Protecting the environment with intelligence
Civil society being excluded from discussions at UN Convention GENEVA: Conservation groups have reacted with dismay and disgust after being forced out of a crucial session on elephants and the ivory trade at the UN CITES Convention, currently taking place in Geneva. The NGOs were removed following a vote in the Standing Committee. The UK, [...]
‘Loophole’ defies the spirit of big cat conservation pledge LONDON: Despite Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s promise to the world that his country would “vigorously combat poaching, trade and smuggling of tiger products”, China appears to have quietly reopened the trade in tiger and leopard skins. Ahead of next week’s meeting of the United Nations Convention [...]
Montreal, Canada. While international climate talks remain deadlocked, the Montreal Protocol has been methodically eliminating some of the worst chemicals contributing to global warming. International ozone negotiators meeting in Montreal last week approved country plans to phase out ozone-depleting substances (ODS) which are also super greenhouse gases (GHGs) harmful to the global climate. By 2015, [...]
Military a key player in illegally transporting raw timber from Laos BANGKOK: A new report released today (July 28, 2011) exposes the pivotal role played by the Vietnamese military in a multi-million dollar operation which is smuggling threatened timber over the border from the shrinking forests of neighbouring Laos. Laos has some of the Mekong [...]
EIA calls for the destruction of all black market ivory KENYA: As several tonnes of contraband ivory went up in smoke, the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) called for all other illegal stockpiles to follow it. Today’s symbolic pyre at the Kenya Wildlife Service Field Training School in Manyani comprised 335 tusks and 41,553 hankos [...]
How Iceland is creating a new trade in fin whale meat for Japan