Hikmat Suriatanwijaya is a media campaigner at Greenpeace's Climate Defenders Camp in Indonesia.

No flashlights. No red carpets. Don’t talk about fancy five-star hotel because here we don’t even have a proper toilet.
 
But Inglourious Basterds superstar Mélanie Laurent seems like she's really enjoying life at Greenpeace's Climate Defenders Camp, in the heart of Indonesia's tropical forest, Semenanjung Kampar, Riau Province.


Oct. 30, 2009 - Mélanie Laurent, who stars in Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie ‘Inglourious Basterds’, in the Indonesian Rainforest with Greenpeace speaking out against forest destruction and climate change in the lead up to the UN Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009. ©Will Rose/Greenpeace
 
“I miss my comfortable bed, though. But I really am enjoying my stay here,” said Mélanie in the middle of a sunny morning conversation.
 
We had just finished breakfast. Everyone was gathering in the main area of the camp. Not luxurious but we've got everything that we need: Coffee, milk, bread, fried rice, and friends.
 
About twenty activists were preparing their gear for the damming activity. They were willing and ready to pull another hard and tiring day of work. Mlanie had already prepared for the trip to Kerumutan Conservation Area to see the beauty of the untouched peatland forest on this beautiful Sunday morning.
 
Kerumutan is two hours by boat. I am sure Mélanie will enjoy the surroundings. But mother nature's beauty is not always the scenery for her trip to Sumatra. Mélanie has been on this Greenpeace trip since last Friday, and she has witnessed a lot of horrible forest destruction.
 
On our way to Kampar Peninsula last Friday, we stopped at Pangkalan Bunut, at PT, the Arara Abadi concession area. Mélanie was just stunned seeing the massive peatland forest being destroyed by canals and being burned for land clearing.
 
“It’s horrible. I am really sad to see how this once beautiful forest now more looks like a war zone,” she said. She couldn’t stop capturing this massive destruction with her digital camera.
 
Mélanie understands that forests are the lungs of the world and shouldn’t be destroyed like that. The 26 year old actress wants that to stop, and she knows that Greenpeace's Climate Defenders Camp is here to stop deforestation.
 
“I am impressed with all of Greenpeace's efforts here. What makes me more impressed is the spirit, I’ve visited the dam-building activity and see everyone working really hard. But I’ve never seen anyone looking down, everyone was working with passion and the spirit is high.”
 
Through the sparks in her beautiful eyes I can see that she really meant what she said. And I believe when she said she really likes the life at the camp. Blistering heat, bugs and mosquitos can not keep her from enjoying herself. For the past two days Mélanie has mixed with all the activists and local communities at the camp. Having lunch and dinner together, sharing the beautiful scenery of Kampar River, even hanging out and singing together during night time.
 
“In this camp, everyone treated everybody with respect. I am glad everybody treated me the same, not as an actress. Without flashlights and public attention, I can really enjoy myself here,” Mélanie smiled.
 
No flashlights and no red carpet for Mélanie. Just a lot of friends who share the common interest and objective: to stop deforestation!

-Hikmat

Karli is the lead campaigner onboard the Esperanza for the Defending Our Pacific tour.

Last week, we found no less than four Taiwanese fishing vessels on the high seas in the space of just three days. We took action against two of them (Mike wrote about those vessels and the actions we did in this post). Though this makes it seem as if these vessels and their crews are our adversaries in the fight to save the Pacific tuna stocks and close the four high seas pockets to all fishing, that is not the case. We were not there to try and tell these captains what to do, but rather to give them the information their employers might not be giving him, to appeal to their sense of morality, and to ask them to stop plundering the Pacific.


Greenpeace activists ask the captain of the Ming Jhy Fwu No. 16 to haul in his long-line after giving him information about our campaign and the state of Pacific fisheries. © Paul Hilton/Greenpeace

What we do oppose is the corporations they work for, which are colluding with the Taiwanese government – just as so many other corporations are colluding with governments around the world – to trap them and their crews into economic circumstances that only benefit the corporation, while also blatantly disregarding the plight of Pacific fisheries and the theft of fish right out of Pacific islanders’ waters.

Our adversaries are also governments, like that of Taiwan, that continue to ignore the warnings of scientists about Pacific fish stocks and instead allow new fishing vessels to be built and sent out to chase after fewer and fewer fish. One of the ships we encountered last week, the Ming Jhy Fwu No. 16, was just built in 2006 – at a time when we were already aware that overfishing in the Pacific was having dire consequences.

The captain of the Ming Jhy Fwu No. 16 seemed like a thoughtful guy. As Mike described, he sat right down and read the campaign literature we gave him with genuine interest. We are not against this captain or his crew. If anything, we have total sympathy for him and are glad to be on his side.

By allowing this vessel, and many, many others like it, to leave the ship-building yards and join the already bloated fleet in the Pacific, countries like Taiwan are locking their own fishing industry – and people like the captain of the Ming Jhy Fwu No. 16 – into a vicious cycle whereby they must fish to make a return on what they have invested in their fishing ship and gear. If governments do not take responsibility, the fishing industry will simply fish itself to death.

Though Taiwan has reduced its fishing capacity in the past years, they still build more vessels and then simply get them flagged under foreign nations. But it's usually still owned by the same owners. The fishing industry is always trying to find and exploit loopholes to avoid national, regional and international regulations. This irresponsible behavior on the part of the fishing industry compromises Taiwan's efforts.

The Taiwanese government and the regional fisheries management organization have to take a much stricter stand on the continued introduction of new capacity into the region and drastically reduce the masses of overcapacity of the fleets that currently exists.

It’s not just Taiwan that has such recent additions to its fleets. In fact, you might recall that on the first leg of the tour we exposed a refueling operation involving a brand new “super-seiner,” a massive fishing vessel with nets large enough to encircle whole schools of tuna and all the other marine life that is swimming with them. That ship, the American Legacy, only left the shipyard for its maiden voyage in 2008.

This is a cycle that we need to break, and this year is going to be a deciding moment for the Pacific. Through the Defending Our Pacific expedition, Greenpeace has again provided evidence that fishing in the high seas is undermining management and threatening the Pacific. We’ve also demonstrated that transshipment by long-line vessels and the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs) by purse seiners are enabling the plunder of marine life.

It’s time for those countries that want a future for their fishing fleets to stand up and be counted alongside the Pacific island countries in their call for the high seas to be closed to fishing.

- Karli

Four courageous, inspirational women from around the world are in New York right now to urge President Obama and heads of state from over 100 countries to take action against climate change. These women have either lost their homes, jobs or food supply to flooding, droughts and other disasters. But they are taking action to rebuild their lives and they are now speaking out for their communities - their family. They are from Mississippi, Uganda, Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands in the Pacific. In facing incredibly desperate situations - all of them have developed a strong voice for action climate change.

 

 

Mary Ann Mayo was the webbie onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza during the first leg of the Defending Our Pacific 2009 tour.

The last refuge of the last relatively healthy stocks of tuna is found right here in the Pacific. Scientists have been warning for years that the fishing pressure on Pacific tuna must be reduced, yet the Taiwanese-owned, American-flagged super-seiner the American Legacy left the shipyard in Taiwan only last year. Amidst warnings of overfishing and calls for restraint, this brand new super-seiner joined the already vast number of fishing vessels out at sea that are chasing fewer and fewer fish.


© Greenpeace/Paul Hilton

The number 8 in the Chinese culture is considered a lucky number, as the word for eight sounds similar to the word for "prosper" or "wealth." I am pretty sure the Chen family, which owns a network of Taiwanese companies, had this in mind when they included the triple 8 in the name of their fuel tanker, the MV Fong Seong 888. Good fortune and prosperity. However, the ship's high seas activities mean bad fortune and poverty for Pacific nations.

The MV Fong Seong 888 was refueling the purse seiner American Legacy in the high seas, near the waters of Kiribati, when we found them.


© Greenpeace/Paul Hilton

The ownership of both vessels links back to the Chen family. Even though these two ships share an owner, they fly under two different flags: the Fong Seong 888 is flagged to Panama while the American Legacy is a US-flagged purse seiner.

Strange to hear, you might say, that these Taiwanese-owned ships are using another country’s flag? The practice of using or flying the flag of another country other than the country of ownership is what is known as ‘flags of convenience’ (FOC). This is done for many different reasons, including cheap registration fees, low or almost no taxes, and the freedom to employ cheap labor. But to the fishing industry, flying flags of convenience also makes it possible to artificially increase the fishing quota from what is assigned to individual nations. And what does this mean? They can fish more than they would be allowed to if they flew the flag of their real country.

Under an agreement called the US Treaty, the United States is entitled to fish in the waters of 16 Pacific nations with up to 40 purse seine vessels. In recent years, the country has had fewer boats than that, but new vessels are being added, flying the US flag even though they're linked to a major shipbuilding and fishing conglomerate in Taiwan. Fresh from the biggest shipyard in Taiwan and flying the flag of the country with the greatest access to Pacific tuna resources comes the American Legacy. What hope do the tuna have with an alliance like that pitched against them?

Now let’s turn to the Fong Seong 888, one of many tankers operating in the Pacific. These tankers, along with the refrigerated “reefer” vessels that transfer fish, enable fishing fleets to stay at sea for extended periods. Without having to come into port to refuel, take on supplies, and land the fish they have caught, it is much more difficult for authorities to monitor tuna catches in the region. These supply vessels open a gateway for illegally caught fish to leave the region untraced – they are literally fueling and fostering the continued plundering of tuna from the Pacific.

To show our protest for this shameful practice, our Greenpeace activists painted "Fueling Plunder" and "Tuna Plunder" on the hull of the MV Fong Seong 888. It was one of the fastest ship painting actions I have ever seen! And with good cause: having already finished their refueling, we barely had time to paint the campaign message when the purse seiner, MV American Legacy, broke away from the starboard side of Fong Seong 888, and headed away at speed.


© Greenpeace/Paul Hilton

Maybe they were afraid we would "dirty" the fresh new paint on their hull. They should be worried that they're onboard a brand new industrial fishing vessel, which has added to the bloated fishing capacity in the region even though scientists are warning of overfishing and countries are agreeing to show restraint.

As I look back at the 3 weeks we have been here in the international waters of the Western Pacific, we have come across FADs, documented an illegal transshipment at sea, confiscated longlines and escorted several vessels out of the high seas (read all about it here). This latest deplorable activity - a brand new fishing vessel being refueled at sea - was perfectly legal, yet illustrates the problem of countries building yet more ships when there are already too many. It also raises the issue of flag state responsibility, and the curse of refueling and transshipment at sea. It is amazing just how many loopholes these companies find through which to carry out their operations. If only the fishing nets were this full of loopholes – I doubt that a single tuna would be caught!

With all the resources at their disposal and the capacity to circumvent, exploit and abuse bans and treaties, what will it take to stop these distant fishing nations from robbing the Pacific nations of their own resource?

While our activists painted the hull of the Fong Seong 888, I was watching all the activity from the bridge. As the purse seiner American Legacy broke away, the horizon where she was headed was dark with rain clouds, while amazingly at the stern of the Esperanza, the sun was shining at its brightest! In my mind’s eye I could see the two roads that the Pacific fisheries are facing at the moment: one heading towards a dark future of the continued plunder of the Pacific until this ocean is fished to death, while the other holds a bright future of a healthy and sustainable tuna fisheries.

Which road will the world take?

And America, which would you like to see as your “Legacy” for the Pacific?

-Mary Ann

Greenpeace activists have already made the point by occupying a Shell tar sands mine in Alberta that "climate leaders don't buy tar sands."

Because Canada is America's largest supplier of oil, the elephant in the Oval Office, when Harper and Obama met at the White House in Washington on September 16th, was Alberta's tar sands.

The tar sands are the reason that Canada has become the largest single national supplier of oil to the United States – exceeding Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria.  The tar sands are Canada's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions... production of synthetic crude oil from tar sands results in three to five times more greenhouse gas than conventional crude.

In parliament on September 15th, Stephen Harper said that he is committed to "clean development" of the tar sands, but the reality is that there is no such thing – the tar sands produce the world’s dirtiest oil.

The official statement from Harper/Obama meeting contained no mention of tar sands; no mention of caps on greenhouse gas emission reductions for the medium-term (2020); and no indication of any progress on national or international emissions trading programs. Yet they had the temerity to say “they reiterated the urgency of taking aggressive action to combat climate change”.

The only justification for any mention of climate and energy was the release of a document entitled: “US-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue Action Plan” [PDF].

This document claims that "The United States and Canada have announced ambitious emissions reduction goals for 2050..." That’s simply not true. The Canadian target for 2050 is only 50 to 60 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050. Scientists have called for a minimum reduction 80 per cent by industrial countries, and as close to zero as possible.

The Harper government's target for 2020 is only 3 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. The KYOTOplus Campaign, supported by Greenpeace and more than 80 other Canadian organizations, calls for a minimum reduction of 25 per cent.

The main thrust of the so-called “Action Plan” is the promotion of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The oil and gas industry touts CCS as the silver bullet solution to the massive greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands and from coal-fired electricity. There are only four test sites in the entire world that are actually sequestering carbon dioxide underground. Aside from numerous technical and environmental problems, we can be sure of only one thing — CCS is prohibitively expensive and can only be realized with massive government subsidies... therefore the Clean Energy Dialog!

By pushing Carbon Capture and Storage, the Clean Energy Dialogue is only putting a fig leaf over the huge environmental impacts of the tar sands. It will ultimately be too expensive and come too late to make a serious impact on the climate crisis. Worse, the huge expenditures on the CCS will prevent investment in the truly effective solutions for global warming – renewable energy and energy efficiency. The Alberta government has already committed about $2 billion in provincial taxpayer subsidies to CCS, and the Harper government has committed about $1 billion... of OUR money.

The bottom line is that the Harper government has refused to take the climate crisis seriously. The fate of the earth is going to be decided at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. It’s time to get serious.

Dave Martin is the Climate and Energy Coordinator for Greenpeace Canada