23 November 2007 - Buenos
Aires, Argentina — The forests of Argentina
are being cleared at a rate of 40 football
fields every hour. To stop the destruction
we took to the trees - and to the streets.
While our activists protested in the forest,
we joined forces with other environmental
groups, got 1.5 million signatures of support
and pushed through Argentina's first federal
forest protection law.
The new law includes a nationwide one-year
moratorium on clearing of native forests
- to avoid a rush of deforestation while
forest management regulations are put in
place. After a year, any jurisdiction still
lacking regulations will continue to be
prohibited from issuing new logging and
land clearing permits.
The Forest Law also establishes environmental
impact studies and public hearings - measures
that will help protect forests where indigenous
people live and small scale farmers. To
pay for implementation, the law allocates
funds from the national budget, plus income
from a new export tax on genetically engineered
soy.
Forest clearing to plant genetically engineered
soy beans destroys 300,000 hectares of native
forest per year.
"Without those 1,500,000 signatures
and the thousands of phone calls which the
senators received, this law would never
have been approved," said Hernan Giardini,
Forest Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace
Argentina. "It is a real victory for
the people and for the entire country."
Now we are only waiting for the approval
of Congress, which we believe will happen
before the end of the year.
+ More
Whalers depart Japan. Humpbacks to be hunted
18 November 2007 - Shimonoseki, Japan —
The Japanese government whaling fleet has
departed its home port of Shimonoseki, for
its biggest hunt since the moratorium on
commercial whaling came into being over
twenty years ago.
The fleet intends to kill more than 1,000
whales while in the Southern Ocean, including
50 endangered fin whales, 50 threatened
humpback whales and 935 minke whales.
The Greenpeace ship Esperanza is standing
by off the coast of Japan. You can read
the crew blog here or check out the live
webcam.
Despite claims that the Japanese are conducting
a "research project," the whale
hunt isn't science. The International Whaling
Commission has said the data the whalers
gather isn't helpful, and virtually everything
the Japanese will learn by harpooning the
whales could be learned by non-lethal means.
The hunt for whales is in fact stealing
money from Japanese taxpayers, and robbing
other countries of much-needed tourist income.
The threatened humpbacks targeted by the
whalers are part of thriving whale watching
industries elsewhere.
"The whaling fleet must be recalled
now. If it is not, we will take direct,
non-violent action to stop the hunt,"
said expedition leader Karli Thomas aboard
the ship.
Humpbacks don't need to die for science.
We're collaborating with Pacific-based scientists
through the Great Whale Trail project, demonstrating
that whale research can be done effectively
and non-lethally. The Great Whale Trail
has been monitoring the location of tagged
humpback whales as they migrate to the Southern
Ocean from the Pacific.
The Great Whale Trail website will also
track the Japanese whaling fleet as it heads
south.
