South Africa’s white rhinoceros recovered from near-extinction thanks to intense conservation efforts. Credit: Kanya D’Almeida/IPS

By Stella Paul
PYEONGCHANG, Republic of Korea, Oct 13 2014 (IPS)

For over five years, 33-year-old Maheshwar Basumatary, a member of the indigenous Bodo community, made a living by killing wild animals in the protected forests of the Manas National Park, a tiger reserve, elephant sanctuary and UNESCO World Heritage Site that lies on the India-Bhutan border.

Then one morning in 2005, Basumatary walked into a police check-post and surrendered his gun. Since then, the young man has been spending his time taking care of abandoned and orphaned rhino and leopard cubs.

Employed by a local conservation organisation called the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), part of the Wildlife Trust of India, Basumatary is today a symbol of wildlife conservation.

Engaging locals like Basumatary into wildlife protection and conservation is an effective way to curb wildlife crimes such as poaching, smuggling and the illegal sale of animal parts, according to Maheshwar Dhakal, an ecologist with Nepal’s ministry of environment and soil conservation.

“[Law enforcement personnel] must have proper arms. They must also have tools to collect evidence, and records. They need transportation and mobile communication to act quickly and aptly. Without this, despite arrests, there will be no convictions because of a lack of evidence." -- Maheshwar Dhakal, an ecologist with Nepal’s ministry of environment and soil conservation
On the sidelines of the ongoing 12^th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 12) in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Dhakal told IPS that poverty and the prospect of higher earnings often drive locals to commit or abet wildlife crime.

Thus efforts should be made to combine conservation with income generation, so locals can be gainfully employed in efforts to protect and preserve biodiversity.

“Conservation efforts must also create livelihood opportunities within the local community,” he added.

“Everyone wants to earn more and live well. If you just tell people, ‘Go save the animals’, it’s not going to work. But if you find a way to incentivize protecting [of] wildlife, they will certainly join the force,” said Dhakal, adding that his own country is moving rapidly towards a ‘zero poaching’ status.

Poaching – a global problem

Poaching and the illegal wildlife trade are a universal menace that has been causing severe threats including possible extinction of species, economic losses, as well as loss of livelihood across the world.

According to the recently released Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 (GBO-4), the latest progress report of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the current annual illegal wildlife trade stands at some 200 billion dollars annually.

The illicit enterprise is also thriving in Asia, touching some 19 billion dollars per year according to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s Wildlife Enforcement Network.

Law enforcements agencies regularly confiscate smuggled products and consignments of skins and other body parts of animals including crocodiles, snakes, tigers, elephants and rhinos. The killing of tigers and rhinos is a specific concern in the region, with both creatures facing the impending risk of extinction.

One of the biggest killing fields for poachers is the Kaziranga National Park (KNP) in India’s northeastern Assam state, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to two-thirds of the world’s remaining Great One-horned Rhinoceroses. In addition, the park boasts the highest density of tigers globally, and was officially designated as a tiger reserve in 2006.

The 185-square-mile park had 2,553 rhinos in 2013. However, 126 rhinos have been killed here in the past 13 years, with 21 slaughtered in 2013 alone, according to the state’s Environment and Forest Minister Rakibul Hussain.

Illegal trade spawns conflict, disease

There is also a direct link between the illegal wildlife trade and political conflicts across the world, says a joint report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and INTERPOL, which puts the exact volume of the illegal trade at 213 billion dollars annually.

Much of this money “is helping finance criminal, militia and terrorist groups and threatening the security and sustainable development of many nations,” the report states.

According to the report, several militia groups in central and western Africa are involved in the illegal trade of animals and timber. These groups profit hugely from the trade, including through the sale of ivory, making between four and 12.2 million dollars each year.

Another report published this past February by Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in UK, also pointed to the example of the extremist Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has been reported to harvest tusks from elephants in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and barter with Sudanese soldiers or poachers for guns and ammunition.

But the trouble does not end there.

Maadjou Bah is part of a COP-12 delegation from the West African country of Guinea, where an Ebola outbreak in December 2013 has since spread to the neighbouring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing at least 4,300 people to date.

Bah told IPS that illegal hunting and trade in wildlife species increases the possibility of the Ebola virus spreading to other countries. Though the government of Guinea has designated 30 percent of its forests as ‘protected’, the borders are porous, with trafficking and trade posing a continuous threat.

Besides primates, fruit bats are known to be natural carriers of the Ebola virus, and since trade in bats forms part of the illegal global chain of wildlife trade, it is possible that Ebola could travel outside the borders where it is current wreaking havoc, according to Anne-Helene Prieur Richard, executive director of the Paris-based biodiversity research institute ‘Diversitas’.

“We don’t know this for sure since there is a knowledge gap. But certainly the risk is there,” she told IPS.

Using the law

Continued poaching is largely the result of slow law enforcement, according to Braullio Ferreira de Souza Dias, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity.

“Enforcement has to be a priority for government[s],” he told IPS.

This can be accomplished by, among other methods, providing law enforcement personnel with the skills and equipment they need to crack down on illegal activity. Forest guards, for instance, should be properly equipped – technically and financially – to prevent crime.”

“There is a need for capacity building in the law enforcement units,” Dhakal explained. “But that doesn’t just mean attending workshops and trainings. It means weapons, tools and technologies.

“They must have proper arms. They must also have tools to collect evidence, and records. They need transportation and mobile communication to act quickly and aptly. Without this, despite arrests, there will be no convictions because of a lack of evidence,” he said.

This is especially crucial in trans-boundary forests, where a lack of proper fencing allows poachers to move freely between countries.

Sometimes, the solutions are simpler.

“For example,” Dias stated, “Nepal has forged partnerships between the government and local communities. But what motivated the [people] to go out [of their way] to find time to prevent poaching? It’s that 50 percent of all earnings in Nepal’s national parks are directed towards local communities. [Officials] convinced them that if the poaching doesn’t stop then it would mean fewer visitors and lesser earnings,” he asserted.

A look at the country’s recent increase in the number of tigers and rhinos are proof of its successful conservation efforts: in the 1970s, Nepal had only a hundred tigers left in the wild. Today there are 200 and the country is aiming to double the number by 2020.

Similarly, the number of rhinos, which was a paltry 100 in the 1960s, is now 535. “We have recruited local youths as intelligence units who collect information on the movement of poachers. It works,” reveals Dhakal.

Experts say that ending demand globally is crucial to halting poaching and illegal trade. For this, collective action at the international level must be given top priority.

Dhakal, who is also the main spokesperson for the South Asian Wildlife Enforcement Network (SAWEN), told IPS that the network has roped in several governments in the region, along with organisations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and INTERPOL.

Gaurav Gogoi, a member of the Indian parliament, says that governments can also cooperate at a bilateral level. “In the markets of Vietnam a single gram of rhino horn powder fetches up to [approximately 3,000 dollars],” he explained, adding that he is involved in lobbying events to push Vietnam to ban all products made of rhino horns in order to curb poaching elsewhere, including the Indian state of Assam.

“If you have poaching, it’s because there is someone out there who wants to buy those products. We have to address that,” Dias said.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Chinese People's Liberation Army-Navy sailors stand watch on the submarine Yuan at the Zhoushan Naval Base. Credit: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff/CC-BY-2.0

By Richard Heydarian
SINGAPORE, Jun 11 2014 (IPS)

China’s early-May decision to dispatch the state-of-the-art oil rig, HYSY981, into Vietnam’s 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), has intensified ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea, raising fears of uncontrolled military escalation in one of the world’s most important waterways.

It wasn’t long before Vietnamese and Chinese maritime forces were locked in a dangerous naval standoff, which led to low-intensity clashes in the high seas.

China’s unilateral action sparked outrage across Vietnam, paving the way for unprecedented anti-China protests, which snowballed into massive destruction of foreign-owned factories, principally owned by China and Taiwan, and the exodus of thousands of Chinese citizens to neighbouring Cambodia.

The whole episode undermined years of painstaking negotiations between Hanoi and Beijing aimed at peacefully resolving bilateral territorial disputes across the South China Sea.

Shortly after, the Philippines also released photos suggesting Chinese construction activities on the Johnson South Reef, a disputed feature that falls within the Philippines EEZ in the Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea.

Later, China confirmed that it was indeed engaged in reclamation activities on the disputed reef, but it tried to justify it by claiming it exercised “indisputable and inherent” sovereignty over the said feature based on Beijing’s notorious “nine-dash-line” doctrine, which covers almost the entirety of the South China Sea.

The Philippines and Vietnam contend that China has flagrantly violated the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, which explicitly discourages claimant states from unilaterally altering the status by engaging in, among other things, construction activities on disputed features.

Alarmed by the intensifying territorial disputes between China and other claimant states, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) expressed “serious concern” and called for a rule-based, peaceful resolution of the disputes.

Expecting a more vigorous response from ASEAN, Vietnamese and Filipino leaders called for the swift finalisation of a legally-binding Code of Conduct (CoC) in the South China Sea, and vowed to forge a bilateral “strategic partnership” to counter China’s territorial assertiveness. Meanwhile, other Pacific powers such as Japan and the U.S. have also stepped up their criticism of China’s recent actions, underscoring their direct national interest in preserving freedom of navigation in international waters.

“Whatever construction China carries out on the [Johnson South] reef is a matter entirely within the scope of China’s sovereignty,” argued China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokeswoman Hua Chunyin, dismissing protests by Filipino officials.

Confronting an increasingly assertive and powerful China, the Philippines and Vietnam have moved closer to a genuine alliance. On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on East Asia in late-May, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III and visiting Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung agreed to forge a bilateral strategic partnership, with a particular focus on maritime and defense cooperation vis-à-vis the ongoing disputes in the South China Sea.

“We face common challenges as maritime nations and as brothers in ASEAN,” declared Aquino during his meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, underscoring Manila’s desire to establish a closer partnership with neighbouring countries.

“In defense and security, we discussed how we can enhance confidence building, our defense capabilities and interoperability in addressing security challenges.”

“More than ever before, ASEAN and the international community need to continue raising a strong voice in protesting against [China’s territorial assertiveness], securing a strict observance of the international law, and peace and stability in the region and the world,” lamented Dung, underscoring Hanoi’s urgent desire for the multilateral resolution of the ongoing disputes.

Recognising China’s military superiority, and the inefficacy of existing diplomatic mechanisms, both the Philippines and Vietnam have been looking towards external powers such as Japan and the U.S. to counter China’s territorial assertiveness.

Much of Asia’s trade and energy transport passes through the South China Sea, and there is a growing fear that ongoing territorial disputes will spiral into a prolonged, destructive conflict, which could affect all regional economies.

Influential actors across the region have been desperately searching for new mechanisms to deescalate ongoing territorial tensions, preventing claimant states, primarily China, from undertaking any destabilising action.

“Japan intends to play an even greater and more proactive role than it has until now in making peace in Asia and the world something more certain,” declared Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the recently-concluded 13^th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, which brought together leading defense officials, experts, and journalists from around the world, and saw spirited exchanges between top officials from Japan, the U.S. and China.

During the high-level gathering, Abe, the keynote speaker, sought to present Japan as a counterweight to China, with Tokyo relaxing its self-imposed restrictions on arms exports, increasing its defense spending, and seeking new ways to expand its security role in the Asian region.

“We take no position on competing territorial claims [in the South China Sea]… But we firmly oppose any nation’s use of intimidation, coercion or the threat of force to assert these claims,” argued U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, underscoring Washington’s growing alarm over China’s territorial posturing in the Western Pacific.

In response, China’s top representative, Lt. Gen. Wang Guanzhong, deputy chief of staff of the Chinese military, was uncharacteristically blunt in his criticisms, describing Hagel’s remarks as “excessive beyond . . . imagination [and] suffused with hegemonism . . . threats and intimidation.”

Under a new nationalist government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is also expected to play a more pro-active role in the region, given New Delhi’s growing trade with East Asia and its large-scale investments in the hydrocarbon-rich areas of the South China Sea. The U.S.’ treaty allies such as Australia have also stepped up their efforts at containing China’s rising territorial assertiveness, as the two Pacific powers deepen their naval interoperability and defense cooperation.

Overall, it seems that China’s rising assertiveness has encouraged a flexible counter-alliance of like-minded countries, which are heavily concerned with the economic and geopolitical fallout of the brewing conflict in the South China Sea. It remains to be seen, however, whether China will relent on its territorial claims amid growing international pressure.

(END)

Thai laws ban transgender women from changing their names and gender on their identity cards. Credit: Sutthida Malikaew/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
BANGKOK, Jul 24 2013 (IPS)

A draft law being readied for parliament that seeks to offer lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples could make Thailand the first country in Southeast Asia to legalise gay marriage.

Last year, Nathee Theeraronjanapong (55) and his partner Atthapon Janthawee (38) decided to make their 20-year relationship legal.

Citing section 1448 of Thailand’s Civil and Commercial Code, which deems same-sex marriage unlawful, the head of registrations in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai handed the couple a letter of denial.

“The LGBTIQ community really struggles with the issue of acceptance from our parents. There is a lot of pressure to conform to traditional beliefs of what a family unit is comprised of." -- Anjana Suvarnananda, co-founder of Anjaree Group.
In response, the couple filed a complaint with the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, the Administrative Court and the National Human Rights Commission insisting that Thailand’s constitution guarantees them equal protection under the law.

The political storm following that incident, which generated considerable media buzz, prompted a member of parliament to gather a committee of parliamentarians, 15 scholars and LGBTIQ activists to draft the country’s first civil union bill, to legalise same-sex marriage.

Presenting the draft law on same-sex unions to Thailand’s parliament is Wiratana Kalayasiri, Democrat parliamentarian from the southern Thai city of Songkhla, who is also the chairman of the Legal Justice Human Rights committee.

He says most legislators in Thailand are over 47, which partially explains the staunch opposition to the law in its early stages.

“At first, there was a negative impression and people were wondering why I was doing this but as this process went on people started to understand that this is a human right of the Thai people, guaranteed under the constitution. Since then minds have changed,” Kalayasiri told IPS.

“We have held five hearings on the bill at several universities throughout Thailand and in parliament as well. A survey of 200-300 people showed that 78 percent are in favour of allowing same-sex marriage and 10.3 percent are against it.

“I was particularly surprised when we went to Songkhla [a city of roughly 75,000 people] for a public meeting and 87 percent of Muslims in attendance were in favour [of gay marriage].”

Still, leading activists in Thailand’s LGBTIQ movement like Anjana Suvarnananda, who co-founded Anjaree Group in 1987 – the first organisation to raise the issue of LGBTIQ rights here – believes that the bill could facilitate the process of moving public attitudes from opposition to acceptance.

“The LGBTIQ community really struggles with the issue of acceptance from our parents. There is a lot of pressure to conform to traditional beliefs of what a family unit is comprised of,” she told IPS.

“This is why it is important that the language of the bill transcends defining marriage as being solely between a man and a woman. If we can put forth the idea that the family structure is based on the union of two loving and consenting individuals then…society and our parents would be more willing to accept our way of life.”

Under the current Civil and Commercial Code, same-sex families are not afforded the same legal protections as heterosexual couples such as medical coverage or recognition as being the sole caretaker of their spouse.

Suvarnananda believes the law will be particularly useful during times of emergency. “If there is a severe accident or health issue, like if my partner becomes ill, then in the eyes of the law I am no one other than just a friend. This forces us [the LGBTIQ community] to struggle by ourselves…We want more security,” she added.

In 1956, provisions making sodomy a punishable offense were repealed and consensual sex between same-sex couples became lawful, making Thailand one of Asia’s most progressive countries regarding gay rights.

Anti-discrimination laws protecting members of the LGBTIQ community are non-existent in the region. Sodomy is criminalised in six member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – namely, Brunei, Burma, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as  Marawi City in the Philippines and the South Sumatra Province of Indonesia.

Thus Danai Linjongrat, executive director of the Rainbow Sky Association, has been urging caution in the drafting of the civil union bill, so that it will not inadvertently fan the flames of intolerance and heighten regional stigmatisation of the LGBTIQ community.

“We are looking for a bill that equalises all relationships,” he told IPS. “For example, the current marriage law grants heterosexual couples the right to marry once they reach the legal age of 17, but for LGBTIQ people the legal marriage age would be 20 years old.”

“When we put forth language like this in a bill it merely reinforces discrimination against a certain segment of society when it comes to marriage,” says Linjongrat.

The situation is particularly complicated for transgender individuals, who confront a range of attitudes and biases across the region. Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore, for example, all have laws targeting and criminalising transgender women for “cross-dressing”.

Even in Thailand, where gender non-conformity receives a high degree of social acceptance, there has been little progress in formally recognising the rights of transgender people.

Thailand’s first sex change surgery was performed in 1972 and there are an estimated 180,000 Thai people who identify as transgender, including a number of pop singers, television personalities and movie stars.

In addition, a transgender beauty pageant, the Miss Tiffany’s Universe, is televised annually on a national scale from the eastern city of Pattaya.

Yet Thai law does not allow trans-people to change their gender or their names on ID cards, birth certificates or passports, leading to complications in finding employment and harassment at border crossings or immigration checkpoints.

Even with a university degree, transgender people have difficulty finding a decent job. To support themselves, many turn to the entertainment or sex industry.

Experts hope “this civil union bill will slightly reduce heteronormativity in Thai society, which could improve…health issues by reducing the likelihood of unsafe sexual practices [among the LGBTIQ community],” Prempreeda Pramoj Na Ayutthaya, an HIV and AIDS national programme officer for UNESCO in Bangkok, told IPS.

Thailand has the highest adult HIV rate in Southeast Asia, with nearly 520,000 people between the ages of 15 and 49 living with HIV/AIDS; a 2010 survey in Bangkok found that 31 percent of gay men and transgendered people are HIV-positive.

“In order for the transgender community to fully support this bill, it must ensure that we are granted the right to legally change our name titles,” Na Ayutthaya stressed.

Recently deforested peat land intended for oil palm plantations in Borneo, Indonesia. Credit: glennhurowitz/CC-BY-2.0

By Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 22 2013 (IPS)

With a propensity to devour everything in their path and spiral quickly out of control, leaving behind swathes of scorched earth, forest fires are considered a hazard in most parts of the world. In Indonesia, however, fires are the preferred method for clearing large areas of land for massive plantations of commercial crops.

In the first half of 2013, research studies have already recorded 8,343 forest fires, a higher number than has been recorded in preceding years.

While some blazes occurred naturally, igniting in the country’s vast rainforests that are transformed in the dry summer months into an expanse of kindling, experts say that many fires were created by plantation companies and, to a lesser extent, by local communities, to clear millions of hectares of jungle land needed for oil palm plantations.

According to the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), oil palm plantations “covered 7.8 million hectares in Indonesia” in 2011, and produced roughly 23.5 million tonnes of crude palm oil that year.

The cheapest and easiest way to clear enough land to yield these huge quantities of oil is to set fire to acre upon acre of rainforest and let the wind and the flames do the work, including reducing the acidity of peat soil.

This soggy, organic matter is anathema to palm trees, which explains why about two-thirds of forest fires in Indonesia occur on peat lands.

Unfortunately, peat soil becomes extremely toxic at high temperatures, emitting greenhouse gases and creating haze and smog. Peat fires can burn on for weeks, even months, endangering wildlife and human communities far from the site of the actual fire.

For years, palm oil-producing companies in Indonesia and Malaysia, which together account for 85 percent of the world’s palm oil production every year, have come under fire from activists and scientists who say the ‘forest fire method’ poses serious environmental and health risks for the entire region.

While most of these fires originate in Sumatra, changes in wind direction mean that smoke travels to nearby countries.

Last month, for instance, the international community pilloried Indonesia for fires that choked parts of neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia.

The haze that enveloped the latter was so bad that the government in Kuala Lumpur declared a state of emergency in parts of the country where air pollution index readings reached a critical 750 on Jun. 23, well above the “hazardous” level of 300.

Malaysian citizens were advised to stay indoors, while Singaporean authorities cancelled outdoor summer activities as panicked residents emptied stores of their supply of protective masks.

The average air pollution index rating in both Malaysia and Singapore now hovers at over 100, a dramatic increase from the preceding decade, which “could contribute to climate change and is seriously detrimental to the health of people in the region,” Gurmit Singh, a renowned Malaysian environmentalist, told IPS.

Blame has been bandied about, with governments, corporations and even local communities named as culprits, but public censure has failed to prompt concrete action.

Environment ministers representing five members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) flew to Malaysia’s capital last week in search of a lasting solution to what has become a predictable, annual crisis, but the talks concluded on Jul. 17 with no firm agreement on the table.

All that officials from Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand approved was a plan for Indonesia to refer ASEAN’s 2002 Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution to its parliament by 2014 – hardly a promising solution, since the accord appeared before Indonesia’s legislature in 2009 but was not mentioned once during the entire session.

The outcome of the high-level meeting comes as no surprise to T. Jayabalan, a public health consultant and adviser to Friends of the Earth-Malaysia.

“For almost 20 years these governments have adopted a lackadaisical attitude towards resolving the problem (of forest fires),” he told IPS.

“No concrete measures have been taken because any measure imposed will impact the profits of palm oil companies,” he added.

A quick look at the stakes involved in palm oil production support Jayabalan’s claim: according to CIFOR, crude palm oil brought in 12.4 billion dollars in foreign exchange in 2008, while the government bagged another billion dollars in export taxes alone that same year.

The sector employs some 3.2 million people every year – no mean feat in a country where 30 million people live below the poverty line.

Earlier this year, the Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association unveiled an ambitious plan to grow the sector by 5.4 percent by the year 2020, adding another four million hectares to existing plantations around the country.

With such zealous plans in the pipeline, a solution is urgently needed, “rather than more talk and postponement of key decisions,” Jayabalan stressed.

He and other experts believe the first step must entail recognising the role palm oil companies play in creating fires.

Data published last month by the Washington-based World Research Institute (WRI) shows that the number of fires per hectare is “three to four times higher within…oil palm concession boundaries than outside of them.”

The research also suggests that there are significant discrepancies between maps issued by the ministry of forestry and those being used by oil palm companies.

According to WRI, “Company ‘Business Land Use Rights’ licence boundaries (in Indonesian, Hak Guna Usaha or HGU)…are generally nested within, and are smaller than, the concession boundaries the government is using. This is creating confusion about responsibility for fires found on land thought to be within concessions but outside areas the companies fully control and are directly developing.”

With more fires expected in the months between August and October, environmentalists are urging governments to “come to terms with the haze and its root causes because people in the region suffer from the pollutants,” Singh said. Various studies have shown that haze pollution leads to an increase in the number of people suffering from upper respiratory tract infections, asthma and rhinitis.

Countries in the region are also being called upon to cooperate in the development and implementation of prevention mechanisms, monitoring and early warning systems, information-sharing networks and other channels for providing mutual assistance.

But these steps have currently been stalled by Indonesia’s refusal to ratify the ASEAN Haze Pollution Agreement.