Save Eco Destinations

Fishing in the Kawabe River

The Construction Ministry in Tokyo wants to build a dam on the Kawabe River in southern Japan, and everyone seems to be against it. At least for now, the dissenters are winning.

Environmentalists, farmers, and fishermen and women are objecting to the project on various grounds. Environmentalists are worried that a dam will damage the scenic gorges. Farmers assert they do not need irrigation water from the reservoir. Commercial fishermen and women are worried fish would swim elsewhere if the river torrents become blocked by the dam. Not to mention that half a dozen small villages had already been relocated for the future building of the damn dam. And what for? Purportedly, for irrigation (which farmers tell us they don’t need) and flood control (which dams have a bad reputation for preventing in Hitoyoshi).

And so these people got together and set up a petition opposing the $3.6 million project. They got 34,000 signatures, half of the residents in the city of Hitoyoshi.

Last September, this group gained the support of the governor of the Kumamoto prefecture, Ikuo Kabashima. Kabashima then requested that Tokyo suspend the dam’s construction (which, again, hadn’t yet begun). Tokyo consented. Thank goodness.

This is a big deal because usually local governors are essentially ignored by Japan’s central government, which gets to decide what happens all over the country despite what the locals might want. Kabashima stood up to the central government both because he empathizes with the plight of the locals, and because he thinks the central government exercises too much power in these situations.

This phenomenon spawned others (yay!). Other regional governments throughout Japan spoke up against plans to build dams in their prefectures. In November, four prefectural governments in the western Kensai region asked to have the dam project cancelled. Last month, the governor of the Niigata prefecture said he would not help finance a new bullet train line and the governor of Osaka refused to pay for a new bridge to an airport.

Now, some of these oppositions are due to the global economic crisis-budgets are limited. Regardless, this gradual deconstruction of the central government tyranny is something to be both noted and celebrated.

And there’s more: the Liberal Democratic Party is drawing up a bill to turn Japan’s 47 prefectures into 9-13 entities with enough power to balance out the central government’s. This may not happen anytime soon, though, as Prime Minister Taro Aso, who proposed the bill, is not very popular right now. But many are standing up to Japan’s central government, so something substantial is absolutely taking place, bill or no bill.

Read more.

Goes to show what grassroots power can do.

Seems like Iceland’s got a rival: the Maldives wants to be the first carbon neutral country (and they plan to do it by 2020, not 2050!).

Scared witless by the impending doom of global warming’s climate change, the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, has announced that within a decade, his nation will be carbon neutral.  (While certain nations under threat of intense flooding are taking bold steps to become environmentally responsible, what they do means nothing if the rest of us don’t join in. By making the changes necessary to become eco-friendly, they are symbolically–and literally!–pleading for the rest of the planet to follow in their steps. And I hope our politicians do!)

Unsurprisingly, Nasheed declared the Maldives’ intention just days after scientists presented the media with apocalyptic caveats. Essentially, the shit’s going to hit the fan, and soon, for the Maldives and other low-lying regions. We already knew that, so why did it take Nasheed so long to take this step? Had he been hiding under a rock? More likely, he was lying on the beach belly up soaking up the sun. In any case, when is everyone else going to get moving? I’m looking at you, Bangladesh! USA! Everyone!

Nasheed will be working with British climate change experts Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas to devise a plan that will revolutionize the Maldives. They plan to eradicate the use of fossil fuels by 2020. If only the Maldives were a larger country! So far it seems only small regions are taking action.

Nasheed promptly followed his announcement by asking other nations to join him in slowing climate change through the adoption of innovative green energy methods.

“The Maldives could just give up. Its people could declare themselves climate change refugees and ask for sanctuary elsewhere. But the new government is taking a stand and asked us to give them a plan for a near zero-carbon economy,” Goodall said.

Excellent point.

Read the full story here.

Al-Shaybah oil field, southeastern Saudi Arabia. (photo by Encyclopedia Britannica)

Saudi Arabia wants to convince you that the reliance on oil will remain throughout the world and for decades to come. The country has issued a warning, no less, against a so-called “premature shift” to renewable energy.

Wha?

Apparently, SA’s Oil Minister spoke at the Energy Pact Conference and asserted that oil, coal, and natural gas ought to remain the energy “workhorses” for a long time-numerous decades! He also said that investing in alternative energy could result in decreased investment in fossil fuels (duh!) and ruin the global economy (huh?).

Sounds like some greedy folk are trying to take advantage of everyone’s fears about the current economic situation to place themselves somewhere most of us agree they (oil magnates) should not be, if only because our priority is becoming ever more green instead of black (which is also kind of green, but only because of the dollar bills).

While SA’s oil minister claims that the world’s need of oil as a primary source of energy will remain for many decades to come, SA’s oil reserves will only last for another 80 years if current production trends persist. The oil reserves in SA are the largest in the world, by the way.

If SA had 200 years’ worth of oil production left, then okay, your greed makes some sense. But 80?? That’s just plain stupid.

If you’re planning a trip to the Middle East, make sure to skip SA and write the country’s government to tell them why!

At this juncture, SA’s words come as an insult to the rest of the world.

Imagine going on vacation somewhere with azure waters. You decide to go snorkeling, check out the local underwater fauna and flora and head toward the local coral reefs. You wonder if your goggles are dirty-the corals look black! (Who knew they could turn a color different from white?) Very unfortunately, the corals are black, so forget rubbing your goggles clean (if only it were that easy!).

On the (somewhat) bright side, this phenomenon is currently limited to Taiwan’s southeast coast. The corals turned black from disease. The culprit is probably untreated sewage. Can you believe this?

Damn, I can.

For a long time, people had suspected this would be a problem-black corals-that more reefs were turning black, and so on. People only suspected because there was no available information to look at on this situation, no research had been done on it, and nobody knew enough about it to speak up or call for action.

Finally, Chen Chao-Iun, a researcher from Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, said that the problem is worst in areas of waters up to 5 m. (16.4 ft.) deep and 300 m. offshore from a couple of Taiwan’s outlying islands.

Chao-Iun seems mostly concerned about the effects this will have on tourism: “If you snorkel, you’ll see it’s black. If it’s all black, there won’t be too many tourists,” he told Reuters.

The Taiwanese researchers have communicated their findings to the government. Next, they will check other offshore areas where coral reefs are found for damage.

Ever hear of Mexico’s Isla Holbox? It’s one of those gems you’ll find scattered across the globe that hasn’t been ruined by capitalist tourism yet. Let me put it this way: your cell phone won’t be getting any reception once you step on the island’s soil.

Note: There doesn’t seem to be much green consciousness, but it is pretty unpolluted and pure. The rest is up to us-not littering, no chemical sunblocks to harm corals, etc.

Developers, of course, want to build a resort and start rivaling Cancún, but fortunately nothing has happened yet-the island remains calm and breezy, free of industrial noise and pollution. The residents at Isla Holbox do want tourism; you’d expect that they need a boost in their income. However, they are showing their integrity: they want tourism on their own terms, which in part means not paving the island’s roads. They know that hardcore tourism would ruin their home.

Consequently, it’s somewhat appropriate that in Mayan, Isla Holbox means “black hole,” given that you could seriously get lost in the 40 km. x 2 km. of lush green tropics. There are no stores, more than 24 km. (15 mi.) of pristine beaches, and plenty of flamingoes, turtles, and pelicans to gaze at in fascination. It’s a haven for relaxation. It makes me want to collapse into a hammock right now, the breeze blowing past my ears, the soft soil massaging my bare feet, palm trees sheltering me from the seething sun at lunchtime. Activities include birdwatching, kite surfing, kayaking, whale watching, and the like.

Despite locals not wanting their home to turn into the next Cancún, we all know it may still happen. Capitalist hotel developers possess seemingly endless amounts of money, after all, and thus power to do as they please. So if you want to check out Isla Holbox, you better go within the next 5 years or so. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

Have you ever visited the lush Indonesian rainforest? If not, you may never get to do it.

The rainforest nestled within Indonesia comprises the third largest rainforest region in the world-it’s a big deal. And we, with the help of global warming, are burning it.

The study on fire in the forests of Sumatra and Borneo, Indonesia, has analyzed the past 50 years of records of visibility at local airports and came up with the aforementioned and very depressing results. Drought years turned the area from fire-resistant to fire-prone, Robert Field, an atmospheric physicist from the University of Toronto told the New Scientist. And during fires, the burning of peat in the swamps beneath the forests can (a) burn for months at a time and (b) releases more smoke and carbon dioxide than anything else.

“Land managers respond to the drought by using fire to clear more land. In dry years, they burn deeper into the forest, which in turn releases more carbon dioxide,” James Randerson, UC Irvine climate scientist, said about another recent study.

“The abrupt transition can be attributed to rapid increases in deforestation and population growth,” Field said.

The worst offender, deforestation, of course, is to make room for farming-hey, another reason to go hardcore vegetarian, if you needed one. Another exacerbating factor has been the nefarious El Niño storms in the Pacific, all the way since 1960.

Randerson says his study’s findings point to the imperative need to include limits on deforestation in future climate agreements, that climate and land use should not, as it usually is, be considered separately from each other when calculating how changes will affect harmful gas emissions and thus global warming.

Say bye bye to the Indonesian rainforest.

As a nature lover, this comes as obviously dismal news. I feel worst for the fauna inhabiting the area. Despite the mosquitoes and my allergy to certain bug bites, e.g. spiders, which make my eyelids swell up and barely let me see, I heartily enjoy spending time amidst trees and shrubs, flowers and fresh soil. I guess I’ll never get to lie on the ground and stare up at the sunny sky through the trees in the rainforest of Indonesia, though.

Map of where the plant will be, in Nayachar island (photo by New Scientist)

If you thought all the news about Xcacel-Xcacelito’s protected mangroves being torn down to make room for the Grupo Posadas’s swank and greedy hotel development are depressing, wait until you read what’s going on in West Bengal.

Exactly one month ago, the state government of West Bengal and an Indian government committee met to approve plans for the building of a petrochemicals plant on the Nayachar island. This plant will-unless somebody kidnaps everyone involved and makes them read Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Jane Goodall, and many other theorists until they turn into Earth-loving vegans-refine crude oil and make petroleum by-products. Within weeks.

Somebody make the remaining endangered royal Bengal tigers some martinis before they wig out, stat!

Indian environmental groups, by the way, need some stiff drinks too. Nayachar island is only 10 km. from the Sunderbans, a UNESCO World Heritage site and biodiversity hotspot (see photo above).

The New Scientist quoted Santanu Chacraverti of the Society for Direct Initiative for Social and Health Action, a Kolkata-based NGO: “Setting up a petrochemical cluster in that region is tantamount to ecocide. … Noxious effluents will flow into the coastal waters and spread into the vast network of rivers and creeks. Sunderban, the nursery of a range of marine, coastal, and estuarine lifeforms, will be subjected to pollution.”

This might prove the sequel to the Narmada River incident in the late ’90s, when India built over 3000 dams across the river and destroyed both its ecosystem and the habitat of hundreds of thousands of humans (as well as, of course, millions of animals).

Honestly, I feel like tossing bricks at these idiots’ heads. I mean, SERIOUSLY? Where are their brains and why aren’t they functioning? These people need to be sterilized and used in scientific experiments to help the rest of the world survive the ecological disasters taking place and those just starting to brew. Really. I really don’t get it. I do not get it. How can these idiots spend their murderous money if they help speed up their planet’s death? Somebody shoot some sense into their heads, please…

Although I was unable to find any petitions to sign or information for letters to write and where to send them, I did find an article arguing that the building of this petrochemicals plant in Nayachar will not cause problems. It’s in the Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) . Too bad they don’t have a place to leave comments… Oh, but you can do so in this blog here.

I am really sorry I haven’t found anything for us to do to help stop this ecocide. If anyone has a lead, please please share it with us.

GVI volunteers carrying out the weekly plankton sampling at L’ilot for Marine Conservation Society Seychelles (MCSS). Photo by Jon Bilbrough

Have you heard of Global Vision International? GVI’s been around since 1998 and works to develop sustainable development through research, conservation, and education. It provides services to charities, NGOs, and governmental agencies around the globe through promotion, donations, and volunteering.

GVI is neither a political nor a religious organization. It sends 2,000 volunteers out per year to aid-reliant projects in over 30 countries.

If you’re not looking to go tan on yet another beach and take more of the same pictures, check out the conservation and humanitarian projects at GVI. You can browse through GVI’s volunteer options, destinations, and more to find something that suits you.

I know that even when I am exhausted and think “I need a vacation!!” more than two days doing nothing will jar me. If I can go somewhere beautiful, enjoy a radical change of scenery, meet new people, and do something that will help others, I feel more rewarded than if I had just spent a week getting sunburned on some beach.

Don’t get me wrong-I love the beach. But after a few hours kayaking and swimming and reading, don’t you get bored? It’d be cool to go somewhere on vacation and know that whenever you got bored or tired of it, you could go on to volunteer somewhere in the area.

GVI even offers responsible holidays of one week or more. For example, the Mexican Marine Expedition in the Caribbean Sea, where they teach you diving to contribute toward coral reef research in the area. (Remember that green sunscreen!) Or you can teach English to Buddhist monks in Laos! There are some awesome options in there, stuff I wouldn’t have thought of.

With GVI, you get training and career development opportunities through the trips and volunteering, so you could even view your time with them as an investment, depending on your future goals.

I think within the next several years, I will go volunteer somewhere for several weeks. Build homes for the homeless, teach English to people in secluded areas, help research for nature conservation. It’s scary–what will happen to your job when you get back, right? True. But when there’s a will, there’s a way.