CENN – APRIL 8, 2004 DAILY DIGEST
Table of Contents:
1. Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline to be Ready by Mid-2005
2. NGO News Line Launched!
3. Western European Governments not Taking Illegal Logging Seriously
4. The International Conference – Environmental Safety: Nature and
Society
5. GIS & Remote Sensing for Wildlife Managers Using the New ESRI
Software ARCGIS
6. Measuring Land Cover Change and its Impact on Endangered Species
1. BAKU-TBILISI-CEYHAN OIL PIPELINE TO BE READY BY MID-2005
Source: Interfax, April 7, 2004
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil export pipeline will be ready for use in the
first half of 2005, David Woodward, president of British Petroleum
Azerbaijan, said in Tbilisi on Tuesday after a meeting between an
Azerbaijani delegation and Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania.
He said that at the moment 60% of construction work has been completed
on the Georgian side: pipes have been welded on 150 km of the 248-km
section. “The pipeline will be ready for use in the first half of next
year,” Woodward said.
In turn, Natik Aliyev, president of the State Oil Company of the
Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR), said that the pipeline is being built
according to plan and will be completed on schedule. “For us, as for
international financial and oil circles, this has been and continues to
be a priority,” Aliyev said.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project will cost $3.6 billion. The future
pipeline will stretch 1,767 kilometers (443 km through Azerbaijan, 248
km through Georgia and 1,076 km through Turkey) and will have a capacity
of 50 million tonnes of oil per annum
Participants in the BTC project are: British Petroleum (30.1%), SOCAR
(25%), Unocal (8.9%), Statoil (8.71%), TPAO (6.53%), ENI (5%), Itochu
(3.4%), ConocoPhillips (2.5%), Inpex (2.5%), TotalFinaElf (5%), and
Amerada Hess (2.36%).
2. NGO NEWS LINE LAUNCHED!
NEWS RELEASE
April 5, 2004
Yerevan, Armenia
April 5. The USAID-funded World Learning NGO Strengthening Program is
pleased to announce the launch of NGO News Line, a unique online
initiative available on our website The current
option presents the latest NGO news on a special page exclusively
devoted to news releases from Armenian NGO sector.
On this page all interested Armenian NGOs can not only read but also
share information about their programs and events by getting directly
involved in the News Line update. As soon as the news is submitted to
World Learning’s Information department via email:
[email protected], the NGO information is processed, translated and
posted on the website both in Armenian and English.
We strongly believe that through the News Line public organizations in
Armenia will have the opportunity to spread their message to a larger
audience using this resource and providing better communication and
information distribution services to NGO community.
The World Learning NSP is funded by the USAID and has been operating in
Armenia since August 2000. Working together with NGOs through providing
training, technical assistance and grants, World Learning has helped
them to become broader based and stronger advocates for civil society in
Armenia.
For more information contact
Zara Amatuni
Information & PR Specialist
World Learning for International Development
NGO Strengthening Program, Armenia
24 Moskovian Street, Apt. 1
Tel.: (3741) 543576, 582620, 520851
URL:
3. WESTERN EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS NOT TAKING ILLEGAL LOGGING SERIOUSLY
Brussels, Belgium – A new WWF online report launched today shows that
European governments are not effectively combating illegal logging.
The report rates 12 countries on 9 different steps needed to tackle this
problem, and finds that none of them has achieved a satisfactory
performance overall.
According to the new WWF online Government Barometer, the UK comes out
best – rated moderate to good – and is clearly ahead of Denmark, Germany
and Sweden, which are credited with an overall moderate performance.
Austria, Finland, France, Greece, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and
Portugal are rated poorly.
The survey shows that most governments support efforts at the European
Union (EU) level to outlaw imports of illegal wood, tackle illegal
logging in accession and candidate countries, and follow through with a
proposed voluntary mechanism to keep illegal timber out of the EU.
However, they are failing to implement strong measures in their domestic
markets.
For example, while EU governments purchase about 20 per cent of all wood
products sold in the EU for public works, only six countries (Austria,
Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, and the UK) have committed to buying
wood from legal and sustainable sources. Of these, only the UK is
monitoring implementation of its public procurement policy.
The UK is also the only country to have a partnership with a
wood-producing country (Indonesia) to combat illegal logging and related
trade.
According to WWF, similar initiatives launched by other EU countries
don’t include clear targets to actively reduce the import of illegal
wood to the participating EU country and cannot be seen as real
partnerships.
“The trade in illegal timber around the world is a multibillion dollar
business, and EU countries, through their buying power, have a key
responsibility in reducing it,” said Duncan Pollard, Head of WWF’s
European Forest Programme. “These countries must speed up their efforts
to tackle an illegal activity that destroys nature, impoverishes local
communities, and distorts markets. There is no excuse for inaction:
commitment is good, but action is better.”
Half of the timber imported into the EU comes from Russia and Eastern
Europe – and a significant portion of this is likely to be illegal.
Previous WWF reports have shown for example that up to 50 per cent of
all logging activities in the Russian Far East and in Estonia, and up to
20 per cent in Latvia and 27 per cent in Northwest Russia, are illegal.
Although available information for most accession and candidate
countries is fragmented, WWF believes illegal logging is a major issue
in these countries. The conservation organization also expects more
illegal timber from Russia to enter the EU via accession countries after
EU enlargement.
With its new online Government Barometer, WWF will continue to monitor
government commitments, attitudes, and actions on illegal logging over
the coming months.
“Governments often make it sound as if they are doing all they can to
curb illegal logging and trade, but the reality is different,” said
Jacob Andersen, WWF Forest Officer. “Our new online barometer will make
it easy for everybody to see who is taking real action and who is simply
hiding behind words.”
For further information:
Helma Brandlmaier,
WWF’s European Forest Programme,
Tel.: +43 676 83 488 217 (mobile)
Louis B?langer,
WWF’s European Policy Office,
Tel.: +32 473 562 260 (mobile)
Claire Doole,
Head of Press Office, WWF International,
Tel.: +41 22 364 9550
NOTES:
The UK has obtained 12 points out the maximum of 18, followed by Denmark
(9), Germany and Sweden (7), Austria, Finland, France, Greece, The
Netherlands and Spain (6), Italy and Portugal (5).
The 9 steps to combat illegal logging used to rate the 12 countries are:
1. Position on the development of a voluntary licensing scheme on timber
2. Position on a EU legislation that would outlaw the import and
marketing of illegal wood
3. Position on a EU initiative that would stop illegal logging in EU
accession and candidate countries
4. Level of collaboration across government departments on the FLEGT
action plan
5. Commitment to ensure public procurement of legal and sustainable wood
products
6. Implementation of commitments on public procurement of legal and
sustainable wood products
7. Participation in partnerships on combating illegal logging and
related trade
8. Effect of participation in partnerships on combating illegal logging
and related trade
9. Level of priority for projects in wood-producing developing countries
to reduce illegal logging
4. THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE — ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY: NATURE AND
SOCIETY
The International Conference was held in St.Petersburg, Russia, on April
2-3, 2004. The Conference was organized by the Center for Environmental
Initiatives, the Russian State Hydro meteorological University, the
Russian Geographical Society, and the Interregional Youth NGO Children
of the Baltic.
St.Petersburg and Vladivostok, Moscow and Yakutiya, Estonia and Moldova,
Finland and Armenia, the USA and Sweden – 12 countries and different
regions of Russia were represented at the conference. The specific
feature of the conference was the fact that its participants represented
different sectors of the society: non-governmental and governmental
organizations, research and educational institutions, and mass media.
The human impact on the environment is so considerable at present that
its consequences are of planetary scale and bring threats to human
civilization. Are there any ways of survival and prosperity? What are
these mechanisms? All these questions are the essence of the problem of
“environmental safety,” and were discussed by the Conference
participants.
Serious attention was paid to nature protection in Russia, where
negative tendencies are observed. The last four years were the time
period when the least number of protected nature areas were established
in Russia as compared to the 50-years history. Never during the last 14
years there were so few nature protection inspectors, so few
environmental impact assessments, and so many environmentally hazardous
projects.
The Conference participants paid special attention to protection of
environmental rights of citizens. These rights include the right for
assess to environmental information, the right for public participation
in decision-making, and the right for assess to justice in environmental
matters. Implementation of environmental rights is of high importance,
especially in Russia. Environmental rights are violated on a broad scale
during construction of new industrial and transports objects, during
construction of new, additional buildings in old centers of cities, and
during destruction of green areas. Protection of environmental rights is
implemented differently in different countries. Therefore, the exchange
of Russian and foreign experience at the Conference was of great
importance.
Erroneous decisions and blind-alley directions of development are
consequences of ignorance and poor understanding of environmental
processes and methods for the problems solutions. Therefore, a
considerable part of discussions was devoted to environmental education,
which must be aimed at themes actual for people and the society.
For example, It is not often that people know, what consumer products
are better for health and for the environment, what is the reason to
save energy and other resources, which packages are less harmful to
nature. Here informal education for youth and adults, joining efforts of
state educational system and NGOs could be of great use. A good example
of such activity is the international school program for application of
resources and energy SPARE presented at the conference.
Environmental problems are usually of transboundary, and sometimes of
global character. Therefore, efficient international efforts are needed
for their solution. The Conference section on international cooperation
permitted the participants to exchange not only opinions on
strengthening the cooperation, but also successful experiences in this
sphere.
Success of the Conference will favor the main Conference goal – to
consolidate the efforts of all spheres of the society to provide
environmental safety and environmental rights of citizens.
The Conference program, abstracts of papers presented at the Conference
and other information about the Conference is available on Internet:
For more information please contact the St.Petersburg Center for
Environmental Information:
Phone/fax: +7 812 3156622
E-mail: [email protected]
Pereulok Grivtsova 10, off. 26, 190000 St.Petersburg Russia
5. GIS & REMOTE SENSING FOR WILDLIFE MANAGERS USING THE NEW ESRI
SOFTWARE ARCGIS
An Introduction to the use of Geographic Information Systems & Remote
Sensing in Conservation and Wildlife Management
April 12-16, 2004
Increasingly, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing –
the mapping of features using imagery acquired either from an aircraft
or a satellite – have become important tools for decision-making and the
applied management of natural resources. Many federal agencies and
NGO’s rely on GIS and satellite data for their work and are starting to
produce their own spatial databases. However, there are few training
opportunities for wildlife managers to learn the application of GIS in
everyday management situations. We are offering a course for wildlife
managers that will provide hands-on experience for the collection of
data, GIS analysis of the data, and map-making using the latest ESRI and
ERDAS software.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
This short course will provide wildlife managers with a working
knowledge about the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
and Remote Sensing to the monitoring and management of wildlife and
forest vegetation. Exercises in establishing locations with a Global
Positioning System (GPS), data input into a GIS, and spatial analysis
techniques for GIS will provide hands-on and real world experience
during the course. Based on examples about habitat selection in
songbirds and white-tailed deer, course participants will learn how to:
* Collect GIS data in the field using survey techniques and GPS.
* Differentially correct GPS data.
* Input GPS data into GIS.
* Input field data into GIS.
* Use GIS for management of large data sets from multiple sources.
* Design and perform analysis using GIS data and spatial analysis
techniques.
* Integrate data with ancillary data, such as satellite imagery, aerial
photography, and State Agency databases.
Visit the following web address for more details and registration
information:
The CRC will also be offering an Advanced Course in Conservation GIS and
Remote Sensing April 19-23.
anced_GIS
Contact:
David Zaks
1500 Remount Road
Front Royal, VA 22630
540-635-6535 (GIS Lab)
540-635-6506 (FAX)
[email protected]
6. MEASURING LAND COVER CHANGE AND ITS IMPACT ON ENDANGERED SPECIES
April 19-23, 2004
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
This one-week advanced GIS and remote sensing course provides
conservationists with an opportunity to learn how GIS and remote sensing
can be used to assess the conservation status of endangered species.
Each participant will be provided with his or her own desktop computer
for all lab exercises. During the hands-on exercises participants will
use the Internet, ArcView, ArcView Spatial Analyst, ERDAS Imagine,
Fragstats, and other spatial analysis programs. Instructors will lead
participants step-by-step through the process of:
* Conduct a regional conservation assessment using GIS to determine
critical conservation areas for an endangered species
* Acquiring multi-date satellite imagery to quantify land cover change
and to map the extent of the remaining habitat
* Using landscape analysis to determine optimal landscape configurations
for conserving the endangered species.
Visit the following web address for more details and registration
information:
Contact:
David Zaks
[email protected]
1500 Remount Road
Front Royal, VA 22630
540-635-6535 (GIS Lab)
540-635-6506 (FAX)
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CENN INFO
Caucasus Environmental NGO Network (CENN)
Tel: ++995 32 92 39 46
Fax: ++995 32 92 39 47
E-mail: [email protected]
URL:
www.worldlearning.am.
www.worldlearning.am
www.cei.ru/environmentalsafety2004.
www.ecocenter.spb.org
www.cenn.org