Green leaders and environmental groups in Australia have added their voices to an outpouring of anger over this week’s progress of the huge Trans Pacific Partnership – a trade deal encompassing a dozen countries that, if ratified, will set economic rules for 40 per cent of the world economy. As Climate Progress reports, the TPP …
Wikileaks released the environment and investment chapters of the TPP earlier in 2014. Instead of a 21st Century standard of protection, the leaked text shows that the obligations are weak and compliance with them is unenforceable. These chapters do the bidding of multinationals. The investment chapter is written in their favour and the environmental clauses …
After years of meetings, months of Congressional debates, and days of around-the-clock negotiations, the United States and 11 other countries reached an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Trade agreement (TPP) on Monday. If adopted, the TPP will eliminate or reduce tariffs between Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United …
Climate change mitigation benefits from the land sector are not being fully realised because of uncertainty and controversy about the role of native forest management. The dominant policy view, as stated in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, is that sustainable forest harvesting yielding wood products, generates the largest mitigation benefit. We demonstrate that changing native …
NEW YORK – As negotiators and ministers from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries meet in Atlanta in an effort to finalize the details of the sweeping new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), some sober analysis is warranted. The biggest regional trade and investment agreement in history is not what it seems. You will …
Ernest Gordon Mainka 1954 – 2014. The nature conservation and photography communities were saddened to hear of the death of the photographer Ern Mainka. Ern learned his skill as a photographer whilst working for Telecom (before it became Telstra) and his overriding love of the natural world led to him taking a redundancy package in …
Jill Redwood is a long-time environmental campaigner and the coordinator of Environment East Gippsland, the longest running community group working solely for the protection of Victoria’s last and largest area of ancient forest and surrounding natural environment. For over three decades, Jill has been a campaign stalwart for the protection of East Gippsland forests and …
This new government report details the ecosystem services provided by the states parks and reserves. It includes the water and carbon values, biodiversity protection, recreational benefits and employment, and loads more. If this is what a small section of Victoria’s natural areas can offer – just imagine how much more benefit we would get from …
The controversial hectare based burn target of 5% of public land annually was reviewed earlier this year by the Inspector General of Emergency Management. The findings and recommendations were released in April this year and the government is still to announce if it will adopt the recommendations. The report looked into many aspects of the …
Minister Jaala Pulford is responsible for VicForests. She’s been caught with her pants on fire again trying to cover for it in reply to a question from Greens MP Sam Dunn in early September. She asked about VicForests’ self-allocation of an additional 316 new stands of forest in Victoria to be clearfelled. The Minister said …
