Reflections From a Murky Pond

The Nature Conservancy has brokered the largest debt-for-nature swap in history — a deal that will secure long-term, science-based conservation for Costa Rica’s tropical forests:

• The United States will forgive $12.6 million in debt owed to it by Costa Rica.
• This move will in turn provide $26 million that will be used to finance forest conservation in Costa Rica over the next 16 years, protecting one of the world’s richest natural treasures for future generations.

This debt swap is unique in that it utilizes scientific analysis to determine the sites towards which the funds will be directed.

– Zdenka Piskulich
Program Director - Conservancy in Costa Rica

For the full story go here.

Indonesia is demanding to be paid $5-$20 USD per hectare not to destroy its remaining forests, for the first time giving an monetary figure that they want extort from the world’s wealthier and more environmental conscious countries. Indonesia wants “big emitters” such as the United States and the European Union to pay the country to preserve its pristine rainforests.

We will ask for a compensation of $5-20 per hectare. It’s not fixed; it is open to negotiation

– Rachmat Witoelar
Indonesian Environment Minister

With a total forested area of 91 million ha (225 million acres), Indonesia could receive as much as $US1.8 billion in blackmail (greenmail?) for preserving its forests under the proposal. Indonesia will also attempt to extort a fixed price for other forms of biodiversity, including coral reefs.

So far we have not received anything for what we have done Now that there is a price tag for preservation, the amount of money we get will increase multifold.

— Rachmat Witoelar

Asking the “big emitters” to agree to the environmental extortion is made even more intolerable by the fact that Indonesia is one of the world’s top three carbon emitters according to a report sponsored by the World Bank and Britain’s development arm.

New York State has sued Exxon Mobil Corp on Tuesday July 17, 2007 to force the cleanup of a decades-old, 17 million gallon oil spill in New York City.

Besides requiring Exxon to perform the cleanup operation, the lawsuit asks Exxon to restore Newton Creek and is seeking substantial financial penalties and damages for the injuries to financial resources.

The lawsuit pertains to a leak that was discovered in 1978 in Newtown Creek, the waterway that separates the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. According to the lawsuit the spill has formed an underground contamination of over 55-acres of the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.

This company cannot ignore the harm its oil spill has caused to the environment and residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

This suit sends the message that even the largest corporations in the world cannot escape the consequences of their misdeeds

 

– New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, located in Brooklyn. U.S. District Judge Carol Amon has been assigned to hear the case.