Amazon

The U.S. credit card system siphons off excessive amounts of money from merchants. In a typical $100 credit card purchase, only $97.25 goes to the seller. The rest goes to banks and processors. But who can compete with Visa and MasterCard? It seems China’s new mobile payment ecosystems can. According to a May 2018 article in Bloomberg titled “Why China’s Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares”:

[Article first published at Truthdig on August 22, 2018]

The future of consumer payments may not be designed in New York or London but in China. There, money flows mainly through a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking—all run by two of the world’s most valuable companies. That contrasts with the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments. Western bankers and credit-card executives who travel to China keep returning with the same anxiety: Payments can happen cheaply and easily without them.

The nightmare for the U.S. financial industry is that a major technology company—whether one from China or a U.S. giant such as Amazon or Facebook—might replicate the success of the Chinese mobile payment systems, cutting banks out.

According to John Engen, writing in American Banker in May 2018, “China processed a whopping $12.8 trillion in mobile payments” in the first ten months of 2017. Today even China’s street merchants don’t want cash. Payment for everything is handled with a phone and a QR code (a type of barcode). More than 90 percent of Chinese mobile payments are run through Alipay and WeChat Pay, rival platforms backed by the country’s two largest internet conglomerates, Alibaba and Tencent Holdings. Alibaba is the Amazon of China, while Tencent Holdings is the owner of WeChat, a messaging and social media app with more than a billion users.

Alibaba created Alipay in 2004 to let millions of potential customers who lacked credit and debit cards shop on its giant online marketplace. Alipay is free for smaller users of its platform. As total monthly transactions rise, so does the charge; but even at its maximum, it’s less than half what PayPal charges: around 1.2 percent. Tencent Holdings similarly introduced its payments function in 2005 in order to keep users inside its messaging system longer. The American equivalent would be Amazon and Facebook serving as the major conduits for U.S. payments.

WeChat and Alibaba have grown into full-blown digital ecosystems—around-the-clock hubs for managing the details of daily life. WeChat users can schedule doctor appointments, order food, hail rides and much more through “mini-apps” on the core app. Alipay calls itself a “global lifestyle super-app” and has similar functions.

Both have flourished by making mobile payments cheap and easy to use. Consumers can pay for everything with their mobile apps and can make person-to-person payments. Everyone has a unique QR code and transfers are free. Users don’t need to sign into a bank or payments app when transacting. They simply press the “pay” button on the ecosystem’s main app and their unique QR code appears for the merchant to scan. Engen writes:

A growing number of retailers, including McDonald’s and Starbucks, have self-scanning devices near the cash register to read QR codes. The process takes seconds, moving customers along so quickly that anyone using cash gets eye-rolls for slowing things down.

Merchants that lack a point-of-sale device can simply post a piece of paper with their QR code near the register for customers to point their phones’ cameras at and execute payments in reverse.

A system built on QR codes might not be as secure as the near-field communication technology used by ApplePay and other apps in the U.S. market. But it’s cheaper for merchants, who don’t have to buy a piece of technology to accept a payment.

The mobile payment systems are a boon to merchants and their customers, but local bankers complain that they are slowly being driven out of business. Alipay and WeChat have become a duopoly that is impossible to fight. Engen writes that banks are often reduced to “dumb pipes”—silent funders whose accounts are used to top up customers’ digital wallets. The bank bears the compliance and other account-related expenses, and it does not get the fees and branding opportunities typical of cards and other bank-run options. The bank is seen as a place to deposit money and link it to WeChat or Alipay. Bankers are being “disintermediated”—cut out of the loop as middlemen.

If Amazon, Facebook or one of their Chinese counterparts duplicated the success of China’s mobile ecosystems in the U.S., they could take $43 billion in merchant fees from credit card companies, processors and banks, along with about $3 billion in bank fees for checking accounts. In addition, there is the potential loss of money market deposits, which are also migrating to the mobile ecosystem duopoly in China. In 2017, Alipay’s affiliate Yu’e Bao surpassed JPMorgan Chase’s Government Money Market Fund as the world’s largest money market fund, with more than $200 billion in assets. Engen quotes one financial services leader who observes, “The speed of migration to their wealth-management and money-market funds has been tremendous. That’s bad news for traditional banks, where deposits are the foundation of the business.”

An Amazon-style mobile ecosystem could challenge not only the payments system but the lending business of banks. Amazon is already making small-business loans, finding ways to cut into banks’ swipe-fee revenue and competing against prepaid card issuers; and it evidently has broader ambitions. Checking accounts, small business credit cards and even mortgages appear to be in the company’s sights.

In an October 2017 article titled “The Future of Banks Is Probably Not Banks,” tech innovator Andy O’Sullivan observed that Amazon has a relatively new service called “Amazon Cash,” where consumers can use a barcode to load cash into their Amazon accounts through physical retailers. The service is intended for consumers who don’t have bank cards, but O’Sullivan notes that it raises some interesting possibilities. Amazon could do a deal with retailers to allow consumers to use their Amazon accounts in stores, or it could offer credit to buy particular items. No bank would be involved, just a tech giant that already has a relationship with the consumer, offering him or her additional services. Phone payment systems are already training customers to go without bank cards, which means edging out banks.

Taking those concepts even further, Amazon (or eBay or Craigslist) could set up a digital credit system that bypassed bank-created money altogether. Users could sell goods and services online for credits, which they could then spend online for other goods and services. The credits of this online ecosystem would constitute its own user-generated currency. Credits could trade in a digital credit clearing system similar to the digital community currencies used worldwide, systems in which “money” is effectively generated by users themselves.

Like community currencies, an Amazon-style credit clearing system would be independent of both banks and government; but Amazon itself is a private for-profit megalithic system. Like its Wall Street counterparts, it has a shady reputation, having been variously charged with worker exploitation, unfair trade practices, environmental degradation and extracting outsize profits from trades. However, both President Trump on the right and Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the left are now threatening to turn Amazon, Facebook and other tech giants into public utilities.

This opens some interesting theoretical possibilities. We could one day have a national nonprofit digital ecosystem operated as a cooperative, a public utility in which profits are returned to the users in the form of reduced prices. Users could create their own money by “monetizing” their own credit, in a community currency system in which the “community” is the nation—or even the world.

New era of food scarcity threat

Environmentalists say the world is on the brink of a new era of food scarcity driven by a "perfect storm" of climate change, water shortage and a rising population” says US analyst and author Lester Brown.

The world is adding 80 more million people are year and that means there's an extra 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who weren't there last night.

And it's not only that, as you know it's fed to cattle, pigs and chicken. So it's the price of meat that's really at stake here when the price of corn doubles as it has over the last several months.

US Drought

More than half the counties in the US have been declared natural disaster areas by the US Department of Agriculture due to the drought, which now covers more than 60 per cent of the lower 48 states. In response, the US Government plans to buy up to $160 million of meat from its farmers to help them through the drought crisis. Severe draught is also crippling farmland in Russia's wheat belt, while below average monsoon rains in India is also adding to concern that global grain crops could plunge.

Ukraine, also a major exporter of grain, has banned wheat exports due to poor harvest this year.   As a consequence only 50 days’ worth of stocks are left in world’s granaries.

A rise in food prices is often linked to social and political turmoil in poor countries, where people already use most of their income to buy food.

Since the 1990s, a once-standard policy of most countries since ancient times – maintaining of reserves from good years as a hedge against famine in bad years – has disappeared, making all people reliant on this year’s weather – something so stupid it has never been done before. Over time,  these grain reserve programs were discontinued largely because of cost and improved market efficiency. If  future supply disruptions attributable to drought  become more frequent, they  may affect not only livestock production but human food consumption as well.

The high costs of producing meat

Meat raising use up 43% of entire grain harvesting and 85% of entire legume harvesting. Of all the cause of Amazon virgin rain forest deforestation, 70% are cut down in order to raise meat.

If crops wastefully fed to livestock are included, European countries have more than three times more food than they need, while the US has around four times more food than is needed, and up to three-quarters of the nutritional value is lost before it reaches people's mouths.

High corn prices mean high feedstock prices, so impact on livestock industry not only in China but throughout Asia because Asia imports corn for livestock. Many ranchers have been forced to bring their animals to market earlier than usual because they cannot afford the rising price of grain, thus cutting into the market value of their animals. Providing assistance to Mid-Western farmers makes matters worse because a good portion of the grain grown in the “farm belt” is used to feed livestock. Very little of the US's rich agricultural lands actually grows food for direct human consumption; rather a large proportion is fed to cattle.

Meat eating surging in Asia

As recently as 1995, China was basically self-sufficient in soybeans. Today, imports account for 75 per cent of its soaring consumption as rising incomes, especially in the burgeoning middle-class, enable many of the country's 1.35 billion people to consume more meat, dairy products, eggs and farmed fish.

More than a quarter of the meat produced worldwide is now eaten in China, mainly pork and poultry. In 1978 when China started agricultural reforms, its meat consumption was one third that of the US. Today, China's annual meat consumption of 71 million tonnes is more than double the US figure.

Wastage and devastation of eating meat

Entire livestock in the world produce 87,000 pounds of excrements per second, which is 130 times more then the human population.

Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water and contributes to animal suffering. According to PETA more than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals. Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution claim that the equivalent of seven football fields of land is bulldozed worldwide every minute to create more room for farmed animals.

More than 70 percent of the grain and cereals that are grown in the USA are fed to farmed animals. Raising animals for food is grossly inefficient, because while animals eat large quantities of grain, soybeans, oats, and corn, they only produce comparatively small amounts of meat.

It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein.

Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food.

According to Greenpeace, all the wild animals and trees in more than 2.9 million acres of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil were destroyed in the 2004-2005 crop season in order to grow crops that are used to feed chickens and other animals in factory farms.

The EPA (USA) reports that chicken, hog, and cattle excrement has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.

This industry is based on a cuisine that demands animal products, to conform to traditions of our assumed "hunter and gatherer" past, slavishly assuming that the hunting harvest is and must remain the main source of our nutrition. It's rapacious in it's appetite for natural resources, environmental destruction, pollution and ongoing animal cruelty. Farms are not what they once were, with farmers having a close connection with their land and stock. They are big corporations now, and factory farms are inherently cruel - with massive political power.

Much of the world's water supply is quietly being diverted to raise livestock without any media coverage, while millions of people across the globe are faced with droughts and water shortages. Sadly, as the Western diet spreads to the rest of the world, even desert nations in Africa and the Middle East are pouring what little water remains into meat production.

Vegan Organic and Environment

Lester Brown: if it's business as usual, nothing else happens, there'll be food scarcity but I find it inconceivable there wouldn't be responses (from world leaders).

Some nations, such as China, are already taking action by buying arable land around world, including Africa, and, yes, Australia.

SAVE OUR PLANET Energy sectors to shape sustainability of future development -- UN

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, FAOSTAT data for 2009: 8,702,490 beef cattle, 32,049,100 sheep , 474,809,000 chickens and 4,521,760 Pigs were sent to slaughter in AUSTRALIA in just one year (Ref. Food and Agr. Org. of U.N website)

Over 700,000 unwanted week old dairy calves are sent to slaughter ever year in Australia as a by-product of the dairy Industry. (Ref, Animals Australia website)

Embracing a diet full of organic life giving fresh fruit and vegetables and whole grains not only nourishes the body but the mind and spirit as well.

VEGUCATED – the movie Six people- Six weeks – One Challenge

SYNOPSIS
Part sociological experiment and part adventure comedy, Vegucated follows three meat- and cheese-loving New Yorkers who agree to adopt a vegan diet for six weeks. Lured by tales of weight lost and health regained, they begin to uncover the hidden sides of animal agriculture that make them wonder whether solutions offered in films like Food, Inc. go far enough. This entertaining documentary showcases the rapid and at times comedic evolution of three people who discover they can change the world one bite at a time.

[image from Sheila Newman & wikipedia] ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2009) — "The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has released photos from the first large-scale census of jaguars in the Amazon region of Ecuador—one of the most biologically rich regions on the planet.
The ongoing census, which began in 2007, is working to establish baseline population numbers as oil exploration and subsequent development puts growing pressure on wildlife in Ecuador's Yasuni National Park and adjacent Waorani Ethnic Reserve. Together, these two protected areas make up some 6,500 square miles (16,800 square kilometers) of wilderness."

Mother Nature recognised at law

In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional rights to nature, thus codifying a new system of environmental protection. Original Article source.

Reflecting the beliefs and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador, the constitution declares that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” This right, the constitution states, “is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people that depend on the natural systems.”

Nature not just an object for economic appropriation

The new constitution redefines people’s relationship with nature by asserting that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law.

Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Environmental Legal Defense Fund, worked closely over the past year with members of Ecuador’s constitutional assembly on drafting legally enforceable Rights of Nature, which mark a watershed in the trajectory of environmental law.

Ecuador’s leadership on this issue may have a global domino effect. Margil says that her organization is busy fielding calls from interested countries, such as Nepal, which is currently writing its first constitution.

Flawed by failure to mandate indigenous community consultation

For all of the hope and tangible progress the Rights of Nature articles in Ecuador’s constitution represent, however, there are shortcomings and contradictions with the laws and the political reality on the ground. A fundamental flaw in the constitution also exists due to Correa’s refusal to include a clause mandating free, prior, and informed consent by communities for development project that would affect their local ecosystems.

“I expect them [the multinational extractive industries] to fight it,” says Margil. “Their bread and butter is based on being able to treat countries and ecosystems like cheap hotels. Multinational corporations are dependent on ravaging the planet in order to increase their bottom line.”

Mining treats countries and ecosystems like cheap hotels

Investigation of Texaco [Caltex in Australia] oil-exploration in the Amazon.

The new Mining Law, introduced by Ecuador’s own President Rafael Correa and backed by Canadian companies, which hold the majority of mining concessions in Ecuador, is a testament to Margil’s forecast. The Mining Law would allow for large-scale, open pit metal mining in pristine Andean highlands and Amazon rainforest. Major nationwide demonstrations are being held in protest, with groups accusing Correa of inviting social and environmental disaster by selling out to mining interests.

Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag, who has been a tireless defender of the environment against transnational mining companies, says that while the new constitution looks good on paper, “in practice governments like Correa’s will argue that funding his political project, which will bring ‘well being and relieve poverty,’ overrules the rights of nature.”

Yet even as Ecuadoran President Correa embraces the extractive economic model of development, the inclusion of the rights of nature in a national constitution sets inspiring and revolutionary precedent. If history is any indicator, Ecuadorians will successfully fight for the Rights of Nature, with or without their president.

U.S. Media: Update by Cyril Mychalejko

When Ecuadorians drafted and passed a new constitution, which gave nature inalienable rights, the US media largely ignored this historic development. In the case of the Los Angeles Times, one of the few mainstream outlets to cover the story, the newspaper’s editorial board trivialized the development (“Putting Nature in Ecuador’s Constitution,” September 2, 2008) by suggesting it sounded “like a stunt by the San Francisco City Council” and that it seemed “crazy.”

“As ecological systems around the world collapse, we need to fundamentally change our relationship with nature. This requires changes in both law and culture, and ultimately our behavior as part of nature,” said Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Defense Fund, who is disappointed in how the US media largely ignored the story.

In Ecuador, at the time of the constitutional vote, the optimism over how the “Rights of Nature” clauses would translate into policy was guarded.
“As exciting as these developments are, it was also inevitable that the people in power would, and will, find ways to circumvent, undermine, and ignore those rights,” said Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag.

Multi-national mining companies dangerously influence national laws

According to Zorrilla, a major disappointment has been President Rafael Correa’s new mining law.

“The law takes rights-to-nature loopholes and widens them so that giant dirt movers could easily drive through them,” said Zorrilla, who has been working with communities of Ecuador’s Intag region to resist mining and promote sustainable development. “To mention a couple of examples, the law does not prohibit large-scale mining in habitats harboring endangered species, nor the dumping of heavy metals in rivers and streams.”
See also,"Ecuador Rising"..

Indigenous leaders file law-suit

Indigenous leaders responded by filing a lawsuit before Ecuador’s Constitutional Court in March 2009, seeking to overturn the mining law, which they believe is unconstitutional. Article 1 of the “Rights of Nature” clauses states: “Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.”

Regardless of the ongoing struggles to ensure that the true meaning and scope of the constitution is upheld, Dr. Mario Melo, a lawyer specializing in Environmental Law and Human Rights and an advisor to Fundación Pachamama-Ecuador, believes that the nature clauses which reflect the traditions of indigenous peoples could offer a path to an ecologically sustainable future.

Rights to nature = progress

“I consider that the recognition of the ‘Rights to Nature’ as a progress on a global scale and one that deserves to be globally broadcast and commented on as a contribution from Ecuador towards the search of new ways of facing the environmental crisis due to climate change.”

The struggles of Ecuadorian social movements and the Ecuadorian government to uphold the “Rights of Nature” and to create a new development model that places human beings as interdependent parts of nature, rather than dominant exploiters of nature, is something we should continue to monitor and learn from.

Source:
Upside Down World, September 25, 2008
Title: “Ecuador’s Constitution Gives Rights to Nature”
Author: Cyril Mychalejko
and
Project Censored
Student Researcher: Chelsea Davis
Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin, PhD
Sonoma State University

Australian 'terrified' by Amazon pirate attack
August 11
Twelve Australians were on board a small cruise ship robbed by pirates on the Amazon River. MV Aqua, owned by Aqua Expeditions , was ransacked by pirates in Peru last week. They took advantage of heavy rain and poor visibility to stage their raid.

Ms Ibbotson and her partner Keith Lawson, both financial planners of Melbourne, waited, terrified, as the pirates ransacked the cruise ship MV Aqua on the Amazon in Peru, working their way from cabin to cabin. "It was just a terrifying, terrifying experience," she reported back from Peru to ABC Online

There were two undercover policemen on board after the previous attack but both were quickly overpowered by the six bandits despite their grenades and automatice weapons! They were robbed at gunpoint of all their cash, cameras and jewellery.
Speaking from Peru, Melbourne woman Ms Christina Ibbotson, 60, reported to Sydney Morning Herald reporters that the worst thing was not being told that there had been a similar attack on the same boat in the same place the week before. Ms Ibbotson said most of the passengers were angry they had not been warned of the first pirate attack and said they had not heard anything from the Peruvian company Aqua Expeditions since.

The boat's owner and the police were reported to have been slow to react!
Police reinforcements arrived after crew radioed for help. Officers later recovered some of the holidaymakers' belongings after discovering them in the gang's jungle base camp, where they also confiscated guns and walkie-talkies the armed gang are believed to have used to coordinate their well-planned attack.

Crime amoungst police, and collaboration between police and criminals, is not uncommon in Peru!

Read the statements from Aqua Expeditions on the 'bandit attack'

In a similar attack on 6th August gunmen stormed Aqua Expeditions tourist cruise ship in Peru in a dawn robbery.

Masked men with guns and hand grenades stormed a cruise ship (the same criminals?) stealing thousands of pounds worth of valuables from tourists, including several Britons, in the dawn raid.

Nine armed bandits bound the hands and feet of the 20 holidaymakers, including Britons, Americans, Australians and Spaniards, on a small cruiser heading up the Ucayali River in the Peruvian Amazon to the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve.

The Peruvian Minister for Tourism, Martin Perez, has reportedly vowed to provide Coast Guard and National Police escorts for cruises in the region, to step up patrols and to increase security officers on board vessels in a bid to salvage the area's tourism reputation.

Aqua Expeditions has reportedly changed its itinerary to avoid the area of the latest raid. Aqua Expeditions has a section on safety on its website which says: "A crew member is assigned on our navigation deck to keep watch around the clock, 24/7, whether the vessel is sailing or docked." Was this enough?

Under new legislation, submitted to the British Cabinet in July, 2009, the State will be entitled to recover “all or part of the expenses ... for rescue operations abroad for people who have deliberately exposed themselves to risks which they could not ignore”.

The authorities will be able to take action against travel agents, shipping companies and insurance companies accused of encouraging journeys to areas deemed hazardous.

If a new French law gains currency around the world, all cruising sailors who visit countries which are on a list of countries 'considered to be dangerous' could be faced with a bill if they get into trouble. Regions considered dangerous are published on the Foreign Ministry website in a regularly updated list. French travellers are at present advised against visiting countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and parts of Peru , Tanzania, Colombia, Sudan and Venezuela.

If you travel for any length of time in Latin America, chances are the police will attempt to extract a bribe. Police are often underpaid and find tourists an easy source of income, so any foreign vehicles or people on the road will often be targeted.
The easiest way out at this point is for you to hand over the bribe in cash, or at least bargain him down further.

While there are statistics about the frequency of such crimes, they are sketchy because the offenses often go unreported, or they are not reported outside national media! U.S. officials say they are concerned about the increasing sophistication of such crimes. In what used to be an uncommon occurrence, groups of tourists recently have been attacked on the road and even in crowded hotels, officials say.

In Peru, crimes against tourists are a fact of life, and Peru's crime problem is not unique. It fits into the increasing trend in many South American countries and cities.
SmartTraveller.com.au (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade)

We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Peru because of the high levels of serious crime. Pay close attention to your personal security and monitor the media for information about possible new safety or security risks.
Petty theft, including pick-pocketing and bag snatching, has been reported in public areas, including in hotels, conference centres, internet cafes and restaurants. You should remain vigilant in crowded public places.

Theft on inter-city buses, including buses on the Lima, Ica, Nasca and Cusco routes continues to increase, often when passengers are asleep or distracted. You should avoid placing luggage or other personal belongings on overhead racks or under your seats.

Violent crime including sexual assault, armed robbery, muggings and car-jacking occurs, particularly in the cities of Lima, Cusco and Arequipa. Travellers walking alone after dark, especially when leaving bars or nightclubs, have been targeted by criminals.

There has been a significant increase in reports of serious crimes, including robbery, assault and rape, against travellers using unlicensed taxi operators, particularly in Lima and Cusco. You should arrange transport at taxi counters within the international terminal when arriving at Lima's international airport and seek assistance from staff at hotels, hostels, restaurants or places of entertainment to book a licensed taxi. The name and contact details of the taxi company should be recorded.

'Express kidnappings', where victims are forced to withdraw funds from ATMs to secure their release, have occurred.

Assault and armed robbery of hikers travelling on the Inca trail have been reported. Use of an experienced guide may reduce the risk of assault and robbery while hiking.
Travel by road outside of major cities after dark is dangerous due to the risk of criminal activity which has often involved the use of bogus road blocks or check points.
The real dangers of travelling in Peru and South America should be upgraded. Travel agents should warn of dangers, but there is a conflict of interest in revealing the real risks. It is a case of making sure that tourists themselves do the research before embarking on a tour where anarchy, corruption, crime and violence are way of life, the “norm”! Maybe tourists should have to pay for their rescue if they insist on travelling to "hot spots" on our globe and get into trouble?
Innocence abroad can be costly, even fatal!

Suez Environnement estimates the Victorian desal plant will generate more than $2 billion in revenue over the next 30 years. With ADF Suez’ existing record of environmental destruction in the Amazon, their submission should be dismissed.

The Age - Desal firm logged the Amazon

GDF Suez's majority is owned by Energia Sustentavel. Energia Sustentavel is building a 3,300 megawatt hydroelectric dam in Brazil. The project is part of the government's Accelerated Growth Program and has had its share of false starts since receiving its environmental building permits earlier this year. Local farmers have been blocking access to the road leading to the construction site since early Monday morning (27th July), impeding workers from entering the project

This globalisation of our water supplies will be funded by the users, Victoria's citizens.

Our capitalistic "growth is good" mentality needs to be given a reality check!

With no discussion of limiting growth, it will mean that our pockets will continue to be raided to pay for one of life's essentials - water. More coastline sites will need to be acquired and developed, greenhouse gas emissions will soar and marine ecosystems could be irreversibly damaged.

It is us, the customers, who will be paying for the demands of our growing and thirsty population.

The massive Thomson dam was finished in 1983 and was supposed to "drought proof" Melbourne. Our population has already exceeded the level its dams were intended to cater for and is still being increased, despite our environmental and our natural resource limitations.

Household water bills are expected to more than double over the next five years, and along with ETS, utilities will continue to rise as our natural resources become more expensive to produce.

1.2 million tonnes of greenhouse gases will be emitted each year once it starts boosting Melbourne's water supply. Limiting greenhouse gases is just given lip-service!

The plant will take in 480 billion litres of seawater and pump back 280 billion litres of saline concentration each year. The effect of this pollution on the marine environment and biodiversity is unknown.

The cost of the plant and the ultimate clean-up will be passed onto consumers, and the benefits of continual population growth will be reaped by our State government. More people means that more taxes and charges can be elicited, and businesses and developers will continue to thrive!

With common sense, conservation, mandatory water tanks and more recycling, we could survive on our present water harvesting schemes but not if we continually push our numbers past natural limits.
However, logic is lacking in our present leaders!

Visit Watershed Victoria's website.

06/06/09 PERU, At least 31 people have died in clashes in Peru between the security forces and indigenous people in the Amazon region.

Those killed included at least 22 tribesmen and nine policemen. The violence took place as security forces tried to end a road blockade. Demonstrators also were threatening to set fire to an oil pumping station of state-owned Petroperu unless the government told police to halt efforts to clear weeks of blockades of roads and rivers that have hurt food and fuel supplies.

The local indigenous population is upset at Government plans to open up much of the land in Peru's Amazonia region to oil and gas and to mineral exploration, even though much of the land is officially protected.

Local people say new laws will make it easier for foreign companies to exploit their land for natural resources.

President Garcia said that the protesters had threatened to cut the lines carrying natural gas out of the region. "What else can the government do but act with energy to impose order," Garcia said.

Alberto Pizango, the main indigenous leader, denied that Indians killed police, saying the protesters were unarmed. He called for international human rights groups to intervene.

The protesters want decrees signed by President Alan Garcia in 2007 and 2008 easing restrictions on mining, oil drilling, wood harvesting and farming in the Amazon rainforest overturned. A Duke University study published last year said contract blocks for oil and gas exploration cover approximately 72 percent of Peru's rain forest.

Critics say President Garcia’s policies favoring free-markets and foreign investments mainly benefit elites in cities and that the economic boom has not decreased poverty levels of the poor.

Over the past weeks protesters have taken over airports, blocked bridges and highways, prevented navigation along several rivers, and stopped oil extracted from the Amazon from being shipped out of the region.

This violence also has exposed the central government's lack of control over remote regions of the country. Indigenous land rights are being violated.

The indigenous groups were backed by the International Federation of Human Rights, which groups 155 human rights organisations from around the world.

Please take action to support indigenous people in Peru.

Visit Rainforest Portal

See also: "Thousands of indigenous Peruvians protest invasion of Amazon by oil, mining and agricultural companies" of 1 Jun 09, Resource boom threatens indigenous people, EcoEarth newsdesk.

Thousands of indigenous people have protested in Peru's Amazon for much of the past 40 days, hoping to pressure President Garcia to modify or strike down a series of laws he passed last year that encourage oil, mining and agricultural companies to invest billions of dollars in the mostly pristine region.

Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon are protesting investment laws passed under a free-trade pact with the United States and against concessions granted to foreign energy companies. Some 30,000 indigenous people have blockaded roads, rivers and railways to demand repeal of new laws that allow oil, mining and logging companies to enter indigenous territories without seeking consent or even any consultation. Indigenous communities complain that some 70% of Peruvian Amazon territory is now leased for oil and gas exploration, putting at risk their own lives and the biodiversity of the Amazon.

Peruvian state-run producer PetroPeru said earlier that protesters impeded work at pumping stations on the government-run North Peruvian oil pipeline, cutting shipments of crude oil.

The indigenous groups started the demonstrations in April, asking that Congress revoke a series of decrees they say will open their land to mining, logging and oil drilling without consent.

Officials in Peru are quick to point out that this was one of the first Latin American countries to establish local government strategies to curb the loss of biological diversity. "We made it possible in 1999, even before Brazil," María Luisa del Río, the Environment Ministry’s director for biodiversity, told Tierramérica. (www.tierramerica.info)

But experts and critics assure that the biggest problem is implementing those plans in Peru, considered one of the world’s leaders in natural wealth of ecosystems, species, genetic resources and indigenous cultures.

Scientists estimate that Peru is home to some 25,000 plant species, that is, 10 percent of the world total, and to 1,816 bird species. But this great natural heritage has been threatened in recent decades by the extraction of natural resources, and hundreds of species are in danger of extinction.

Between 2002 and 2007, mining concessions grew more than 70 percent due to incentives for foreign investment and high international prices for metals. Meanwhile, protests by indigenous and peasant communities about mining-based pollution also increased.

Indigenous leaders saying President Garcia has disregarded a U.N. declaration that protects their rights to control land and natural resources.

The protests, which have already shut Peru's pipeline that carries oil from the Amazon to the Pacific Ocean, underscore the risks of investing in a country with a poverty rate of 40 percent and a history of discord between wealthy elites in Lima and poor indigenous groups in the countryside. Despite this reality, the President declared that:

"The lands of the Amazon belong ... to all Peruvians and not just a small group that lives there," Garcia said over the weekend. "The riches of Peru belong to all Peruvians."

Garcia decreed most of the laws in question last year using special powers Congress gave him to bring Peru's regulations into line with the requirements of its free-trade pact with the United States.

Garcia, a former leftist who now fervently supports foreign investment, has sold dozens of concessions to foreign energy and mining companies since taking office in 2006. More auctions are planned in a country where mineral exports drive economic growth and the government is working to become self-sufficient in oil production.

The Peruvian government has sent troops into its Amazon region to quell protesting indigenous people. (May 16)

(May 31) Truckers burned a weigh station and an official vehicle in northern Peru on Friday to demand government action against Amazon Indians who have been blocking highways in a protest against laws they say threaten their control of ancestral lands, CPN Radio reported.

Truckers Protest

The reality is that indigenous people will lose their natural heritage to the President, foreign investors, the business elite, but they will end up with nothing!
The Indians have refused to end their protests, despite the initiation of talks with the government on resolving the dispute.

Please add your voice in solidarity with the tens of thousands of indigenous people and their international supporters mobilizing to protect the Peruvian Amazon.
Click here to open rainforestportal to send automated letters of protest.

latest crisis
Environment Peru's biodiversity under threat
production reduced due to protests

To burn-off or not to burn-off?

There's a pot-stirring poll in today's Australian - Is conservation policy to blame for the fires?
The truth is that logging is responsible for the fires. Logging or 'forestry management' historically, and probably actually, underpins the philosophy of the Department of Sustainability Victoria's approach to forests and is almost certainly responsible for increasing fire-risk in our forests and Victoria's climate change.

New cut at brown mountain lets in light, starts drying

Here is what logging does to forests:

Source: Woods Hole Research Centre, "Fire and Savannization"

Every year, accidental understory fires damage a large percentage of Amazon forest. This is the phenomenon we have called 'cryptic deforestation' (Nepstad 1999). These escaped fires travel slowly (10-20 meters an hour) and only reach a few inches in height, but they can be quite destructive to understory vegetation and kill many larger trees. Once a forest has burned, increased leaf shedding, an abundance of branches and other coarse fuel enhance its fuel load, and an open canopy ensures the fuel will be dry enough to burn. Since settlement is typically a one-way process, the ignition source - humans - is there to stay, and successive burns tend to be more intense and destructive.

Cryptic deforestation due to forest fires and logging may affect as much forest area as deforestation in most years — and even more during periods of prolonged drought. For instance, during El Niño years, up to 25,000 km2 of Brazilian forests may be affected by fire."

We can change local climate by changing forests.

Think of how much cooler it is in a thick forest on a hot day, if that forest is dark and well watered.
A healthy forest is a microclimate that recycles its own water and creates rain.
The forests that burned were not healthy forests. They have been thinned for centuries by logging. Prior to that, the dry forests were largely created through aboriginal fire-stick farming.

We have been brainwashed by the logging industry to believe this is normal.

The same thing is now happening to the Amazon.

Fires will cost more if we don't spend money on forest-rehab now

Think of all the money and water that the fires have so-far cost us.
That could have gone to hydrating them, nursing them back in to health.
We could recycle water through forests, plant in-between the trees - providing viable understory and denser trees.

Clean Ocean Foundation has been campaigning for just such a use for 'waste-water' for years.

It could pay off in terms of increased rainfall and pleasant climate nearby, quite quickly. As we rehabilitate and increase our forests, around sustainably built, fire-proof towns, climate has a chance of improving, Victoria-wide. We really don't have any other options.

God, we just throw money away on everything else and in Victoria we do send an enormous amount of water which would once have percolated slowly through the land, mostly through forests, out into the sea. Gunnamatta outfall, for instance, where 150 gigalitres of polluted water runs into the sea every year.

Loggers have normalised drying, dying forests to our cost

Note that this may seem more of a problem than it is because the forests have been managed by people who have normalised the idea of constantly thinning forests so that the public no longer question the idea that they catch fire more and more frequently.

Logging costs Victoria more than money; we can employ loggers to rehabilitate the forests and our climate

Yet there are loggers who know and love the forests, but have no other way of making a living. Let's provide jobs for the community rehabilitating the forests and our climate. It would be so much more interesting and positive than logging - which probably costs Victoria more money than it makes.

A healthy forest lets in little light (pic by Sheila Newman)

The key to potentiating a wetter forest must be
(a) in redensifying it; adding trees so that there is less light and less drying
(b) in the opposite order, growing a wet understory, and several layers of such
(c) reducing light and increasing moisture by increasing canopy, density and tree size, height and age

Ideas for transforming dry forests into wet forests in Oz, esp. Victoria.

Dry forests will use up water only as long as it takes to get them on their feet; then they will conserve their own water and positively affect rainfall.

Gunnamatta Outfall - 150 GL a year.
- Wet the dry 'fuel' and use it as mulch.
- Maybe use chemical agents which retain moisture initially among the mulch (such as are sold for people who don't wish often to water their plants.
- Use wetting agents
- Close down some of the new intensive irrigation farms, such as feedlots and divert the water back to a good cause
- Use water from desal plants - if we must have them; let us use their water well instead of on new developments.

-Tax water speculators (buyers and sellers) an amount per dollar for forest rehab.
- Get volunteers to contribute money from their taxes to buy water for forest moistening.

Once you had established some wet understory, it wouldn't take too long for a lot of the evaporation to stop.

- Fast-growing wet-forest trees which could be helped along.
- Use a variety of techniques to intensify the humidity of the forest climate; maybe possible to artificially increase the canopy for a while, for instance, to retard evaporation.
- You could start planting a section at a time.
- It might be an idea to replant for wet forest (irrigated) on the edges of the forests next to towns (obviously you would then have to plant a buffer-zone to diminish evaporation. However you need a large, consolidated area to enhance the forest micro-climate

- Build up the earth around the forests, using bulldozers, to create giant swales feeding into the forests, stopping run-off and allowing percolation.
- Prolong the swales (Peter Andrews style) back as far as you can in the catchment area.
- Un-dam, undivert rivers and creeks which once fed the forests.

- Stop growing the population of water consumers and take some back from dumb industries like paper (short fibres) recycling. Most industrial recycling is a waste of energy. The most useful recycling you can do is of organic waste in your garden. (Yes, a garden is a very good thing for the environment.)

Those are just some ideas.

Keep on doing the same thing and you will get the same results - lots of bushfires

The Murrindindi fire blasted over the Black Range and some of the most "managed" forest in Victoria on it's way to the Acheron Valley and Marysville. Logging regeneration and pine plantations mostly. Then it slowed down once it hit the O'Shannesy/Armstrong catchment. Unfortunately looks like some old growth remnants from 1939 may have gone in the Deep Creek area.

The logging industry and their political mouthpieces don't care about the truth or facts, they are only concerned with establishing their self interest position in the public mind, off the back of tragedy, and of course blaming "greenies" and "conservation" as the villains.

It is a replay of what they did after the 1993 bushfires, and they kept it up for over 6 months.

Hopefully the Royal Commission will sort out the propaganda and lies from the truth, but no doubt the loggers will provide a barrage of submissions and run a PR campaign in their favour too.

The irresponsible and inflammatory attitude of the mainstream media

Miranda Divine has already jumped on the forest-bashing bandwagon, but has she even looked deeply into the matter?
Wilson Tuckey sounds like a wise old parent, doesn't he, giving us all the bad news about growing up. But are we such children as to believe him?

Twice today on Radio National the opportunists were at it - first Phil Cheney in the morning and on The World Today, the ABC Radio National gave David Packham oxygen.

Let the mainstream media know that their coverage of this rubbish is in bad taste and shows shocking ignorance of the issue. We must not allowing different environment sectors to be used as a political tools by the mainstream media, which, going by its interests in property development, population growth, housing and big-business, would rather get rid of the forests and the native wildlife and just have wall to wall houses and crops - and the hell with our climate.

Now go and answer that poll in the Australian.

See also: "Greens, logging, forest fires and malaria" of 11 Feb 09 and "Brown Mountain Rape" of 26 Jan 09