is gone.'

In Rudranadar colony, a refugee camp for the latest exiles from Ghoramara, families huddle around oil lamps in tiny huts. Angurbala recalls the night she lost her home late last year: 'Everything changed when the water burst through our home. My grandson drowned, the water took everything. We left for a government camp, but here is no better. We were promised our own freshwater well, but the land here on Sagar is also bad. Now all the water is salty and you can't use it.

'We worry that the same thing could happen to us here. It feels like we have no escape from the sea.'

Source:  Observer News Service
==============================

15 April 2008
 
Capital push to green cover
 - Resource centre to grow tougher species
 
by
PRIYA ABRAHAM

Bhubaneswar: The urana, the pani ambo, the sinduka and the sundari -these rare species of trees growing at Orissa's Bhitarkanika and Mahanadi delta would soon be grown outside their habitat.

The Regional Plant Resource Centre in Bhubaneswar has started a project to promote ex situ conservation and propagation of rare, endangered and threatened mangrove trees of the Orissa coast. Loss of habitat, soil water salinity, human interference, and limited natural regeneration has been a major threat to these species.

Despite the presence of protected areas in national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and biosphere reserves that play an important role in conservation, endangered plants still require ex situ conservation.

"It's with an aim to explore and provide alternate protection to such vulnerable species, that the resource centre initiated this project. The research objective was also to share results relating to vegetative multiplication of selected rare, endangered and threatened species and highlight the significance of its conservation," said principal investigator U.C. Basak.

The project emphasises on indigenous mangrove species of Orissa that has a medicinal utility.

Of late, wetlands, islands and coastal ecosystems have been infested with weeds. Climate change, associated with increasing temperature, changing hydrologic regimes, rising sea-level and increasing magnitude and frequency of tropical storms and natural calamities such as tsunamis remain growing threats to mangrove ecosystem.

K. Kathirsesan of the Centre of Advanced Study in Marine Biology in Annamalai University said: "Mangroves are likely to be one of the first ecosystems to be affected especially in low-lying areas, because of their location at the interface between land and sea. As the sea rises, mangroves would tend to shift landward."

Human encroachment on land would be the prime factor for depletion of rich bio-diversity of the mangroves. There are a few genetically superior plant species, which can overcome any climatic change. "Those species have to be identified and propagated," Kathirsesan added.

Source:  The Telegraph (Calcutta)


==============================
20 April 2008

Stunted mangroves too short to protect city

KOLKATA, April 20: A recent study conducted on the stunted growth of mangrove vegetation in the Sundarbans spells doom for Kolkata and parts of south Bengal in the event of a major storm like hurricane Sidr.

The study comprising compilation of data regarding salinity, tidal amplitude, turbidity coupled with quantum of dissolved oxygen in the local river water points a warning finger towards the city and the unsuspecting inhabitants living in and around it.

The increasing siltation of the Hooghly river mouth is cutting down the amount of fresh water inflow in the rivers crisscrossing Sundarbans. This increases the proportion of salinity in the river water, the study conducted by Nature Environment and Wildlife Society (NEWS) said.

The rise in the salinity is adversely affecting the mangroves which act as buffers in case of storms. In fact, the presence of the mangroves had a considerable role in cutting down the wind speed of hurricane Sidr from 240 km per hour to 100 km per hour, decreasing the loss of life and property in Bangladesh.

But the rise in salinity on the Indian Sundarbans is already making its presence felt. Mangroves of the Sundari variety from which the area derives its name are becoming extinct, the NEWS study funded by the British Deputy High Commission, Kolkata said.

The more salt-tolerant mangroves like baine, garjan, kankra, hental are facing a different problem from the emerging situation. Stunted growth stares them in the face.

As a fallout of the increased salinity, they are no longer growing to the heights they once commanded. Once a strong storm lashes out, it is feared it would pass unchecked over the short trees, no longer acting as high green ramparts resisting the passage of the invading hurricane.

Some tall but not so strongly rooted mangrove clumps may stand in the way of the oncoming storm. But their once solid phallanx would be as good as "broken reeds" leading to devastating losses in terms of men and materials, the study said. But mangroves of Bangladesh Sundarbans stand thick and tall as the presence of greater fresh water inflow owing to lesser siltation does not affect its mangrove population. Unless the water quality changes in the Indian Sundarbans, a major ecological disaster awaits Kolkatans.

Source: Statesman News Service

==============================
24 April 2008
EU emerges as largest importer of Indian marine products
LONDON: The European Union has emerged as the largest importer of Indian marine products with frozen shrimp continuing to be its largest export item in the sector, a senior official of the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) said.

India exported over USD 600 million worth of marine products to EU last year. The UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy were among the major EU countries for Indian seafood exports, G Mohan Kumar, chairman of the authority, told newspersons in Brussels on Wednesday.

India exported marine products valued at USD 1.85 billion during the year 2006-07, accounting 34 per cent of the exports by value.

MPEDA, he said, had set the objective of achieving an export turnover of USD 4 billion by the year 2012 and USD 6 billion by 2017,

The frozen shrimp continued to be India's largest export item in the sector, accounting to nearly 54 per cent of the total value of exports.

"We are very proud of black tiger shrimp to be India's unique shrimp," he told a luncheon gathering of representatives of seafood companies from Europe and elsewhere organised by MPEDA.

Ten Indian companies are among the 1,600 participating from approximately 80 countries in the 16th Annual European Seafood Exposition (ESE) from April 22 to April 24.

Source:  The Times of India

==============================

26 April 2008

Vannamei shrimp may enter farms soon

By K.P.M. Basheer
 
To counter threat to Indian export
Union Ministry of Agriculture may issue notification soon
Trial farming in Andhra Pradesh reported positive results

KOCHI: Farming of the South American vannamei shrimp, which is cheaper to breed and which is claimed to be resistant to many common fish diseases, is likely to be allowed in India shortly.

This is to counter the Chinese threat to Indian export of black tiger and other shrimp varieties which are more expensive than Chinese shrimps on the international market. China, the leading producer of vannamei shrimp, has in the recent years dumped the vannamei in the United States and Japan, the two largest shrimp consumers in the world. The Chinese vannamei is sold almost at two-thirds of the price of Indian shrimps. This has dulled the price of Indian exports and shrunken the market.

Anvar Hashim, president of the Seafood Exporters Association of India, told The Hindu that the association had received information that the Union Ministry of Agriculture had completed all the formalities for allowing vannamei breeding and that a notification would be issued soon. However, G. Mohan Kumar, chairman of the Marine Products Exports Development Agency (MPEDA), said he was not aware of a final decision yet, though the formalities were at an advanced stage.

Government cautious

Seafood exporters had asked the government to allow Indian fish farmers to grow the vannamei so that the exporters could successfully compete with Chinese, Mexican and Thai shrimps as the vannamei could be grown cheap and hence sold cheap too. However, the government has been extremely cautious because of the fear that the new variety might bring in new viruses and diseases too. In mid-1990s, the white-spot virus attack had devastated the shrimp sector.

The Ministry of Agriculture, which administers fisheries, asked the Exotic Species Committee to study the implications of letting in the vannamei. A two-year trial farming was carried out in two farms in Andhra Pradesh and it reported positive results. It is based on these results as well as other scientific inputs that the Ministry has now decided in principle to allow wider farming. Aquaculture is practised on a large, commercial scale in the East Coast.

Fishworkers' Union leader Charles George said fishermen and fish farmers were not against introducing the vannamei into the farms as long as it was not against the Indian ecology and economy. "We welcome innovations and experiments, but they should add to strengthening the fisheries sector." New marketing strategies should be adopted to survive in the international seafood market, he suggested.

Source: The Hindu
 
==============================
29 April 2008

Indian Villagers Protest Deep-Sea Port

BHUBANESWAR, India - Authorities in eastern India arrested at least 100 villagers and deployed a huge police force to quell a protest against a proposed deep-sea port, officials said on Monday.

Villagers in Orissa state, fearing they will lose their land without adequate compensation, forced officials to suspend construction work late on Sunday in Dhamra, where India is planning to build one of its biggest ports.

The proposed port on the eastern coast will handle 83 million tonnes of cargo per year, said Santosh Mohapatra, chief executive of Dhamra Port Company Ltd.

The project is a joint venture between Tata Steel Ltd and leading engineering and construction firm Larsen & Tubro Ltd.

"The project has local support and only a small number of people are making unreasonable demands," Mohapatra told Reuters.

On Monday, villagers complained they were losing land to the Dhamra port project without adequate compensation. Some said they will not hand over land for the port at all.

"The administration cannot take away land forcibly and we will fight for the right of the people," Upendra Roul, a lawyer representing the villagers said.

Armed policemen surrounded the site, but protestors were still shouting anti-government slogans, witnesses and officials said.

THREAT TO TURTLES ?

The Dhamra port project has been mired in controversy with international conservation group Greenpeace saying the project would kill thousands of rare Olive Ridley turtles.

The port site in Dhamra is not a turtle nesting ground, but Greenpeace says it is part of a breeding and feeding ground and very near to one of the world's largest nesting areas in Gahirmatha.

"The area is also ecologically significant besides the turtles, and the proposed port should be shifted," Sanjiv Gopal, a Greenpeace ocean campaigner told Reuters from Bangalore.

Officials on Monday said there were no major obstacles and work would resume soon.

Regular protests by villagers have delayed a slew of projects in the mineral-rich state.

A $12 billion steel plant by South Korean firm POSCO and an alumina refinery by Britain's Vedanta Resources Plc are among the main ones yet to take off.

(Editing by Bappa Majumdar and Bill Tarrant)
Story by Jatindra Dash

Source:  Reuters

==============================
Sri Lanka

21 April 2008

Mangrove project to withstand tsunami

By Wasantha Ramanayake

A regional forum under the Mangroves For the Future (MFF) project implemented in six countries in the tsunami aftermath will begin at Hotel Heritance, Ahungalle today.

According to the country office of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the five-day forum will present and discuss outcomes of the preliminary programmes carried out in India, Indonesia, Maldives, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

It will develop a framework for the actions. The IUCN sponsored forum will be attended by representatives from the six countries and resource persons.

Being implemented after the Asian Tsunami in 2004, MFF aims at developing the coastal environment and promoting investment in coastal ecosystem management.

Mangroves would act as a natural barrier against Tsunamis thus would reduce the vulnerability of coastal communities. "The partnership would not only conserve and restore the coastal ecosystem but also would help sustain the lives of coastal communities," an official said.

The Environment and Natural Resources Ministry is also involved in the MFF, she said.

Source: Daily News (Sri Lanka)
 

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E. ASIA

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China

A Torch Bearer for The Shrimp Market
11 April 2008

...the Olympics in China may help prop up the shrimp market.  A strong Chinese domestic demand for vannamei is expected to cushion any blow Chinese shrimp exporters might feel from Japan's current aversion to Chinese seafood products.  As a result, there is little incentive for Chinese exporters to try and drop their prices -- they will have their hands full with the domestic market.
Source:  Seafood News
http://www.seafoodnews.com/  

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LATIN AMERICA

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Colombia

14 April 2008
 
Colombian clam diggers' livelihoods under siege
 
Environmental pollution and encroaching narcos have taken their toll on Narino state's Afro-Colombians. The community's unique, altruistic culture is in peril.
 
By Chris Kraul
chris.kraul@latimes.com

TUMACO, COLOMBIA - After a lifetime spent digging for black clams in the swamps that line the coast here, Clojilda Velasco remembers when she could count on finding 400 a day. Now she's lucky if she gets 100. But she still shares when one of the other women comes up salado, or unlucky.

Oil spills, industrial pollution, drug traffickers and over-harvesting are quickly reducing the clam population in the mangroves of Tumaco and snuffing out the livelihoods of Velasco and other extremely poor families who depend on the mollusks for their subsistence.

But even more at risk is an Afro-Colombian culture unique to Narino state that economists and ethnologists describe as one of South America's most unusual in its spirit of altruism, cooperation and equality.

"Here, we take care of each other," Velasco, 58, said as she stepped from a canoe and trudged into the mangrove, which resembled an enormous muddy sandbar topped with mangle, as mangrove shrubs and trees are called. She was accompanied by two of her granddaughters as she ranged, calf-deep in mud, at low tide through the dense foliage.

She stopped to reach a foot down into the ooze to grab a mollusk the size of a walnut that had attached itself to a hidden mangrove root. As always during her 40 years in the swamps, she kept an eye out for snakes, scorpions, centipedes and a nasty mud-dwelling fish called the pejesapo whose bite causes the flesh to rot.

"Too small. Let's leave it, and let it make a family," Velasco said of the clam, known as a piangua.

For Velasco, her fellow clam diggers are family. She may be tall and forbidding in her manner, but it is she who takes charge when a comrade gets sick or is short of cash or needs a loan of sugar, rice or beans.

When Orofilda Prado fell in the mud and hit her head on a mangrove root a few weeks ago, Velasco quickly raised money to hire a taxi to take her to the hospital, then arranged shifts of women to feed and take care of her five children.

Juan Camilo Cardenas, a behavioral economist from the capital, Bogota, who studies Afro-Colombian communities, said Velasco's values are typical of the piangueras, as the clam diggers are known.

Experiments he conducted among the women revealed an unusually high degree of cooperation, Cardenas said, "where you include in your behavior the interests of others."

"The values of hyper-fairness, altruism and aversion to inequality are as strong as any community I know of in Latin America," said Cardenas.

Asked what shaped those values, Cardenas cited "abandonment by the government, the absence of private agriculture and shocking poverty. . . . You have people saying, 'OK, we're on our own and we need to share.' "

The poorest of Colombia's poor, Afro-Colombians began gravitating here in the 1850s, when slavery was abolished. They naturally settled on the inhospitable Pacific coast, where their lack of private property didn't matter and where they could freely extract timber, fish, shrimp, gold and clams.

A few years ago, piangueras could count on earning $10 a day, enough for Velasco to keep her six children fed and in school. Returning by canoe to their stilt shacks built over Tumaco Bay, she and her friends would celebrate by singing folk songs called arrullos.

Now the singing is infrequent and Velasco's catch is meager, even with the help of her 15-year-old granddaughter, Alicia, who can't go to school because there is no money to pay the $3 weekly tuition charged by public schools.

"If we don't come up with a strategic plan soon, we could see the clams diminish until they disappear," said Carmen Julia Palacio, president of the Clam-Diggers Assn. of Narino, a union she formed with other piangueras in the 1990s.

Mangroves, which hug half of Colombia's Pacific coast, are under siege around the world from creeping development and pollution. But over the last decade, Tumaco's estuaries, among the largest in South America, have been swamped by a combination of environmental, political and economic crises.

A massive 1998 oil spill from a Petroecuador tanker that caused much of the mangroves to wither was the first of a succession of disasters associated with a trans-Andean oil pipeline that brings crude to an offshore depot here from Colombia's Putumayo region.

Industrial pollution and the lack of sewage treatment in Tumaco have turned many parts of the swampy areas into cesspools, despite the tides' twice-daily flushing.

South of Tumaco, narco-traffickers have taken over a huge mangrove zone called Papajal for clandestine bases to transport drug shipments by "fast boat" to North America, officials say. The narcos have declared the area off-limits to piangueras, depriving them of a quarter of their hunting grounds.

Coca fumigation this decade in the jungle lowlands forced the cocaine industry into Narino state, with narcos pushing huge numbers of peasants off their land. As a result, Tumaco's population of 150,000 has risen by half since 2002, said Cielo Araujo, a municipal social worker.

"People arrive here with nothing to do, with no economic alternative," union leader Palacio said. "So now they're out there with us."

Once the exclusive vocation of women, clam digging now attracts local men who have lost their fishing jobs because of declining stocks of shrimp and sea bass.

But the clam diggers of Tumaco aren't standing meekly by as their way of life slips away like the tide.

Long invisible, the piangueras have made strides to improve their lot. With the help of the World Wildlife Fund office in Cali, they initiated a legal process with the Colombian government that in 2003 resulted in formal recognition as a union that got them health benefits and political representation.

But Carmen Candelo, a WWF community development director, said the piangueras need help in "adding value" to their catch if their industry is to survive.

Carlos Borda, a marine biologist with ICA, the Colombian equivalent of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the government was holding meetings in Tumaco to discuss possible development programs, including investments in a processing plant, and a study of the clams' life cycle to optimize conservation.

Citing the Colombian Constitution, which "recognizes and guarantees cultural and racial diversity," Borda says the government owes the clam diggers of Narino their livelihoods despite their relatively small numbers.

Palacio says it may be too late: "What we need is job training, because this resource is disappearing."

The end of the piangueras would be a loss for Colombia, economist Cardenas said.

"Their way of life has a lot to show the rest of Colombia with its violence and broken social contract," Cardenas said. "They could be the source of lessons Colombians have been ignoring for 200 years."

Back in the swamp, Velasco joked about how life's crooked path brought her to the mangroves, how she grew up on a farm an hour's walk east of Tumaco but left for the city to "look for a man." Her husband, a fisherman, introduced her to clam digging as a compatible activity.

"Here is where he brought me, to dig among the pejesapo," Velasco said, smiling as she remembered her husband, who has died.

"We're bent over all day, but I prefer it to housekeeping or working on a farm. We work at our own pace. . . . We know more people. This work is very social."
 
Source:  Los Angeles Times
 

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OCEANIA

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Australia

21 April 2008

Farmer blames prawn farm ponds for crop woes

A Wide Bay farmer says leaking salt water ponds from a commercial prawn farm have tainted his water supply and damaged his crops.

The Environmental Protection Agency says an investigation found evidence of salt water leakage and localised impacts.

A spokesman says the aquaculture company has been ordered to operate in a reduced capacity until it meets certain obligations.

But Elliott Heads' mango and citrus farmer Patrick O'Brien says the leaking has occurred over a 12 year period and he wants the prawn farm closed before more damage is done.

"I couldn't understand what was happening until I discovered that my bore was poisoned. Along our common boundary all my pasture withered away for a matter of about 15 to 20 metres adjacent to our common boundary, which is about 300 metres long," he said.

Source:  ABC.net

 

Since that time, Gray said that they had instituted a policy not to accept any wood from unknown sources.

At the same time, he said he expected that discussions could be had with estate security to determine a strategy to help the police nab the mangrove destroyers.

The acting superintendent said, meanwhile, that they would stay on top of patrols in the area.

"We will definitely try to visit there more than once a week. We understand that we need to go down there to put a dent in their operations," he said.

Source: Jamaica Observer

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NORTH AMERICA

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USA

11 April 2008

Gourmet shrimp dishes head to the food court

BY ELAINE WALKER

Shrimp carbonara, coconut shrimp, shrimp cocktail and Cajun jambalaya shrimp hardly sound like the fare typically found in a mall food court.
But Shrimp Market is trying to show consumers that shrimp can be affordable enough to enjoy on a regular basis. It may be the first quick-service restaurant specializing in shrimp.
The Aventura company opened its first store a year ago in Aventura Mall and is ready to roll out the concept with 14 more stores over the next year in South Florida and the Northeast. The first is today's opening at Pembroke Lakes Mall in Pembroke Pines. Locations are also planned for Dadeland Mall in Miami and Sawgrass Mills in Sunrise.

''Shrimp was always a treat. You could only eat it on special occasions,'' said Vanessa Abramowitz, president of Shrimp Market. ``We want shrimp to be accessible to everyone.''
The menu at Shrimp Market is designed with enough variety to encourage repeat visits, offering shrimp prepared in every way from fried and grilled to Italian and Asian dishes. There's also shrimp sold by the pound to take home.
Most of the menu items cost around $7 per entree. The most expensive: an 18-ounce container of chilled cocktail shrimp for $14.99 that can easily serve three or more people.
''You have to go to a specialty restaurant to get something like this,'' said Babita Roop of San Francisco, who was sharing cocktail shrimp and grilled garlic-shrimp skewers for lunch one day this week at Aventura Mall with her friend Monique Davis. ``It's amazing. I wish we had one of these at home.''
Shrimp Market controls costs because the restaurant chain is the subsidiary of Cartagena Shrimp Co. of Colombia. The vertically-integrated company raises shrimp from larvae, processes them and sells the frozen shrimp wholesale to restaurants, supermarkets and distributors.
ANNUAL REVENUES
Abramowitz's father Salomon Finvarb founded the shrimp company in 1983. Today, it produces 10,000 tons of shrimp a year, which generates annual revenues of about $100 million. The company opened a U.S. wholesale subsidiary Caribco in 2002, and sales have grown to $12 million last year.
The restaurant chain is an idea that Finvarb has contemplated for years.
''Because we control the whole supply chain, there's no fat in our chain and no middle man,'' said Finvarb, president of Cartagena Shrimp Co.. ``We can get the product to the public at very reasonable prices.''
Shrimp Market takes advantage of the parent company's expertise by having all its products processed at the Colombia plant. Fried shrimp are butterflied and breaded. Shrimp for the rice and pasta dishes are blanched, peeled, deveined and portioned into plastic bags. The frozen shrimp are then shipped to Miami, along with the shipments for Caribco.
''I get it exactly how I need it,'' Abramowitz said. ``This way, I can keep more control because I know I'm going to get the same quality at every restaurant.''
Aventura Mall took a chance on Shrimp Market because of a desire to bring more diversity and upscale tenants to its food court. ''Typically we shy away from untried things, but this was so unique,'' said Ted Siegal, senior leasing director for Turnberry Associates.
Aventura Mall has been pleased with Shrimp Market's performance, which rang up $650,000 in sales last year. The company's goal is to get average restaurant volume up to $800,000.

The expansion plans include some of the top shopping malls. ''The developers love it because there hasn't been anything new under the sun in food courts,'' said Arthur Weiner, whose Coral Gables firm AWE Talisman has handled the leasing.
CONCEPT MAKES SENSE
Industry experts say the concept makes sense in a food court because if one person in a party doesn't like shrimp they have other choices.
''They have a nice niche if they can execute,'' said Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of WD Partners, a restaurant consulting firm. ``When you specialize in this kind of aspirational, high-end protein there is little margin for error. While that's not so hard to do when there's three stores, it is much harder with 30 and even more difficult with 130 stores.''
As Shrimp Market continues to grow, the company is focusing on adjusting the menu mix with items that can be prepared quickly and at affordable prices. Shrimp spring rolls were taken off the menu because each took 10 minutes to prepare.
Shrimp green curry is gone because it had the highest food costs of any item on the menu and wasn't a top seller.
At the new Pembroke location, Shrimp Market is testing a slightly scaled-down menu with about a half dozen fewer choices. The new restaurants also have a more open kitchen so customers can watch their food being prepared.
''There's a perception that if you have shrimp in a food court it's not going to be very good,'' said Danny Bendas, managing partner of Synergy, a restaurant-consulting firm working for Shrimp Market. ``We're doing a lot of marketing to let people know that we do cook to order and everything is fresh.''

Source:  Miami Herald

==================================
15 April 2008
One less burger, one safer planet
By Derrick Z. Jackson jackson@globe.com
EARTH DAY is a week from today, so brace yourself for cuddly, hug-the-planet blubbering from the presidential candidates. John McCain will tell you we must be the "caretakers of creation" even though he received a zero rating in 2007 from the League of Conservation Voters. Hillary Clinton will tout her 10-step personal home plan on global warming, such as recycling and using efficient light bulbs. Barack Obama will surely tell us we "cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake."
Ah, but what about hamburgers? When the candidates tell us to stay out of McDonald's, then we will know their light bulbs are on. The end of timid politics is when they say that with the planet being at stake, you must eat less steak.
With fatal food riots in poor nations, and with China rapidly approaching Western levels of consumption, we in the obese United States must redefine what constitutes, to borrow from McDonald's, a "happy meal." Scientists are concluding that along with more fuel-efficient cars and curbing industrial pollution, the simple act of eating less meat could help slow global warming.
"For the world's higher-income populations, greenhouse-gas emissions from meat eating warrant the same scrutiny as do those from driving and flying," according to the authors of a study last fall in the Lancet.
This might hit you a bit in the "too-much-information" category, but those authors, from Britain, Australia, and Chile, found that with global meat and milk production being on course to double by mid-century, the methane and nitrous oxide being released (that includes flatulence and gases from manure) is significant. Livestock occupy nearly a third of the land on earth. Agricultural greenhouse gases are about 22 percent of all emissions around the world.
The study said that stabilizing agricultural emissions would require a 10 percent cut in global meat consumption. There would likely be other benefits, such as lower rates of heart disease, colorectal cancer, and obesity, and preservation of the habitat for all kinds of species. "Today, as Chinese, other Asian, European, and US farmers begin to run short of land for crop expansion," the study said, "the increasing demand for meat in developing economies is forcibly extending intensive agriculture into the tropical rain forests of South America, especially Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay."

Similarly, the 2008 "State of the World" report from the Worldwatch Institute calls meat and seafood "the global diet's most costly ingredients." A huge problem in wealthy nations is that even when people cut down or give up meat for health reasons, they often substitute increasingly endangered fish near the top of the oceanic food chain such as swordfish, tuna, or shark or create a demand for shrimp and salmon that overwhelms the environments they are being raised in.
The report noted that consumer pressure for "sustainable" varieties of seafood and more humanely grown meat has already resulted in pledges by corporations to provide such products, even by fast-food chains such as Burger King. But that does not get away from the ultimate realization that wealthier people at some point have to move "down the industrial food chain," choosing less of products that are disappearing or particularly damaging in their production.
"Eating less of these foods," the report said, "is a sort of investment in the future, since it will mean saving family farms, improving rangeland, reducing water pollution, and, in the case of wild fish, preserving a catch that is increasingly scarce."
This gastronomic angle to global warming will challenge the intestinal fortitude of the candidates, given the work left to them by a Bush administration that encouraged outrageous consumption and inspired no sacrifices despite Sept. 11, 2001, the subsequent loss of over 4,000 soldiers in two wars, and $100-a-barrel oil. In 1928, the Republican Party promised a chicken in every pot. In a 1984 Democratic presidential debate, Walter Mondale chided Gary Hart's "new ideas" by asking, "Where's the beef?" The next president needs to put meat on the bones of environmental policy, by telling us to eat less of it.

Source:  Boston Globe

==================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
24 April 2008
Landrieu Urges Immediate Embargo of Processed Shrimp from Thailand and Bangladesh
New Report alleges labor abuses and unsanitary conditions in these countries.
WASHINGTON -- United States Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., today sent a letter to President Bush urging him to immediately embargo imports of processed shrimp from Thailand and Bangladesh. Her concern is based on new claims that shrimp industry workers in Southeast Asia suffer gross labor abuses and unsanitary conditions that could jeopardize the health of American consumers.
"Shrimp is a $13 billion global industry with the U.S. importing over $4 billion worth," Sen. Landrieu wrote in the letter. "As such, our country plays a critical role in driving demand. In an attempt to undercut our domestic shrimpers, processing plants in these two countries are alleged to use grossly inadequate food safety, environmental and labor standards. If these reports are true, we are jeopardizing the health and safety of Americans, and harming our own law-abiding domestic producers."
The report was released by the Solidarity Center, and titled "The Degradation of Work: The True Cost of Shrimp." CNN further elaborated on the sexual abuse, child labor, human trafficking and disgracefully low wages that are claimed to be commonplace conditions for shrimp industry workers in Thailand and Bangladesh.
"American consumers have the right to know if they are purchasing products made in such appalling and unsafe conditions," the letter states. "Alone, the food safety issues are enough to embargo imports due to the health and safety concerns posed to all Americans. Those concerns, combined with the disgraceful labor conditions used to supply our market, demand an immediate prohibition against shrimp imports from these countries."
A full copy of the letter is available HERE. 
Source:  Sen. Mary Landrieu
==================================
26 April 2008

La. shrimpers hope report will make customers think

Foreign processors accused of abuses

By Bruce Alpert

WASHINGTO