Fw: CLIMATE PRESS RELEASE: Southeast Asia's Annual Rainforest Fire Emissions = Carbon Reductions from 5 Kyotos

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Press Release

November 10th, 2006

-for immediate release-

 

Southeast Asia's Annual Rainforest Fire Emissions = Carbon

Reductions from 5 Kyotos!

 

Joint Press Release by Ecological Internet, Biofuelwatch, Watch

Indonesia and Save the Rainforest (Germany)

 

You can still support this vital climate/rainforest protest at

http://www.climateark.org/alerts/send.asp?id=indonesia_peatland

 

At Nairobi, governments are debating the future of the Kyoto

Protocol and action to prevent the most serious impacts of

climate change. So far, they appear to have ignored pleas to

address one of the greatest single sources of carbon emissions:

the destruction of South-east Asia's peatlands and forests. The

annual emissions from annual peat and forest fires are about

five times as great as the total annual emission cuts which the

Kyoto Protocol aims to make by 2012, from 1990 levels.

 

Indonesia alone holds 60% of all tropical peat, containing some

50 billion tonnes of carbon. This is equivalent to 7-8 years of

global fossil fuel emissions. Timber and oil palm plantations

are draining the peatlands and also pushing local communities

and small-holders into peat areas and rainforests. Once this

peat is drained, all this carbon will eventually be released

into the atmosphere, unless the peat is subsequently re-flooded

and restored. Annual fires, many of them set deliberately by

plantation owners, speed up the process. This year's fire season

has been one of the worst on record. Wetlands International

warned earlier this week that the boom in biofuels is speeding

up the destruction, and further that one tonne of palm oil grown

on peat is linked to the release of around 20 tonnes of carbon

dioxide released from that peat. Due to its low cost, palm oil

is set to become the prime feedstock for biodiesel.

 

Biofuelwatch member Andrew Boswell says from Nairobi: " Over 6600

people from 75 countries have emailed governments to call for

real action to address the causes of the annual peat and forest

fires. So far, there are no signs that delegates have listened.

UNFCCC exists to prevent dangerous climate change and to

stabilise levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This

will be even harder to achieve unless tropical peatlands are

protected and restored.

 

Ecological Internet, Biofuelwatch, Save the Rainforest (Germany)

and Watch Indonesia are calling on the Conference to agree to

international assistance with fighting the fires which are still

burning on Borneo, and to set up a working group which will draw

up proposals for the protection and restoration of the peatlands

which must report back within a year. They stress that those

proposals must be developed in close co-operation with local

communities and the South-east Asian NGOs representing them and

must take full account of the needs of local people, and also of

the need to protect those forests which are not part of the

peatlands.

 

Contacts:

Andrew Boswell, Biofuelwatch: Nairobi contact 0720833788 (until

17/11 only); from outside Kenya 254-720833788

 

Dr Glen Barry, President of Ecological Internet, USA:

GlenBarry, Tel +1 920 776 1075

Notes:

1. Biofuelwatch is a UK campaign which seeks regulation to

ensure that only sustainably-sourced biofuels can be sold in

Britain in the European Union. See www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/

 

2. Ecological Internet (EI) provides the most successful

Internet based environment portals, search engines and

international Earth advocacy network ever, regularly achieving

environmental conservation victories around the world. EI

specializes in the use of the Internet to achieve environmental

conservation outcomes. Ecological Internet's mission is to

empower the global movement for environmental sustainability by

providing information retrieval tools, portal services and

analysis that aid in the conservation of climate, forest, water

and ocean ecosystems; and to commence the age of ecological

sustainability and restoration. On average 30,000 visits a day

are made to our environmental portals. See

http://www.ecoearth.info/

 

3. Save the Rainforest (Rettet den Regenwald e.V.) campaigns

against the abuse of rainforest by industrialised countries and

organises support for indigenous people in the forests. See

http://www.regenwald.org/

 

4. Watch Indonesia is a German-based working group for

democracy, human rights and environmental protection in

Indonesia and East Timor. See http://home.snafu.de/watchin/

 

4. For a fully referenced background paper about the peat and

forest fires in south-east Asia, and their contribution to

global warming, see

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/peatfiresbackground.pdf

 

5. For the figures provided by Wetlands International, see

http://www.wetlands.org/