European Commission must stop funding aviation biofuel development

Agrofuels could be used in aircraft within the next 1-5 years, creating yet another market which will cause more climate change, deforestation, evictions and hunger. For the aviation industry, this is another way to continue unsustainable and highly damaging growth. Please tell the European Commission to stop funding the industry’s research and development of aviation biofuels. (Start: 30.06.2009)

Mighty Mekong River Must Forever Flow Freely

Urge Southeast Asian governments to cancel plans for up to eleven mainstream dams. Ask that each regional nation commit to keeping lower expanses of the Mekong River flowing freely, without any dams, in order to save their shared critical source of food, income and life for present and future generations. (Start: 28.06.2009)

Action for Life and the Environment in Paraguay

Ask the president to veto the law that threathens life!

The Congress of Paraguay, manipulated by agribusiness, has recently approved a new law that promotes the indiscriminate fumigation of agrochemicals on monoculture plantations. This new law leaves the population without legal ways to defend themselves. President Lugo can veto the law and send it back for revision to the Congress, and take real measures to defend the population and the environment. (Start: 24.06.2009)

Madagascar: Daewoo's Rainforest Land Grab in Nature's Paradise

The island of Madagascar is a veritable Noah's Ark of biodiversity, and this natural wealth is the country's primary treasure and opportunity for future ecologically sustainable development. The Korean company Daewoo Logistics continues to pursue plans to lease half the agricultural land in Madagascar for 99 years, industrially producing maize and palm oil on 1.3 million hectares that are now biodiversity rich rainforests and gardens. There already exists a severe food crisis nationally and local peoples, who are soon to be dispossessed from their land, are protesting, causing a major government crisis. Tell Daewoo the people of Madagascar have spoken -- and to shove off and leave Madagascar's rainforests, peoples and land alone. (Start: 19.06.2009)

Resource Boom in Peru's Amazon Threatens Indigenous Peoples' Livelihoods and Their Rainforest Homes

Support tens of thousands of indigenous people bravely protesting Peru government's give-away of their rainforest homes to oil, mining and logging industry without their approval; insist peaceful protests are not met with violence by President Alan Garcia's government, and that the focus for Amazonian development be upon benefiting from standing trees and intact rainforest ecosystems. (Start: 27.05.2009)

Plane Stupid and AAA crash Virgin Atlantic 25th birthday party

Activists from Plane Stupid and AAA (Action Against Agrofuels) have gate crashed Virgin Atlantic’s 25th birthday party at Heathrow airport, to highlight plans to allow the aviation industry to continue to expand if it uses biofuels instead of conventional aviation fuel.

Read more

Reports on Agrofuels in Africa

Biofuelwatch has important new reports on biofuel in Africa including: “Profit at any Cost: A battle between big business and sustainable lifestyles – Northern Ghana”. Please, see: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/reports.php#africa.

Stop the Sao Francisco River Diversion Project in Brazil

The Brazilian government is planning to divert large quantities of water from the Sao Francisco River in the north-east of the country, against the wishes of large sectors of the population. Please support the affected communities by signing a petition which calls for proper public hearings and judicial hearings regarding those plans. Many thanks.
(Start: 23.05.2009)

ALERT UPDATE! Malaysian Govt. Denies Well Documented Oil Palm Development Plans in Brazilian Amazon

TAKE CONTINUED ACTION NOW! In a startling yet welcome announcement, Malaysian government‘s land agency now denies plans to produce oil palm in the Amazon. While the prospect of a Malaysian government agency funding Amazonian oil palm has been dealt a serious setback, it is likely this project will re-emerge. Let‘s get formal commitment from the Malaysian government that this project is canceled, and to stop all Malaysian government and private industry funding of oil palm expansion overseas. Maybe, just maybe, we are winning this one!

Indonesian Orangutan Habitat Wiped Out for Airport and Brothels

Agence France-Presse reports that part of a national park on Borneo island, home to hundreds of endangered orangutans, has been turned into a development zone complete with an airport and brothel. Some 600 orangutan have disappeared from Kutai National Park, East Kalimantan province, over the past seven years due to unchecked construction. It really makes you wonder — just how callous can humanity be towards sister species, and if this is going on with government complicity, just how willing is Indonesia‘s government to limit deforestation? Or is REDD carbon finance proposal just about the carbon money?

Peru army moves into Amazon after tribes blockade rivers and roads

The Guardian reports that Peru‘s army is poised to deploy in the Amazon rainforest to lift blockades across rivers and roads by indigenous people opposed to oil, gas, logging and mining projects. The Peruvian rainforest is the largest swath of Amazon outside Brazil. Ecology and culture are at stake as government plans to exploit 70% of the rainforest for oil, gas and timber.

Rainforest Rescue Now on Facebook!

Important new Rainforest Rescue facebook site from renowned German NGO Rettet den Regenwald emphasizing action for global forests at http://bit.ly/rainforest_rescue Become a fan!

India: Physic experiment against elephants

The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in India is home of the largest population of Asian elephants and many other endangered animals like tigers and leopards. Construction plans of the Indian authorities threaten the survival of the animals. In February, Rainforest Rescue had an action to preserve an important migration corridor of the elephants. After receiving thousands of e-mails from all over the world, it is now looking very likely that the planned buildings will be totally relocated outside the forest belt. But now an authority in an adjoining state, Tamil Nadu, plans to build a neutrino research centre within an elephant corridor in the Nilgiri Reserve. (Start: 07.05.2009)

Malaysian Oil Palm Threatens Brazilian Amazon

Malaysia's government owned and subsidized oil palm and agrofuel industry -- the scourge of Asia and the world's rainforests -- is continuing to expand, this time into the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. Malaysia‘s Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) will soon break ground on a joint venture with a Brazilian firm to establish 30,000-100,000 hectares (ha; 75,000 – 250,000 acres) of oil palm plantations in the heart of Brazil's Amazon rainforest. (Start: 06.05.2009)

Oil Palm in Your Food: Rainforest's and Climate's Greatest Scourge

Palm oil is very likely to be found in your margarine, bread, biscuits and candy bars — frequently listed as “vegetable oil” in the ingredients. Thirty square miles of carbon and biodiversity rich habitat are being cleared a day to provide you these products, largely in Malaysia and Indonesia, but increasingly threatening primary forests wherever they are found, including in the Amazon.

VICTORY! California Leads in Saying No to Deforestation Biofuels

California is setting the precedent of regulating greenhouse gas emissions from transport fuels. Critically, as our recent alert demanded, biofuel‘s indirect land use impacts, starting with corn ethanol, are to be considered when determining a fuel‘s net impact upon emissions.

Forest and Crop Biomass Can Never Ecologically Sustainably Power Industrial Society

No Biomass/No Burning! Truly renewable energy must be defined as including no energy production or climate mitigation claims from food based agrofuels, live plants and ecosystems, or burning biomass of any type. (Start: 28.04.2009)

Declaration: ‘Biochar’, a new big threat to people, land, and ecosystems

Keep ‘biochar’ and soils out of carbon trading

Caution urged against proposals for large scale use of charcoal in soils for climate change mitigation and soil reclamation

Read the declaration, supported by more than 120 organisations from around the world.

Major Victory for Ivory Coast's Rainforests as Oil Palm Successfully Resisted

Finally the oil palm scourge threatening primary rainforests and life giving ecosystems worldwide faces a setback as local protests are again successfully supported internationally by Ecological Internet, Rainforest Rescue and others.

U.S. Industrial Agriculture and Biofuel/Biomass Campaign

Securing world food security while maintaining operable global ecosystems may be one of the biggest challenges humanity faces this century. Biomass for agrofuel and biochar from increased industrial plantations is suddenly being proposed as the universal answer to our climate and energy problems. But the world‘s land and forests are already past their carrying capacity, and terrestrial ecosystems, upon which all life depends, are crashing. Biomass based climate and energy plans dependent upon further intensification of industrial agriculture are premature, almost certainly will be ecologically devastating, and no one knows if they will work. It is more likely they will continue the processes that are leading to global ecosystem collapse.

Activists storm Bath energy firm's HQ

AA occupied Blue NG offices on Friday 17th, Via Campesina Day, in solidarity with millions of peasant land-workers demonstrating globally against agrofuels. Blue NG are committing a crime against humanity and the planet by using misinformation* to win support for the new market of agrofuel power stations, when virtually all agrofuels have been shown to cause ecosystem destruction, accelerated climate change & food poverty.

Land robbery and murder for agrofuel in Brazil?

In the northeast Brazilian state Bahia investors have been trying since early last year to seize land by any means to grow agrofuel plants. In the village Casa Nova 336 families and their 13,000 goats and sheep are in danger of losing their livelihood and land. Now the war over cultivatable land has escalated. On 4 February the figurehead of the resistance, 56-year-old subsistence farmer José Campos Braga was shot dead. (Start: 21.02.2009)

Serious threat to the largest surviving Elephant Population in India

Asia’s largest remaining population of wild elephants is found in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. These elephants face a variety of serious threats. The most serious threat (and also the easiest to remedy) is the proposed relocation of four government departmental check-posts on the inter-state highway. If implemented, the proposal would prevent the annual migration of the wild elephants between Tamil Nadu and Kerala which is necessary for their very survival.
(Start: 26.02.2009)

Indonesian community leader detained by palm oil mafia

Since 28th January, the environmentalist and local mayor Muhammad Rusdi from the village of Karang Mendapo in Jambi Province, Sumatra has bee detained by the Police. The notorious company Sinar Mas, one of the largest palm oil companies in South-east Asia, is believed to be behind the arrest. Years ago, Sinar Mas illegally appropriated and logged land belonging to rubber farmers and turned it into an oil palm plantation. In August 2008, Rusdi, together with other local farmers, ‘occupied’ and reclaimed their own land. Since that time they have been threatened and persecuted. There are serious concerns about Rusdi’s safety and wellbeing. (Start: 07.02.2009)

Community Leaders in Canada to Sue the Toronto Stock Exchange and a Canadian Mining Company

Marcia Ramirez and Carlos Zorrilla, community activists against mining from the Intag area of Ecuador, will be visiting Canada from the 25th of February until the 7th of March as part of a tour to announce lawsuits against a Canadian mining company and the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Charcoal disguised as “biochar” sold as another profitable climate tech-fix

In the last issue of WRM Bulletin (Nr. 138), there is an article that warns about concerted lobbying for carbon finance and government support to fund ‘biochar’, i.e. charcoal used as a soil amendment as another profitable climate fix as well as a false solution to the climate crisis.

Read it here.

A land grab in Colombia

Socialist Worker (US)

David Goodner and Megan Felt report on the struggle of indigenous people in Colombia to stop Muriel Mining from exploiting their ancestral land.

EU decision on biofuel targets

Renewable Energy Directive agreed, EU endorses high mandatory biofuel target

Climate, communities, rainforests and other ecosystems to be sacrificed

In December 2008, the European Union reached an agreement on the Renewable Energy Directive. Detailed analysis of what was decided regarding biofuels and solid biomass…

"Next Generation Biofuels": Bursting The New "Green" Bubble

Letter challenges unrealistic promises from an unsustainable industry

United States—A diverse alliance of organizations published an open letter [1] today in the U.S. and internationally warning of the dangers of industrially produced biofuels (called agrofuels by critics). The letter explains why large-scale industrial production of transport fuels and other energy from plants such as corn, sugar cane, oilseeds, trees, grasses, or so-called agricultural and woodland waste threatens forests, biodiversity, food sovereignty, community-based land rights and will worsen climate change.

Indonesian ecolabeling initiative providing cover for rainforest destruction

The Indonesian Ecolabel Institute is facilitating rainforest destruction by issuing “sustainable forest management certificates” to companies that convert natural and peatlands into industrial timber estates, allege national environmental groups.