Month: November 2014

Wrong Priorities in Ferguson and Beyond: We Must Invest in Communities, Not Violence

In the lead-up to the grand jury outcome in the Michael Brown murder the St. Louis and Ferguson-area police have ramped up their preparation with stockpiles of more weapons and rhetoric that contributes to the public frenzy.

Demonstrators outside Ferguson
Police Department 11/19/14

While I understand the need for security, does the narrow-minded focus on military and weapons actually make us more secure? Human security and peace economists understand that increased weaponization makes us more insecure.

Researchers for some time now have been able to understand how freedom from violence and the threat of violence, community-based economic development, authentic democratic processes and transparency increase human security. Violence and security have often been linked; human security research suggests they are mutually exclusive. Choosing violence to attain security precludes that very security for anyone who critiques violence, as thousands have learned in Ferguson. Clanging claims that we live in a great democracy that protects everyone’s rights sound awfully hollow to an unarmed protestor who has just been injured and arrested by a jack-up cop strapped with an official lethal sidearm and a legal system that affords him every benefit of every doubt.

Democracy is not just a system of voting but an approach to governing that recognizes obstacles to participation and development and listens, trying to hear what communities need. It is not ever envisioned as a system where the majority can vote itself immunity and vote the minority vulnerable to brutality committed by agents of the state. That sort of system is a false democracy. We want a real one.

Communities don’t want handouts—people want to work to determine their own futures. But many young people question the very concept of future. In the immediate aftermath of the murder of unarmed Michael Brown last August, St. Louis City police gunned down another African American youth, Kejeme Powell across the street from my parents’ home. He had a little knife and was simply depressed and told the police, “Shoot me.” They were exceedingly unprofessional and lacking even a whit of compassion as they did just that—at least six shots each. Where is the hope?

The current state of affairs concerning the outcome of the grand jury is extremely disconcerting, contributing to an increased sense of insecurity. Governor Nixon needs to appoint an independent prosecutor to avoid the perception of injustice. A real involvement of the community in plans for any grand jury outcome as hands up united suggested, or focusing on all of the positive efforts the community in Ferguson and Beyond are doing to teach nonviolence would be actions that ease the air of panic of the entire region.

People of color in the US, in general, don’t trust the legal system to bring justice. Fixing that might seem like a daunting task, but democratic theorists point out that even the smallest communities must have their needs addressed if we as a society are to maintain the promise of democracy.

The lack of real understanding of the protestors, beyond the sense that they are a nuisance, is part of the continuing failure of local and national officials. Their response continues to point out the deep racial divide and necessity of deep conversation and action. For instance, there was a demonstrationfor second amendment rights in downtown St. Louis in October where demonstrators carried guns openly. Some had three or four weapons including automatic assault weapons. This gathering of an all white crowd was not met with riot gear, but only a few police with luminescent vests. In San Franciso, exuberant Giants fans set fires broke windows and destroyed property. While police arrested some- where was the rethoric around violent whites or even the call for the national guard? Fans were excited, expressing joy, although a bit much, but Whites are allowed to be angry, express emotions. But don’t protestors, who are rightly angered over police killings of Blacks, have the same humanity to express their frustration?

I reiterate the need for dialogue, for listening to people’s truth so they can move forward. This is not just desirable, but actually required for reconciliation. If that is not what our society is about, then there needs to be a conversation about who we really are as Americans. But as it stands, the assertion by our elected leadership is that this is a democratic nation concerned with all of its citizens. My message to government officials is that all of the preparation for the violence following the grand jury; the cost of increased overtime for police, money spent on weapons and security with the threat of violence does not provide authentic security, but instead exacerbates the root causes of the protests- the inattention to the dignity of already marginalized. Governor Nixon, you and Ferguson area officials are bracing for a storm you helped to create. More

 

IWMI Launches Book on Developing Water-Related SDGs

IWMI logo20 October 2014: The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has released a book, titled ‘On Target for People and Planet: Setting and Achieving Water-Related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),' which highlights that framing water-related SDGs in a water security context provides a more comprehensive framework than the human-needs approach of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).


The book calls for: recognizing economic water scarcity; balancing development and conservation needs; and exploring pragmatic solutions. The book also identifies four key challenges: development of broad partnerships within the water sector and beyond; accommodation of growth requirements particularly in Asia and Africa; large-scale investments in water resources and agriculture need to complement, rather than undermine small-scale producers; and integration of policies for coherent water management across sectors. Next steps are also identified in the book: supporting governments to set national targets; achieving water and food security-related SDGs; and measuring and tracking progress.


The book includes chapters on: water-food-energy nexus; water governance; water metrics; social inclusion; sustainable development and ecosystem services; managing water variability; water quality; and accessing and putting water to productive use in Sub-Saharan Africa. [Publication: On Target for People and Planet: Setting and Achieving Water-Related SDGs] More


Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust

HASKELL COUNTY, Kan. — Forty-nine years ago, Ashley Yost’s grandfather sank a well deep into a half-mile square of rich Kansas farmland. He struck an artery of water so prodigious that he could pump 1,600 gallons to the surface every minute.

Last year, Mr. Yost was coaxing just 300 gallons from the earth, and pumping up sand in order to do it. By harvest time, the grit had robbed him of $20,000 worth of pumps and any hope of returning to the bumper harvests of years past.

“That’s prime land,” he said not long ago, gesturing from his pickup at the stubby remains of last year’s crop. “I’ve raised 294 bushels of corn an acre there before, with water and the Lord’s help.” Now, he said, “it’s over.”

The land, known as Section 35, sits atop the High Plains Aquifer, a waterlogged jumble of sand, clay and gravel that begins beneath Wyoming and South Dakota and stretches clear to the Texas Panhandle. The aquifer’s northern reaches still hold enough water in many places to last hundreds of years. But as one heads south, it is increasingly tapped out, drained by ever more intensive farming and, lately, by drought.

Vast stretches of Texas farmland lying over the aquifer no longer support irrigation. In west-central Kansas, up to a fifth of the irrigated farmland along a 100-mile swath of the aquifer has already gone dry. In many other places, there no longer is enough water to supply farmers’ peak needs during Kansas’ scorching summers.

And when the groundwater runs out, it is gone for good. Refilling the aquifer would require hundreds, if not thousands, of years of rains.

This is in many ways a slow-motion crisis — decades in the making, imminent for some, years or decades away for others, hitting one farm but leaving an adjacent one untouched. But across the rolling plains and tarmac-flat farmland near the Kansas-Colorado border, the effects of depletion are evident everywhere. Highway bridges span arid stream beds. Most of the creeks and rivers that once veined the land have dried up as 60 years of pumping have pulled groundwater levels down by scores and even hundreds of feet.

On some farms, big center-pivot irrigators — the spindly rigs that create the emerald circles of cropland familiar to anyone flying over the region — now are watering only a half-circle. On others, they sit idle altogether.

Two years of extreme drought, during which farmers relied almost completely on groundwater, have brought the seriousness of the problem home. In 2011 and 2012, the Kansas Geological Survey reports, the average water level in the state’s portion of the aquifer dropped 4.25 feet — nearly a third of the total decline since 1996.

And that is merely the average. “I know my staff went out and re-measured a couple of wells because they couldn’t believe it,” said Lane Letourneau, a manager at the State Agriculture Department’s water resources division. “There was a 30-foot decline.”

Kansas agriculture will survive the slow draining of the aquifer — even now, less than a fifth of the state’s farmland is irrigated in any given year — but the economic impact nevertheless will be outsized. In the last federal agriculture census of Kansas, in 2007, an average acre of irrigated land produced nearly twice as many bushels of corn, two-thirds more soybeans and three-fifths more wheat than did dry land.

Farmers will take a hit as well. Raising crops without irrigation is far cheaper, but yields are far lower. Drought is a constant threat: the last two dry-land harvests were all but wiped out by poor rains.

In the end, most farmers will adapt to farming without water, said Bill Golden, an agriculture economist at Kansas State University. “The revenue losses are there,” he said. “But they’re not as tremendously significant as one might think.”

Some already are. A few miles west of Mr. Yost’s farm, Nathan Kells cut back on irrigation when his wells began faltering in the last decade, and shifted his focus to raising dairy heifers — 9,000 on that farm, and thousands more elsewhere. At about 12 gallons a day for a single cow, Mr. Kells can sustain his herd with less water than it takes to grow a single circle of corn.

“The water’s going to flow to where it’s most valuable, whether it be industry or cities or feed yards,” he said. “We said, ‘What’s the higher use of the water?’ and decided that it was the heifer operation.”

The problem, others say, is that when irrigation ends, so do the jobs and added income that sustain rural communities.

“Looking at areas of Texas where the groundwater has really dropped, those towns are just a shell of what they once were,” said Jim Butler, a hydrogeologist and senior scientist at the Kansas Geological Survey.

The villain in this story is in fact the farmers’ savior: the center-pivot irrigator, a quarter- or half-mile of pipe that traces a watery circle around a point in the middle of a field. The center pivots helped start a revolution that raised farming from hardscrabble work to a profitable business.

Since the pivots’ debut some six decades ago, the amount of irrigated cropland in Kansas has grown to nearly three million acres, from a mere 250,000 in 1950. But the pivot irrigators’ thirst for water — hundreds and sometimes thousands of gallons a minute — has sent much of the aquifer on a relentless decline. And while the big pivots have become much more efficient, a University of California study earlier this year concluded that Kansas farmers were using some of their water savings to expand irrigation or grow thirstier crops, not to reduce consumption.

A shift to growing corn, a much thirstier crop than most, has only worsened matters. Driven by demand, speculation and a government mandate to produce biofuels, the price of corn has tripled since 2002, and Kansas farmers have responded by increasing the acreage of irrigated cornfields by nearly a fifth.

At an average 14 inches per acre in a growing season, a corn crop soaks up groundwater like a sponge — in 2010, the State Agriculture Department said, enough to fill a space a mile square and nearly 2,100 feet high.

Sorghum, or milo, gets by on a third less water, Kansas State University researchers say — and it, too, is in demand by biofuel makers. As Kansas’ wells peter out, more farmers are switching to growing milo on dry land or with a comparative sprinkle of irrigation water.

But as long as there is enough water, most farmers will favor corn. “The issue that often drives this is economics,” said David W. Hyndman, who heads Michigan State University’s geological sciences department. “And as long as you’ve got corn that’s $7, then a lot of choices get made on that.”

Of the 800 acres that Ashley Yost farmed last year in Haskell County, about 70 percent was planted in corn, including roughly 125 acres in Section 35. Haskell County’s feedlots — the county is home to 415,000 head of cattle — and ethanol plants in nearby Liberal and Garden City have driven up the price of corn handsomely, he said.

But this year he will grow milo in that section, and hope that by ratcheting down the speed of his pump, he will draw less sand, even if that means less water, too. The economics of irrigation, he said, almost dictate it.

“You’ve got $20,000 of underground pipe,” he said. “You’ve got a $10,000 gas line. You’ve got a $10,000 irrigation motor. You’ve got an $89,000 pivot. And you’re going to let it sit there and rot?

“If you can pump 150 gallons, that’s 150 gallons Mother Nature is not giving us. And if you can keep a milo crop alive, you’re going to do it.”

Mr. Yost’s neighbors have met the prospect of dwindling water in starkly different ways. A brother is farming on pivot half-circles. A brother-in-law moved most of his operations to Iowa. Another farmer is suing his neighbors, accusing them of poaching water from his slice of the aquifer.

A fourth grows corn with an underground irrigation system that does not match the yields of water-wasting center-pivot rigs, but is far thriftier in terms of water use and operating costs.

For his part, Mr. Yost continues to pump. But he also allowed that the day may come when sustaining what is left of the aquifer is preferable to pumping as much as possible.

Sitting in his Ford pickup next to Section 35, he unfolded a sheet of white paper that tracked the decline of his grandfather’s well: from 1,600 gallons a minute in 1964, to 1,200 in 1975, to 750 in 1976.

When the well slumped to 500 gallons in 1991, the Yosts capped it and drilled another nearby. Its output sank, too, from 1,352 gallons to 300 today.

This year, Mr. Yost spent more than $15,000 to drill four test wells in Section 35. The best of them produced 195 gallons a minute — a warning, he said, that looking further for an isolated pocket of water would be costly and probably futile.

“We’re on the last kick,” he said. “The bulk water is gone.” More

 

 

Duty to Refuse’: Top Medical Groups Back Nurse Who Said ‘No’ to Force-Feeding Guantanamo Hunger Strikers

Force-feeding a competent person is not the practice of medicine; it is aggravated assault.'

Leading medical groups are speaking out in support of a U.S. Navy nurse who refused on ethical grounds to force-feed hunger strikers held captive at Guantanamo Bay.

The American Nurses Association announced Wednesday that they have penned letters to U.S. government and military officials strongly urging against any punishment or retaliation for the act of refusal, which occurred in July. The military is planning to try the unidentified nurse, who is an officer, before a Board of Inquiry, which could result in a dishonorable discharge that strips him of his veterans benefits.

“The ANA Code of Ethics for Nurses clearly supports the ethical right of a professional nurse to make an independent judgment about whether he or she should participate in this or any other such activity,” reads an October 17 letter (pdf) to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel from Pamela Cipriano, ANA president. “The military setting does not change the nurse’s ethical commitments or standards.”

Doctor Vincent Iacopino, senior medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights, told Common Dreams that his organization strongly supports the nurse's refusal to take part in the force-feeding of competent adults, which is banned by the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association and has been condemned by the office of the United Nations high commissioner for human rights as torture and a violation of international law.

“Force feedings are being done without informed consent, against people's wishes,” said Iacopino. “We have codes of conduct that prohibit us from conducting therapeutic interventions or diagnostic procedures that people do not consent to.”

“The government is claiming it is doing this to save people's lives,” Iacopino continued. “The reality is that people are on hunger strike, protesting something: indefinite detention, often without charges. Any health professional under those circumstances has a duty to refuse. This is ill treatment with no respect for autonomy.”

This is not the first time medical professionals have called for non-participation in the Guantanamo Bay force-feedings.

In op-ed published in the New England Journal of Medicine in July, a time of doctors writes, “Force-feeding a competent person is not the practice of medicine; it is aggravated assault. Using a physician to assault prisoners no more changes the nature of the act than using physicians to 'monitor' torture makes torture a medical procedure. Military physicians are no more entitled to betray medical ethics than military lawyers are to betray the Constitution or military chaplains are to betray their religion.”

Furthermore, the American Medical Association also penned a letter to Hagel in April declaring, “Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions.”

The nurse's act of refusal was originally revealed by Abu Wa'el Dhiab, a Syrian man and father of four who currently held in Guantanamo Bay despite being cleared for release since 2009. Dhiab told his lawyers at Reprieve that he heard the nurse, described as an approximately 40 year-old Latino man, state, “I have come to the decision that I refuse to participate in this criminal act.”

“Before we came here, we were told a different story,” the nurse reportedly added. “The story we were told was completely the opposite of what I saw.”

The U.S. military has been broadly criticized for its treatment of hunger strikers. In response, the U.S. has imposed secrecy on its procedures and practices, including a media blackout on the number of people participating in the protest.

One hundred forty eight men remain incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay without charges or fair trial. More

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

If this brave and honourable nurse is going to be tried, then so should President Obama and the Joint Chief of Staff. Editor

 

SPREP, Talihau Community Implement Beach Restoration Strategies

11 November 2014: An innovative approach to coastal erosion has been developed over the past two years as part of the coastal Ecosystem-based Adaptation project, which is implemented by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and funded by the Australian Government.


The approach, which aims to strengthen and rehabilitate beaches in the Pacific island region, has now been tested in the Talihau community in Vava'u, Tonga.


The beach rehabilitation guidelines and strategies have already been tested in Kiribati, Samoa and Vanuatu. They are designed to limit and, where possible, halt erosion on beaches in the region, and will, hopefully, be able to reverse the damage that has already occurred and increase coastal resilience to the impacts of sea-level rise.


The interventions are intended to be cost-effective, achievable and easily managed by local communities. In Vava'u, for example, representatives from all levels of government worked with community members to protect the degraded Talihau Paradise Beach from further erosion. The community of Talihau will continue to oversee the maintenance of the beach with assistance from the Tongan Ministry of Environment and the Vava'u Environmental Protection Association.


SPREP's Paul Anderson said that an assessment of the beach confirmed that human impacts were negatively impacting on the beach, with only six mature trees and no evidence of new growth, an indication of degradation caused by trampling from humans and animals. He discussed specific interventions, including fencing to prevent livestock from damaging beachside vegetation, preventing the mooring of boats on degraded areas, and talking to the community about the damaging impact of sand mining. Other interventions included replanting coastal vegetation and creating brush protection mats to build up the volume of sand. [SPREP News] More

 

Secrets: shining a light on hidden power

The truth can be a slippery thing. We each have a version but it slips and slides about in our minds as we deal with the constant flood of information coming at us from all sides, not to mention trying to balance this expert view against that, between what we know, what we think we know, and what we suspect.

We are all at the mercy of cognitive biases and layers of assumptions and associations built up over our lifetimes. And so we need reference points to help mark the key geographical features of our worldview. And, sometimes, we need some of those reference points visible in our world, amongst our tribes of friends, colleagues, allies and families. It’s very difficult for most of us to make our way in the world and act with the determination we often crave without some acknowledgement that we’re not the only ones seeing the world as we do. The bigger the thought, the less pleasant it is to assimilate, and the further out from the mainstream it lives, the more important that acknowledgment can be.

The 1%-99% Occupy meme was one of those markers. The reason it travelled so far and fast wasn’t because it told people something altogether new, but rather that it capped off and gave voice to thoughts they already had. It didn’t teach as much as it validated and articulated.

At /The Rules, we think its time for a new marker; one that grows very much from the 1%-99% meme, and, hopefully, adds something important. And it’s that we now all live on a One Party Planet.

This is a provocative claim, pregnant with meaning and implication. If it’s true in the way we believe it to be, it means there is an identifiable form of totalitarianism casting a shadow over the entire human race. It means that there is a force so broad, so enmeshed within the logic of modern global power, that the solutions we all work toward in the specific struggles we care most about – be that rampant inequalities in income and opportunity, widespread poverty, or climate change – are all facing it. Not a force that lives in any single person, organization or structure, but that is ephemeral in the way that all ideology is ephemeral. It transcends and thereby unites the leadership of the vast majority of political parties, governments and corporations that have any proximity to global power. But for all this, it is also specific, definable, and visible through the right lenses. Which means it can be challenged.

It’s got many names but we call it Neoliberalism, because that fits it well enough and is very common, recognizable currency. It’s not primarily an economic agenda; it’s a moral philosophy. As Margaret Thatcher, one of its seminal champions herself said, “economics are the method, the object is to change the heart and soul”.

It is defined by a circular and hermetically sealed logic, in three parts. Firstly, that survival of the fittest through eternal competition between self-interested parties is, practically speaking, the only law upon which human society can realistically be ordered; secondly, that, in the moral hierarchy, financial wealth equates with life success which equates with virtue; and thirdly that man [sic] is, if not an island, then, at most, a part of an archipelago of islands of shared interests, answerable only to himself, his peers and, possibly, his God, in that order. To see only the familiar economics – i.e. belief in small government, low taxes, the sanctity of private property and private industries, and 'free' markets, particularly in labor, all of which feed, above all else, the double-headed hydra of profit and economic growth – and not connect it back to the moral philosophy is to miss the point.

To back up this provocative claim, we have released a pamphlet today called, The One Party Planet. We start it by looking inwards, at our cognitive capacities. The world we see around us today is a reflection of human consciousness; we long since passed the point where we could say, “it wasn't us.” So whatever challenges we face—climate change, rampant inequality, endless violent conflict or vast impoverishment—are challenges, first and foremost, of and for the human mind. It helps, therefore, to spend a small amount of time reflecting on what we know about its character in a section called, How True is True?

Then we turn to what might be more familiar territory: power theories, processes and players. This breaks into six parts; The Neoliberal Heart and Soul, Fashions in Global Power, Financial Might, Concentration of Corporate Power, Active Political Projects, and In their Own Words. And finally, a few thoughts on the system's internal logic; that alignment of forces that mean none of this was really planned and no one is actually to blame. We conclude with the most human considerations in Facing Ourselves, and Where Hope Lies.

We have written it as a political pamphlet to honor all those that were written against the wishes of the ruling elite in the past, and that played some part in monumental change, from the English Civil War to the Abolition of Slavery. We’d like help spreading it around, translating it, and building on it. If it’s wrong in important ways, we want to know how. If there more that should be said, we want to help people say it. You can comment on our facebook page, or write to pamphlets@therules.org. More

 

Water Resource Management- New Publication 2014

Department of Organic Food Quality and Food Culture, University of Kassel and Department of Archaeology and Heritage Management, Rajarata University, Sri Lanka are pleased to announce about the publication of their new research paper, titled “Water Resource Management in Dry Zonal Paddy Cultivation in Mahaweli River Basin, Sri Lanka: An Analysis of Spatial and Temporal Climate Change Impacts and Traditional Knowledge” in the Special Issue “Changes in precipitation and impacts on regional water resources”, Climate Journal International.

The paper may be accessed at http://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/2/4/329

Abstract: Lack of attention to spatial and temporal cross-scale dynamics and effects could be understood as one of the lacunas in scholarship on river basin management. Within the water-climate-food-energy nexus, an integrated and inclusive approach that recognizes traditional knowledge about and experiences of climate change and water resource management can provide crucial assistance in confronting problems in megaprojects and multipurpose river basin management projects.

The Mahaweli Development Program (MDP), a megaproject and multipurpose river basin management project, is demonstrating substantial failures with regards to the spatial and temporal impacts of climate change and socioeconomic demands for water allocation and distribution for paddy cultivation in the dry zone area, which was one of the driving goals of the project at the initial stage. This interdisciplinary study explores how spatial and temporal climatic changes and uncertainty n weather conditions impact paddy cultivation in dry zonal areas with competing stakeholders' interest in the Mahaweli River Basin.

In the framework of embedded design in the mixed methods research approach, qualitative data is the primary source while quantitative analyses are used as supportive data. The key findings from the research analysis are as follows: close and in-depth consideration of spatial and temporal changes in climate systems and paddy farmers' socioeconomic demands altered by seasonal changes are important factors. These factors should be considered in the future modification of water allocation, application of distribution technologies, and decision-making with regards to water resource management in the dry zonal paddy cultivation of Sri Lanka. More

 

 

FAO ‘Pocketbook’ Highlights Environment, Food Security, Nutrition Links

17 November 2014: The world produces more food than it needs, leaving deep resource footprints in terms of carbon emissions, environmental degradation and land and water use, yet it is off track in achieving the World Food Summit (WFS) target of reducing the number of hungry people by 2015, according to ‘Food and Nutrition in Numbers.’

The publication from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) provides a “pocketbook” compendium on the global state of nutrition.


FAO released the compendium in advance of the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN 2), which convenes on 19-21 November 2014, in Rome, Italy. The meeting is expected to adopt a declaration on nutrition and a framework of action on guidance for national policy commitments.


The pocketbook provides global, regional and national level data on the impacts of food systems, with the aim of highlighting the external aspects of nutrition. It addresses a range of topics on nutrition and health, including micronutrient deficiencies, obesity, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), food prices and trade. It also includes food security indicators and indicators on links between the environment, health and nutrition and data on agriculture-related carbon emissions and land use.


Data included in the publication provide “the starting point for evidence-based food policy analysis and for getting a more complete picture of health and environmental impacts associated with nutrition,” emphasized Josef Schmidhuber, FAO’s Statistics Division. Schmidhuber underscored “how much more food agriculture has produced over the past decades,” but said that “what is equally remarkable is that in this world of plenty, we still have 800 million who don’t consume enough calories and 2 billion who don’t eat well.”


FAO’s Nutrition Division Director, Anna Lartey, highlighted the importance of nutrition in development, stressing that countries that do “not pay attention to the nutrition of its citizens will pay dearly in health costs and loss of productivity and this can significantly reduce its economic development.” [UN Press Release] [UNRIC Press Release] [Publication: Food and Nutrition in Numbers] [IISD RS Coverage of ICN 2]

More

 

 

President of Palau becomes Champion of the Earth for his pioneering Green Economy Policies

Bangkok, 17 November 2014 – President of Palau, Tommy Remengesau, Jr, was announced as a winner of the UN’s top environmental accolade, the Champions of the Earth award.

The Policy Leadership award, which has been won in previous years by European Commissioner for the Environment, Dr. Potocnik, and Brazil’s Environment Minister, Izabella Teixeira, will be awarded to President Remengesau by UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki-moon and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner at an awards ceremony attended by UNEP Goodwill Ambassador Gisele Bundchen at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. on 19 November 2014.

Tommy Remengesau, President of Palau, said, “I am honored to receive this award on behalf of the traditional leaders, the people of Palau, and the islanders around the world, who are the stewards for the protection of our vast oceans and natural wealth.”

“As a fisherman, I have seen first-hand the devastating impacts of overfishing, climate change and pollution on our oceans. As the leader of an island country, I know we have the solutions to tackle these issues. We need to stand together to take action now to protect our oceans and our Mother Earth for our generation and future children.”

Under the leadership of President Remengesau, Palau is showing the way to protect its invaluable natural resources while balancing the needs and traditions of its people. Earlier this year the President announced the world’s first Nation-wide Marine Sanctuary that fully protects over 80 per cent of Palau’s 600,000 sq km of Exclusive Economic Zone.

The Sanctuary bans industrial and foreign fishing as well as exports, while establishing a local fishing zone for domestic use. This is a bold step to reverse degradation of the ocean and stands to ignite further global action on oceans.

The President has demonstrated the country’s capacity to successfully meet its conservation goals, having established a network of protected areas representing more than 50 per cent of marine and 20 per cent of terrestrial areas through the Micronesia Challenge. This was largely funded by a “Green Fee” where tourists pay US$30 on departure from Palau, generating more than US$1.3 million annually for conservation.

The President has spearheaded a range of local to global initiatives, from the world’s first shark sanctuary to establishing the Global Island Partnership alongside President Michel of Seychelles, which has inspired more than 30 leaders to launch major sustainable island commitments.

UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, “Palau is an inspiring example of a small island nation courageously addressing the global challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss through a blue-green economy transition, and reflects the level of commitment many Small Island Developing States demonstrated earlier this year to advancing national sustainable development goals at the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States through the S.A.M.O.A Pathway Outcome Document.”

“Supporting President Remengesau – and other leaders of other small island nations – on this journey of transition, provides an unprecedented opportunity to be part of game-changing solutions that can be applied in broader contexts and bigger economies.”

“In short, we should look upon small island nations like Palau as microcosms of our larger society, and not stand back and leave them to grapple with threats – such as climate change.”

Champions of the Earth is the United Nations’ flagship environmental award launched in 2005 that recognizes outstanding visionaries and leaders in the fields of policy, science, entrepreneurship, and civil society action. Whether by helping to improve the management of natural resources, demonstrating new ways to tackle climate change or raising awareness of emerging environmental challenges, Champions of the Earth should serve as an inspiration for transformative action across the world. Past laureates have included past laureates Mikhail Gorbachev, Al Gore, Felipe Calderon, Mohamed Nasheed, Marina Silva, Vinod Khosla, and many other such exemplary leaders on the environment and development front.

Visit http://www.unep.org/champions/ for more details.