Notícias da Rede WWF

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04 Sep 2008
Failing grades for carbon emitters down under
Some major Australian power generators are doing next to nothing to prepare for a low-carbon future, according to a new report from WWF-Australia.

The 2008 WWF-Australia Power Generators Carbon Future Score Card assessed 19 of Australia’s power firms on the work they are doing to reduce their carbon emissions and around half were awarded two stars or less out of a possible five.

The worst performers were Alcoa, the world’s largest alumina producer, Intergen, a global power generation company, and Rio Tinto, a multinational mining company. All three received no stars.

“These companies and the other companies who have got just one star really are facing extinction unless they make dramatic cuts in their emissions,” said Paul Toni, Development and Climate Change programme leader for WWF-Australia.

“All of these are very big, wealthy and influential companies with access to a lot of capital. They should be leading the pack, not dragging the chain.”

The survey judged the generators on whether they had invested in alternative power sources and whether they set greenhouse gas reduction targets.

It also took into account whether they were investing in research for renewable energy and “clean coal” demonstration plants.

The report accused the lowest-scoring companies of lobbying for government compensation but failing to invest in technology to cut emissions at their most polluting power plants.

“It's remarkable how these dinosaur companies can complain about their future and ask for handouts but do zero to reduce their emissions,” said Toni.

“Despite knowing for 20 years that carbon emissions would have to be cut, the carbon footprints of the worst performing companies from power generation and mining interests remain enormous and extremely damaging.”

The results of the lowest scoring companies were in stark contrast to industry leaders such as Origin Energy, TRUenergy, Babcock and Brown, Transfield Infrastructure Services and Verve, who all scored four or five stars.

Only Origin Energy, who scored five out of five, and TRUenergy had publicly available quantified emission reduction targets.

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04 Sep 2008
Foreign poachers cost Philippines another 100 turtles
Foreign poaching of Philippine marine life has flared up as an issue again following the discovery of more than 100 dead Hawksbill turtles aboard a Vietnamese fishing vessel apprehended near Malampaya.

The fishing boat’s 13-man crew flooded their vessel as a Filipino gunboat approached them near the country’s main gas field, around 80km off the coast of Palawan Island in the South China Sea. A total of 101 Hawksbill turtles were found drowned in the vessel’s cargo hold.

Resting sea turtles, which grow up to a metre in length and can weigh as much as 80kg, can remain submerged for up to two hours but stressed individuals must resurface every few minutes.

“Again and again, foreign nationals have encroached upon Philippine waters to plunder our nation’s dwindling marine resources,” said WWF Project Manager RJ de la Calzada. “It disheartens us to find the animals we work so hard to conserve slaughtered on a wholesale basis.”

Distinguished from other sea turtles by a hooked beak and heavily-serrated carapace, the Hawksbill has for millennia been hunted for food and tortoiseshell, a material used as far back as the ancient Greek and Roman times to fashion jewellery, combs and brushes.

The Hawksbill turtle is protected under Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which prohibits all international trade. It is also now classified by the IUCN as Critically Endangered, the highest risk rating for a living animal. Under Philippine and international law it is illegal to capture and kill sea turtles and to trade in turtle by-products.

The 13 Vietnamese poachers are just the latest in a long line to have intruded upon Philippine waters, violating both local and international laws. Last year over 200 Green turtles were retrieved in the Sulu Sea and two years ago 359 CITES-protected Napoleon or Humphead Wrasse were seized.

“The list goes on and not one case has ever led to a serious conviction,” said De la Calzada. “The Vietnamese poachers were not the first and they will certainly not be the last.”

Amid fears that justice might again prove elusive, WWF is acting as a watchdog to ensure that charges are pressed in this case. The 13 Vietnamese crewmen will be charged with violating the Philippine Wildlife Conservation and Protection Act, penalties for which can include a fine of up to one million Philipppine pesos (US$21,500) coupled with a six-year jail term.

“WWF condemns such blatant poaching of internationally-protected marine life and hopes that the Philippine government will finally have the resolve to dispense due justice against foreign poachers who disregard both local and international laws,” said WWF-Philippines president Dave Valdes.

For further information please contact: Gregg Yan, Information, Education and Communications Officer, WWF-Philippines. Tel:   +63 2 920 7923/26/31. Fax:   +63 2 426 3927. Email: gyan@wwf.org.ph

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04 Sep 2008
Narwhal massacre provokes outrage in Greenland
The discovery of dozens of massacred narwhals on the east coast of Greenland has widened divisions between hunting and tourism interests.

Narwhals are a small Arctic whale with a single long tusk, sought after by poachers because of its ivory.

A scientific expedition from New Zealand discovered the whale carcasses as they sailed along the coastline about two weeks ago. According to local media 48 animals were killed and poaching is suspected.

"We received a complaint that there may have been a possible violation of the Greenlandic law regarding the protection of narwhals, after the discovery of cadavers in Illoqqortoormiut," said the deputy chief of Greenland police Morten Nielsen.

Greenland’s Hunters and Fishers Organisation, KNAPK, was quick to condemn the apparent slaughter, along with many ordinary people as well as representatives of the tourist industry

People in Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, are authorized to hunt narwhals "but there are rules that say you can't shoot females and that you have to remove the body" after killing the animal”, Nielsen said.

There were females and calves among the dead, Danish news agency Ritzau reported, adding that only the males' long tusks, some meat and blubber had been removed from the carcasses.

"We're now trying to investigate the incident and figure out what has happened and if the law has been broken," Nielsen said.

Narwhals can grow up to five metres in length and live primarily in the Arctic Ocean. Males have a single long, twisted tusk that protrudes from the upper left side of the jaw and which can grow up to three metres

Some females may also grow tusks, albeit much smaller. The export of narwhal tusks is banned in Greenland, and imports are banned in the European Union, according to Ritzau.

At the International Whaling Commission meeting in Chile in June, Greenland failed in a bid to extend indigenous subsistence hunting quotas to humpback whales, following revelations that the whale hunting had a large commercial component ending up on supermarket shelves.


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