By Nic Christensen and Rosie Lentini

Lord Monckton. Image: Joanne Nova

Leading Australian climate sceptics are planning to use profits from Lord Christopher Monckton’s recent speaking tour to found a central anti-climate change organisation.

Tour organiser John Smeed said they intend to use the profits from both ticket and DVD sales as a seed to ensure the climate sceptic voice continues to be heard.

With public lectures costing up to thirty dollars per ticket, the tour has attained sales in excess of $150,000.

Mr Smeed says financial support for the tour has been hard won as “groups such as the Australian Coal Industry and the Australian Minerals Council just gave us the flick”. However, despite these challenges Mr Smeed is proud to be able to say that “we’ve organised it and we’re underwriting it”.

As Australia approaches a Federal Election, the new organisation’s aim will be to coordinate communication and campaigns between disparate Climate Sceptic groups across Australia.

Listen to the extended interviews for this story from the Wire:

Over the last three weeks Lord Monckton, one of the world’s most ardent climate sceptics, has criss-crossed Australia on a paid speaking tour.

Lord Monckton’s visit has been controversial, with many scientists and media commentators questioning both his use of science and his credibility.

The resulting publicity has promoted Lord Monckton’s tour and galvanised a movement of climate change sceptics.

“At the end of the day, with the DVD sales which I think will most probably generate quite a lot of cash that we will then step away from it,” Smeed said.

“The money coming in we’ll leave to the anthrogenic, global warming sceptic young people, to press on with that. To provide a financial base, to provide a centre communication point for these quite diverse groups that have started to communicate because of this tour.”

Lord Monckton, who is at odds with the scientific community, believes that global warming is a United Nation’s concoction and simply a money-spinning campaign.

“There are papers now in draft by a series of scientists whom I have been working with, that will reveal definitively the necessary calculations that prove that CO2 has a tiny effect on temperature and once those papers get published they will reveal that,” Lord Monckton said.

“Those who wish to believe science that CO2 has a large effect on temperature are going to have to do a lot of work to try and over come the arguments we have presented.”

Lord Monckton’s visit has been controversial, with many scientists and media commentators questioning both his use of science and his credibility.

Listen to the extended interviews for this story from the Wire:

Professor Matthew England, co-director at the University of New South Wales’ Climate Change and Research Centre, said that Lord Monckton’s claims have underestimated how much the world’s temperature will increase with the doubling of greenhouse gases.

“This is Orwellian. For those listeners who know some of George Orwell’s great pieces…I think the logic is by some of these folks is that if you say something like this enough times, people will start to believe it is correct,” he said.

Lord Monckton has not only been forced to defend his use of the title, Lord, but also his previous claim that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

“Everyone who contributed to the 2007 report of the IPCC which won the Nobel Peace Prize is entitled to say that they contributed to the document that won the prize,” Lord Monckton said.

“I am a contributor to the 2007 report, I am therefore entitled as the next man to say that I contributed to the Nobel Peace Prize.”

However, while his bio on the Science and Public Policy website says Monckton was presented with the prize-winning gold pin at the University of Rochester in New York, Monckton was quick to deny any knowledge of the statement.

“Well it’s not my website. And you know its what they choose to say and they might have phrased it in a way that goes beyond what is strictly to the truth. I don’t know I haven’t looked at it,” he said.

Climate sceptics are often portrayed as a fringe minority. However, climate scepticism is a view point that has been growing steadily and is one that is becoming more organised.

Many people who attended one of the sceptic events have been converted by Lord Monckton and believe that climate is simply a hoax.

“I want to hear what the professional Greenie has to say in response to Lord Monkton’s rebuttal of the global warming scam,” said one attendee.

“It [global warming] is the biggest hoax in history. It’s a bigger hoax than any religion we’ve ever dreamed up.”

Others believe that Lord Monckton’s views are a positive movement to open up climate change debate as Australia approaches a Federal Election.

“I’m so pleased this debate has opened up that it’s now getting both sides of the story and we’ve had a clamp down by Rudd and Wong and Turnbull, and McFarlene. They tried to put a lid on the real issues, and I think the real issues are now starting to come out,” said another attendee.

While many people attending the organised and well-funded lectures have strong views about climate change, there were also a few in the crowd that were undecided and happy to simply listen.

Nic Christensen and Rosie Lentini are reporters for the Wire.

Britons are fighting a losing battle to keep their iconic river clean amidst ineffective infrastructure and environmental challenges. Elizabeth Pearson reports.

The iconic river has become a dumping ground for junk and sewage waste. Image: UK Environmental Agency.

Beneath the turbid surface of the Thames lurks a “national scandal”, according to the Chairman of London’s Consumer Council for Water.

Oblivious to this, 30 Greenwich teenagers are up to their knees in mud on an icy Winter morning, fishing rubbish out London’s famous river. Siblings Kippa and Jess Brand have braved the plummeting mercury to wade into the muck exposed by the low lapping tide at Bell Water Gate. This is one of a series of community events run by the environment charity Thames 21 in a bid to remove superficial pollution from the riverbank.

“We’ve found heaps and heaps of trolleys and tyres,” 17-year-old Jess exclaims enthusiastically as she slips out of a pair of grimy wellies. “You wouldn’t believe how heavy everything was- so much heavier than it looked.”

“You burn extra calories because it’s for charity,” event coordinator Abigail Kelly shouts out across her shoulder, hefting spades and shovels from the pebbly rind of riverbed into a nearby truck.

Thames 21 has been campaigning for 16 years to clean up the shores of the river. Within the space of 90 minutes, these teenagers have managed to dig one shopping trolley, twenty abandoned roads cones, ten tyres and a stack of miscellaneous debris out of the quagmire.

“People just throw rubbish into the Thames. We find hoovers and irons and random things- I end up having a treasure chest on desk at work,” Ms Kelly said.

“Last week, we found a grenade which still had the pin in it so we had to call the police. We find lots of guns and knives and second world war shells rolling around.”

But apathy toward the health of the Thames is hard for these volunteers to swallow.

“People can’t think that they get to dump their stuff in the river, like some sort of tip,” Kippa said. “This river is part of our city and we have to look after it. If fools keep this up, there will be nothing left of it.”

And these students are only scratching the surface of the problem.

Something more sinister lurks upstream.

More than 32 million cubic metres of untreated waste overflows from London’s sewers into the Thames every year- enough to fill the 02 arena 15 times, the Environment Agency estimates.

The city relies upon a Victorian drainage system that collects both sewage and water runoff. During heavy rainfall, the increased water volume drives this system to full capacity. Excess waste is discharged straight into the Thames at 57 different outlets.

“The state of the Thames currently is not acceptable,” said the Chairman of the Consumer Council for Water London Committee, David Bland. “It is a national scandal that this river is in this condition and the eco standard must be raised very much far above where it is now.”

Anglers, canoeists and rowers have consistently reported raw sewage floating on the river’s surface over the last two years. Recreational users are often forced to avoid certain sections of the Thames during heavy rain because of the sludge generated.

But the Thames is naturally turbid so these contaminants are, more often than not, invisible in the swirling, clouded depths.

This biological waste is not just aesthetically displeasing, it poses significant health risks.

A study by the London Port Health and Environment Services Committee in 2007 found that “there is evidence of an elevated risk to the health of recreational users of the upper river for two to four days following combined sewer overflow discharges of raw sewage”.

Illnesses including gastrointestinal bugs can result from immersion in or ingestion of contaminated water, though the Environment Agency admits it’s difficult to gauge the exact number of people directly affected.

The report concluded that there was “evidence that background concentrations of microbiological organisms exceed the World Health Organisation recommended levels for recreational use at Kew Barnes and Putney”.

These overflows are also in breach of the European Union’s Waste Water Directive, which stipulates that sewage must be treated before it is discharged.

The EU’s environment watchdog launched legal action against the British government in October 2009, describing the sewage overflows as “too frequent and in excessive quantities”.

Ironically, the river was once a great success story for England.

The quality of London’s freshwater supply had been vastly improving since 1990, according to the Environment Agency. But recent levels are declining once more.

A population explosion is continuing to put pressure on the city’s outdated drains.

The nation’s largest water company Thames Water admits the infrastructure is struggling to keep up.

“Despite vast improvements to the river, there remains a big problem- London’s sewage system is Victorian. It was built in the 1850s and 60s by Sir Joseph Bazalgette following the Big Stink when Parliament had to reconvene at Oxford because the stench from the Thames, then an open sewer and biologically dead, simply overwhelmed the Palace of Westminster,” Senior Press Officer Simon Evans explained.

“Bazalgette’s combined human waste and surface water run-off system fed into two big interceptor sewers, one north of the river and the other to the south, which each fed to Beckton and Crossness respectively before pumping the effluent out to sea with the prevailing tide. The upshot was a cleaner Thames and a far healthier, less stinky Thames.”

The system features 57 combined sewer overflows designed to spill into the tideway section of the river when severe rainfall drove the pipes beyond full capacity.

Last century, this was a “once in a blue moon” occurrence, Mr Evans said.

Now, it’s a different story.

“Since then, London’s population has more than doubled, much of the city has been concreted over and climate change is bringing less frequent but heavier downpours – all putting huge strain on our 150-year-old drains.”

“Untreated sewage is ending up in the river on an increasingly frequent basis, not only from the sewer system but also from the five major sewage works along the tidal Thames, which struggle to cope with today’s heavy flows. And this can’t be right,” Mr Evans said.

As little as 2mm of rain is enough to trigger an overflow. This is now happening, on average, at least once a week.

Britain’s Environment Agency has floated a £2.2 billion super-sewer as the most viable solution. Plans are currently on the table to build two new pipelines beneath the river and transport excess waste away from the city. But Britain’s water authorities remain divided over the scheme dubbed the “Thames Tideways Tunnels”.

And as long as the government hesitates, budding environmentalists like Jess and Kippa Brand are fighting a losing battle to keep this primary waterway clean.

Though pulling rusty shopping trolleys out of the river won’t change the sewage issue, the siblings are determined to do what they can to help.

“Like anywhere else, the Thames has its own ecosystem- it’s 215 miles long, runs through urban and rural environments, contains both fresh and salt water, and is home for many species of birds and fish,” Jess said.

“If we pollute it here, then the consequences will be felt downstream as well- it’s our responsibility to look after the river as much as anywhere else, because it’s not like we’re the only ones using it.”

Elizabeth Pearson is a UTS Geji reporter on exchange in London. For more stories on the River Thames, visit Elizabeth’s blog.

Environmentalists argue that what began as an initiative to clean up dirty palm oil production practices, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has become little more than an NGO-endorsed greenwashing tool. Rebecca Zhou reports.

Due to an increase in worldwide demand for food, palm oil production has grown dramatically since it began in the 1970s. Image: CELCOR

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was set up by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to involve companies in creating more sustainable ways of producing palm oil. However environmental experts believe that not only is the RSPO ineffective, it has become a way to green wash poor practices.

“The RSPO gives the companies a green front and encourages more consumption, which is precisely the cause of the problem,” said Valerie Phillips, forest campaigner of the Greenpeace branch in Papua New Guinea, one of the three countries most adversely affected by the palm oil industry.

The Roundtable board includes stakeholders from producers, processors to traders and retailers who work with NGOs to develop a set of ‘Principles and Criteria’ that all member companies must follow to be certified.

One of the environmentalists’ main concerns is that there is no legal framework around the ‘P&C’ and companies work at their own pace to meet them. Often they are not met at all.

“It is a voluntary initiative so the company cannot even be held accountable for failing to meet standards,” said Eddie Tanago of the Centre of Environmental Law and Community Rights (CELCOR) in Papua New Guinea.

“Up till now there are 11 or 12 companies certified under RSPO mechanism, however all of the companies have gotten complaints because of most of them are not following the principles and criteria of RSPO but still have the certificate,” said Agrofuels campaigner from Friends of the Earth Indonesia, Torry Kuswardono.

WWF’s Global Forest and Trade Manager Lydia Gaskell says that companies wanting to be certified are given action plans and targets according to ‘the size of the company and how sustainable they are.’

“To take a company off certification for failing to meet standards and criteria is at the very least, impractical,” said Gaskell. “There would be no need for the RSPO if everyone was meeting those principles and standards from day one.”

The fact that action plans and targets are negotiable is another weakness, said Grant Rosoman, Forests Campaigner for Greenpeace International. He believes that WWF’s close affiliation with businesses has led to compromises in their conservation efforts.

Misuse of environmental indicators

Under the P&C, the company must work with WWF to identify ‘High Value Conservation Forest’ (HCVF) areas prior to plantation. WWF, with the assistance of other independent consultancies such as Daemeter Consulting use a HCVF ‘toolkit’ as a framework to define these areas.

“They’ve taken the HCVF concept and misused it,” said Rosoman, “The HCVF is essentially open to interpretation and when used this way, the assessments see heavy interference from the company.”

“Say the assessment is done and 50 percent of the land is written off as being primary forest. The company says not feasible. It then becomes negotiable with WWF to reducing that down to a more ‘economic level’. In the end it gets to something ridiculous like only 10 percent of the area.”

WWF has been under fire in the past for receiving enormous levels of funding from corporate companies. In 2007, it received $20 million from Coca Cola for research into water efficiency. Its 2008 annual Financial Report recorded revenue of $196.5 million while Greenpeace reported a 2007-08 revenue of a little over $40 million.

“WWF needs to take a side and really stick to their guns and not be influenced by the client. Poor HVCF assessments risks good work done on the ground,” said Rosoman.

Kuswardono is also concerned with the lack of transparency with HCVF assessments and the role that WWF plays in the process.

“It’s hard to know what WWF’s role is because they are always acting in the gray area between the government and the company,” said Kuswardono.

“Although WWF will set principles and criteria which promote their interests in HCV forests, they won’t push the companies to implement them.”

Violation of land rights

Investigations into RSPO certified company Wilmar International show that it has been clearing land without proper consultation with communities. Criterion 2.3 in the P&C states that the company must ensure ‘use of land for oil palm does not diminish the legal rights, or customary rights, of other users, without their free, prior and informed consent’ and that prior negotiations with locals must involve ‘open sharing of all relevant information in appropriate forms and languages, including assessments of impacts, proposed benefit sharing and legal arrangements.’

Kuswardono says that when companies do consultations, they are insufficient and often misleading.

Child pushing a wheelbarrow. Image: CELCOR

“They will use tactics of division by selecting certain figures of the community who support their projects and cause a divide between communities in this way.”

A joint investigation by NGOs into Singapore palm oil giant Wilmar International in October 2009 revealed that crucial information about land rights were often omitted during negotiations with community. The team discovered that a large majority of local people living in the Landak plantation area had been misled into relinquishing their land to the company.
Under Indonesian law, the land leased to a company is returned to the government, and not the original owner. The investigation showed that those who agreed to relinquish their land did it under the belief that they could reclaim ownership after expiration of the lease.

The investigation team reported that ‘they [community leaders] vehemently asserted that the lands were theirs and should revert to them and that they had only lent the lands to the companies for their use (hak pakai). Two interviewees in the widely separated districts went on to say that they would never have agreed to release their lands if they had known that this was permanent.’

Health issues

A study by CELCOR in 2006 reveals that some of Cargill’s plantations managed by its subsidiary Higaturu, have also gravely affected communities’ health.

In 1976, Higaturu, a subsidiary of Cargill started a plantation in Popondetta in Oro Province, where the Kokoda Track is situated. The health effects of the mill on local communities for the past 33 years has been severe and in some cases, irreversible.
The study documented the effects of nine toxic chemicals such as the herbicide ‘paraquat’ used commonly in all plantations as well as a variety of insecticides. Its effects range from skin diseases, ulceration and alterations to the Central Nervous System resulting in intense nausea and loss of reflexes. Paraquat was banned by the European Union (EU) in 2007 but remains legal in most developing countries. Though it is still commonly used in Australia and New Zealand, there are strict regulations governing it.

“The people live all the way down near the rivers there and those rivers have all been polluted with the effluent from the mills. The company reports claim that it is a hundred per cent treated but it’s not,” said Tanago.

“The people depend on the river for living. They drink from it and they wash their clothes in it and they continue to do so because they have nowhere else to go.”

In response to allegations of pollution made by CELCOR and Friends of the Earth to the RSPO grievances panel in 2008, Wilmar responded that they would prepare ‘to adopt a precautionary approach by conducting Environmental lmpact Assessments, a full HCVF Assessment and Social Impact Assessments before any land development in the area commences.’

But Tanago maintains that he has not seen any real commitment from the company.

“Their complaints have fallen on deaf ears. The company says that there is no scientific backing and sometimes they will just refuse to answer them. There is evidence of suffering though. About 60 per cent of village of 200 people are affected. Only few ever speak up about it.”

WWF also seems to believe that complaints from the communities and findings of NGOs require more substantial evidence.

“There will always be allegations, and WWF can’t be everywhere at once.”

“Cargill and Wilmar are definitely not a hundred per cent there yet,” said Gaskell, “In fact I wouldn’t say that any of the companies are quite there yet.”

“WWF is very much aware of the situation on the ground,” said Grant Rosaman, forests campaigner for Greenpeace International, “But when WWF becomes an external assessment body for the companies, the companies become their clients and it gets very difficult for them to stay loyal to their agenda.”

Forest Restoration coordinator for WWF Indonesia, Fitrian Ardiansyah concedes that some companies on the Roundtable have continued their malpractices.

“This is a challenge for us. And we have been naming and shaming companies which use the RSPO to cover up their practices,” said Ardiansyah.

The RSPO website has a list of companies whose memberships have been terminated but no such ‘name and shame’ list that draws attention to the alleged malpractices of major companies like Wilmar and Cargill, exists. An older version of the RSPO website however, did report a complaint made against Wilmar International by Friends of the Earth in January 2008. Complaints made against companies are dealt with by the Grievances Board, which consists of stakeholders instead of external assessors. In response to the allegations against Wilmar, the executive board stated that ‘There are three items in the response where further assurance is to be secured…none of these three items, individually or collectively, were considered as invalidating the acceptability of the response.’ There was no specification of what those three items were and whether Wilmar delivered its assurance. At the time of this article’s publication, the executive board’s response had been removed from the new RSPO website, a move that further shows the board’s lack of transparency.

The Singapore biofuel giant remains a member of the Roundtable and received full certification in January 2009 as ‘a testament of Wilmar’s strong commitment towards sustainable palm oil production, based on sound management and active engagement with the different stakeholders in the palm oil supply chain’, according to a company press statement

Villagers are contracted by major companies to harvest palm oil. Image: CELCOR

Gaskell describes the Roundtable as a ‘journey of improvement’ that WWF guides them along. It is also a journey for the organisation itself, which is constantly seeking ways to improve the principles and criteria.

“RSPO has worked hard to get a set of standards that are far and beyond the current level of practices. They are the best practice management right now. And those standards are not set. WWF will continue working with companies to strengthen them.”

But both international and local campaigners believe that WWF is missing the point, which is that without a legal framework within the country that can govern a company’s actions, the RSPO is useless. Furthermore, local governments often have no regard for the environmental impacts of plantations and this makes it difficult for the company to carry out assessments without heavy financial losses and thereby making them more likely to skip the process.

Government indifference

In Indonesia, the Department of Agriculture regulates and distributes permits to companies. These location permits provide for the transfer of rights of the land to companies for commercial uses but are only valid for three years. In that time, companies must carry out initial surveys, socialisation programs and environmental impact assessments, secure investments, apply for and be granted requisite permits for clearance and construction and install the necessary infrastructure. Delays occur for a number of reasons and permits are often forfeited if the company cannot complete the process on time.

“It is very likely that the companies will not perform assessments or community consultations properly because they are afraid they will lose the land to someone else,” said Kuswardono.

“The government in Indonesia or Papua New Guinea doesn’t care how much forest will be destroyed when they give out these permits.”

The same investigation by Sawit Watch, Wild Asia and Forest Peoples Programme found that as a reaction to complaints of other businesses, governments often rush to reallocate these permits to other companies. Wilmar International was reported to have had over a total area of 120,100 ha in 2006 with active permits. By 2009, the Minister for Agriculture had cancelled permits to almost all these areas and had then restored to Wilmar only 52,204 ha. The main receiver of the permits was a company called Djarum, which is not RSPO certified and was alleged to have cleared land without conducting environmental impact assessments or securing agreements from host communities.

“The big task which WWF and RSPO should focus on is creating a legal bind for the HVC assessments so that companies can be held accountable for their actions,” said Tanago.

“Nothing is being done right now about the pollution and land clearance because the government is on the company’s side.”

WWF concedes that it is a difficult situation but maintains that it is taking a constructive approach.

“We have been involved with the Indonesian government since the early days of the RSPO and taking all the necessary steps in the process,” said Ardiansyah, former forest restoration coordinator for WWF Indonesia. “It is a difficult process because the government does not yet understand.”

“But I would say that 50 per cent of the P&C have already been incorporated into government agenda. The critical points related to social and indigenous issues are not quite there yet.”

Carbon emissions

Palm oil production also accounts for a large majority of Indonesia’s carbon emissions. When each hectare of peatland is drained for oil palm production, an estimated 3,750-5,400 tons of carbon dioxide is released over 25 years. Due to this, Indonesia is the highest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the U.S.

The Roundtable held its annual conference in Kuala Lumpur in early November 2009 and according to its press releases, the executive board managed to ‘reach a compromise in which some emissions reduction requirements will be directly incorporated in the Roundtable’s certification standards.’ Again, the standards to be followed will be voluntary.

“This is a move in the right direction,” said Adam Harrison, WWF’s representative on the RSPO Executive Board in a press statement released after the meeting. “We encourage companies to embrace emissions reduction standards once they become available and do their part to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change.”

The fact that the RSPO does not factor the enormous levels of CO2 emitted from plantations has been one of the primary concerns of NGOs. WWF appears to consider the outcome of the latest annual meeting a constructive step forward but it is unlikely that the others will agree.

Twenty six years after the first official request by the Greek State for the return of its Parthenon, or Elgin Marbles, the British Museum is still claiming ownership and refuses to hand them over. Sofia Belegrinou investigates.

London's British Museum is still refusing to repatriate the Elgin Marbles back to Greece due to concerns over the capital's air pollution. Image: Andrew Dunn.

The Marbles are a collection of classical Greek marble sculptures, inscriptions, friezes and architectural fragments that originally formed parts of the Parthenon, a symbol of ancient Greek democracy, and other significant buildings on the Acropolis of Athens.

According to the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the artefacts were controversially removed between 1801 and 1804 by Lord Elgin, then-British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. They were spirited to Britain where they were eventually purchased in 1816 by the British Government and put on display at London’s British Museum where they remain to this day. The Museum originally vowed to give them ”an honorable shelter” and keep them ‘’safe from ignorance and degradation,” as quoted in the New York Times in 2002.

The British museum argues that some artefacts symbolise the cultural heritage of all humankind through the ages in the world’s museums and private collections. The Parthenon Marbles are part of this international cultural heritage, despite their significance to Greece. Yet the debate surrounding the Marbles is not just about ownership. It has become further complicated by the question of the levels of air pollution in Athens and how this environmental factor will affect the condition of the marble pieces if repatriated back to Greece.

The Acropolis Restoration Project is a highly significant project worldwide. The Greek team uses a technique of combining infrared and ultraviolet beams to avoid a yellowing effect of lasers on the marble. Commencing in 1983, the project is still only partially completed with the main part of the Acropolis and the Temple of Athena remaining. In a report, Evangelos Venizelos, the former Greek Minister of Culture mentions that the main aims of the program are structural and surface maintenance and the protection and re-orientation of old restored sculptures.

According to Theodore Skoulikidis, the chief chemical engineer of the Acropolis Restoration Project, there are six main types of limestone and marble deterioration caused by atmospheric pollution. These include: water freezing in the fissures causing stone cracking due to expansion; erosion caused by suspended particles; biodeterioration; marble cracking due to the corrosion of steel clamps and junctions introduced either during construction or restoration; attack by acids contained in the atmosphere combined with rain water; and attack by SO2 that in absence of rain water creates a gypsum formation (sulfation) on the stone surface.

Maria Ioannidou, the archaeologist heading the Acropolis Restoration Project says that such deterioration is severe.

“The effect of pollution is very serious. It destroys sculptural, structural and painting detail.”
Apart from other causes of deterioration, the Parthenon Marbles have suffered heavily from recent attacks of atmospheric pollution hanging over the Greek capital. The pillars, pediments and lintels remain exposed and continue to deteriorate in Athens’s smog. As a result, acid rain eats away at the marble layers due to the presence of sulphur and nitrogen oxides.

The US Geological Survey confirms that the sculptures receive little rain or rain runoff and seem to be formed by sulfur dioxide uptake, in the presence of moisture, on the stone surface. Subsequent conversion of the sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid results in the formation of a layer of gypsum on the marble surface.

Robin Cook, the former British foreign secretary told the BBC in 2004, “Athens might no longer be a war zone but atmospheric pollution had already caused serious damage to many of the Marbles remaining there.”

In fact, other parts of the Parthenon have already been moved to the New Acropolis Museum in order to preserve and protect them.

Monument reconstructor Konstantinos Boletis emphasises that the corrosion of the Marbles due to air pollution has been limited since the 80s when the Greek government implemented a range of measures to combat the issue: restriction and relocation of industrial activities; restriction of road traffic; extensive pedestrian areas; promotion of public transport and fuel quality improvement for industry and households were the main provisions.

Ian Swindale is a British teacher who in 1997, lead an online student campaign on this subject. He says that the British Museum argument about air pollution is quite obsolete.

“I suspect that the British Museum doesn’t want to return the Parthenon Marbles because it would create a vacuum in the British Museum’s collection of worldwide artefacts,” he said.

Undoubtedly, the case of marbles is more complex than it seems. Based on a recent report about CO2 emissions conducted by Greenpeace, in 2008, the Greek national electricity provider emitted roughly 52 million tons of dioxide. In other words, it exceeded almost 18% of the total accepted limit based on the National Plan of Dioxide Emission, issued after the Kyoto protocol on the confrontation of climate change.

Further research conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) confirms that “although efforts have been made to raise public awareness of environmental issues, lack of familiarity with the concept of sustainable development still constitutes a handicap for policy implementation.” The intensity of air pollution emissions is very high, overall; emissions of SOx, NOx and CO2 per unit of GDP exceed the OECD Europe averages by 100%, 42% and 38%, respectively.

Consequently, the intensity of air pollution emissions is still very high.

“Pollution issue is quite embarrassing considering about the fines Greek Government has to pay in order to save humanity’s cultural heritage,” says Greek journalist Sofia Iordanidou.

Gradually, Greece will observe the emission limits defined by the EU standards. In the meantime, the country has applied to the European Commission to delay compliance with EU air quality limits on this particulate matter from 2005 until mid-2011. Unfortunately, there is no specific plan.

Remarkably, between 1990 and 2006, all member states – except Greece – reported a decrease in emissions.

On the other hand, Swindale’s 1997 student online campaign states, “The Marbles suffered far more damage from their lengthy stay in the heavily polluted and humid atmosphere of London than they would have done if they had stayed in Athens where pollution is only a very decent phenomenon recently.”

Equally, Anna Panayotarea, a professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki claims that there has been no risk of air pollution since the mid 90’s, after the launch of several measures to improve energy efficiency in power generation and industry.

“I believe that the biggest corrosion of the marbles was not due to the polluted air of Athens but when Elgin removed the sculptures. In his effort to take as much as he could, sawing some of the sculptures in half to reduce their weight and ship them easily to England.”

However, as long ago as 1986, during her speech in Oxford Union, then-Greek Minister of Culture Melina Merkouri who was heading up the official international campaign for the return of Parthenon Marbles, confirmed that the Greek Government has never intended on exposing the repatriated piece in the open air.

If the Elgin marble sculptures are returned to Greece, they are to be housed in today’s new Acropolis museum.

Acropolis site supervisor Alexandros Mantis insists on the replacement of 17 original sculpted plaques with replicas because they can no longer endure atmospheric conditions. Mantis insists that keeping the marbles in a safe place will strengthen Greece’s case for the repatriation of the Marbles from London in a brand new and impressive museum which is located some miles away from the Acropolis.

“There can no longer be any question about where or how the marbles should be displayed,” says Eleni Cubitt, secretary of the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles.

Speaking earlier this year at the opening ceremony of new Acropolis museum in Athens, the current Minister of Culture Antonis Samaras said, “The main British argument against was that there was no deserving museum in Greece to house the marbles. Now, this argument is off the table.”

GEJI reporter Sofia Belegrinou prepared this report while on exchange at UTS from Aritstotle University.

The outcome of the COP15 has left much of the world in disappointment, Reportage enviro Danish Correspondent Jeppe Funder reports from Copenhagen.

The COP15 comes to an inconclusive end. Picture: Jeppe Funder.

The COP15 conference is over. The world is left with a non-legally binding agreement and a document full of intentions, but without targets or signatures.

Only late night efforts particularly by Barack Obama and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao lead to an agreement in Copenhagen. But the agreement satisfies nobody, it is not legally binding, it is not signed by all countries and does not have a set CO2 emissions target. The agreement sets the maximum temperature rise to two degrees, but how the goal will be reached is still unclear.

Countries have been left to report back on how much CO2 they are willing to cut with these numbers to be added to the document. Countries are free to sign the agreement or they can choose not to, as their signature has no consequences.

Negotiations went on for over 24 hours before the final ‘Copenhagen Accord‘ was published. According to multiple sources the Chinese Government was one of the main obstacles of a larger agreement, as they refused – and still refuse – to sign an agreement that allows UN inspections to verify actual emission cuts.

The line of dissappointed parties is growing by the hour. The union of developing nations, the G77, accused the Danish Goverment of not being an impartial leader of the negotiations.

“What has happened today confirms what we have suspected all along: That a deal will be pushed through by the United States with the assistance of Denmark,” lead negotiator of the G77 Lumumba Stanislaus De-Aping told reporters at a press conference.

General Secretary of Greenpeace International Kumi Naidoo told Politiken.dk, “we are sending a death sentence to the small island states.”

Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has taken a lot of heat for his negotiation tactics which ultimately didn’t result in a legally binding agreement. Yet he told Berlingske.dk that is still proud of the outcomes of the COP15.

“We’ve made a difference Denmark can be proud of by bringing the world’s decisive negotiations power to the same table. Denmark can’t deliver the results, we can only deliver the frame.”

The frame is now the Copenhagen Accord. Analysts hope that more countries will support the document and another climate meeting in Germany early 2010 will result in more progress. If not, the pressure will be on once again, when the COP16 takes place in Mexico in December 2010.

Elizabeth Pearson reports from London

Gordon Brown sees the Copenhagen accord as a constructive step in fighting climate change. Image: Wikicommons

The watered-down accord reached at the Copenhagen conference is a “vital first step” in a global approach to climate change, Britain’s Prime Minister says.
British prime minister Gordon Brown has been among leaders from 193 countries to spend two weeks in the Danish capital fleshing out a worldwide agreement on tackling global warming.

A last-ditch deal agreed on as negotiations concluded today admitted that “deep cuts in emissions are required” but failed to supply any detailed provisions to achieve this.

Mr Brown told journalists at the UN summit that the accord was a “vital first step” but refused to label it “historic”.

“This has not been an easy summit but I do say that the Copenhagen deal offers hope,” he said.

“This is the first step we are taking towards a green and low carbon future for the world, steps we are taking together. But like all first steps, the steps are difficult.”

World leaders agreed to limit a rise in global temperatures to two degrees celsius but failed to incorporate specific details as to how this would be achieved. The setting of individual emissions targets for 2020 was also postponed to early next year.

Mr Brown had been pushing for the treaty to be made legally binding. This action was, however, erased from the timetable, to the distress of the European Union.
President of the EU Commission Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters, “I will not hide my disappointment regarding the non-binding nature of the agreement here”.

“In that respect, the document falls far short of our expectations.”

The UK’s Energy and Climate change secretary Ed Miliband admitted the conference dubbed ‘Hopenhagen’ had not been as successful as anticipated.

“I don’t think it’s the full agreement we would have wanted. We would have wanted a clearer tract to a legally binding treaty. We’d have wanted more clarity of ambition for 2050,” he said.

“[But] it’s not the final word at all, it’s the end of the beginning. It marks a real sense that developed and developing countries, despite their constraints, want to tackle the problem.”

Final day talks were hijacked by a standoff between the two largest economies over calls by US President Barack Obama for China’s carbon output to be independently monitored.

Executive Director of Greenpeace UK John Sauven said the event was altogether unsatisfactory.

“The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport,” he said.

“It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen.”

Elizabeth Pearson is Reportage-enviro’s London correspondent.

Read other news from the Copenhagen Conference from our correspondents.

The Copenhagen Climate Conference was significant for all, but none as much as the Pacific Islands, whose people will lose their homes, culture and livelihoods in the near future. May Slater reports.

Locals campaign against climate change. Picture: 350.org.

Akka Rimon greets her Sydney audience with a traditional I-Kiribati blessing “Te Mauri, Te Raoiao Te Tabomoa”. It means health, peace and prosperity for all. “This is something that we believe strongly in, something we believe everyone is entitled to,” she says.

Akka is here to tell the story of her changing island home, Kiribati, a string of 33 coral atolls and coconut palms straddling 4000km of the equator. It’s a fitting tale for a forum called ‘The Human Face of Climate Change’, but it’s a story she finds difficult to tell.

“When I was asked to speak here I wasn’t really sure whether I should be excited or sad because these issues are so close to my heart.” Her story, she says, “is about the waves, climbing over the walls, climbing over my island one day.”

In Kiribati, a nation of 110,000 people, ideals of collective health, peace and prosperity are being washed out with the King tides. “We are tiny” Rimon says, “but we’re at the forefront of climate change.”

Rising sea levels, a warmer, more acidic ocean and extreme weather events are making life on the islands untenable. And in response, her people are preparing to leave.

“Maybe we will still be there when our grandchildren grow up but I don’t know what will happen to us after this,” she said.

Scientists estimate they have fifty years before the atolls will properly drown. Akka thinks it’s more like thirty.

But the Islanders are already living out the flooded sci-fi future of Waterworld – just not in the Hollywood spotlights. On Kiribati, climate change is felt acutely, and every day. Water and food – basic to survival – have been affected most severely. As the sea pushes deeper into natural waterways, it is contaminating freshwater supplies and salt-soaking already arid soils.

“Our children collect water every day,” says Rimon. “In their quest, they now have to carry their buckets right into the middle of the island.”

They are also suffering new health problems from exposure to water borne diseases that hitch a ride on warmer currents and fester in stagnant inland pools.

Not much grows here; land is an already limited resource and more fragile plant life cowers in the face of greedy and temperamental tides. Locals depend on imported foods like rice, flour and sugar.

“We have coconuts and bwabwai (taro), what we call papaya, pandanus and breadfruit as our major substitutes,” says Rimon, “but when there’s a delay in a cargo ship arriving, then we’re in trouble.”

But perhaps the most obvious proof of Kiribati’s close fought battle with climate change are the deep scars of coastal erosion.

“Everywhere, you can see damage to the infrastructure, damage to the roads – the rate of our erosion is frightening because it’s faster than our capacity to repair the damage, to re-build homes and sea walls” says Rimon. “It’s amazing how nature is fighting back.”

The damage and the uncertainty are not unique to Kiribati. Dr Sarah Park, from the CSIRO Climate Change Adaptation program says “all countries in the Asia Pacific Region are vulnerable”. And that includes The Torres Straight Islands. Last year, Dr Park met with Pacific representatives in Fiji as part of an AusAid funded project to assess the impacts of climate change.

“Extreme events like the tsunamis we saw in Samoa will be more frequent and more severe,” she says. “Warmer water temperatures will increase the likelihood of cyclones and storms, which will especially affect the low-lying islands like Kiribati and Tuvalu.”

Park’s research aims to inform future adaptation strategies; improving food security, water management and access to health and education. She says migration, as a way of coping, is an extreme last resort. But the prospect is fast becoming a reality for many.

Cam Walker, National Climate Change Officer at non-profit organisation Friends of the Earth, says climate displacement in the Pacific region is happening, and the numbers of people fleeing their homelands will continue to grow.

“Compared to the rest of the world, numerically, it is not as big an issue as it’s going to be for other regions, particularly Africa and mainland Asia, but it’s going to be significant.”

Unfortunately, these real life refugees from the rising seas will not have a Kevin Costner raft to help them sail off in search of Dryland.

In April this year, The Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea became the first people in the world to officially relocate for environmental reasons. When whole communities began the move to mainland Bougainville, experts and activists dubbed them the world’s first ‘Climate Change Refugees’.

“In the Carterets” says Walker, “global warming has actually led to the collapse of the local food security. Rising sea levels matched with storm surges are impacting their food growing areas, their gardens – which means they’re dropping into malnutrition.” There was no alternative but to leave.

Other vulnerable Asian and Pacific nations are bracing themselves in similar ways against the creeping tides, unprecedented droughts and increasingly severe weather events. Like Papua New Guinea, the governments of Kiribati, Tuvalu and The Maldives are supporting their people to relocate.

Rimon says Kiribati’s long-term strategy is to upskill its people; putting training programs in place so that when the time comes to jump ship, they’ll be ready and able to swim with the best in the global economy.

“The government is trying to empower people to believe they can make a good life of themselves, wherever they are in the world,” she says.

Kiribati has already set up a number of skill building partnerships and labour mobility schemes with Australia and New Zealand. In one such program, about sixty young people are traveling each year to Australia to train under the Kiribati Australia Nursing Initiative. Another, The Pacific Access Scheme, allows Islanders to work in New Zealand for an extended temporary period. Rimon herself, who works in the Kiribati public service, is at Sydney University this year on an AusAid Leadership Award Scholarship, completing a Master of Public Administration.

“We want to migrate, not as second class citizens, but as skillful people, as worthwhile citizens,” she says. “We don’t want to be refugees of our own country and we don’t want to be a burden on other countries.”

More immediately, she believes what’s needed is a better understanding of climate change; of the small things individuals can do to slow the impact and adapt to the changes happening around them. Rimon says that while most I-Kiribati now jump at any chance to get out, there are others who don’t believe global warming is actually happening.

“We are strong Christians, some people believe these changes are happening because we have sinned, it’s God’s will. But most I-Kiribati believe in God’s rainbow promise to Noah that there will never be another flood,” she says.

Her concern is that there will be a second flood, and when it strikes, people need to know what to do. “Maybe the government should at least give out lifejackets to every household,” she suggests grimly.

A 2001 World Disasters Report by The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies revealed that more people in the world are now forced to leave their homes because of environmental disasters than war. By 2050, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that there will be 150 million environmental refugees worldwide.

How will Australia respond to a humanitarian catastrophe of such scale on our doorstep? Bill Clinton raised the question during a visit to Australia in 2001. It was the time of the Tampa affair, when the Howard government refused a Norwegian freighter carrying 438 rescued asylum seekers from entering Australian waters.

“If you’re worried about 400 people” he told Australians at a charity dinner, “you just let the world keep warming up like this for the next fifty years and your grandchildren will be worried about 400,000 people.” The number of displaced from the island states alone, is predicted to be more like one million.

Australia is one of the driest places on earth, with gasping riverbeds, a bleaching barrier reef and crumbling coastlines of our own. We’re currently turning asylum seekers away by the boatload, literally. But as the world’s largest per-capita greenhouse polluter, there is the notion that we have a responsibility to support our Pacific mates bearing the brunt of the effects of global warming.

Margaret Duckett, CEO of the Australian Foundation for the Peoples of Asia and the Pacific, thinks we definitely do.

“The proportion of carbon emissions from those 8 million people that make up all Pacific Island countries is three quarters of one percent of global emissions” she says. “Their contribution is miniscule, but they’re the ones suffering the most.”

Cam Walker says the Australian Government recognises climate displacement is happening but is reluctant to act ‘prematurely’. They say they have to wait for Pacific Island nations to ask for help with relocation, and that at present, they are not doing so. “And we say, ‘Well that’s like saying you don’t call the ambulance until the truck hits the wall!”

Last week at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, Tuvalu, Kiribati and other members of the Alliance of Small Island States lobbied hard for deeper emissions cuts and a new treaty to cap global temperatures at 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, as opposed to the 2 degrees being pushed by the big polluters.

But the government of Tuvalu has also asked for more immediate assistance from its wealthier neighbours.

“A number of the Pacific Island countries want to be set up and accepted as autonomous states within Australia or New Zealand” says Duckett. “They also want it acknowledged that they will retain ownership of the sea waters around where their countries used to be so that they maintain an economic base. Otherwise they, and their cultures, will disappear.”

Duckett says previous appeals for Australia and New Zealand to take the people of Tuvalu in as a whole community have fallen on deaf ears.

Paul Power, CEO of the Australian Council for Refugees, says current refugee solutions are not appropriate, and in fact, The Refugee Convention is under more pressure than it can bear.

“We need to be prepared for significant climate displacement and we need to find new mechanisms to respond to displacement on a much larger scale,” he says. “Here we have the opportunity to plan long term – It would be a great shame if our collective thinking about movements of people in the future isn’t lifted above and beyond the current way of thinking and responding to crisis situations.”

In October, in an attempt to raise awareness of their country’s plight, leaders of The Maldives pulled on wetsuits and scuba tanks to hold an underwater global warming meeting. The flippers of President Mohamed Nasheed and his 13 cabinet members came to rest, 10 metres below the surface, under office desks on the sandy ocean floor. With hand signals and water-proof whiteboards, they drafted an appeal to all countries to dramatically cut their emissions before the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference. The Maldives are the lowest lying country in the world; 20 of its islands have been evacuated in the last 15 years because of rising seas and devastating tsunamis.

‘I don’t know what works’ says Margaret Duckett of the dramatic publicity stunt, ‘but it is important to try and get some understanding, to inspire action. Not enough people are really aware of what’s happening.’

Many, including Akka Rimon, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, delegates of this year’s Pacific Islands Forum in Cairns and members of the Alliance of Small Island States in Copenhagen agree; the only policy to minimize the pain of a climate displacement crisis is a sharp reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, globally.

“It’s hard to think we’ll be victims of what other people are doing,” says Rimon. “Now our work is to yell to the world, to our big brothers and sisters, that we don’t have any time left.”

Does she believe migration is inevitable for her people? Rimon laughs and launches into another personal story. “Let me tell you what happened when two earthquakes struck Vanuatu just a few weeks ago” she says. “It was so close to home. We had tremors and alerts, Government offices were closed. In the news we hear of people in Vanuatu running to the mountains, to the highlands. But we in Kiribati have no place to run…which is really not a joke at all!”

Rimon spoke to her brothers back home. “I asked them; ‘So what are you doing?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, the stadium is filling up with children’. This is what the panic was like; everyone trying to get their children up on the stadium, to higher ground. And I’m wondering; how helpless is this?”

What she does know is that her people want to remain in Kiribati for as long as they can. “We look forward to the outcome of Copenhagen to assure ourselves we still have hope,” she says. “But at the end of our story, our islands will be submerged one day.”

It’s a reality that lends a galvanizing perspective to the notion of a climate change debate.

“For us” says Rimon, “Climate change is an issue concerning our basic rights to a happy, healthy quality of life. It is a threat to our very existence.”

“Te Mauri, Te Raoiao Te Tabomoa.”

May Slater is a postgraduate Journalism student from The University of Technology, Sydney.

Read about COP15 from our foreign correspondents.

By Calliste Weitenberg

A native Fimbriate Gudgeon (Oxyeleotris fimbriata) and Sooty Grunter (Hephaestus adamsoni) found dead at Yakerabo Creek in July 2007. Image: Kutubu Villagers.

A crucial scientific report has not been included in the environmental impact assessment of a new $16 billion gas project in Papua New Guinea, which received the final green-light from co-venturers last week.

The confidential report compiled by a global wetlands organisation for the World Wildlife Fund Australia (WWF) confirms evidence of acute pollution and a dramatic decline in the health of the internationally protected site, Lake Kutubu.

Crossing a section of its northern catchment area, the ‘PNG LNG’ project will run a 284 km gas pipeline near to the lake, already the site of major environmental degradation at the hands of mining development according to local villagers who live there.

Conducted by Wetlands International, the Rapid Ecological Health Assessment of the Lake Kutubu Ramsar Site, obtained by Reportage, confirms toxic levels of barium and lead in fish samples taken from the lake, as well as a dramatic decline in its unique fish stocks and exceptional water clarity.

“The ecological character of Lake Kutubu has changed markedly in the last ten years,” states the report.

“This is most clearly illustrated by an approximate 37% decline in density of fishes at four metres depth during this period, along with a declining size structure.

“There also appears to be a roughly 50% decline in water clarity in the lake over the last 17 years…”

The report raises concerns about the effects of oil mining that began at the lake in 1990. In recent years the oil mining has been conducted by Australian mining company Oil Search Ltd, a partner in the PNG LNG project.

Conducted over four days in October 2007, the Wetlands International report was commissioned following complaints by villagers about an acute pollution incident in June and July of that year which coincided with nearby drilling activities by Oil Search Ltd.

The lake is a designated “Wetland of International Significance” protected under the Ramsar Convention for its unique biodiversity and ecological significance, most notably for its pristine water and high level of rare fish endemic to the site.

This week, the Ramsar Secretariat said they were still investigating the 2007 pollution incident and the new joint Oil Search – Exxon Mobil – Santos PNG LNG project. It was signed off by all parties at a ceremony at the Papua New Guinea National Parliament House last week, but $US43 million in early works construction began in August.

Another Fimbriate Gudgeon found dead at Yakerabo Creek. Image: Kutubu Villagers.

One shellfish showed barium at 65 times the standard, selenium at 33 times the standard and arsenic at 30 times the standard.

Heavy metals in surface water samples collected in October by the report’s author, Aaron Jenkins, were within the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard for drinking water.

However, samples taken at the time of pollution in 2007 provided by villagers at Gese and Yakerabo – sites closest to an Oil Search well during the contamination event – were found to contain barium in concentrations of 36 mg/L, fifty-one times the WHO safe drinking water standard. Lead was found at 0.13 mg/L, thirteen times the standard.

During this pollution incident, villagers said the lake changed colour. Connected creeks discharged unnaturally yellow-brown coloured water, detergent-like bubbles floated on the surface and fish also died.

In statements recorded at the time of the pollution, villagers told of explosive vomiting and diarrhoea as well as skin and eye irritation after swimming in the water or eating fish and drinking from the lake and connected catchment areas.

One local girl is reported to have experienced extreme vomiting and died two days after eating freshwater perch from a heavily polluted part of the lake.

In the Wetlands International report, author Aaron Jenkins urges further investigations into the deterioration.

“Evidence of acute environmental pollution and associated human health problems at Lake Kutubu give very strong support to recommending further investigations on both the extent of these phenomenon, and to ensuring that actions are taken to fully address these problems,” he concludes.

WWF inaction

Finished in December 2007, the Rapid Ecological Health Assessment has not been released by WWF Australia.

Its findings – which are among the most recent for the lake – have not been assessed in the PNG LNG project’s Environmental Impact Assessment, raising new concerns over the extent and accuracy of the project’s future impacts on the lake.

Neither WWF or Oil Search have carried out any further scientific investigations into the pollution of the lake, despite its strong suggestions for follow-up investigations.

In correspondence to Friends of Lake Kutubu, an Australian group representing the local Kutubu villagers, the International Program Development Manager at WWF Australia, Peter Ramshaw, said the report’s recommendations and any further water testing were “not within WWF’s remit”.

“Aaron’s report contains a series of recommendations, these are not within WWF’s remit, it is now up to the appropriate authorities to take up their own responsibilities,” he said.

“Again, [water monitoring] is not part of WWF’s remit and we have not been engaged to carry out any monitoring of the water quality nor do we have the expertise to do so.

“The responsibility for this lies initially with the Government of PNG’s Department of Environment and Conservation and thereafter with [Oil Search Limited] if it is demonstrated that their responsibility was engaged,” he said.

WWF is funded by Oil Search Ltd to conduct conservation projects in the area, called the Kikori Integrated Conservation and Development Project.

First established under Chevron Niugini in 1994 and continued by Oil Search Ltd after its take-over in 2003, this funding arrangement is currently in its fifth phase of the partnership which began in 1993.

WWF Australia, its PNG offices and Oil Search Ltd have not answered questions about how much this arrangement is worth.

No annual reports by Oil Search Ltd or WWF declare the funding amounts, despite listing the project among their environmental initiatives.

WWF Australia has also ignored its own peer review of the report by an external applied ecologist who found the Wetlands International assessment to be “well written and balanced” and its conclusions both “conservative” and “sensible”.

While noting that the samples were small and there was a lack of overall statistical data, this peer review especially supported recommendations for further investigation, also calling for “a sustained and rigorous monitoring program” of the lake.

Wetlands International Oceania – who compiled the report for WWF – says it stands by the report and that it is a valid preliminary assessment of the lake’s health, despite its ‘snapshot’ analysis of data collected across a four-day period.

An introduced carp (Cyprinus carpio). Image: Kutubu Villagers.

Doug Watkins, Manager of Wetlands International Oceania, agrees follow up investigations into these findings should have been by conducted by WWF to form comparative, statistically significant data.

“The work that we did was over a short period of time, it was a very preliminary assessment. I would have liked to have seen in the period afterwards a quick follow up into the findings,” he said.

No further studies or investigations have been done by WWF Australia in PNG.

In November, Reportage revealed WWF Australia did not alert the Ramsar Convention to the report or original evidence of pollution, despite it being party to an international wetlands protection agreement.

Wetlands International Oceania, which is also an official partner of the Ramsar Convention, said it was unable to pass on the report to the convention’s international body due to its confidentiality agreement with WWF Australia.

Pollution links

Further concerns are raised by the report over potential links between the mining activities of Oil Search Ltd within the area, the high heavy metal counts in both the lake’s water and fish stocks and the reports of illnesses by local villagers.

None of these have ever been fully investigated.

The Rapid Ecological Health Assessment finds the symptoms suffered by villagers after eating or drinking from the lake are synonymous with the effects of barium poisoning. Barium is a compound used to drill oil and gas wells.

“The symptoms described by villagers, particularly in the vicinity of Gese and Yakerabo and around the time of the alleged event, of explosive vomiting and diarrhoea are consistent with the effects of acute toxicity of barium, a major component of drilling mud,” it says.

Symptoms of major skin and eye irritation and the descriptions of detergent like bubbles on the contaminated water are also found by the report to be consistent with the health and environment effects of drilling foam.

The potential for underground chemical seepage through the easily eroded limestone geology of Lake Kutubu from Oil Search Ltd’s Kutubu 2 drill site and surface mud pits – which store and treat the toxic run off during drilling – has not fully been investigated.

Both the well and its drilling fluid settlement ponds (which store the chemical run-off from the well during drilling) were situated within the lake’s catchment boundaries and also within a major groundwater recharge zone for Lake Kutubu.

No investigations by Oil Search Ltd have been conducted into specific surface and groundwater pathways in this landscape and it maintains it was not the cause of the pollution.

A statement issued to Reportage by Peter Botten, Executive Director of Oil Search Ltd, said two independent reviews – one conducted by the DEC and the other by WWF (the Rapid Ecological Health Assessment) – cleared its operations of any link to the pollution.

“Both found no evidence of a causal link between our drilling operation and the events at the lake,” it states.

“Toxicity tests carried out on mud chemicals used in the drilling process indicated that, even in undiluted form, they had effectively no toxicity.”

“While there was turbidity observed in the tributaries that were sampled, all measurements were well within WHO water quality standards,” it states.

Oil Search Ltd said it responded immediately to villager reports of toxic pollution by shutting down drilling operations to investigate potential linkages to its operations.

“None could be established and at no time was the well considered to be unstable,” it said.

Drilling reports for the Kutubu 2 well obtained by Reportage from the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and lodged by Oil Search Ltd reveal the well was considered unstable.

Lodged reports from March 15 to June 25 2007 show the well was plagued by “ongoing losses” which slowed weekly drilling progress to a mere three metres by week six and prevented any drilling altogether in weeks nine, twelve and thirteen of the operation.

By week fifteen, a final drilling report issued by Oil Search Ltd to the ASX stated, “due to the instability of the Kutubu 2 hole, it has been decided to plug and abandon the well.”

Note:

If you would like to contact Calliste Weitenberg with further information, please email calli.weitenberg@gmail.com

The COP15 negotiations are entering their final stages, but space is limited so NGOs are being forced out as heads of states arrive in big numbers. Jeppe Funder & Rune Langhoff report.

The Bella Centre's capacity is forced to the limits as heads of state arrive. Picture: Jeppe Funder.

Californian ‘governator’ Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the building at the COP15 as leaders of the big nations are starting to arrive. President of the European Union Commission José Manuel Barroso has arrived, China’s premier is expected on the 17th and Obama is scheduled to arrive on the 18th.

But with the new arrivals, the Bella Centre’s maximum capacity of 15,000 people is being streched above and beyond its limits, as 45,000 people have applied for permission to attend the conference.

This has lead to the NGOs at the conference being removed from the conference. They have – until now – had complete access to the venue to promote their messages. But as of Wednesday some of the NGO-workers won’t set foot inside the Bella Center again as more than 80 per cent of some NGO personnel are denied access, because delegates are arriving in big numbers.

“More and more of us are being excluded with numbers increasing each day and only 20 per cent of the organisation have access now,” said Emily Mulligan, 350.org Australian Policy Advisor. She explains that the exclusions have led the movement to unite further and to spread its efforts outside of offical UNFCCC frameworks.

“It is interesting that so many NGO delegates were accredited and made the effort to come to Copenhagen freezing to f***ing death, when at the crucial last moments the UN saw fit to simply remove us from the process,” said Mulligan. She added, “Other interests are over represented within the Bella Centre, whereas it seems that those argueing on behalf of the science and our environment are excluded from the process.”

A total of 3,500 journalists are now accredited, and according to the UN no more accreditations for media personel will be issued.

According to the newest press release from the UNFCCC the Danish Government and NGO network, People’s Climate Action, are organising an alternative venue for the NGO-workers denied entry to the Bella Center. This will be held at the Forum Copenhagen near Copenhagen’s city center.

“Many NGOs have simply lost faith in the official channels; the UNFCCC is providing a live stream of events, but often times a twitter feed provides more diverse and up to date information,” said Mulligan.

The entrance to the Bella Center has been under massive pressure for the last three days. As there is only one entrance for all NGOs, press, and non-VIP delegates, and because the accreditation process has been slow, waiting periods of 3-4 hours and as high as 7 hours have been business as usual.

Negotiations inside the venue are moving ahead with the heads of state in attendance. With just two days left, the lead negotiator, COP15-Minister Connie Hedegaard, has officially stepped down and has been replaced by Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen as negotiations enter the ‘high level’ phase. However, Hedegaard has been appointed special advisor and will still be leading the behind-the-curtain talks with big CO2 players such as the US, India, and the G77, representing developing countries and China.

Danish police are maximising their use of the new protest package of laws, arresting over 1000 COP15 protesters in the past week, writes Jeppe Funder.

Protesters light fireworks on their way to the Bella Centre. Picture: Jeppe Funder.

One week into the COP15 and protesters are taking to the streets of Copenhagen. Police are using the recently passed protest package laws to the full, having detained more than 1,000 protesters for up to 12 hours and charging only six of these.

Hundreds of protesters under arrest were forced to sit on the cold ground for up to five hours before being taken to the special detention cages on the outskirts of Copenhagen.

By far the largest protest of the COP15 took place on Saturday, where up to 100,000 people were involved. The huge crowd started out at the Danish Parliament and was en-route to the Bella Center, where COP15 is taking place, when police made their presence known by arresting between 3,400 protesters in a pincer movement at the back of the demonstration.

According to the police the arrests were made because some of the protesters from the so-called ‘black block’ began throwing bottles and stones at police and buildings along the way.

“This particular group had earlier been throwing stones and fireworks, just as windows had been crushed in respective buildings of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Børsen,” the police stated.

Reports from the police also included protesters attempting to set cars on fire.

Detained protesters had their hands tied with plastic strips and were made to sit in the streets for up to 4 hours. This has been widely critisised and the police have apologised, saying that they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of arrests and were not able to transport the protesters to the custom-built detention cages.

In a press release, they noted, “Copenhagen Police will evaluate if there is an opportunity for a faster way of transporting detainees away from the scene in the future.”

The largest portion of the protesters walked along the route to the Bella Center passing by heavily guarded McDonalds and KFC restaurants while chanting, singing and dancing in the cold Danish winter. NGOs such as Greenpeace and 350.org and Danish parties as Socialistisk Folkeparti were represented at the protest.

According to police, protesters from more than 20 different countries have been detained. If any of these are charged with active protesting or disturbing the public peace, they risk deportation.

Danish progressive website Modkraft.dk states that more than 600 people are sending complaints to the police about their arrest.

Amnesty International have critisised police action during the protests.

“The number of arrests is totally out of proportion and innocent protesters utilising their freedom of speach and freedom to protest have been arrested,” said General Secretary Lars Normann Jørgensen.

Danish newspaper Politiken reports that a number of arrested protesters will take the mass-arrests to court. This will put the protest package to the test before judges and decide when the police are allowed to mass-detain people during a protest.

Several protests are scheduled in the coming days.